Blasting out of your headphones on Friday 1 August, Melbourne-based artist Bernadette Novembre’s latest earworm Sliding will be securing its place at the top of your personal playlists.
With a full album release to follow sometime next year, the new single is just the latest highlight in Bernadette’s lifelong passion for music. Beginning with a career as a child performer that saw her touring globally as a support act from age six to 12, she put her education first as she entered her teen years.
“Once I got on my first big stage – like Palais Theatre, for example,” she reflects of her early start in entertainment industry, “I think that’s the moment where I was like, ‘Oh, this is great!’ You know, just performing to a large audience and feeling good about it on stage.”
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It was up until eight years ago, however, that the performer bug came back to bite Bernadette. She has wanted to assemble a lineup of tracks for an album ever since.
“I got back into the scene and started writing with songwriter and producer Ryan Ritchie,” she reflects of her journey across the past decade. “We released an EP at that time, which was very much soul in nature. There were about five songs on the EP and it did quite well—but, you know, I wasn’t satisfied with just an EP.”
Her sights were still keenly trained on the big-time, with aspirations to follow in the footsteps of the ‘60s rockers who shaped her earliest music tastes. The Beatles naturally sit at the top of her musical mantel, citing George Harrison as her all-time favourite artist.
The Kinks and The Doors also rank highly in her list of musical inspirations, with dashes of more modern indie rock like the Arctic Monkeys and even some Lana Del Rey rounding out the rest of her sonic palette.
“I knew I wanted to sort of steer a bit away from pure soul,” she says of the direction behind Sliding, but admits that some soulful undertones still made their way into the finished product.
“I found Josh Moriarty, who is my co-songwriter and producer – he’s also in Miami Horror – and so he said, ‘Yeah, I’m happy to come on board for this album,’ and we just started writing together.”
The runup to this point has been a long and strenuous process. Bernadette estimates it has taken the whole five-year period since the COVID lockdowns to get the new album on course. She cites financial strains, ever the enemy of the indie artist, as the cause for the protracted development period.
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“It’s taking this long to actually start releasing stuff,” she admits, “just because it’s so costly as an indie artist. Like, fully independent; I have no label at the moment, no manager, and I have a day job to support. That’s quite hard because it’s full-time, and so then doing my singing after hours… Doing an album, I knew I wanted that to be an achievement to acquire.”
The new single also marks another notable triumph in Bernadette’s life, namely her endurance through anxiety disorders and treatment-resistant depression. While the worst of these maladies were at their height in her early 20s, they never fully left her.
“You know, it’s always dormant,” she attests. “But I’m doing heaps better today, and the music has acted as like therapy for me. I guess now, coming to the release of the song, I’m kind of apprehensive, to be honest. I’ve never spoken about that part of my life before, but I think it’s an important topic to speak about just in terms of trying to increase awareness.”
The single’s launch event will be used as a fundraiser for mental health research initiative Black Dog Institute, to help others overcome the struggles Bernadette has faced herself. She appreciates the full-circle nature of the new song, with her day job operating within the mental health sector.
“Coming out the other end,” she says of her experience with depression, “then kind of showing people what’s possible… If you get the right support, and if you continue on and try and push through—as cliche as it sounds, there is light at the end of the tunnel.”
Bernadette Novembre’s latest single Sliding is set for release, with an accompanying music video, on 1 August 2025. Keep up-to-date with Bernadette’s music releases on her Instagram account.
