Watch the full interview on YouTube
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Sometimes we choose to change our circumstances and sometimes they get changed on us, and how we respond to those changes reveals who we are and also shows us the way forward. For Cassie Leopold, founding member of Darlinghurst, there’s been a lot of change in recent times: the band went from being a four-piece to a two-piece, with Leopold and Pagan Newman, and now it’s Leopold on her own.
While all that was going on, Leopold face a major health challenge which meant she had to focus on other things. She’s emerged from that, and from the fluctuations in the band, with a new direction for Darlinghurst and being, as she says in this new interview, the leader for the first time. She still has a band, but she’s the one who determines which songs they play and record.
Leopold has been a musical performer from a very young age and performance is in her very marrow, as she says:
‘The only place I ever felt okay was on stage – for this 20 minutes, 30 minutes, or the three minutes of one song, it’s my time.’
She was a member of the Young Talent Team – a contemporary of Dannii Minogue’s – and learning what she describes as the triple threat of singing, dancing and acting. She sang backing vocals on an Olivia Newton John album after stepping in at the last moment for a sick colleague. She was signed in a girl group at seventeen.
For most of her career, Leopold’s skill was stepping in, filling a brief, and delivering what was needed. ‘I was very good at doing that,’ she says. Taking the reins is a different skill entirely, and one she has arrived at in her own time. Now the responsibility is hers, and so is the freedom to decide what happens next, and it was so interesting to talk to her about all of it.
The latest single from Darlinghurst is ‘Pour Me Another One’, and we talk about that as well as what’s ahead in this exciting new musical adventure she is on.
Listen to ‘Pour Me Another One’ on Apple Music
Listen to ‘Pour Me Another One’ on YouTube
