There are some artists you hear for the first time who make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up – in a good way, because you’ve sensed that there’s something pretty special going on. That is the case with Piper Rodrigues, an artist from the NSW Central Coast/Kuring-gai Awakabal land, who has released her debut single, ‘King of Cups’. The song was written with Golden Guitar winner Melody Moko and produced by Catherine Britt and Michael Muchow, and it is a snappy, sassy, vocally and instrumentally rich track that is equally suited to dark bars and barefoot dancing in the grass.
Says Rodrigues of the inspiration for ‘King of Cups’: ‘I based the song on a real spread of tarot cards I pulled for a guy – I pulled the spread and took a photo on my phone and kept it. This song is about the moment I realised that I deserved better in a relationship and me confronting that realisation head-on.’
Rodrigues entered her first talent show at age seven, graduated from the CMAA Academy of Country Music in 2020 and she is now studying a Bachelor of Music at Newcastle University. She has played at the legendary Bluebird Café in Nashville, and at the Tamworth Country Music festival in 2020, as well as toured with Britt in 2020.
The video was made by the in-demand Duncan Toombs from The Filmery. Rodrigues says of the clip, which is having its premiere on this site today, ‘We took our inspiration from an Indiana Jones film where a character needs to walk around a room and pick a cup in the hopes that they stay alive. The song itself is so mystical and sensationalised in aesthetic and we really wanted to do that justice through setting me up as some kind of storyteller in the band scenes and then a witchy protagonist at the table.’
Rodrigues is recording new music for release later in the year – if it’s even half as good as this first song, it will be an absolute highlight of 2021.
To learn more about Piper Rodrigues: https://www.facebook.com/hiheyitspiper