Montaigne has spoken with Marc Fennell on SBS’ 'The Feed' episode which aired last night about her Eurovision journey, the writing process for her Eurovision entry ‘Technicolour’, the fans of the contest, and art as competition.
The interview began with Marc asking Montaigne about at what point she realized that she was not going to be having the same Eurovision experience as artists before her, to which Montaigne joked about whether he meant from the beginning of this year or the beginning of last year. She then spoke about the story beginning from March of 2020, just a few weeks after winning ‘Eurovision – Australia Decides’.
“My partner had a trip to Japan planned in March, and it was when he had to cancel his trip because of the warnings of coronavirus, it was like, okay, this is serious. And then, you know, like a week later it broke bad.”
The topic then went on to talking about how Montaigne felt about having to abandon ‘Don’t Break Me’, as the potential Eurovision entries from 2020 would not be allowed to represent countries at the 2021 contest due to the rules of the contest.
“I did grieve. I was upset. I did have my moment, and I’m a firm believer in feeling your feelings. It’s annoying that this song doesn’t get its time in the spotlight. But this is just the situation, like, I can’t do anything about it.”
Which then turned into talking about the writing process for her second Eurovision entry, ‘Technicolour’.
“It started in my bedroom, here, on the guitar. I was having some feelings . . . It was literally just improvising my feelings, which is how most of my songs get written, quite frankly. I was like, actually I don’t want the song to stay sad and ruminating. I want there to be a juxtaposition of . . . feeling your feelings, not repressing them, but also having the resilience to be like, I’m going to follow the signs that these feelings are pointing me towards . . .”
Discussion turned to talking about the fervent Eurovision fanbase who Marc described as being “not short on opinions”, and how Montaigne felt about being inserted into that fanbase.
“It’s been interesting. It’s been a challenge. Just a lot of rude people. Just a lot of rude people on Twitter. I get it, it’s an open forum, say whatever you want, so why not say whatever you want? To me, it’s like, well, morally, how about you be kind to other people? It’s just interesting, fielding all those comments . . . Everyone has insecurities. I have insecurities, about my voice, about my art, about the things I do . . . Some people say things, not knowing that is your weak point. That’s made me upset over time, hearing it over and over again from certain people. There’s a lot of good stuff, but you always fixate on the one thing.”
While talking about the reaction that she expects from her performance when it’s played out at Eurovision, Montaigne mentioned she was hoping for positive reactions, although can realistically expect a combination of both positive and negative reactions.
“I hope people feel excited about it, I hope I sang it well, I think I sang it well. From memory, my voice cracked a little bit in the last note which sucks, but whatever, I did my best.”
She also touched on how Eurovision and her performance for Eurovision has made her nervous.
“The Eurovision stuff has had me really nervous in a way I never have been. I think it’s just the scale of it, and also the preciseness of it. I’m used to doing live stuff, which is never recorded . . . I love that, I love the chaos, that’s where I thrive.”
Montaigne has mentioned in the past about how she isn’t a fan of art as competition, which Marc brought up, asking what the value of competing at Eurovision is for her.
“One, it’s like being on the world stage. It’s literally a world stage . . . It’s a lot of people. The thing about Eurovision being a competition is, like, sometimes the most memorable thing doesn’t win. I think it’s the nastiness that I can’t handle at the competition. If people weren’t nasty, I’d be open for competition. Competition’s great. It really encourages you to do your best, and I wanted to be able to be that person who’s like, that isn’t me, and I can still do this.”
Montaigne’s full interview with Marc Fennel on ‘The Feed’ can be viewed below.
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