HAYDEN CALNIN SAYS “FUCK YOU
COLLINGWOOD”
AND FINDS HIS LONG LOST INSPIRATION IN A HOUSE NEAR THE BEACH silvia pellegrino
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ustralian singer and songwriter Hayden Calnin made a comeback in June with a brand new single, “F**k Collingwood.” Between a day at the studio preparing his next EP and the next, he found some time to exchange a few words with me during a Skype call. After a friendly chat about how life was going, I asked him if anything changed in himself and his music compared to when his last EP Dirt came out. He said, “I wasn’t feeling very inspired to write in the last couple of years… nothing I was writing felt genuine or deserving to be put out. I basically spent the last two years working with other artists […] just to help other people and get with the community. This next EP is very different; it is still pretty experimental and, well, sad… but it is shining a Issue Five
light on a different kind of emotion. [...] It is a little bit more hopeful and it has a lot to do with change rather than being caught in the middle of something.” Calnin’s music has always been a major part of my life. I will never forget how I felt when I first heard “Coward;” it was as though he had the power to make the simplest song sound ethereal and honest. He believes that an element that every artist should have nowadays is truth. “Truth to themselves. I have watched a lot of musicians I love just tailor their sounds to what’s going on in radio-land, and it always upsets me because I can see that [it’s] not what they wanna do and they are just caving to the industry instead of sticking to what they believe in.” I couldn’t agree more—record labels can put a
