“Your skill-set and your knowledge is everything in this business,” a confident Jess Higgs of moniker George Maple tells me recently. “You need to know everything from the accounts and book-keeping to how they put the lighting rig up.” This notion – one of being across every aspect of her brand – is a shift from an earlier version of the musician; reluctant, reserved. Crediting experience for this coming-into-her-own evolution, Higgs, 28, stands proud to be the strong and powerful woman she is today. Her new album Lover – a catalogue of old and new pop-synth takes on electronic – is described as a soundtrack to a fierce and fractured existence (including GRAZIA favourite and stripclub-inspired Sticks And Horses). Today, we sit down with the Australian-born, London-based singer, songwriter and producer with some thought-provoking questions on critics, intimacy, glitter lipstick and the empowering side of taking creative control.

Performing for David Jones is pretty much the Australian equivalent of James Bay performing on the Burberry runway. Do you hope that you will be able to springboard from this platform into something more?

“I love that comparison! I was incredibly honoured to be performing [on the DJs runway] and am aware of the magnitude. Growing up, DJs was such an iconic department store, I’m definitely grabbing this opportunity with both hands. I love the idea that I’m part of something that has cultural relevance and whatever comes from that will be amazing.”

Would you be interested in a longer-standing role with the retail giant?

“[Laughs] I mean I guess that’s up to my team and a bigger conversation. But I really love, love, love the brand. Anything is possible!”

Tell me about your stage style…

“What I like to do before I approach a performance is to really think about what I’m trying to communicate and what the narrative is for today. For example, for DJs, I took a lot of time going back and forth with the David Jones stylist and talking about the need for there to be drama and for it to be powerful but still feminine and also really emulating that strength. That’s really where all my decisions flow from. Given the incredible designers under the DJs umbrella, I get to pick pieces from them and then I’ll find my own vintage pieces to mix in – it’s a very creative process. It changes show-to-show.”

You have said that back in the days of Flight Facilities, you were afraid of the spotlight. Now, you truly are such a strong and empowering role model for young women as we see you take complete control of your music, its production and your image. How different do you feel as a woman now compared to when you were first starting out?

“That’s an amazing question, that’s really, really amazing. I feel as though I’ve had a few different lifetimes over the past three or four years and I’ve been thinking a lot about evolution. Do we evolve? Or do we strip back and become more confident with who we are at the centre?”

“I think that, for me, it definitely was about stripping back and saying ‘I grew up performing and I singing. From the age of nine, I was in musicals, it’s in my blood’. You go through life and things happen to you and maybe you lose confidence or maybe you’ve decided you’re painting yourself as a songwriter rather than a performer – we grow up.  The last three years have been so enormously important for me as a woman and now I’m only just coming into my own as the woman I really want to be. Now is the time to take it even further. But yes, you’re completely right, you nailed it.”

Tell me about the inspiration around Lover?

Lover was inspired by my own experiences primarily but essentially it’s a conversation about intimacy.”

“Intimacy to me is really fascinating.”

“We often think about intimacy as just this sort of heterosexual love connection with one person or a sexual kind of desire that we have for someone and what I really wanted to explore was all the different facets of intimacy – the pain, the heartbreak, the fear, the vulnerability. It the same kind of conversation that you have about never painting someone with one brush stroke. It’s about really enabling people to see the different facets of a concept or of a person. For me, I’m very multi-faceted and I think the problem is in the fact that society likes to categorise and say ‘this is what this is’ and ‘this is what this person is and this is what they identify with’ whereas I really like the idea that there’s so much more and that’s what Lover is about; exploring deeper than the surface level of intimacy.”

When it comes to relationships and intimacy, do you feel you produce your best pieces of song-writing when you’re in a good place with that relationship or a place of pain?

“Oh bringing all the good questions! Thank you, I really appreciate it. I can’t write very well when I’m in a very heightened emotional state. However, I think that it’s that emotional state that almost has to run through my body before I’m able to process it and write about it. It needs to occur so they are kind of interchangeable. In terms of whether I’m happy or whether I’m sad, I think it’s quite equal to be honest. I think I’m quite happy at the moment. I went on holiday to Byron Bay for a week and it was my first holiday in three years. The music that I’ve been writing in the last couple of weeks has been fun and sort of a bit disco and I’ve sort of been exploring those realms again and I found that really interesting. I was like, ‘Oh, this is what happens when you’re really happy!’ [Laughs]”

Which was the first track you penned from the LP?

Hero happened in an hour whereas something like Sticks And Horses existed for three years. I think Sticks was one of the first album tracks that remained on the album in a completely different form. I think there’s 26 versions of that song!”

Which city did you do most of the songwriting for this album? 

“London is where the initial inspiration came from. Then, I actually ended up spending a lot of time in Los Angeles and – this is really strange – a lot of time in Vegas and Miami. I was exposed to a completely new culture that I hadn’t experienced. It was very different to the Northern Beaches of Australia! I think more abstract environments really inspire me – places with a story and a little bit of dirt and grit. A little bit of an underbelly – there’s some undealt-with conflict, there’s something about those places that I find very inspiring, they have a lot of depth.”

Rolling Stone said “She’s a fine singer but the real Jess Higgs is still hiding.” What do you think about that comment? Are you still hiding?

“[Laughs] No, I’m really not. I think everyone has an opinion and I have absolutely no problem with anyone saying whatever they want but I think for me personally as an artist, I think Lover is an exact representation of where I was as an artist at that time. For me, its about ‘OK, I was in this place, I wrote that and then now I’m in this place and I’m writing this’. I think that’s our job as musicians, that’s how I get things finished and let go of them and not attach myself so deeply to the meaning of everything.”

Lover is really a reflection of who I am and who I was at that time.”

When you start out producing a music video, where do you look for references on styling?

“It’s quite character-driven, really. I’m really inspired at the moment by Cleopatra and geishas and I think Black Swan was an early inspiration for George Maple. I also look at films and I’m often really intrigued by the characters in the film because it’s a different sort of medium. I’m also really lucky because I’ve worked with some really incredible makeup artists along the way, like Pat McGrath’s 2IC in New York City.”

Were you rolling around with a glitter lip for a week afterwards?

“[Laughs] Basically yes! There’s was a lot of glitter in my change-room, in my bag…”

You’re currently touring nationally, what can audiences expect?

“I am spending a lot of time basically translating the narrative of the record into a live experience. It’s consuming my existence basically! My shows are very kind of narrative-driven. I think this is an amazing opportunity because it’s a headline show – it’s not a festival set – I can really get into the depths of the album and create a proper show because I’ve got dancers and LED lights and I’m across all the production which I find really exciting. I hope that everything that is in my mind will actually come to fruition. Rather than it being a gig, it’s a show.”

Do you have a pre-show ritual?

“I have green juice and a Bounce ball. A funny story: I put that on my rider and I turned up to a show and they had given me an exercise ball! [Laughs]. I now have to put ‘peanut Bounce ball’ so hopefully no one will confuse that! I really just try and stay relaxed and listen to good music. The only thing that really affects me is stress. I try and not stress too much and know that I have an amazing team around me. I do anything I can to relax, I dance around, I just enjoy it. I don’t want to get to the end of ten years of being an artist and be like, ‘Oh, I was really stressed the whole time and I didn’t enjoy it.”

What is going on in the film industry at the moment is shocking and there’s talk that it’s only a matter of time before similar narratives infiltrate the music industry. What’s the best piece of advice someone in the business has to given you about standing up for yourself and being a woman in music?

“When I was about 15-years-old, I had every label trying to sign me. My parents freaked out and took me to a really amazing music lawyer called Shane Simpson. He said to me ‘Finish school, learn how to produce, keep honing your skills, your live performances and your songwriting. Own as much as you can, buy out people when you can so you own enough.’”

“The core of the message was your skills are your armoury and if you focus on that and you use that as your weaponry in order to navigate through this industry, then that’s the most powerful thing you can do.”

“And surround yourself with people that support that. It’s not easy for anyone in this industry whether you’re male or female but I would say your skill-set and knowledge is everything in your business… from the accounts to how they put the lighting rig together because the more that you know, the more that you can communicate with people and the more you can operate at a higher level I think.”


George Maple is currently touring Australia. For tickets, click here: 

16 Feb 2018 – The Triffid, Brisbane
21 Feb 2018 – 170 Russell, Melbourne
22 Feb 2018 – Metro Theatre, Sydney
23 Feb 2018 – The Gov, Adelaide
24 Feb 2018 – Villa, Perth