Casey Donovan was never expected to win Australian Idol. From the outset she was the outsider. Neither contrived, media savvy, Hollywood glam or predictable, Casey was always exactly who she is: herself. Raw, messy, vociferous, vulnerable and determined, Casey Donovan was different to the other contestants. She was incapable of self-betrayal and she could never sell out. And for that reason alone, it was widely assumed she would never win. But incongruously, that is precisely why she is the Australian Idol. Because every time Casey Donovan walks onto a stage or into a recording booth, she never contrives a single note. And she never betrays the emotion of a song. In life, as in song, Casey Donovan is the real thing.
Music is in Casey’s blood. She never spent a lot of time with her father, but his impact is telling. Everyone in his family plays and sings. Family parties always ended with guitars being played and her brother, uncle and cousins getting up to sing. But Casey remained in the shadows, keeping to herself. “I knew I could sing”, she recalls, “But I didn’t like showing off, so I just sat back and let everyone else have their turn”. But one day when she was about 14, Casey was listening to her older cousin play a George Strait song on guitar when she launched into song. “My cousin stopped playing and said ‘Geez, Casey – you can really sing’”, she laughs. “And then she screamed for her mother to come in and listen to me! I think that was the first time I was aware of anyone else thinking I had any significant talent’.
From there, everything just snowballed. She picked up a guitar and taught herself how to play the three chord country tunes she’d grown up with, along with the Nirvana songs she’d become obsessed with. And almost immediately she began writing her own songs. “I performed in several competitions for young Indigenous kids. My cousins and I traveled to Wollongong a couple of times when I was 14 or 15 to compete in the solo events. One of the competitions was the Young Black and Deadly’s and I won that one. That’s when I decided I wanted to pursue music, so I enrolled in Music College to improve my craft”.
Craft is not a word you tend to associate with Casey because her singing is so emotionally visceral that the tendency is to feel Casey, rather than just listen to her. So we hear the soul, never the technique. But as Casey so consistently demonstrates on FOR YOU - the highly anticipated debut album that is set to establish her as a truly extraordinary new talent - her vocal control is astonishing. But what is even more astounding is her singular ability to meld the immediacy, energy and the angst of a 16 year old teenager with the sage-like soul of an old blues diva… and all this in an album recorded in just six days!
Produced by Bryon Jones (Guy Sebastian, Shannon Noll), FOR YOU is a hook-laden trip that seamlessly explores the history of Casey’s multi-faceted musical personality without ever losing sight of the fact that that this is a Casey Donovan album.
There’s the power ballads and pop sensibility she developed during her Idol journey (‘Shine’, ‘Better To Love’, ‘Symphony of Life’ and of course her No. 1 single, ‘Listen With Your Heart’), the rock fuelled guitar assault that pays homage to the bands – Incubus, Metallica, Nirvana - that inspired her (‘What’s Going On’ and ‘How Could I Fall (For That)’), the off-kilter pop rock you just know she couldn’t resist (‘Flow’ and ‘Something Beautiful’) and even a little country (‘Til I Found You’). And in a major pointer to the career that lies ahead, there’s the moving, self penned title track, (‘For You’) about her family.
Casey is justifiably proud of her work on FOR YOU. “Recording this album was the most excited I have ever been in my life”, she says. “There was and is no better feeling than being in that vocal booth and just being able to sing my heart out. I love the songs and I gave my whole heart and soul to the vocal performances. I think the songs communicate the exact feelings and emotions that I wanted to say to all the people who voted for me and got me into this amazing position”.
FOR YOU, debut album from Casey Donovan, is released nationally on Sunday, 12th December through Sony BMG Music Entertainment.
