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If HAIM & Shania Twain got together to make music, their sonic sister would be Hayley Marsten. Her sophomore release, Girlhood, glittered into the world in June 2023. As described by Apple Music ‘her darkly dramatic country anthems bear rousing traces of 1970s rock’, Girlhood is a triumph.

Her sharp pen and open heart led to the creation of her stellar debut, ‘Spectacular Heartbreak’ in 2019. The album was crowdfunded, nominated for Alt-Country Album of the Year at the Golden Guitars, Country Work of the Year at the Queensland Music Awards in 2020 and was streamed over half a million times.

3 years on from her debut, Hayley has signed with Cheatin Hearts Records, graced the stage of CMC Rocks, toured nationally with headline shows and supported industry stalwarts like Fanny Lumsden. As described by Marsten ‘Girlhood is an album for my younger self’, but it most closely represents where she’s at right now, both as an artist and a person: sometimes sassy, always heartfelt. And something tells us Baby Hayley would wholeheartedly approve of Girlhood, which is, unquestionably, her adult counterpart’s most honest and accomplished set of songs to date.

Girlhood

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“Girlhood is the album I wanted and needed to hear when I was younger”

Release date: June 16

“For me, Girlhood is the album I wanted and needed to hear when I was younger,” Brisbane-based, alt-country singer-songwriter Hayley Marsten says of her eagerly anticipated second album. “Everything from the songs down to the way the album looks was really inspired by who I so badly wanted to be when I was a teenager and I’m really proud of what I made for that younger self.”

Although Hayley admits her debut record Spectacular Heartbreak (2019) – a self-described “breakup album” – was “very vulnerable”, Girlhood delves even deeper. “I honestly feel like going to therapy really informed a lot of the songs on this record,” she reveals. “I was doing a lot of reflection on who I was, and the way that I treat myself. I think Girlhood is my entire personality and all the things that – had I listened to it when I was 15 – would’ve made me think, ‘Wow, what a cool album!’ Even the cover art is pink and purple and glittery!”

Hayley was riding high following the release of her critically acclaimed debut album, which attracted over half a million streams in its first year. “It had gone really well, I’d been nominated for all of these awards [Alt-Country Album of the Year at the Golden Guitars, Country Work of the Year at the Queensland Music Awards] and toured with some really great people, and it felt like things were finally coming together for me,” she reflects. “My whole life revolved around music and a lot of my self-worth was tied to being able to work and achieve. Then when I couldn’t do that, it was really hard for me to get out of bed. So I started going to therapy.”

Around this time, Hayley says her “standing co-write dates” with longtime collaborator Kieran Stevenson (who co-wrote the title track from her debut album and is also in her band) gave her “a reason to get out of bed” in the morning. During one of these songwriting sessions, Hayley explained to Kieran that while she was experiencing some therapy breakthroughs, a new type of fear had emerged. “The depressive state that I was in felt like a weird safety blanket that I wanted to cling onto,” she recalls, “because at least I knew and understood it, and there were no new scarier ways for me to feel upset.” Kieran empathised, the pair got to work and ‘I Knew The Pain’ – her latest single, released last month – “just totally fell out”.

“I miss the old familiar pain/ The way you call my name/ And now I only see you on bad days/ But I miss the way/ I knew the pain.”

Some might call ‘I Knew The Pain’ a sad banger: like much of the material on Hayley’s stunning new record, this song is instrumentally upbeat – with shiny, optimistic guitar riffs and jaunty drumming – to juxtapose harrowing lyrical content.

Co-writing sessions with Kieran also birthed three more album tracks: the shiny, synth-led ‘Drowning Myself’; ‘Good Writer’ – a humorous takedown featuring shimmering guitar parts; and Girlhood’s second single ‘I’m Fine, Thanks’ – a song about moving on, which channels the playfulness of HAIM.

Honouring her dark sense of humour, Hayley originally pencilled in ‘I’m Fine, Thanks’ as this record’s title. “I’m so glad that I thought about it for a bit longer,” she admits, “because I feel like Girlhood is such a better encapsulation of what this record actually means.”

‘Girlhood’, the song, was written at the 11th hour. “The word ‘girlhood’ appears in the lyrics of ‘My Body Was Not My Own’ and it’s a good word so I decided that I wanted to use it in another song,” Hayley explains. “And I’m so glad I trusted my instincts, because I just feel like it pulls the whole record together and is a nice bow-tying of that whole thought process around becoming a woman and getting out of that childhood mindset.”

“Goodbye to girlhood/ I’ll do things she never thought she could/ Only now at 29 leaving girlhood behind.”

“I actually turn 29 the day before the album comes out,” Hayley enlightens, “and I really do feel like I’m only now actually stepping outside the mindset of thinking that I can’t – or I’m not allowed to – do stuff or say things or wear things, because it’s not appropriate. It was always really hammered into me to be a nice girl and a polite girl, and to not make a fuss or kick up a stink. And if your opinion’s a bit controversial, keep it to yourself. I just now feel I’m slowly trying to break the habit of conforming. I think it’s a constant journey of unlearning those bad habits; that kind of shedding feels very empowering.

“The whole mentality of my adolescence was that the goal in life was to be cool and likeable and attractive to boys. And I just never got to be who I actually wanted to be, because there was too much fear or shame around it. So I wanted this record to be all of those things that I wished that I could’ve been back then, but felt too scared to be.

“There’s songs on this record that have really heavy guitar; I always wanted to be in a rock band, but I just never felt like I was cool enough to have distorted guitars on my records. And I never felt like I could dance outside the lines of straight-up country music, but I’ve always really loved synthesiser sounds and stuff like that.”

The first song Hayley wrote for Girlhood was the piano-driven third single ‘Bittersweet At Best’. “I just sat down with the guitar and opened my mouth and it came out!” is how she remembers the songwriting process. Hayley initially had doubts about this one, but decided to record it “just in case”. But after she shared the demo, Hayley remembers, “My partner Dan [Sugars, producer] and Kieran were like, ‘Oh my god!’ – almost crying! And I was like, ‘Okay, maybe it is good then’.

“I wrote another song for the record called Teen Movie, which I thought was okay, and I sent it to Kieran thinking it had potential but would need editing. He was like, ‘Don’t change anything, that is the best song you’ve ever written!’”

“I never had examples of good love in front of me/ So I took my cues from teen movies.”

Hayley grew up in Gladstone, a coastal town in central Queensland, and her mum was a fan of John Hughes films (The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles). “When I was a teenager, my parents got divorced. I was watching a Mary-Kate & Ashley TV show and their divorced parents – in the TV show – were gonna get back together and I was like, ‘Oh, maybe it could happen!’ And I look back on it now and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, you poor, sweet, delusional girl,” she shares, laughing.

At the start of last year, Hayley returned to her childhood home for a week and discovered her bedroom was exactly as she’d left it. “I felt really connected to my past self,” she explains, “and I felt, in a way, that she was a better version of me because she didn’t have all of this self-doubt. Looking back through rose-coloured glasses I thought, ‘Oh my god! I was so confident and sure of myself, and I just knew that things were gonna work out, and now I don’t feel that way at all!’ But I think, in reality, I was a very, very shy girl who was really unsure of herself.”

It was during this Gladstone visit that Hayley had an epiphany: “I was like, ‘I wanna make music that my teenage self would like and be proud of!’ And I had this thought in my head for such a long time. Maybe subconsciously that did inform how the rest of the record came together; even down to the title track going on at the last minute. I remember being in the studio thinking, ‘Ooh, is there enough? It feels like it’s not quite there yet’.

“It was all very serendipitous. I feel like ‘Girlhood’ really ties the record together and makes it feel like a full picture of this period in my life.”

Instead of her usual practice of travelling interstate and booking studio time for a couple of weeks, Hayley recorded album number two in Brisbane – taking her sweet time and recording it bit by bit – which definitely paid off. “Listening back to these vocal performances is the first time I’ve been like, ‘Wow, I’m actually a good singer!’” Hayley marvels.

Girlhood also saw Hayley working with an “A-Team” of producers that she trusts implicitly – Kieran, Dan, Michael Muchow and co-executive producer Cody McWaters (King Stingray, The Chats) – so she felt super-comfortable putting forward “weird ideas like the live track at the end [‘Live Transmission’] and orchestral strings on the opening track [‘Getting Better’].” They also encouraged her to take risks.

“Songs like ‘I Am A Rich Man’ [Girlhood’s fourth single] – there is just no way I would ever have attempted to sing that with any other group of people and it took me a long time to get that perfect, because it is really hard for me to sing. But I’m really proud of how it turned out. I would never have written or released a song like ‘I Am A Rich Man’ when I started out, because I was so afraid of offending anyone or being too much.”

‘I Am A Rich Man’ opens with Hayley sharing a famous Cher quote – “Cher said, ‘Mom, I don't need to marry a rich man; I am a rich man” – and she hopes this sentiment, and the song itself, will inspire and empower young girls. After writing the bones of ‘I Am A Rich Man’, Hayley called in another favourite songwriting partner: “Imogen Clark and I jumped on Zoom and ate dinner while we finished it,” she shares, laughing.

The live track that closes Girlhood, ‘Last Transmission’, was penned at a time when Hayley felt unsure as to whether she’d ever play another show. “I feel like every artist goes through phases of being like, ‘I’m not doing this anymore,’ and you just throw a little tantrum,”

Girlhood was crowdfunded and one of the pledge rewards was listening to the album in advance. “In January I performed the whole album – sans ‘Girlhood’, because I had only just written that song – and we recorded ‘Last Transmission’ so all the pledgers’ ‘WOO!’s are now on the record,” Hayley tells. “I just thought it would be a nice time capsule like, ‘Hey, if I don’t see you, thanks for giving a shit and coming to the show.’

“If this is the last transmission that you hear from the stage/ This made me happy/ I’m glad you came to see me play.”

Earlier this year, Hayley signed with the prestigious alt-country label Cheatin’ Hearts Records and also took the stage at Australia’s biggest country music festival CMC Rocks, performing in front of 23,000 people. “I looked out into the audience during the set and there were people with signs with my lyrics on it!” she extols. “I will never forget that one.”

Hayley’s “very autobiographical” Girlhood album most closely represents where she’s at right now, both as an artist and a person: sometimes sassy, always heartfelt. And something tells us Baby Hayley would wholeheartedly approve of Girlhood, which is, unquestionably, her adult counterpart’s most honest and accomplished set of songs to date. 

debut album ‘Spectacular Heartbreak’

Bragworthy Quotes

Videos

Big Hoorays! (Career Highlights)

CMC Rocks Performer 2024

Thirroul Music Festival performer 2023

Girlhood debuted at #4 on the ARIA Country Charts

Girlhood national album tour visited Brisbane, Gladstone, Sydney, Wollongong, Bundaberg

Girlhood was a featured release on Apple Music during release week June 2023

Girlhood featured on Women in Pop, ABC National Drive, Countrytown & Sunburnt Country.

Signed to Cheatin’ Hearts Records

CMC Rocks 2023 Performer

Named one of AIRs Women in Music Mentees 2022

‘Bittersweet at Best’ added to ABC Local National Radio playlist in October 2022

‘I’m Fine, Thanks’ music named Rolling Stone AU’s ‘Video of the Week’ on release week.

Hayley named as one of Groundwater Country Music Festival Performers for 2022

Hayley named as one of the Deni Ute Muster festival performers for 2022

Crowdfunded over $20k to make my second album

Hayley included in BIGSOUND’s 21st Birthday Celebration festival, Big Summer Block Party in November 2021

‘Drowning Myself’ was nominated for a Queensland Music Award in the country category 2022.

‘Drowning Myself’ released October 8th 2021, produced by Aria Winner Magoo with Dan Sugars and Hayley Marsten.

‘Drowning Myself’ playlisted on Apple Music editorial playlists upon release.

‘Drowning Myself’ played on Double J’s Tower of Song.

Released the digital EP ‘Spectacular’, 4 songs from ‘Spectacular Heartbreak’ re-imagined on grand piano on June 15 2021.

Recipient of an APRA AMCOS Women in Music Mentorship in the pop/rock genre, mentored by rock icon, Adalita

Hayley was named as one of the 2020 BIGSOUND50.

Headlined the ‘Sass & Rhinestones’ Queensland tour in September/October 2020 with multiple Covid Sold Out Shows.

The self-directed, self-produced and self-edited music video for ‘Pretty’ was added to high rotation on CMT Australia.

‘Spectacular Heartbreak’ was named a finalist for Alt-Country Album of the Year at the 2020 Golden Guitar Awards.

‘Wendy’ was named a finalist for Country Work of the Year at The Queensland Music Awards.

‘Spectacular Heartbreak’ was playing on commercial radio, peaked at #3 on The Music Network Charts and has been streamed over 260,000 times.

The Spectacular Heartbreak tour spanned 20 dates, 4 states and 3 months. Almost every show was sold out or packed to the rafters.

Hayley opened for Fanny Lumsden’s Country Halls Tour and Troy Cassar-Daley on the Legend and the Locals tour.

‘Red Wine, White Dress’ was one of the longest-running songs on The Music Network Charts and The Country Tracks Charts for Q1 2019.

‘Wendy’ was streamed over 210,000 times on Spotify.

‘Wendy’ was added to ‘Fresh Country’ on Spotify, ABC Country & ABC Local Playlists and reached #18 on The Music Network charts and #25 on the Country Music Channel charts.

Over $17,000 was raised through crowdfunding to record my debut album

#1 Single on Kix Country Radio (‘Coming Home’ December 2018)

Opened for/toured with Fanny Lumsden, Troy Cassar-Daley, Imogen Clark, Bennett, Bowtell & Urqhart, Brad Butcher, Clare Bowditch, Deborah Conway, Katie Noonan, Amber Lawrence, James Blundell, Rachael Fahim, Casey Barnes, Arna Georgia and Andrew Swift.

Grants received from Arts Queensland, Regional Arts Fund & Regional Arts Development Fund for recording, music videos, launch shows. All written and acquitted by Hayley.