As Perth-born singer Samantha Jade worked last year on recording disco tracks for her third album, she took inspiration from the global #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. “When that started to happen,” says Jade, “we added on songs like ‘I Will Survive’, and I think that song, for anybody going through struggle, is such an empowering moment, but especially [for] women in this climate.”
The resulting album, Best of My Love—a tribute to strong women of the disco era—updates retro jams for a new generation and proved to be just what Jade needed to rejuvenate her career. “My record Nine [released in 2015] was very much heartfelt,” Jade says. “It was very deep and I had gone through a lot of turmoil in my personal life, and it was dedicated to my mum and that situation, so I knew I wanted to do something light and fun.”
The new outlook comes four years after Jade lost her mother, Jacqueline, at the age of 51 to an aggressive form of cancer, just four months into treatment after the diagnosis.
“I don’t know if you ever really cope fully,” Jade says. “I don’t know if time heals wounds because I don’t feel like that’s ever going to be healed, but I just think you get used to things and you get used to life without people.”
Jade says she carries Jacqueline’s memory everywhere: “I honestly feel that about everything in my life. I can hear her and what she’s saying and what she would say.” She adds with a laugh, “Sometimes I’m like, ‘Oh my God, Mum, you’re more present now than you were before!’”
Yet celebrating her 30th birthday last year without her mum by her side was extremely difficult. “That was a tough milestone to hit without that person who brought you into the world,” she says, adding that the older she gets, the more she thinks about her mum.
“Things you go through in life, I think, ‘God how did you deal with that?’ ” Jade reveals. “They say that you do that when you have kids, but I think that it’s before that, that you do that. You go, ‘God, how did you deal with just being a woman in the world and running a household?’ Things like that.”
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