
Sarah Blasko: “I like to just see what comes out as I feel the subconscious mind knows what it wants to say.” Photo: Mclean Stephenson
Goodbyes and new beginnings – the iconic Australian singer and songwriter returns with her first studio album in six years
Sarah Blasko is one of Australia’s most celebrated musicians. Across her acclaimed discography, starting with her 2004 debut The Overture & The Underscore and including standout albums like As Day Follows Night and I Awake, Blasko has explored themes of love, loss, and self-discovery with her signature poeticism. From the cinematic sweep of What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have to the raw intimacy of Depth Of Field, there’s a thread of emotional precision and haunting, evocative melodies weaved through her work. A three-time ARIA winner, Blasko’s artistry extends to compositions for theatre and dance, complimenting her studio work.
Blasko’s latest album, I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain, marks a welcome return after a six-year hiatus. Opening with the stirring The Way, a track that weaves personal history with spiritual questioning, the album is an exploration of endings and the hope found in renewal. It also reaffirms her ability to create work that feels both timeless and deeply personal. We now hand over to the Australian icon to learn all about each of the record’s songs.
THE WAY
This song had its humble beginnings when songwriter Bec Sandridge came around to my house to try writing something together and we bonded over our Christian upbringings. She kept singing, “Get me to church!” and I loved it. We were making up all kinds of silly lyrics about repenting for our sins while I played piano. We weren’t sure if either of us was going to do something with it and then I eventually pulled it out and finished it off. I wanted to speak of my longing to go back to the past, to the days when I was a believer, so I took the biblical phrase, “I am the way, the truth & the life,” and turned it into my own kind of prayer, “Show me the way, the truth of my life.”
Originally this was going to be the album closer but then a friend convinced me that it was a good place to start, that it set the scene and I eventually agreed. I enjoy looking at the album as a narrative or sorts, but I usually look at it that way when I’m choosing the track order, I try not to focus on it when I’m writing. I like to just see what comes out as I feel the subconscious mind knows what it wants to say.
BOTHERING ME
The title comes from a line in the second verse of the song. It’s an understatement of sorts. In real life I felt the problems were all-consuming not just “bothering me” so I liked the idea of taking that line and playing down the emotions I felt. There are some pretty heavy realisations in the second verse, and within the song in general, so I do enjoy making a song transcend any one feeling so that it’s richer and broader than that.
Musically, in the verses I wanted to convey a sense of normality and moving forward, and then a wildness and unhinged quality in the choruses and instrumental. The light and shade of feelings. Neal [Sutherland] and I laid down a bed of string synth that went throughout the entire song to convey a sense of unease, of being stuck.

Sarah Blasko: “I do enjoy making a song transcend any one feeling so that it’s richer and broader than that.” Photo: Marcus Coblyn
GOODBYE! FEAT. RYAN DOWNEY
I wanted to write the end to all endings here. I mean you can’t actually fully say goodbye to anyone or the past, but I was certainly going to try. I wanted the song to feel final and triumphant. I added the exclamation mark to suggest, ‘I’m screaming it but also I’m saying goodbye with love and good humour.’ As the lyrics say, “I’m crying and waving now as I drift high above the clouds.” It’s so sad to say goodbye but sometimes you just have to. This wasn’t originally going to be a duet but the lyrics started sounding like a dialogue between two people and then I just tried to think of a voice that would complement me but offer a very different tone to mine. Ryan Downey came to mind because he’d joined me on the tour for my last album, Depth Of Field. I found him really inspiring to watch every night. He’s so lovely and, in my opinion, criminally underrated. I was so glad he said yes. I love what he brings to the song – he sounds like he’s from another era and I’m fond of that. There’s a mysterious quality to his voice.
I CAN’T WAIT ANYMORE
Ok, so this is the final goodbye. The last stage of grief I suppose – acceptance. Years pass and you realise, it’s time, “I want to live like I’m reborn!” I remember this felt so good to all play live together in the studio, the way it builds and builds. It’s built on the live energy of the band that I have played with for many years, and then the strings accentuate those dynamics.
GIVE YOU UP
This is a song to myself and the ones I love, a promise to never give up on myself or them. I think the past few years have been quite a test and many have come out the other end feeling like giving up. Written alone at the piano as most of these songs were, I was really pouring my heart out at a time when the world felt so uncertain and we were all isolated from each other. A lot of these songs came out of wanting to lift myself up and out of my experience. Again, the song was recorded live all together when we could finally get in a room, and it did feel long overdue. Recording this way felt more important than ever.
EMOTIONS
I wanted to write a song that fully owns my emotional side and revels in it. It’s a little tongue-in-cheek really. The idea that my emotions are so unpredictable that you might need to leave town if an emotional outburst is about to occur. It’s a dramatisation and I am dramatic, but sometimes I do feel like an emotional weirdo. I wish I wasn’t so emotional, but on the other hand, it can be my own personal superpower if I harness it in the right way. Recording the ending jam-out was super fun and satisfying. The horn players were asked to go “off book” and express themselves which can only lead to good things!
IN MY HEAD
This is the real final goodbye! Ha ha! Refreshed, gathering all that’s good around you and holding on. New dreams arise if you hold on for long enough. As you can hear, most of this second side of the record has horn arrangements, I wanted to bring in a new element for part two of the album. There’s something very triumphant about their sound as I wanted to convey the sense of drawing on my past but heralding a new era. The horns and strings were arranged by the bass player in the band, David Symes, and we worked closely on the melodies and the spirit we were trying to create.

Sarah Blasko: “I wrote it in some of the few moments I had at the piano when my kids were asleep or in the other room.” Photo: Mclean Stephenson
DREAM WEAVER
This song is for my dear friend Greg Weaver who died a few years ago. We called him “dream weaver” because he could seemingly solve all problems. He was my tour manager and soundperson for so many years, and at a particularly formative period – in those first few albums of mine when I really had no idea what I was doing. He looked after me and encouraged me so much that sometimes I felt there was an invisible string that connected he and I when I was up there singing and he was doing the sound.
I always knew the show was going well and he was happy with the sound when he started air-drumming mid-set. He gave the biggest, longest hugs to everyone and was a really sensitive emotional person under a big, tough exterior. He would often come back after a show with tears in his eyes and tell us how much he loved the show. I want to honour and remember him always. Again, I felt the horns and backing vocals could convey that sense of the sacred and special place he played in my life.
TO BE ALONE
Probably the most autobiographical song I’ve made. Kind of speaks for itself, I think. But yeah, I was married young, I got divorced young, went out and found myself, and then here I am with a home life at the ripe old age of 47 trying to work it all out, realising this time won’t last forever. Amen.
I wrote it in some of the few moments I had at the piano when my kids were asleep or in the other room. I was pretty scared to put this song on the record but the friend who encouraged me to open with The Way also talked me into keeping this on the record. They thought it was a brave step & encouraged me that people would want to hear such honesty. Like many of the others, the recording of this song felt so natural & there was an ease to getting it down.
DIVINE
This was originally conceived at the time I wrote my last album Depth Of Field, but it didn’t fit with those other songs. I wrote it with my good friend Ben Fletcher during an artist in residence in Campbelltown in Sydney – me at the piano, him on guitar. We were set up on a stage under lights and I imagined performing it live to lots of people when I wrote down the line, “Have you ever wondered?” I wanted it to feel relatable to many. It sounds gospel-like to me, as though I was performing it in a church, it’s probably why I wanted to call it Divine, but it’s about awakening to the idea that life doesn’t have to be a struggle, inspired in some way by the Björk song Undo from Vespertine.
I was told my whole childhood that the end of the world was coming and it was all very dark and foreboding, so I’ve spent my adult life trying to find the divine and the beauty in everyday life – not focussed on the afterlife. My beautiful children have certainly helped, “You hand me the morning with a look in your eye/Calling out my name like a song you devised/Walking over my heart one sweet step at a time. You came to remind me this life is divine”.
Kenny Gilmore who mixed the album took the bridge in a direction I LOVED but it was unexpected, he took it out of reality for a second and heightened it with reverbs and distortion, and then it makes the final chorus so uplifting and triumphant as it returns. It’s probably my favourite moment on the record.
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