Many make the journey to Nashville with the dreams of making it on Music Row, but not many of them already have an established music career in another country.
Dianna Corcoran, whom has won accolades in her native Australia for her intense voice and engaging sound, did just that – leaving her homeland five years ago, Corcoran has been diligently working on her American debut album, In America. Collaborating with some of Nashville’s industry heavyweights, Corcoran is making herself known to the industry and fans alike.
TCN: In America is your American debut. How are you feeling about it so far? Are you excited to be making way to a new audience of country fans?
DC: It’s amazing, I think every artist is going to sit here and go “oh my gosh, I feel amazing” and, ya know, this is so exciting and all the rest of it but the fact is, to me, it’s terrifying. Like it’s just, um, you know, sort of diving in here and I had a bit of a career in Australia before I came here and it’s just all about, um, how am I going to get to 350 million people with this? But, um, it has beyond expectations – the feedback, the reviews, everything has been beyond expectations. And when people come back with good reviews, I’m naturally extremely nice to everyone, so I go on and Google them and say “aw, they probably say that to everybody. They’re so lovely, they would never say a bad word.” And then I find some bad reviews and I’m like “Oh great, they actually might have liked it!”
TCN: So about the creative process in making the album – Kristian Bush is one of the co-writers, who is beloved here in the states.
DC: Yes, yes he is. He’s a good one, he’s co-written a couple other songs and also helped produce on the record as well. The creation of the record took a very long time, almost five years now. And it’s taken that long to get it up and running for a lot of reasons. A couple of incredibly hard-working aspects of this where it wouldn’t come as easy as if you were with a major label and we just took that long to get it together to make sure we had the right songs. I’ve written all the songs on the record and that’s important to me because I have to be authentic and I struggle to be authentic if I’m singing someone else’s story. So all of them are real, 100% true stories that I took in to the room and said “Hey, we’re writing about this today.”
TCN: So is it stuff that you’ve experienced personally or that you’ve seen through other people?
DC: It can be anything, most of the songs on the record are personal experiences but I can witness other peoples sorrow or wins in life and write about that as well. But it has to be something I can connect with, I’m way too emotional.
TCN: There’s another Australian who’s made it big here in the states, Keith Urban. Have you ever talked to Keith?
DC: Unfortunately he’s the next generation up from me so I was a little kid when he was, he had already moved to America when I was a little kid so Keith and I never got to work together but I did come up and win all of the rewards that he had won. So it was really cool, like “Keith Urban won this so maybe…”
TCN: That’s a good omen though.
DC: I am following in his footsteps to a certain extent.
TCN: Did you perform any of the festivals like Country Music Rocks back in Australia?
DC: There is. Yes, the CMC Rocks, which is our CMT, and there’s the Tamworth Country Music Festival, both huge festivals, and I’ve been a part of both of those. extensively. It’s a really cool place to be but we’ve only got 20 million people and I needed to find more country fans and apparently they’re all in America. So I packed my bags.
TCN: How are you enjoying the states? You’ve been here five years, you said.
DC: I do love it. I miss home, I need the sun. So the Aussie girl has to get back to the sun occasionally. But other than that it’s just amazing and people have really embraced me. Because Australia and America are good mates, it works.
TCN: What do you find is the difference between fans in America and fans in Australia?
DC: You know there’s one thing I love about fans in America that I wish were a little bit more back home, American’s are more enthusiastic about original material. I can do a lot of my songwriting and original material here and people will appreciate it, hearing a new song. I feel like in Australia they still want to hear the big country hits, it doesn’t matter. Even if I’m my own artist – luckily I’ve had my own hits over there so they recognize those songs but it’s very hard to push through and get that. So I feel like that’s something I’m loving here, the embracing of original music
TCN: So the single, “God Did Good,” and a lot of songs on the album are very ’90’s sounding, like Shania – very empowering, a bit of pop, a bit of rock, but very country sound to it, and you said that going in that that was intentional.
DC: It was, yeah. Production wise, I think as an artist I’ll always be sort of my own entity, but the biggest thing that I was missing was the women of the early 2000’s and sort of late ’90’s from when I was a kid. And those big productions. And then when women kind of left radio, to a certain extent, we lost a lot of that. And we’re missing it. So I said I want to create the music that I miss. So even though it has today’s pop elements, it’s like Shania Twain production over Taylor Swift quirkiness with an Olivia Newton John singing. Well, only like 50%, if only I could be so good.
TCN: But it’s still all you.
DC: It is, 100% all me.
For more information on Dianna, visit www.diannacorcoran.com or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Youtube.