With a voice that seems to echo on air and songs that provide joy steeped in anguish, Sarah Blasko has been a mainstay of the Australian music scene since the release of her debut album 'The Overture and the Underscore' in 2004.
In 2009, she released As Day Follows Night, the highlight of Blasko’s long and illustrious career to this point. 12 years later, she’s still reflecting on its momentous impact.
“It was a very vulnerable record. I was heartbroken when I wrote it, and I was also learning how to write on my own,” she says. “When I think back, I’m very proud of myself that I kind of took that step. It was hard work, and it was a really full-on time.”
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The album saw Blasko finish the award season with a, very fragile, Triple J Australian Album of the Year Award and the ARIA for Best Female Artist.
It’s the success of As Day Follows Night that has Blasko back on stage now, wowing audiences again with her 10-year-anniversary tour of the seminal album, after a couple of years of pandemic induced delays.
With hits including ‘We Won’t Run’ and ‘Bird on a Wire’, As Day Follows Night is still seen as a benchmark of song writing and production in Australian music. The heartbreak album being unlike anything Blasko had done to that point in her career and something she will always be proud of.
Blasko attacked her heartache head on and decided to step outside her comfort zone to produce the record, heading to Sweden to work with producer Bjorn Yttling. Blasko had to work every day in a strange studio with people she didn’t know and who spoke a completely different language.
Ytlling’s process was a complete change to the way Blasko’s first two albums came together and was at times a rocky experience for her.
“The producer that I worked with was very direct and he worked very quickly,” she says. “I kind of hated working with him, yet I loved working with him at the same time. The principles that he taught me were huge. He had just had a child at the time, and he was like, ‘right, we start at 11am’ and I think we were finished by six every day.
“The first two albums that I’d made, were literally 12-hour days, nonstop week after week for six to eight weeks. I thought that kind of labour was normal, but he taught me to go in and rehearse so you know what you’re doing, but then you still capture the imperfections. You do it quickly, and you keep it fresh.”
Ytlling’s process for As Day Follows Night is one Blasko still applies when making music today and it’s the reason it remains one of her favourite albums.
“It finished so quickly, and we did it so quickly it just felt so effortless,” she says. “So, when I listened to the album, it was joyful to listen to because it was such a quick, easy process.
“It was a huge shift for me. I felt like, well, that’s how I want to make records from now on. The labour is not always the best thing for music, and it can kind of stifle it and crush it. So, from then on, I’ve taken that same idea and applied it. The times that I haven’t applied it, I think I’ve ended up not being happy with the result.”
12 years on Blasko now finds herself in a very different place. She gave birth to her first child with partner Dave Miller in 2015 and the initial heartbreak that inspired As Day Follows Night is long in the past.
When performing on stage Blasko knows she needs to identify with feelings of heartache and loss for it to feel genuine, so she must embrace that on stage whilst also refining elements to keep it fresh and relatable to who she is today.
“Any of the heartbreaks or the struggles that you feel now, you need to put that into the performance of it, for it to feel authentic, because otherwise you’re just playing something that’s old,” she says.
“There’s been a couple of arrangements that I’ve changed around a little bit, not in a big way or in a melodic way, but just to bring the songs to where I am now. I think that’s important, because people can tell when something just feels like it’s being played the same way over and over.”
Though, she certainly hasn’t forgotten the pain that inspired the album all those years ago.
“I still remember what that heartache felt like, I know who that person was, and I feel so much love for who I was and who they were. I was younger then, so I guess I see it in a way that I feel for this younger version of myself.”
Ultimately it was this heartache that led to one of the most successful periods of Blasko’s career. The award nominations came in swiftly following the release of As Day Follows Night with some major wins coming her way.
Blasko had the pleasure of playing at the ARIA awards the year she won Best Female Artist and also picked up a Triple J award.
Looking back, it’s not necessarily the accolades that Blasko remembers so fondly.
“I mostly look back at the recording experience,” she says. “I really remember playing it live with my band, but I’d be lying If I said I didn’t think that it was great to win these awards. It’s all the fun things around it that you remember. I remember my manager smashing my J award, which was really funny. We were having a few drinks, celebrating and we thought it looked like it wouldn’t be able to break…. it did.”
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After years of delays, the As Day Follows Night tour is finally underway, with the Melbourne leg already completed and shows in Sydney and Brisbane yet to come.
Blasko is just happy to finally be back on stage after the postponements, which have her feeling like a newcomer all over again. Both Blasko and her band mates felt the impact of playing in front of crowds again for the first time in a long time.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt that nervous before the first show, but it was good to kind of feel those nerves again and to feel like ‘Okay, what is this? You are used to doing this all the time’,” she says.
“It’s hard to explain how complete you feel after doing something that you really love. All week [following the shows], I’ve felt almost like a different person. It’s really encouraging to feel that way and we all felt it together, because a lot of the other guys also hadn’t been doing any shows. So, we were all quite emotional.”
Blasko is looking forward to getting back out there and playing the remaining shows. The best albums never appear to age, and they can evolve with the changing times. As Day Follows Night is one of those ageless albums.
“I just hope that this album can speak to people where they are at now, because I think the album obviously had a place in peoples’ hearts all that time ago,” she says.
“So, I hope that it can offer nostalgia, but I also think the album has the potential to offer something to people where they’re at now.
“It is an album about heartbreak, and it was written for that, but you know, I think that a lot of people are feeling like that right now, they are a feeling a bit lost and that’s where I was when I made the album.
“This will be an uplifting show to watch and to hear.”
As Day Follows Night anniversary tour. Sydney, State Theatre, Thursday March 24, and Brisbane, The Tivoli, Saturday April 9. Tickets are available here.
