STACK February 2016 Issue 136

77 / 89

11
FEATURE MUSIC
MUSIC
The track titled Stamina seems to stand
out as a thematic touchstone – and Hayley
Mary is happy to talk about it, even though
she “actually went into this album not
wanting to talk about the songs.” There’s
a part in which the lyrics are structured
around binaries – “It ain’t X, because X is
Y” – and the vocalist explains that it’s her
take on the American/Australian dream. “You
know the ‘new world’ nuclear family where
you get a house, and you get a husband,
and you get love in a romantic and socially
acceptable way, and you just hide away in
that construct, and that’s forever,” she says.
“I just felt really suffocated by the notion
of it. None of that really makes you happy,
those socially constructed aspirations. I did
use to aspire to them; then in my personal
life I went through a period that broke them
all down and I just realised I don’t really
want to be in one place, I don’t really want
one man or one woman. I like embracing
the uncertainty of travelling and being a bit
nomadic and not searching for that thing at
the end of the rainbow. The rainbow’s more
interesting than the thing at the end of it.
There’s heaps of colours in the rainbow,” she
laughs. “In that song when I go ‘One thing,
one thing,” it’s like the ‘one thing’ that I’m
acknowledging is just to keep going – which
is stamina, obviously. Like one love? That to
me is just crazy in a planet of seven billion
people. I think it puts a lot of pressure on
people! Particularly women of my age. I can
only speak from personal experience but
if they don’t have their boyfriend or their
husband which they aspire to have a child
with and buy a house with and get into a
lifetime of debt with, then they’ve failed
somehow.”
Hayley has alluded to her impression that
women’s experiences seem to be being
discussed more openly recently, and she
has a few ideas on why that might be. “I
think a lot of it happens in the bedroom, or
in the privacy of the home, to be honest,”
she says. “A lot of men have come on board
because their wives or partners or sister or
mothers have gradually convinced them.
It was a lonely place being a feminist even
two or three years ago, and now you’re not
really cool if you’re not one. Which I like!”
She speaks about Taylor Swift and Emma
Watson, and then ponders that maybe the
attitude shift has to do with the internet and
more people reading personal accounts.
“The history of feminism is very unique
because a lot of it happens internally,” she
says. “It’s never going to be that big tangible
metanarrative that we’re so used to. It was
always untellable, but now we’ve got more
technology and more mediums and outlets
to tell the little stories.”
“Every ‘ism’, every movement towards
acceptance is slowly gaining ground. There’s
been a coming of understandi
just seems part of our evolutio
that we’ll eventually try and
understand each other more
and more – that seems to
be part of the progress of
humanity.”
One love? That
to me is just
crazy in a planet
of seven billion
people