FEATURE: Spotlight: Peach PRC — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Peach PRC

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THERE is so much terrific young talent…

emerging right now, that it is hard to keep track. Platforms like TikTok are proving very effective in terms of promotion and awareness. I discovered Peach PRC recently through Twitter. Real name Shaylee Curnow, the Adelaide-based songwriter and artist is an incredible talent. I think there is a generation of young Pop artists who are not only releasing incredibly impressive and original music. They are also discussing and highlighting themes that need to be addressed. Perhaps – if they are an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artist – more easily able to express their sexuality through their music, we are witnessing so many frank and relatable artists who are earning a wide audience through social media. Before getting to some interviews with Peach PRC (I shall refer to her by her artist name), here is some biotrophy regarding the incredibly influential and amazing Australian artist:

“The Australian singer and songwriter packs an often unbelievable journey from writing and recording in her bedroom to social media phenomenon into smart, slick, and sweet songs with a bold bite. Equally funny and sensitive, she holds nothing back when it comes to life’s ups and downs, mental health, and everything in between.

After building an audience of 1.2 million-plus followers, generating over 10 million streams, and attracting acclaim from BuzzFeed and more, she formally introduces herself with new music under her recently signed deal with Republic Records and Island Records Australia.

Growing up in Adelaide, she always wanted to sing and begged mom and dad to allow her to audition for Australia’s Got Talent to no avail. “They said I was too young, sensitive, and it would hurt my feelings,” she laughs. In between listening to Avril Lavigne, Ke$ha, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and Shakira, she wrote songs on her own and attended talent school where she honed her vocal and performance chops. During high school, she found solace in music.

“For a long time, I didn’t have many friends, or anyone really close to me,” she admits. “When I needed to vent about things, I’d start writing. My songwriting is essentially what I’d say to a friend.”

After dropping out of school, she penned music during her free time and worked as a stripper at night for a short spell before launching a Tik Tok page in 2019. She had danced under the name “Peach Porcelain”—an homage to the Super Mario character Princess Peach. Since “Peach” was taken, she joined the platform as Peach PRC. She organically attracted an audience by posting everything from funny moments to self-care advice and, of course, music. A snippet of her first single “Blondes” played over the background of a video where she discussed the track’s meaning, and it went viral. The full version eventually amassed 4 million Spotify streams as she maintained this momentum with the follow-up “Colourblind” (both produced by a long-distance ex-boyfriend and producer), racking up another 1.5 million Spotify streams. Along the way, she carefully cultivated an undeniable style.

“It’s girly hyper-pop,” she explains. “I’m drawing on the early 00’s and mid-2010’s, but adding my own twist.”

That twist defines the 2021 single “Josh.” Originally previewed as a fan favorite snippet on Tik Tok, the track puts an ex on blast in a clever and hypnotic fashion. With warm vocal delivery, she teases, “Does your mum still buy your clothes?” Meanwhile, 808 claps, distorted guitar, piano, and a ticking clock entwine as she confesses, “I thought you were blocked. Fuck off, stop calling me, Josh.”

“Josh and I dated for ages,” she recalls. ““When we broke up he would always try to get back with me- which I found to be so annoying! One day, I was writing in the worst mood, and he messaged me. I was like, ‘Go away!’ I was so aggravated he tried to reach out after I finally cut him off. I made a bit of the song and posted it on my Tik Tok spam account with the caption, ‘I’ll probably delete this’. Everyone told me not to delete it! I’m glad I kept it.”

In addition to music, Peach PRC also takes every chance to uplift as a mental health advocate. She’ll post candid videos such as “cleaning my room with you in real time (for people with depression/ADHD)” and “folding my laundry with you in real time (for people with depression/ADHD),” enlightening her audience and reminding them they’re not alone.

“I know it can be really hard to take care of your basic needs when you’re having a hard time,” she says. “So, I try to speak up and help when I can.”

In the end, Peach PRC makes a real connection much like a friend would.

“I just want everybody to feel heard,” she leaves off. “To me, there’s nothing better than when somebody puts how you feel into words”.

It is important to feature some interviews with Peach PRC. I want to start with Rolling Stone Australia’s chat from last year. It is fascinating learning where Peach PRC came from and how she has become this incredible artist who looks set to have a very promising and busy future:

“Peach began working as a stripper when she was 19 and kept it up for four years. Now that she’s removed from the profession, she’s wary of stigmatising it, but she reserves little fondness for that time in her life.

“I stopped doing music for a bit because I was just in such a low place,” she says. “I thought, ‘What’s the point? It’s not going anywhere.’”

Peach had previously turned to music as a vital form of self-expression. Even in her teen years, songwriting had an explicitly cathartic function for her. But by the time she reached 21, she hadn’t written anything in years and her life was in pieces. She hated her job. She felt financially strangled. And her mental health was unravelling.

“I was like, ‘I need something to bring me out of this really dark, sad place,’” says Peach.

In this state, Peach dug her guitar out of the cupboard. Before long, she had the bones of ‘King Size Bed’ – the first song she’d written in years. “Writing that gave me such a euphoric rush of, like, ‘That’s right, I can express this sadness. I can put it into something,’” she says.

After uploading an unfiltered video of herself performing ‘King Size Bed’ to Instagram – which “got like 20 comments” and had Peach “losing [her] mind with excitement” – ideas for songs started tumbling out of her.

Curnow had chosen the stage name Peach Porcelain when she started dancing. Encouraged by the relative anonymity it offered, she decided to use it as her musical alias too. As for the contraction, “PRC”, that didn’t come about until she joined TikTok. In fact, everything in Peach’s world started to shift once she joined TikTok.

Although she’d been urged to join the platform by her younger sister, Peach was initially sceptical. “I was like, ‘What is this?’” she says. But after browsing its users and finding people who were being “so hilarious and so cool and entertaining” she wanted in on the fun.

Peach has a natural flair for content creation. Her early posts ranged from intimate stories about her daily life to rants about players and mansplainers. There were also snippets of new songs she’d written and covers of current pop tunes filmed with early collaborator and fellow TikTok bigshot, Jeris Johnson.

“Every part of my personality that I would give to my friends in real life, I would just put on the internet in little short form videos,” she says”.

“Josh” came out at the end of February. Peach PRC’s enormous TikTok following has translated into huge streaming figures for “Josh”, including more than seven million Spotify streams and more than a million views of the song’s official video. Peach’s sphere of influence now also extends well beyond social media, with “Josh” debuting at #7 in the ARIA Top 20 Australian Singles chart”.

Billboard spoke with Peach PRC earlier in the year. I think a lot of the attention and acclaim aimed at her stems from the incredible track, God Is a Freak. A remarkable song that has gained a lot of positive reaction, many fans have reacted to it with videos of their own:

“Even with her experience in rapid success, Curnow says that the instant attention given to “God Is A Freak” still blows her away — in the month since she “leaked” her chorus, her original video has received over 2 million views and 400,000 likes, while the sound has been used over 7,000 times by other app users. Even pop mega-producer Finneas recognized the potential of her song, commenting on one of her videos, “This song is so so so good.”

“When he commented that I was over the moon,” Curnow says, grinning. “It definitely made me feel better about everything, especially when there’s some people being like ‘this sucks,’ it’s like, ‘Well, Finneas said he likes the song.'”

One part of the song’s viral success that Curnow did not expect was a series of extremely moving videos that would go on to be posted using her sound, in which LGBTQ individuals spoke candidly about how they had been made to feel unworthy or less-than by Christian churches around the world. Users quickly began taking the second part of the song’s chorus, in which she sings, “What’s the fixation/ On hating the way he creates/ So why would I spend my eternity/ With God when he’s a freak,” and using it as a means of translating their own trauma.

“It was meant to be this silly song making fun of the ridiculous concept that it is to me. But to see so many people share these vulnerable stories, talk about their religious trauma and the way they’ve overcome — that has been so moving,” she says. “There was one video that made me cry the other day … someone talked about being rejected for being trans, and how they sold their purity ring to pay for testosterone. It was so powerful.”

Curnow says that she spent the last few years identifying as bisexual, until she had a few tough conversations with herself about identity. When she saw the massive response her song was having with her LGBTQ fans, Curnow decided that there was no better time to tell the people about herself. “Eventually, it just got to a point where I said, ‘I need to stop trying to swerve around this and accept it for what it is,'” she says. “[‘God Is A Freak’] became a thing where it was like, ‘Okay, this seems like a good time for me to also drop a line”.

Also putting a spotlight onto God Is a Freak, Consequence interviewed a very modern and captivating Pop artist. Although she is perfectly suited for a TikTok generation, there is so much depth to her music and character that means she will transcend social media and carve out her own space. Here is somebody who can go very far in music:

“At nearly 2 million followers on TikTok, Peach PRC is gaining traction in both her native Australia and elsewhere, but she’s one that’s suited for the new decade through and through. Though Peach maintains a very particular aesthetic (the color pink being a prominent through line), there isn’t a great deal of content on her page that is heavily produced, doctored, or micromanaged by a marketing team.

In fact, it is Peach’s authenticity and humor, her ability to turn the camera on and speak her mind, and her approachable and relatable ideas about humanity, relationships, trauma, and self-care that has captured so many people’s attention.

Naturally, this attitude spills over into her music, and songs like “God Is A Freak” and her breakout single “Josh” (which she wrote about her ex, who would not stop calling her) boast a similar kind of authenticity and hilarity. But this also points to a larger trend in music, from the bombastic online personality of Doja Cat to Ariana Grande’s grounded, personal approach to social media: artists are finding new ways to subvert traditional expectations about what a “pop star” should be, and they’re doing so with an emphasis on authentic expression, online humor, and with the camera always on.

Peach PRC already exists as a different kind of pop star — one where there’s a true hybrid between your TikTok presence and musical one. That comes with a lot of pressure. How have you been handling it throughout the last year? What steps do you take to protect your mental health?

Oh, gosh, I don’t know! It is full-on sometimes, but I think for me, TikTok is just an outlet. It’s something that I do enjoy doing and I love connecting with people that way. So my space away is TikTok, that’s how I kind of relax. But that’s kind of it — there’s nothing that I do, self care-wise, that isn’t already online.

“God Is A Freak” has a real 2000s-y vibe. What are your musical influences? Which albums from the last 10 years have you really connected with?

Yeah, I really love early 2000s pop, or even 2010 pop. I love Kesha and Katy Perry and Lady Gaga and all of those people. And I try to put as much of that in my music as I can — that kind of sound. I really look up to them and am definitely inspired by them.

What’s next for Peach PRC?

I have so many demos that I’ve been making over the last year, and just so many songs that I want to put all together into an album release. I don’t know which ones it will be yet, but I’m really passionate about all of them. So I hope I can put out as many as I can! In terms of when, I don’t really know — I’m just scatterbrained all the time and I didn’t really know what I’m doing until I’m doing it. But I am really excited about everything I have coming up this year!”.

I have included mainly interview text in this feature, as it is more important to learn about Peach PRC and hear her music. I love what she is doing. There were years when I sort of went off of Pop music and felt it was either too generic, lacklustre, or overly processed. In the past few years, there has been this wave of Pop that has a complexity and importance to it. Able to produce fun and accessible music with lyrics that are personal and yet speak to her audience, the phenomenal Peach PCR needs to be…