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‘I’m Sorry’: Thelma Plum Reflects on Home, Guilt and Apologising ‘Way Too Much’

'I try to make them catchy,' Thelma Plum tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ. 'Lana Del Rey is always [a] production reference for me.'

Published by

Lars Brandle

October 29, 2024

‘I’m Sorry’: Thelma Plum Reflects on Home, Guilt and Apologising ‘Way Too Much’

Sports people talk loud and often. Spend enough time with one, you’ll hear the peculiar expression of an athlete’s “ceiling,” the unscientific idea of how they’re limited, or otherwise, by their talents. The higher that ceiling, the assumption can be made that they’ll progress to all-star, some day.

Thelma Plum has no ceiling. For the Australian singer-songwriter, the sky’s the limit.

On her second album, I’m Sorry, Now Say It Back, Plum finds that sweet balance, by unspooling lyrics full of raw honesty, humanity laid bare, delivered in her unmistakable, vibrato-hewn voice and soundtracked with studio polish, strings, and delicious melodies.

“I try to make them catchy,” Plum admits. “Lana Del Rey is always [a] production reference for me.” Definitely, those hooks on “Freckles,” “Nobody’s Baby,” and other cuts were “very intentional.”

Plum continues to grow as an artist and songwriter, finding new ways to express herself. The strengths and the weaknesses.

I’m Sorry is the followup to Plum’s debut Better in Blak, a collection that gathered seven ARIA Award nominations and 200 million-plus global streams. Its title track landed in the top 10 of the triple j Hottest 100, the highest result ever for an Indigenous artist at the time, and earned Plum first place in the coveted Vanda & Young Global Songwriting Competition.

Plum squared up with Better in Blak, and delivered a knockout blow. With I’m Sorry, an admission of a flaw. It’s right there in the title.

“Yeah, I say sorry way too much. I do,” she tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ in the Sydney headquarters of Warner Music Australia, her record company. “It is something that has been ingrained in me. It’s probably the bloody Irish Catholic in my family. That Catholic guilt has really been there, to say sorry.”

A proud Gamilaraay woman, Plum has no reason to apologise, though she admits she has “often felt misunderstood. It’s something I’ve felt maybe for a long time, you know, for my whole life. It’s a feeling that… goes with shame.”

When writing works for her new 12-track set, she “had this hope that you might understand me a little bit more after you finish the record. It’s not like I haven’t written about trauma before or the things that have happened in my life, but it does feel like this is maybe a little bit more intimate.”

Plum points to album track “All The Pretty Little Horses,” on which she sings: “She was only five when she found out life / Was a little less black and white / She loved too much, but she had to get tough / It’s the only way for her to get by.”

It’s a personal story, one in which “I speak about the things that happened to me when I was a kid,” she recounts. “I feel quite proud of myself for sharing those parts of me.”

I’m Sorry is the culmination of five years of writing, and recording in Byron Bay, London, Sydney and Brisbane, the latter a place where Plum is right at home, and which makes regular appearances in her songs.

“I’m driving, near the river in West End,” she sings in “We Don’t Talk About It,” re-tracing her neighbourhood – an area popular with artists and students – close to Brisbane’s CBD. It was in the West End where the late, great songsmith Grant McLennan of The Go-Betweens died at home in 2006. Today, a bridge named after the band connects the West End with Hale Street and the Inner City Bypass. Music is in the roots of this part of the River City. Plum is telling its story.

“Brisbane is – shock horror – my favourite city. I do love singing about it,” she admits. “I wonder if it’s because everyone was so hard on Brissie and that it went so far.”

Plum supports the album with a national tour, produced by Handsome Tours and kicking off tonight (October 24th) in Newcastle, hitting up stages in Thirroul, Sydney, Adelaide, Fremantle, Melbourne, Gold Coast, and Toowoomba before heading back to Brisbane for a triumphant homecoming finale.

“It feels very vulnerable. Like, hey, I shared all this with you,” Plum says of I’m Sorry. “I hope people like it.”