“Some of these songs have been around for a very long time,” Andy Golledge tells Apple Music about his debut album. The Sydney singer-songwriter puts one track, “Ain’t Nobody,” as far back as 2007 or 2008. “It’s just come around when it was supposed to, I guess. Mentally, I wasn’t ready, but now I am.” Strength of a Queen takes the sound, heartbreak, and lovingly crafted detail of classic Americana and marries it to raw, earthy rock ’n’ roll, with most of the songs recorded live with Golledge’s longtime band. “A pretty obvious theme in there is love,” says the singer, who was raised in Tamworth, a regional city about five hours’ drive from Sydney, famous for being Australia's country music capital. “There are a few songs that were inspired by other people’s love and other people’s hardships, but for the most part, every song is about love. Which wasn’t on purpose.” Here, Golledge offers a track-by-track rundown of Strength of a Queen.
“Ghost of Love”
“Every now and then, I get inspired by certain artists in a way where I’m like, I’d like to write a song that, in my head, would sound like that style of music. This song was birthed from Tom Petty or The Traveling Wilburys; I really wanted to write a fun, upbeat song. It ended up being quite a personal song. It kind of covers my whole journey of coming to Sydney from Tamworth, and all the love that came in between.”
“Strength of a Queen”
“‘Strength of a Queen’ was inspired by the breakup that a band member of mine had. It’s one of those breakups that wasn’t bad at all; it was just a very interesting thing where both people had two different directions. They just drifted into different paths. It seemed to me that they were perfect for each other. I had this idea to write a song about someone who was waiting around for a woman or whatever to kind of make [them] stronger.”
“New Stamp”
“When I was starting out in music, I was playing a pub where no one would really listen. I was playing ‘New Stamp,’ but I was playing it very differently; it was more of a folky, soft-spoken song. I couldn’t figure out how I could get people’s attention, so I just started belting it out as you hear on the record and made everyone pay attention. I grew up in the country and the song is about a simple boy who’s happy to just be out fishing or running wild, and then having a sophisticated lover. It’s a punching-above-your-weight kinda vibe, just jammed into a blues song.”
“Rescue Me”
“You can hear Caitlin [Harnett, vocals/banjo] at the start. I think she says, ‘I think we should all come in at the same time.’ Usually, I would [start the song on] acoustic guitar and the band would shuffle in behind me at some stage. And that’s why you can hear me palm-muting on my acoustic guitar at the start, ’cause I just don’t know when the guys are going to come in, so I’m just going to hit the first note on the guitar when Piltzy [drummer Josh Piltz] starts playing. That’s why, again at the end of the song, Caitlin was like, ‘That’s sick!’ It was the first take, and we had no idea what was going to happen.”
“Love Like This”
“This is one of the newer songs. It’s about meeting my current partner. Sometimes, when you fall in love, you look for somebody that you aspire to be, and my partner is a very strong woman and terribly inspiring. So, that’s why I called the song ‘Love Like This,’ because it’s hard to find a real love without having all these other worries and doubts and other things inhibiting your view on people.”
“Heavy Hand”
“That was the first breakup song I ever wrote. I was with a woman from about the age of 17 to 27, so that was my journey from Tamworth to Sydney. You know when you break up with your first partner, you always think you’re going to get back together—that’s what that song is about. Or you’re worried they’ll forget about you. It’s all the kind of uncertainty when you’ve left somebody, and it’s somebody you were a kid with and then an adult with. [Writing this] was my process of getting over it. It’s a long song!”
“Carry On”
“‘Carry On’ compiles all my breakups into one song. Each verse is about a different person I’ve been with, and the same patterns you fall into. I wrote the song with that perspective recently, just for myself, to have it there to realize you’re traveling the right path and making the right decisions, whether it’s in love or anything else. It’s one of my favorite songs on the record.”
“Ain’t Nobody”
“‘Ain’t Nobody’ is just about getting really drunk. I still remember when I wrote it. I think it was 6 in the morning, downstairs in the garage of a house I had. I just had this idea about a character who was a horrible person, who would travel around getting drunk and causing shit. But deep down, he’s a sensitive person. It’s probably the only fictional song on the record.”
“Dreamin’ of a Highway”
“[Live], I would play the whole first verse and chorus without the band, and they would kick in on the start of the second verse. But I just had this thing in my head that [we should all come in] together, because in my head it just sounded much better on the record as a song the whole way through. So, I just mentioned to Piltzy to come in at the start and he did, and that was the take we used. I was like, that’s exactly how I thought it would sound in my head.”
“Babe I Think You Think Too Much”
“I was seeing someone for a short time who thought way too much, to the point where it was terribly frustrating. And that’s fine: People have anxiety, myself included, but it’s how much energy or anxiety do you want to give to every single aspect of your life?”
“Baby Mumma”
“Growing up in Tamworth, there wasn’t much to do. I kind of spent my life around a bowling club. My old man was playing bowls, so I just spent my teenage years around alcohol and that environment. And you hit 18 in Tamworth and are like, ‘What are we gonna do? I know, we’ll go to the pub and play the pokies,’ and that’s what we did. And I eventually moved to Sydney and slowly formed a severe gambling habit, and the song was written as a cry for help to my partner at the time about having no money. I basically would budget my life around gambling. It’s evolved into a much more fun, upbeat sing-along song considering where it came from. It wasn’t so fun and upbeat when it was first written.”