Little star
Chelsea Warner, who has left her Sydney hometown to make music with some of the world’s biggest names, reflects on how, at the ripe old age of 22, she is happy to put her singer-songwriting ambitions on hold and let her inner producer take the reins.
Twenty-two-year-old Sydneysider Chelsea Warner is a producer, singer-songwriter and multiinstrumentalist who has travelled the world to make music with the likes of American rappers Kid Cudi and Lil Durk, fellow Australian Guy Sebastian, Chinese singer Tia Ray, and now, K-pop stars, too.
“There is always plenty to talk about and there are always places to find inspiration,” says Warner, on a video call from her hotel room in Seoul, South Korea. “Being a songwriter is very much about narrating the way you view the world, and the way you move through life.”
When we spoke last month, Warner was at a songwriting camp hosted by Kreation Music Rights, the new publishing arm of SM Entertainment, which houses some of K-pop’s hottest groups, such as Aespa, Super Junior and Girls’ Generation.
Three weeks earlier, she was at an invitational in Bali, Indonesia, making music with the likes of MNEK, Smoko Ono and Khris Riddick-Tynes, in a fivestar villa in Ubud. After our chat, she is flying to California.
Before finding herself as a musician with the schedule of a diplomat, Warner was a solo artist with a burgeoning reputation in Australia. Her debut single, “How Come You Don’t Pick Up Your Phone”, released when she was only 18, epitomises her unique R&B sound and no-nonsense lyrical style.
“I think the option to be an artist will always be there,” she says. “It is in my bones and always something that I’ll come back to. But I wondered what would happen if I just focused on producing at this particular point in time in my life, career and creative journey.”
Warner considers Victoria Monét, the songwriter behind some of Ariana Grande’s biggest hits, to be her role model. In February, Monét won three Grammys for her own releases.
“I found myself incredibly inspired by people in the industry who take more of the behind-the-scenes roles,” she says. “I am so passionate about and excited by the idea of digging through credits in songs, looking at who worked on what and recognising their contribution to a certain sound.”
She says she could always identify beats produced by Pharrell Williams, whose signature sound can be heard across his work with the biggest names in pop and hip hop, such as Madonna, Britney Spears and Snoop Dogg.
Warner and I first met in Hong Kong a year ago. She was here for the Cross Point Songwriting Camp, hosted by Universal Music’s publishing arm. Partnered with Tia Ray and Kohki from Japan, she wrote “My Little Star”, which has since become a fan favourite.
“There’s something really emotional in that song,” says Warner. “It was originally called ‘North Star’. It’s about my inner child and always connecting to and listening to her.”
As a child, Warner trained at Sydney’s Sister2Sister School of Singing, where she was introduced to the music software Ableton, and she began exploring the production side of things.
“I would finish school for the day, then take singing lessons, guitar lessons, piano lessons and learn about performance, production, songwriting and group singing,” says Warner, who went on to study jazz and music theory at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, one of Australia’s oldest and most prestigious music schools. There, she met her “pockets of people and communities”.
“Australia’s music scene is diverse in the sense that, geographically, we are a combination of many sounds and genres from all over the place,” she says. “There isn’t one particular ‘Australian sound’ – we’re very influenced by the US and UK specifically, which gets filtered through the Australian lifestyle.”
Baduizm, the 1997 debut album by neo-soul queen Erykah Badu, has served as a guidebook for Warner as a singerproducer – just listen to her vocals on her 2021 track “Opinions”.
“A big part of me learning how to produce was about hearing sounds, musical ideas and concepts that I loved in other people’s songs, and then trying to replicate it,” she says. “Through the process of replication, you end up accidentally creating your own variation, because you’re filtering them through your own lens.”
Her recent stints in Asia were also major sources of inspiration, and with Australia being in the Asia-Pacific region, Warner feels that she’s been offered a lot of regional opportunities.
“After the Hong Kong trip, I was so curious about C-pop,” she says. “What I love about the genre the most is how unapologetically complicated it is. I’m like, ‘Yes, bring back complicated music, bring back music theory’ – that, to me, is the essence [of songwriting].”
Warner has no concrete, longterm plan; she wants to be “guided by intuition”, which tells her: “As long as I’m working hard and taking care of myself, everything will flow.
“My personal growth has allowed me to become deeply comfortable with myself and aware of who I am, which makes me a more confident record producer, and more comfortable in any room with any person.”