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Shanleigh Rose is an award-winning singer and songwriter from the Sunshine Coast hinterland in Queensland who has been releasing music for five years. Her latest single, ‘Like My Mama Loves Tobacco’, is the most personal song she has put out – and, as she tells me in this new interview, the one she almost didn’t.
The chorus was written when she was sixteen, in a music room at school, after discovering the songwriting of Melody Moko and Fanny Lumsden. She wrote it, filed it away, and didn’t quite know what it was about. A few years later, after a break-up, she understood.
‘What I feel for this person is actually more like an addiction than love,’ she says.
That realisation gave her the metaphor at the centre of the song, with the tobacco of the title standing in for the kind of relationship you know is poisoning you but can’t walk away from. ‘You’re poison, but it’s all I’ll ever want’, she sings in this powerful tune that has already won the lyrics-only section of the Tamworth Songwriters Association Awards before the melody was even finalised. It was the response from other songwriters at the awards night convinced that convinced Shanleigh to release the song.
‘Like My Mama Loves Tobacco’ was produced by Michael Muchow who, in a lovely piece of symmetry, is Melody Moko’s producer (and husband), with vocal production by Nyssa Ray, who pushed Rose through four hours of takes to find her most emotionally open performance.
‘You can be sadder,’ Ray told her. ‘You can have more emotion.’
Rose has also recently released ‘Down to Your Grave’, a collaboration with Cate Jamieson and Bethany Walsh, written and recorded as a university assignment that the three decided the world needed to hear. More collaborations and more original releases are planned, alongside a growing focus on stagecraft and the live experience.
Shanleigh plays regularly across Southeast Queensland. Keep an eye on her socials for details.
‘Like My Mama Loves Tobacco’ is out now.
NB: At around the 22-minute mark, I had a coughing fit and had to pause the recording, so after that point my voice sounds different. Thanks to Shanleigh for patiently waiting out the coughing! I’ve had a cold and persevered with interviews as I don’t want to cancel on the artists – and thankfully they do most of the talking – but it does mean my voice sounds raspy and sometimes shaky.
Listen to ‘Like My Mama Loves Tobacco’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Like My Mama Loves Tobacco’ on YouTube
