fromUtah;whentheshowendsthiseve-
ning,they’lljumpbackinthecarforthe
returnjourney.Thenameonthemar-
quee above Jill’s head is Matt Corby’s,
andtonighttheSydneysiderwillplayhis
fi rst ever headlining gig in Los Angeles at
this sold-out 650 capacity venue. Jill has
been waiting for this moment since stum-
bling across Corby’s 2013 single “Resolu-
tion”onYouTubeseveralyearsago.“Ijust
love his music,” she says, “he’s really tal-
ented.Ialsothinkhe’sadorable.He’slike
themostgorgeousmanI’veevermet.”She
blushes. “Well, hopefully I meet.” Next in
line is 21-year-old Amanda Hayes, an L.A.
localwhothinksCorbyis“supercuteand
super talented; he’s a dream”. Her friend
Ericanodsandsighs:“IfIcouldmakea
man...”
Insidetherecentlybuilt,beautifullyap-
pointedvenue,thesupercuteandsuper
talented Corby is onstage with his five-
piece band, putting the finishing touch-
es to their soundcheck. Wearing a brown
jacket that hangs well below his hips over
a loose white shirt and black pants rolled
upatthehem,Corby’shandsrarelyleave
hispockets,eveninthosemomentswhen
his body tightens and strains as he push-
eshisvocalstothelim-
itsoftheirrange.The
hushed acapella vocal
loopsof“Monday”,
constructedbyCorby
as his bandmates pack
up around him, are so
serene you wouldn’t
knowthesingerwas,
untilonlyafewhours
ago, nursing a bruising
hangover. After arriv-
inginL.A.lastnight,
he hit the hotel bar
with longtime friend
Jarr yd James, who’s
in town writing songs.
Theduometasteen-
agers, and have done
time in each other’s
soloband.“Iwassup-
posed to go surfing
[today]butIbailed,”
smiles Corby, reaching for a bottle of water
backstage. “I just felt really rancid this
morning, for obvious reasons.”
Corby has, to date, only played a smat-
tering of shows in America, largely in
major cities such as New York and L.A.
and, for the most part, without his backing
band. Still, his reputation is growing – the
seven gigs on this two-week run through
the U.S. and Canada are all sold out, with
extra dates added in L.A. and New York
to cope with demand. Tickets for tonight
vanished within 30 minutes. “We haven’t
done anything very serious [here] yet,
but the internet is a pretty crafty tool,” he
muses. “Over the last two years, it’s just
grown at a really nice rate and we haven’t
had to be in anyone’s face. Which is awe-
some for me.”
For a man who at one point this evening
says, “If I walk into a room I’m like, blend
into the wall, I’m not here to cause a scene
or anything”, not having to be in anyone’s
face is just about as ideal a scenario as you
could imagine. That his job is to stand in
front of people bearing his soul via the
medium of song is, he acknowledges, “the
height of irony”. And yet it’s what he’s done
since the day in Grade 2 when Corby went
to his music teacher at school and said,
“Hey, I can sing, can I sing here? I just
want to know if you think this is good.” He
ofered up a tune – “It might have been ‘If
You Wanna Be Somebody’ from Sister Act
2 ,Ilovedthatmovie when I was young” –
after which his teacher whisked him of for
a repeat performance in front of the prin-
cipal, who in turn pulled him up onstage
at that afternoon’s assembly. “I had no
performance anxiety then, I had no idea
what it was to even get up in front of peo-
ple, so I just got up, held the mic, sang the
song and gave it back to her and went and
sat down again. And I
guess from that point
on I was just the dude
that sang.”
Being “the dude
that sang” has been a
mixed blessing for the
25-year-old. On the
one hand, it’s brought
him here, to the Tera-
gram Ballroom, where
he’s sitting in a dress-
ing room surround-
ed by best friends who
double as bandmates,
while an adoring
crowd eagerly awaits
his performance; it’s
taken him to the top of
the charts in Australia
thanks to songs such
as 2011 breakthrough
“Brother” and “Resolu-
tion”; it’s garnered him ARIA Awards; it’s
allowed him to walk onto stages in rooms
big enough to hold 5,000 people, as he
did at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney in
2013; and, most impor tant of all, it’s g iven
a voice to his innermost thoughts, feelings
and insecurities, an outlet that’s proved as
cathartic as it has creative.
The downside, though, has been crip-
pling. Being “the dude that sang” has, at
times, left him bullied, broke and battling
self-doubt and suicidal thoughts, as he’s
weathered the storm of a stint on Aus-
tralian Idol and fought to ensure his ca-
reer lasted beyond the closing credits of
the 2007 fi nale. The more time you spend
withhim,themoreyousensehe’sstillre-covering from the experience, desper-
ate to be judged only on the quality of his
music and terrifi ed by the lingering threat
of ridicule, to the point where he’s unable
to enjoy the critical and commercial post-
Idol success he’s fought so hard to obtain.
To be “the dude that sang” is a compli-
cated existence.f matt corby had his
way, he probably wouldn’t be
doing this interview. He cer-
tainly wouldn’t be posing for
the photos that accompany
the feature, having contracted a “phobia of
cameras” after the maelstrom of media at-
tention generated by Australian Idol.
When he walks into a cafe in the inner-
Sydney suburb of Alexandria a month
after his performance in L.A., sits down
and orders a long black, he is clearly un-
easy about the increased media spotlight
as the release date of his debut album, Te l -
luric, approaches. “I’m just not very good
at putting myself out there,” he of ers, “and
I’m not good at not overthinking what
could happen.”
What’s the worst that could happen?
“No one likes it. But that’s not that bad.
I think it’s more just being ridiculed pub-
licly. I’ve copped a lot of that, being from
Idol, and that carries over still to this day.
I don’t want to give people more of an op-
portunity to pick on me, but maybe that’s
just more of a victim mentality.”
He worries, he says, about whether he
should be “whoring myself out doing in-
terviews”. He says his “management have
been twisting my arm like fucking crazy to
say stuf about this album”, that he’s “not
here to talk about how fucking good I am”,
and that he “just wants to play music that
hopefully [people] think is good. If they
don’t, go away, that’s fi ne.” He’s also con-
cerned that what he says in this interview
“might get misconstrued, and I end up
being really devastated because I’ve mis-
represented myself and my intentions”.
And that’s all within the fi rst fi ve minutes.
It should be noted that Corby is not
combative or hostile, and makes for very
easy company; better still, he’s open and
unfl inchingly honest, a refreshing trait in
this age of carefully constructed sound-
bites and endless rounds of 20-minute in-
terviews designed to sell “product”. But
he has been burned by the spotlight and
knows the burden of growing up publicly,
the only upside to which is that he “learned
everything about what I didn’t want from
being a musician” at an early age.
“I think I’ve always had this gauge,” he
says backstage in Los Angeles. “Would I
have been successful in the Sixties? Could
I hold my own back then as a musician,
would anyone even give a shit? That’s al-
ways a thing I have running through my
head. That’s how good I feel I want to be
as a musician by the time I’m done here. I52 |Rolling Stone|RollingStoneAus.com May, 2016
Editor Rod Yates wrote the Violent
Soho cover story in RS 773.
Matt
Corby
“I had a
massive
chip on my
shoulder,”
says Corby
of the years
a er ‘Idol’.
“I had so
much to
prove.”