Episode 13: Hayley Warner

Interview Transcript

Adam Burke: Welcome to The Cockatoo, reporting on what Australians are up to in music in the USA. My name is Adam Burke, and we're coming to you from Hollywood, California, which is Tongva and Chumash country. In these interviews, we get into musical journeys to the United States. Today, we are joined by singer, songwriter, and musician Hayley Warner. Originally from Sydney, Hayley has written for herself and scores of other artists from Tina Arena to Kelly Clarkson to Katy Perry. She was runner-up in Australian Idol, and very importantly, did a sensational performance for our Breakers series out in the Mojave back in the COVID days.

We'll link to that performance in the episode description. For now, we have Hayley here. Welcome, Hayley.

Hayley Warner: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Adam.

Hayley: It's good to see you and talk to you.

Adam: Absolutely. Good to see you again. You grew up in Sydney, right?

Hayley: Yes. Southern Shire, which some people think it's a derogatory thing, and other people love it. I loved it. It was great.

Adam: Tell us a little bit about your upbringing and your journey getting into music.

Hayley: I grew up in the Southern Shire, like I said. I've got two siblings. I'm the youngest of three. I dropped out when I was year 10. I was the only child that was allowed to leave school. I think my mom knew that that was not for me. I quickly left school and she said, "You have to have something to do. You can't just leave and do nothing," so I auditioned for Australian Idol back when I was 16. Then that took me on this wild journey of just realizing that that's exactly what I am meant to do on this earth. Came runner up there and then lost the deal, got dropped and shelved, and was pretty depressed a couple of years after Idol.

It's a big fall from grace and a big drop for any 16-year-old to be followed around with paparazzi and 24-hour security guards and then be completely nothing or no one to anybody anymore. So I had to figure out what I wanted to do and what made me happy and get my shit back again. I had an A&R at the time that put me in rooms and told me I wasn't very good at writing. As a huge return of a FU, I said, "I can't write." I went and worked my ass off and started writing and then wrote the winner singles for X Factor for the following three years. The A&R that told me that I couldn't write was actually the A&R that picked all of the winner singles, which were my songs. It was this really vindicating feeling.

I found my passion in writing and then carried that on. It led me over to LA 12 years ago. I've been in this crazy city ever since, been broke more times than I've been rich, lived in and out of motels, slept on couches, contemplated going home and packing it all up. Every time I come close to ending it, the universe gives me something else to hold on to, so I'm still here.

Adam: Well done. It's quite a roller coaster, isn't it? Tell us about that time. 12 years ago, you say you moved from Sydney to Los Angeles.

Hayley: I think I've always been delusional and a big dreamer. I felt like at the time of writing and I was with the best of the best in Australia for years. I just felt like I'd hit the ceiling. I was either going to do the same thing for the rest of my life, which was write with the same people and nurture and nourish this new up-and-coming artist in Australia or I was going to play with the big dogs. I had a choice. I had a manager at the time that brought me over and really believed in me and thought I could be something or someone. I just came off the back of that.

I only knew my publisher in Australia, Marie Hamblin, who'd signed me when I was 16 and was super integral to my success. I came over here. I knew maybe two, three friends and couch-surfed. I don't know. It was just this feeling of like, I can't stay here. I've had enough now. I think I need to go and see what else is here. This is, the best place to be for the music industry, in my opinion. London is incredible. New York is incredible. I know Berlin is killing. It felt right for me to come over and dig my heels and see what I could muster up.

Adam: How did that go down logistically?

Hayley: I was writing, like I said, and doing a ton of stuff in Australia for different artists. That helped fund, in terms of royalties, the move, or at least the first three months of the move. I knew if I could, bag a bunch of cash and I think I had $20,000 at the time. I spent it in three months, which is terrifying. I just thought if I could just get here and get settled and try and meet a bunch of people-- I was in sessions twice a day. One started at 12:00 and finished at 7:00. Then the next one started at 7:00 and finished at 12:00. I rinsed and repeat. I did that for going on three or four years.

I was averaging 300 songs a year. That's all I did. That was just get here, get on the ground, meet as many people as you can, say yes to absolutely everything, and try and build a community or people that could help change my life or get me off the couch or the Motel 6. I was pretty willing to do just whatever it took at that time.

Adam: You talked earlier about that time when you went from being a star on Idol and having security and then being hardly known, that full circle that you went through. How did the emotion of moving to LA compare to that? How much did that help with that feeling that you had back in Sydney, having gone through that cycle?

Hayley: I honestly think it was the best thing that happened because I think you can be completely disillusioned to think that Australia is bigger than it is. Although it is a big place for us, you get on the plane, you come over here, and no one has any idea who you are. It doesn't matter if it's me or it's some other big artist, insert name, in Australia. Nobody cares here. You have to start again. I think having the humbling experience before of having that you're nobody, it really humbles you. You get on the plane and you don't think you're hot shit when you get off it.

I think that really equipped me to be over here and be hungry and not feel entitled and feel like I'm the best thing because I really wasn't.

Adam:  Do you remember the first time that you got a gig that really paid where you felt like you were on the first rung of the ladder of this new beginning?

Hayley: I don't know if it was a gig. I came over here to write. Always wanting to be an artist, but being really encouraged and lovingly forced or pushed to just stay as a writer and shut up. I've had years of unlearning and unwiring that because it was so ingrained in my worth ethic and mind for so many years. I think what changed was my manager at the time. I was close with this publisher, a lady called Katie Vinton, and she was at Sony ATV at the time. Then she came over to Warner Chapel. In those three months, she wanted to sign me and then she had signed Justin Tranter and another writer right around the time. It was like, "Oh, okay, this is the pool I want to be in. This is the world I want to exist in."

Then from that point on, everything changed. We had this access. I was in with people I dreamed about. Just being in the rooms that you always dreamed of being in but never thought you could get there, I think that was the turning point. I think that was three years into being in LA or four years in. Somewhere around there.

Adam: Can you think of a name of a person that you would have dreamed about being with?

Hayley: Tranter was a big one and he's become a dear friend of mine back in the day. God, who else? Nolan was huge. I worked with a guy called Nolan Lambrosa that was massive at the time. Ryan Lewis. We did all the Macklemore stuff. The Katie Camp. It was insane. It was just like, "What is going on? I shouldn't be here."

Adam: Just to be clear, so Idol is in essence a singing contest, right? You don't write that song.

Hayley: No, you're just a puppet. You're the karaoke singer.

Adam: Right. You're out there on stage. It's a vocal contest. Yet at this time, when you come to the US, you've already been conditioned to feel that you should only be a writer and not a singer. Did I get that correctly?

Hayley: Yes. When I first came over, people were like, "Yes, cool. You can sing, but you're not an artist. You should be a songwriter. This is really good for you. You're great at this." In the beginning, it was just like, I was willing to do whatever I wanted. I was happy to abandon that side of myself. Now it's taken a complete flip and I will not negotiate. It's non-negotiable. I'd rather abandon the writing stuff than I would my own art and storytelling. At the time, I was hungry. I was listening to people that were in these very powerful places. I just wanted to get in with them and do what they said.

When you're young like that, you think that they know you better than you know yourself. Which I'm glad I did what I did. It's all brought me back to this beautiful time in my life in my 30s. Now I'm ready to absolute just crush. I will take no advice from anybody. They tell me to get back into a writing room and write for somebody else unless I believe in them. That's the beautiful part about where I am now. I get to work with these artists that I absolutely love that have become friends. I'm happy to tell their story and take a day off of doing my own stuff, but not at the cost of my own artistry.

Adam: Yes, because people who check out the performance that we did out in the Mojave will also say that you're a very good guitar player. You're the full package of singing, playing and also writing. How long did that process take where you came to have the identity of yourself as a musician, as a writer, as a singer, the person you are now?

Hayley: Everything changed in the pandemic. I was just on the hamster wheel. I was every day just waking up and doing whatever my calendar told me and really not enjoying it. I would find every reason not to do the writing. In the pandemic, everything changed. I was in a really dark place in my life. I didn't want to be here anymore. I had taken measures to have that fulfilled and something happened and the universe didn't want me to go. I got to this point and I was like, "I can't do this. If this is going to kill me, this is ridiculous. What am I here for?

Why did I come here and why am I missing my family all the time, missing out on all these milestones if I can't go back and say I did the thing I wanted to do?" Everything changed in the pandemic. I had called my publisher at the time, Sam, who is now my amazing manager. I just said, "I'm done. I can't do this anymore. I'm sorry. If you want someone on the roster that wants to go in five days and write with your artist, it's just not me. Thanks so much for everything, but I'm out." Her response was, "Good. I've been waiting for you to tell me this. You're not a fucking writer. You're a fucking artist."

She was like, "Can I manage you?" My whole life changed from that. From 2020, we made this album in my bedroom, in my house, in the pandemic on KRK speakers for $250. It was just, how do we get back to the thing that we love that we did for free? It's the hard thing about the music business that art and commerce shouldn't go together. I was finding myself so attached to, okay, if I write this, is this going to give me money so that I can then do my artistry? What I realized is I might be waiting till I'm 80 for that.

Why don't I just stop and go do the art and then believe that that's going to be the thing that's going to make me the money and change my life and be able to build a career? Definitely the pandemic, I think.

Adam:  One of the songwriting projects of yours that stood out to me was Nickelback. Have you seen the documentary?

Hayley: I did. My song's in the credits of that documentary. It plays for about two and a half minutes, to which I was like, "What?"

Adam: Okay.

Hayley: That is the weirdest story, by the way. That is the wildest and weirdest story.

Adam: Yes, because I know that-- and anyone who hasn't seen in the documentary, Nickelback--

Hayley: It's actually a really good documentary.

Adam: It's excellent. I feel like it's a return of serve from them that was overdue.

Hayley: 1000%.

Adam: The song's called Song on Fire. It currently has 34 million streams on Spotify alone. Chad Kroeger is known as a pretty hardcore songwriter and to get in a room-- regardless of what you think of Nickelback, that guy's written a bunch of hits. How do you end up in a room with Chad and how does this all go down?

Hayley: You don't end up in a room with him. That's how it went down. Me and this writer called Steph Jones, she just wrote Espresso for Sabrina Carpenter. She's done a lot of the Kelsea Ballerini. She's an amazing writer. We've been friends for a long time. Years ago, we got into a room. We didn't have a producer that day. I was like, "Oh, screw it. I'll just play guitar." We ended up writing this song called Chapters. It's basically chapters of your life or whatever. We recorded this voice memo.

I don't even know how it got out. I did not send the voice memo anywhere. Then it got to this guy, Greg Souders, who A&R's Nickelback on the publishing side, and he somehow found this fucking voice memo that we had done. I don't know how, why, anyway, he sent it to Nickelback. It's the most country acoustic thing that you've ever heard. If I played you the voice memo to what it was, to what it is, it's just insanity, so they took all of the lyrics out.

None of the lyrics that we have are the same. They replaced all of the lyrics, but they kept all of our melodies and then made it this rock song. Then we get this email that it's going to be a single and we have even splits on the song. It's just like, "What is going on?" A voice memo in a room when we didn't have a producer and we thought the day was a fail and then it turned out to someone to hear. That's just great A&Ring. I would have pitched 100 songs before I pitched that song.

Adam: Another pretty good shout-out to the people behind the scenes-

Hayley: Exactly.

Adam: -who help make all this stuff happen. I normally at this point would ask if there's any advice you'd tell yourself if you went back to the time when you moved, and you've definitely, I think covered that pretty well, but is there anything else you'd say that you would tell your 12 year ago self looking back?

Hayley: Yes. if there was one thing, I think I would have trusted myself a little bit more. I wish that I would have looked back and curated rooms that made me feel safe and seen and understood what made me the best version of myself and then ran towards that. I was very busy being a people pleaser and a chameleon I'd definitely go back and be more confident and go, "Hey, this is what I do and this is what I don't do." That's okay, but, all in all, I'm so happy to be where I am now. I feel the happiest that I've been since I've lived here and so freaking excited for what's to come.

Adam: Good on you. You've hung in there and you've done it your own way and pretty good advice. Be yourself because no one else can.

Hayley: Amen.

Adam: Great to hear it working out for you.

Hayley: Thanks, Adam.

Adam: Of course. We've been talking to Hayley Warner, her latest release is the EP, I Think I Saw the Moon. Be sure to go and check that out wherever you obtain your music and really great to have you here today. Can't wait to hear the journey of this new direction that you've taken since the pandemic. It sounds awesome. Just really appreciate the chat.

Hayley: Thanks so much, Adam. Thanks for your time and always being a believer and a supporter means a lot.

Adam: Oh, of course. Thank you. This has been the Cockatoo interview. We're the Pitchhiker Foundation, a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit based here in California. If you enjoy what you're listening to, please support us. The best way you can do it is by telling family and friends about us and getting them to subscribe and listen. Thank you very much for tuning in and we'll catch you on the next edition.