Melanie Horsnell
Encyclopedia
Melanie Horsnell is a singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...
from New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
.
Musical career
Melanie first picked up a guitarGuitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
at the age of five, learning the classical
Classical guitar
The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...
and flamenco
Flamenco
Flamenco is a genre of music and dance which has its foundation in Andalusian music and dance and in whose evolution Andalusian Gypsies played an important part....
styles of play, and began busking
Busking
Street performance or busking is the practice of performing in public places, for gratuities, which are generally in the form of money and edibles...
at Manly Beach
Manly Beach, New South Wales
Manly Beach is a beach situated in Sydney's Northern Beaches, Australia. From north to south, the three main sections are Queenscliff, North Steyne, and South Steyne....
at the age of ten. By her late teens, she still hadn’t really thought of continuing her music career – she had her heart set on managing Woolworths (supermarket) – until she won a spot on The Northern Composure CD and national songwriting competitions. From there she headed to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
for a year, busking on a daily basis and working on her songwriting skills.
Back home, Melanie began her residency at the Excelsior Hotel in Glebe
Glebe, New South Wales
Glebe is an inner-city suburb of Sydney. Glebe is located 3 km south-west of the Sydney central business district and is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney, in the Inner West region....
in 2000 and became regarded as one driving forces behind Sydney’s blossoming “NuFolk” movement. Over the years at the Excelsior, Melanie performed with some remarkable artists including Paul Greene, Andy Clockwise
Andy Clockwise
Andy Clockwise is an Australian born musician, performer, writer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Andy currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Clockwise likes to describe his style as “Schizo Pop”, while his musical genre is Indie/Pop. Andy has headlined his own tour as well as...
, Bertie Blackman, peregrine
Peregrine (band)
Peregrine is an indie rock band from Sydney, Australia.-Early career:Peregrine began as the vehicle for the performance of songs written by Brett Winterford, who after several early line-up changes settled on drummer Mathew Smith and bassist Dane Higgins , and guitarist Felix Akurangi .Winning a...
, Tim Ireland and Wesley Carr, while at the same time played host to many emerging artists, most notably Laura Imbruglia
Laura Imbruglia
Laura Imbruglia is an Australian indie rock singer-songwriter. Her father is an Italian of Sicilian heritage and her mother Anglo-Australian, and one of her sisters is the pop-alternative diva Natalie Imbruglia. She grew up on the Central Coast and is currently based in Melbourne. Imbruglia has...
. Her residency continued for 4 years, but there were larger things afoot for the young songstress.
In 2001, Melanie independently released her first EP, Don’t Know What to Say, followed the next year her second EP Magic Mirror (produced by Garth Porter
Garth Porter
Garth Porter is an Australian musician, songwriter and record producer best known as a member of the 1970s pop group Sherbet, and for his key role as co-writer and producer for country music singer Lee Kernaghan....
), which was soon picked up by radio across the country and led to Melanie signing with Shock Publishing worldwide. Soon after, Melanie was approached to write songs for popular children’s show The Saddle Club
The Saddle Club
The Saddle Club is a children's television series based on the books written by Bonnie Bryant and is an Australia/Canada co-production. Like the book series, the scripted live action series follows the lives of three teenage girls in training to compete in equestrian competitions at the fictional...
and to score the soundtrack for the film Love in the First Degree.
In 2003, Melanie began work on her debut album, The Adventures of..., again with Garth Porter behind the desk. Its first single “Birds” earned Melanie high rotation on the Triple J
Triple J
triple j is a nationally networked Australian radio station intended to appeal to listeners between the ages of 18 and 30. The government-funded station is a division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation...
network.
In 2004, she signed to Rounder records in Europe, after a demo of The Adventures of... found its way into the hands of Bert Pijpers of Rounder Records. The Adventures Of... was released in The Netherlands, Germany and the UK - in February 2005, the album was released in rest of Europe. Melanie even did a crash course in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
to record the French version of the beatlesque
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
pop gem “I Just Want Some Love” which helped The Adventures Of… wind up as feature album on national radio in France that year. Having made no less than four tours of Europe over the years, she also played to a packed house at The Esplanade in Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
in early 2005.
Her Australian fans were satisfied when they finally saw the release of her album The Adventures of... in September 2005 through Inflatable Girlfriend Records/MGM. Melanie has also managed many Australian tours, often with her band "the Inflatable Girlfriends" (ironically made up of male musicians), as support for The Frames
The Frames
The Frames are an Irish band based in Dublin. Founded in 1990 by Glen Hansard, the band has been influential in the Dublin rock music scene. The group has released six albums...
, Josh Pyke
Josh Pyke
Josh Pyke is an Australian singer-songwriting musician.-Beginnings and Feeding the Wolves :Josh Pyke was in his first band by age 12 and played his first performance in front of 650 parents and students at his primary school graduation. Playing guitar and initial song writing efforts came aged 14...
, Bernard Fanning
Bernard Fanning
Bernard Joseph Fanning is a musician and singer-songwriter. He is best known as the lead singer and frontman of Australian alternative rock band Powderfinger from its formation in 1989 to its dissolution in 2010....
(Powderfinger
Powderfinger
Powderfinger was an Australian rock band that formed in Brisbane in 1989. From 1992 until their breakup the band lineup consisted of vocalist Bernard Fanning, guitarists Darren Middleton and Ian Haug, bassist John Collins, and drummer Jon Coghill....
), Lou Rhodes
Lou Rhodes
Lou Rhodes is an English singer and songwriter from Manchester, now living in Wiltshire. In addition to providing vocals and lyrics for the band Lamb, Rhodes has released three solo albums: Beloved One, Bloom and One Good Thing...
(Lamb) and Jason Mraz
Jason Mraz
Jason Thomas Mraz , also known as Mr. AZ and Mr. Raz, is an American singer-songwriter. Mraz released his debut album, Waiting for My Rocket to Come, which contained the hit single "The Remedy ", in 2002, but it was not until the release of his second album, "Mr. A-Z", in 2005, that Mraz achieved...
.
Melanie has supplied vocals for several songs used in television commercials, including McDonald's
McDonald's
McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...
, Johnnie Walker
Johnnie Walker
Johnnie Walker is a brand of Scotch Whisky owned by Diageo and originated in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland.It is the most widely distributed brand of blended Scotch whisky in the world, sold in almost every country with yearly sales of over 130 million bottles.-History:Originally known as Walker's...
, Huggies
Huggies
Huggies is the brand name of a disposable diaper marketed by Kimberly-Clark. Huggies were first test marketed in 1968, then introduced to the public in 1978.-Product lines:...
, Bonds (company)
Bonds (company)
Bonds Industries Pty Ltd is an Australian manufacturer and importer of men's, women's and children's underwear and clothing, and a subsidiary of Pacific Brands Holdings Pty Ltd. It is a popular mid-range brand within Australia and the United Kingdom...
and National Grid plc
National Grid plc
National Grid plc is a multinational electricity and gas utility company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Its principal activities are in the United Kingdom and northeastern United States and it is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the world.National Grid is listed on...
(in the United States). In addition, Melanie and Elliot Wheeler came together in the side project "Forever Thursday," with Melanie as the lead singer on the song "How Can It Be", music for a J.C. Penney
J.C. Penney
J. C. Penney Company, Inc. is a chain of American mid-range department stores based in Plano, Texas, a suburb north of Dallas. The company operates 1,107 department stores in all 50 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. JCPenney also operates catalog sales merchant offices nationwide in many...
advertisement shown during the 2007 Oscars.
In 2008 Melanie went back into the studio with producer Paul Mckercher (Augie March, Magic Dirt, Little Birdy, Eskimo Joe) to lay down 12 new tracks for her album Complicated Sweetheart. The first single from the album features a track "Mary Mary" and two bonus songs, "Christmas in the suburbs" and The Saints song "Massacre", and was released in July 2008. "Mary Mary" received immediate airplay on National Youth Broadcaster Radio Triple J
Triple J
triple j is a nationally networked Australian radio station intended to appeal to listeners between the ages of 18 and 30. The government-funded station is a division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation...
and also FBi Radio
FBi Radio
FBi is an independent, not-for-profit community radio station in Sydney, Australia. FBi places a heavy emphasis on local alternative music: it has a policy that at least 50 per cent of its music content is to be Australian, of which at least half comes from Sydney musicians.FBi began 'test...
, RRR and a number of other stations.
Complicated Sweetheart was released in Australia on 6 September 2008 through Inflatable Girlfriend Records/MGM.
Personal life
Melanie Horsnell is the mother of two daughters: Gypsy (born on 5 November 2008) and Harmony-Celeste (born 19 January 2011).Albums
- The Adventures of...[UK] - 2004
- The Adventures of...[AUS] - 2005
- Complicated Sweetheart...[AUS] - 2008
EP's
- Don’t Know What to Say - (2001)
- Magic Mirror - (2002)
- Birds - (2004)
- Kiss you again - (2007)
- Mary Mary - (2008)
Music videos
- Birds - (2004)
- I Just Want Some Love - (2005)
- How can it be - Forever Thursday - (2007)
- Mary Mary - (2008)