Jessica Mauboy career: ‘I felt really emotional’: Jessica Mauboy reflects on her incredible career as she approaches one of her biggest milestones yet | Exclusive Interview
Jessica Mauboy is a household name here in Australia.
Whether you know her from her iconic career in the music industry or her roles in feature films such as The Sapphires, Mauboy has well and truly left her mark on the Aussie entertainment industry over the past 20 years.
She’s received countless accolades for her work, but when asked what her proudest moment is, she throws a spanner in the works.
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“I guess my very first award when I was 10 years old, at the Adelaide River country music competition,” she tells 9honey Celebrity.
“My mum had dressed me in, I think it was from a party hire costume place, and it was head-to-toe cowboy tassels.”
Mauboy said despite not liking the outfit, the competition was potentially the most “defining moment” of her career.
“It was a moment of going, ‘This is kind of what I wanna do for the rest of my life,'” she recalls.
“That sitting on the edge of something, of the unknown, was the very first time at that age… And I knew, I knew, that’s what I wanted to do.”
Mauboy shot to fame as a competitor on Australian Idol in 2006, and although she didn’t go on to win, Australians quickly recognised her talents.
By 2008 she had released her first solo album Been Waiting, which became the second-highest-selling Aussie album of 2009 and was certified double platinum.
“I had no idea what I was doing. I was just going with my gut,” Mauboy remembers.
“I was really having fun and making the music that I found really interesting and that made me feel really good.
“I just wanted a body of work that I felt I was close to.”
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Been Waiting became an iconic moment in Aussie music history, with tracks such as Burn and Running Back now iconic throwback hits for an entire generation.
“I instantly feel proud of the work and proud of myself for being so brave. I started at a really young age,” she says.
“It was prime time for me in the music industry, coming out as an artist… I have really fond memories.”
In 2016, Mauboy released The Secret Daughter: Songs from the Original TV Series, an album which debuted at number one on the Aria charts.
The achievement made her the first ever Indigenous artist to top the Aria album chart, which she says is a highlight of her career.
“Being the first First Nations woman to be in the running of the Aria industry and – in front of peers and people I look up to, leaders in the music industry, artists in the music industry – I think for me to have been recognised in that light of my music, my artistry abilities, is a huge thing for me,” she says.
Now, as of August 9, Mauboy is going to have another accolade to add to her list.
This year, the Aussie singer is being inducted into the National Indigenous Music Awards (NIMAs) Hall of Fame in Darwin.
ARIA Awards Hall of Fame inductees over the years
“I was, at first, really speechless. I think I went quiet,” Mauboy recalls of the moment she received the news.
“I remember being on the phone and kind of having not any words, but I felt emotional. I felt really emotional. And the first things that came into my mind were the artist, my community, Darwin itself.
“Darwin has shaped me into the person I am today, whether it’s the kind of connection that I bring in terms of my body language, the way I speak, the way that I look, the way that I look at life, that place has birthed me, to be who I am.”
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To Mauboy, being named as this year’s inductee seems “crazy” after having spent so many years attending the awards and now following in the footsteps of some of her idols.
”For me, it means continuing to pave a pathway and to open doors for other artists and allow them to dream big, and that anything is possible in music, no matter where you want to go into it,” she says.
While many see a Hall of Fame induction as the pinnacle of a career, a moment to hang your hat up, Mauboy is far from done making music.
Her new single While I Got Time is out today, August 1, with the singer describing the song as the beginning of a new chapter in her career.
“While I Got Time is purely about going away and kind of the sacrifices and the memories and the people that have come into your life that have impacted you,” she explains.
“It’s something to hold onto and grasp and embrace and to never let go of that and to trust where you’re going and doing all the things that you’ve always wanted to do.
“It has a whimsical feel, it’s quite folky, and I think more importantly, it’s where I wanna be.”
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