Check out Jen’s interview with Ingrid Michaelson who hits our shores next week!

With her latest album Lights Out still causing quite a stir, NYC songstress Ingrid Michaelson is excited to announce her return to Australia. After selling out her previous two tours, Michaelson returns for a string of endearingly quirky live shows in major cities.

Her sixth album, released in April 2014, debuted at the #1 U.S. Independent Billboard Charts, topped the U.S. Billboard charts at #5 and launched into the #2 position on the U.S. iTunes charts after its first day in store. The video for her new single, Girls Chase Boys, has attracted the attention of almost 2 million viewers for its charmingly flirty interplay between gender-bending girls and boys… chasing girls and boys.

“Lyrically deep and musically adventurous, Michaelson has it all” – BBC

Michaelson’s aptitude for contagiously crafted performances and her panache for the unexpected sees it as no surprise that she has graced the screens of the likes of Good Morning America, The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, to name a few.

Look at the amazing clip for ‘Girls Chase Boys’ HERE

Hi Ingrid, we are so keen for you to come back to Australia!

I first heard of you when I saw your music video for your cover of Gotye’s song Somebody that I used know. That was amazing! You did all the instrumentals yourself?
My friend Chris who was in my band she helped me figure out what all the parts were. I mean I play piano and keys and a little guitar but I don’t play bass and drums so he showed me what the other parts were then we taped it and he edited altogether.

This is your third time down under, and with your latest album being so successful we are stoked to have you back. You had to postpone your last tour till now, how keen are you to come back here to play your four shows?

Well I postponed it because of personal reasons, family problems. I want to tour last year when the album came out and it makes sense but I just couldn’t for personal reasons. I do not want to leave people hanging so we decided to come back. The timing might be a little strange because the record is new anymore. The last two times I’ve come this shows have gone so well and the audience are so sweet so I did not want to just cancel the tour, I want to live up to my promise of coming back.

I have heard that your story telling captivates the crowd as well as your songs which is refreshing as that rarely happens! Have you got a whole set of new stories to tell for this tour? Can we have an example?
I kinda talk about things as they happen every once in a while there will be a song that will have it’s own story that goes along with it. Like there was this one song, I have not done this for a long time but it was a cover of an REM song. one night I met the lead singer of REM was very intoxicated and I was at the party and I have this long story that I tell and then I play the song. So like a little package together. A lot of my interactions with audiences usually come out of something that happened during that day or even just with the interactions of people in the audience and things that they say to me in the moment. Other artists that asked me how can I perfect my talking to the audience and asked should I have stories ready to go. I think people really appreciate spontaneity and they don’t want to hear what has been said 50 times before. I think artists need to feel comfortable on stage. There is a fine line between engaging an audience or being overtaken by the audience because if you allow people to feel comfortable enough to talk to you like shout things out sometimes they can overtake you and sometimes you have to crack the whip to get the audience back. Over the years thats something that I’ve learnt how to do. I really do just love having all the people in front of you and pretending that they’re not there for me just does not make any sense. I love it when people respectfully interact with me and it makes for a very memorable show, and unique show. I use the audience energy their experiences so some shows a much more talky than others, I don’t try and force it, if it is there is is there if it is not it is not. I really do generally love interacting with people. T

Who are you bringing with you as your band?
I will be bringing Allie who was come with me to Australia before and my bandmate Billy who has never been to Australia before so he’s really excited he is actually in Bali at the moment and meet him on Monday in Sydney. He is very very excited. Allie and I have been twice before so we have seen the Blue Mountains we have seen koalas, we’ve walked up the Sydney Harbour Bridge so we are seasoned professionals and he is very excited about doing all the touristy things.
Will you have much time to do that?
The way that works out when we come to Australia is we flying into Sydney then we have one day to rest, one day to promo and then we have our show and we fly, show, fly, show, fly, show then fly home. We never really get any time to do anything. We fly to the city go to the venue and do the show. The two shows we’ve had in Melbourne have been really awesome and fun. There is just never any time in Australia, like in the states we are in tour buses and do was show, drive for a few hours then we are in the next city.

Your video Time Machine certainly has fans on you facebook page dying to see the video as you teased them with snippets each day leading up to the release. This video included some pretty high profile comedians, (Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office), Donald Faison (Turk from Scrubs) and David Koechner (Champ Kind from Anchorman) Matt Jones (Badger from Breaking Bad), Jorge Garcia (Hurley from Lost), Rob Delaney, Steve Agee, Brian Baumgartner (Kevin from The Office) and Garret Dillahunt) did you have fun filming that? It certainly came off as hilarious! (you can watch that music video here 
I reached out to Rob Delaney is a comedian and a blogger, and to Donald Faison, he is a friend of mine and then we contacted Rainn Wilson who has a production company called Soul Pancake and they produce the video. Rainn contacted all the rest to see if they want to be in it, they all said yes because they trusted Rainn and we had an amazing time and was really funny. It was shot over a year ago but we haven’t been unable to release until now. While we were all doing it I could not believe that it was actually happening, an idea of mine, and it was really fun. Your music video for Girls Chase boys is now up to nearly 1 million views on you tube. It is a classic take off Robert Palmers video which I have always hated due to very obvious reasons! I love your song anyway but this music video makes it just perfect! Who came up with this concept for the music video? Yeah I wanted to do something dancy but I’m not really a dancer per se but I like the idea of having some movement in the video. I usually do come up with the music video ideas myself. So I was thinking of some iconic videos that have movement like some crazy choreographed movement and that’s the one that came to my mind and so I pulled up on my computer and watched it then I started again and I muted it and played my song with it. It did not Sync off or make any sense but I thought the whole idea of the song is that just everybody is searching for love and no matter who you identify that as, how you achieve the, is that we just all wanna be loved. We thought it would be kind of fun to put that idea in a playful way into the video and so we switched the gender roles, I became the Robert Palmer character and and the sexy women in the back became sexy men. The director said that we should put women in their too and then there will be swaying hips and you don’t know whether you are seeing a man or a woman, it was blurring gender lines and just getting back to we are just humans. It wasn’t meant to be a jab at the video, it wasn’t meant to take a feminist stance although it did and I’m glad it did but it was not what I was thinking. I just thought it would be awesome and fun to do. To have dudes with beautiful chiseled faces with red lips, I liked it visually, and it would be interesting and different. I was pleasantly surprised with that, we got on a really good PR ride with it and it was really good fun. It helped to get the message across about what the song was really about.
How does your song writing normally go, do you start with an inspirational idea and dwell on it for a while?
I haven’t really got a set way of doing things, I’ve been doing a lot of cowriting lately, this latest record I think by three or four songs each song was cowritten. So you get into a room with someone with some idea of chord progressions or a word. I really don’t have a set way but from me it’s definitely about chord progression. I don’t think I have to write a song with the word in for example Parachute but normally it is chord procession and then you think of a lyric and you think oh that is cool and you go with that. I have written songs before that’s just started off with the title. Then other times I start with a poem. So I don’t really have a set way, I am very open.
You have said that you have been in the past a bit of a control freak when it comes to your writing but you have been letting go and it is liberating. Is it still difficult to let go?
Yes I think so for almost all of my writing, I wanted to be the only person to write the songs and I think in the time of my life it was important. But the older you get I think that there is a reason why that most songwriters make fewer and fewer records because you can’t keep saying the same things over and over again if you’ve been doing it for a few years. I got to the point where I needed help, I felt everything I needed to say had been said and I had done it in a way that it needed to be done, I needed help really! It made for just such a great experience to open up and work with other people. I will still write by myself but I don’t plan on going back to that being the only way that I write. If you get with the right writer is actually really magical and it’s really nice to share with somebody to to have something that you have made together. You can celebrate the success with somebody else rather than just yourself.
You have seriously thought provoking lyrics and music videos, what is your view on todays pop culture that (possibly a huge generalisation here) has neither of those things?
I mean I think that there is always going to be pop music that is really sex driven and always has been. I wonder what happens when these people get older and can’t show their arse any more (laughing). This is why I really admire Taylor Swift as she is a beautiful beautiful girl. She is also very clever funny and smart and she is self-deprecating and she is very self-aware and that is the mark of being a real artist that has a future and longevity. That being said I do like music with a great beat it doesn’t have to be thought-provoking necessarily, I think there is so much music in the world that there needs to be music that just makes you feel good and music that makes you wanna dance or cry or makes you think.
Well our time is up, that went quick, thanks so much for your time and I hope to meet you at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne and i hope that your trip goes really well!
Thank you very much! See you soon!