This was on one of my mother’s records. My whole musical influences come from Reader’s Digest record boxes and movie soundtracks that my mum had. I remember this being the first song that I was really into. I liked the melody and the lyricswere easy to remember. Hey, Mickey! It was catchy for a young girl who was into dancing and gymnastics. I also liked watching the video with the cheerleading pom-pom choreography and the costumes. I just loved it. You could see what was written in the stars. It put me on my life path.
I probably watched Grease at least 50 times while I was growing up. It’s one of the first things I remember being influenced by. When I was 9 or 10, I used to choreograph dance routines to it. All the family friends would come over for a barbecue and I’d take all the kids into the lounge room and get everyone to learn my choreography. That was me progressing a little bit more to being a tween. I loved the whole album. It was very influential for me.
I liked bad Sandy. I mean, look, I became Stah. I had a girl gang at school, not quite in the same way. We didn’t have a name or anything. But, we’d be getting up to mischief. I was pretty much a ringleader, smoking behind the tree or the bike shed or jumping out the window and carrying on.
You Shook Me All Night Long - AC/DC
In high school, hanging out with my friends, we started smoking and drinking at quite a young age. It was the 80s so these things weren’t as frowned upon as they are now. They still weren’t good at 13 or 14, but kids today don’t even do it. This song represents that jump. It was dirty and about sex and was rude. That made it really cool.
I distinctly remember it was our song we’d sing as we walked around the cross-country circuit. We didn’t run. We’d just walk and sing this. We thought we were so tough. I like a bit of AC/DC, it takes me back to my teenage self.
Blister in the Sun - Violent Femmes
This was seminal. I was 17 and had more influences and people opening the door to music that wasn’t in the charts. I’d found this album but no one else had heard of it, so it made me even cooler and more avant-garde and edgy. Actually, I’d just goofed into it. I liked their sound and their lyrics. The album represents a turning point, where I started to discover music that was outside of the mainstream.
Light in Places - Peaches
There are obviously missing decades, but this song brings us bang up to date. It’s the song Peaches wrote for me for my laser act. It’s the song that I perform Stargasm to with the laser butt plug that I’m bringing to Splore.
I gave her two words for inspiration for that song, “iconoclasm” and “stargasm” and paid her out of an Arts Council grant that was funding my show. I think she spent it on mastering the track, it wasn’t really very much money. I gave her those words and went through her back catalogue and picked out some sounds that represented the mood of the show, which had a big spacey vibe, and then she wrote this. It’s bang-on and totally amazing. Because it’s what I perform the laser act to, it’s a part of my life force, my art history.
Empress Stah.
But my memory is shot. I’ve got broad, broad brushstrokes and I can’t remember the first time I heard it. I remember being relieved that I liked it and that it was brilliant. It was exciting. My memory is actually that bad. I do so much. I work so fast and move through so many shows, genres, countries, that my career is just a big happy blur of fabulous, but the details are lost on me.
Empress Stah performs her internationally acclaimed aerial performance, Stargasm, at the three-day music and art festival Splore, Tāpapakanga Regional Park, February 24-26
