You may know her from ‘All Saints’ or ‘Winners and Losers’ but Virginia Gay has a talent other than acting — turning pretty songs dirty and dirty songs pretty.
“I heard Mondo Rock’s ‘Come Said the Boy’ for the first time, I never actually heard it until I was 24, and I was like, ‘excuse me, these lyrics are crassy’. I thought if it was true of one song then maybe it would be true of others. Pop is like a wonderful conduit to get tremendous filth out into the world so I started looking and then I found all of these amazing songs. And then conversely, I also started listening to a lot of hard rock and found some beautiful poetry in it — some extraordinary, heartbreaking poetry — so I thought I would sing the pretty songs really dirty and the dirty songs really pretty,” she says.
Using the same lyrics and melody, she puts the song into a different musical context letting you hear some of your favourite songs in ways you’ve never heard them before. “I’ll put a Barry White bassline underneath a Guy Sebastian song, for example. I’ll put something that lets you hear the music in a different context. Like Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is just a beautiful, terrifying lullaby. I really like Lady Gaga and I like what we’ve done with Gaga. I think Gaga’s underrated as a genius. I think she’s the most aware of this crazy idiotic celebrity culture that she’s in and she’s just running it. I love it,” she says.
Performing to sell out audiences, the show has already been met with rave reviews. Gay misses being in front of a crowd and says this is her way of getting back into a room full of people and working with them to create something special. “When I did it in Melbourne I had a pack of ‘All Saints’ fans who took up the two front rows. I don’t think they knew what they were getting themselves in for but they adored it. They stuck around afterwards and were like, ‘we thought you were just this nurse but goodness you’re not’,” she says.
Having always dreamt of becoming an actor, Gay fell into television after catching a lucky break with the role of Gabrielle Jaeger on ‘All Saints’. “I’ve always wanted to be an actor and a singer, and a dancer really but I haven’t got the legs for it,” she laughs. “My father was an opera singer and so there was always singing around the house so that’s been a great introduction to the world of song.” She pauses and interrupts herself, “the world of song, who says that? Am I living in a 1950s movie? I think they’re two sides of the same coin. In my head you can’t separate them. They’re the same impulse; they’re the same thing, the desire to entertain and the request to come with me on a journey. One of them requires slightly more breath control, that’s the only difference I think.”
She’ll be lighting up your TV screens again soon when ‘Winners and Losers’ returns and will be taking ‘Dirty Pretty Songs’ over to Edinburgh for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival later in the year. “I’m going to Edinburgh with ‘Dirty Pretty Songs’ and that’s going to be amazing, probably going to be the highlight of my life. And then hopefully ‘Winners and Losers’ will come back on air sometime soon and hopefully they’ll want another series of that. We’ll have to wait for Australia to decide. Call in now and vote for your favourite Australian television drama,” she laughs.
‘Dirty Pretty Songs’ is on for two nights only from Wednesday June 20 to Thursday June 21 at the Judith Wright Centre.
