It’s the year 2000 and an 11-year-old Jessica Mauboy is nervously walking on stage at her first-ever singing competition: the Adelaide River Country Music Talent Show. She’s wearing a velvet vest and skirt set with a cowboy hat and hoedown boots her mum hired from a fancy-dress shop. Backstage, the other performers are tuning their guitars, comparing notes with their bands and doing vocal exercises. Mauboy doesn’t have an instrument or a band or a vocal coach, she only has her backing track on a CD. She feels out of place. Standing on the stage in front of the crowd and judges, she keeps her eyes closed as she begins to sing Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine”. When Mauboy opens her eyes at the end of the song, the crowd erupts into grand applause. She takes a deep breath and holds her head high. “That was a defining moment for me because my deep passion for music overrode my fear,” says Mauboy, 31, who won the talent show. “Now, when I have moments of doubt and low self-esteem, I think back to that little girl on the stage. Even though I was afraid, I made it then and I’ll make it now.”
It’s a memory she has conjured many times in the past year, one of enormous change for Mauboy. She left her record label of 14 years, parted ways with her long-time manager and took total control of her life, career and music. “I knew I needed to do things my way and take the reins,” she says, admitting she was filled with fear over the decision. “Last year was probably my lowest and also my highest because I gained so much strength. I feel the most free I’ve ever felt.”
JESSICA MAUBOY
Denne historien er fra April 2021-utgaven av Marie Claire Australia.
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Denne historien er fra April 2021-utgaven av Marie Claire Australia.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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SHANNEN DOHERTY
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A NEW DIRECTION
When she was 16, Jordan Lambropoulos told her surgeon she'd rather die than wake up with a colostomy bag. Today - 10 years, countless operations and 14,000 Instagram followers later - she's proof that a colostomy bag is not the end. In fact, it can be the beginning of a whole new life
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Brisbane-born star Vidya Makan steps into the shoes of America's founding mother in the long-awaited return of Hamilton
LEIGH-ANNE
The English singer on colourism, freedom and reuniting Little Mix
