Emerging artist Sharmain Kendrick releases new single

Emerging artist Sharmain Kendrick has recently released her new single Kill Him. It was first played on Australian radio and officially released through a single launch at Jimmy’s Den, Perth. Joining the launch was Kate Hindle, Courtney Conway, Josie Bright and Jasmine Atkins. They’re all young up and coming country pop singers like Sharmain. The official video for Kill Him will be released this month.

Sitting in front of my laptop calling the Perth-born singer, her smile pops up. Feeling comfortable in her own home, and ready to talk about her new single, Sharmain confirms, “I had my second single launch, called Kill Him, on 2 April so I was super busy organising my set and learning songs.”

The single co-wrote with song-writer Mike Carr is a tongue-in-cheek song about an unfaithful partner, “This song is definitely apparent for the girls, so if you’ve ever been in a horrible relationship this one’s for you,” she said grinning. “Obviously, I would never kill somebody! It’s funny because it pulls on things that some women have been through, but even if they haven’t been through a partner cheating on them, even just their man irritating them, leaving dirty dishes around or leaving their jocks on the floor it’s like ‘oh my god sometimes I just want to kill you’. So I think it’s definitely a song for the girls.”

As an independent artist, Sharmain is ecstatic at how far she’s come. She began her solo music career in 2013 discovering her passion on stage at the Boyup Brook Country Music Festival. “I knew from that point on that’s what I wanted to do, that modern country music vibe that’s coming out of Nashville, I just love it,” she said. “I completed a boot camp there with a couple of big artists that they got in called Carter and Carter. I learned so much. But from then on, I have just kind of been really lucky. We have another big artist over here in Australia, Adam Brand, who has been kind enough to take me under his wing and mentor me a little bit.”

Her music is influenced by the likes of Kelsea Ballerini, Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift who all started their careers as country pop artists too just like Sharmain. At just 28 years old her music career went off with a bang. On 28 August last year, she released her debut single Break Your Heart and it went straight to number one in the iTunes chart. It also hit number 26 on the top 30 country music chart on CMC, a country channel in Australia. She then spent six months doing gigs around the country for this album.

Following the accomplishment of her debut, in September her and her partner, now to be husband, went to Nashville. “I did some song-writing with some co-writes over there that I had managed to book,” she said. “I just really wanted to experience everything over there so I hit the honky-tonk bars, the Rhinemann Auditorium and experienced the history of Nashville. I went to the Grand Ole Opry and my partner proposed to me on stage!”
This led to Sharmain writing a song about her whole experience over there, “I did a whole bunch of song-writing sessions and I ended up writing a song called Struck by Love, which is all about love, about my partner Dave, about how it all happened. Using metaphors and just expressing how I was feeling.” She smiles at the thought; it is her favourite song after all. “I love the lyrics, the melody of the song, the chords, everything about the song just flowed out really nicely when we wrote it.”

As well as the song, she constantly writes her music through real life stories about herself or her friends. She just thinks about things and writes about them from the heart. “We might all be sitting around a table and one of my girlfriends would be like, ‘oh this guy…’ and I’m like, ‘oh that would make a good song’. So then I go home, journal it and write it. When the times right I will be like, ‘oh I might strike some chords, see if that works, and just write a song’.” She explains thinking about some previous songs she had written.

She has had quite an adventure since her debut including going to the Tamworth Country Music Festival this year for the first time and she made the top ten finalists list for Toyota Star Maker 2016. “They say it’s like the X-Factor of country music here in Australia!” She did one gig at Hungry Jacks in Tamworth and she said, “Let’s just say it was definitely a character building experience,” she laughed. “Literally the only people who were there were my mum, my fiancé, my sister, and then the people who worked at Hungry Jacks. I was singing and a girl who worked there decided to start cleaning, but instead of starting to clean at the other end of the shop, she started mopping right in front me. I’m like ‘should I stop singing? Should I move? Is this really happening right now?'”

She accomplished various gigs in Tamworth as she was there for seven days but when she got home it was a rush as the Boyup Brook Country Music Festival was soon to start. For this, she was nominated for three awards: new emerging talent, new video-clip of the year, and new single of the year. “I came away with two out of three of those awards. I won new emerging talent and new video clip of the year for Break Your Heart,” she confirmed. “I was very humbled that people have noticed me and started to believe in me as an artist. As far as the country music industry goes they were the first awards that I got and to be recognised and noticed for your art form is just… I just can’t wait to get more music out there!”