Jess Mauboy splits with label to release new single for huge Home and Away moment
After almost 20 years in the major record label system in Australia, Mauboy has severed ties with Warner Music to launch her emotional new single While I Got Time on her independent imprint Jamally.
Mauboy and her co-writer PJ Harding were given a cryptic brief to write the powerful ballad, unaware it was intended to soundtrack the heart-wrenching departure of Lynne McGranger's beloved character Irene from Home and Away.
Seven has yet to confirm when McGranger's final episode will air this month.
The wildly popular actress, who is the favourite to take home the Gold Logie on Sunday, came up with the storyline of her character exiting the show after 33 years due to an Alzheimer's diagnosis. She wanted to foster a national conversation about the disease and care of elderly patients.
'There was no communication whatsoever that we were writing a song for Irene,' Mauboy said. 'They asked us to write a song about crossing oceans, travelling, moving away and leaving family and having all these memories of the people that you love.
'As travellers, as writers, as collaborators, we've experienced those times of sacrificing being away and missing home.'
Mauboy and Sydney songwriter and producer Harding, who has penned Grammy nominated songs with Noah Cyrus, completed a rough demo in half a day.
It was immediately sent to the Home and Away producers who called McGranger in to hear it. She was moved to tears.
'The producers told me they wanted to talk to me and I was like 'Well, you can't fire me, I've left!'' McGranger said. 'They played me the song and the footage (of her final scenes) and it is so powerful and moving.
'I filmed the bloody thing, and I watch it with the song and I'm crying.'
It's been a year of big changes in Mauboy's life, both personally and professionally. She welcomed her first child, daughter Mia, with husband Themeli Magripilis in January.
After three years in development, in March the pop star and award-winning actress launched a sun-care brand Desert Rose, inspired by her childhood in the Northern Territory outback under Australia's harsh sun.
And now she has launched Jamally, her indie record label.
Sony exercised their option to sign the 16-year-old singer from Darwin when she was runner-up on the fourth season of Australian Idol in 2006.
She parted ways with the major label in 2020 after frustrations with the executives' creative vision for her next album and signed with rival Warner Music.
Mauboy released her fifth record, the top 10 hit Yours Forever last February.
But she reached another impasse over her artistic future and decided to go independent.
'I've dedicated my whole life for the last 15 years or more to music and the label and their process and I wasn't really doing what I deeply wanted, or the permission to do it,' she said.
'The decision came to go out on my own and yes, there's gonna be a lot more things to do, but I'm willing to take that risk (instead of) spending time doing the same thing over and over again.'
Wanting to start a family and spend more time with her and her husband's clans also galvanised her decision to take full control over her career.
'I've always wanted to be a mum. I come from a big family so I've wanted that for myself, I wanted that for my family and to reconnect after that time away, the time I'd sacrificed of not even being with them, or dipping in and dipping out.
'I want to be there fully, mentally, physically, and loving everything that I am actually doing and making a decision on. I'm making the choices and I'm actually doing it my way. For the first time.'
Mauboy will give 'While I Got Time' its live premiere at the National Indigenous Music Awards in Darwin on August 9, where she will also be inducted to the NIMAs Hall of Fame, alongside revered First Nations artists including Yothu Yindi, Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter, Kev Carmody and Gurrumul.
She said she was deeply humbled for the honour from her community.
'I did think about how do I as an artist who's still making music, still trying to discover where my place is, receive such recognition, so high in the music industry, when you look at the other Hall of Famers, the giants,' she said.
'Have I done enough? To get into the Hall of Fame, you are meant to have done everything.
'I am deeply humbled and I keep thinking about how I've always gone into music doing it for community. The NIMAs was the birth of who I am as an artist.
'This is going to make me work even more harder. I'm not finished, I want to go to the ends of the earth with music.'
While I Got Time is out now. The TV Week Logie Awards air live on Seven from 7pm on Sunday.
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