Not many of us will ever be in the position where we can accidentally text Australian music legend Paul Kelly, but then, not all of us are Thelma Plum, who told The Project tonight about a time that she did that exact thing.
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Plum had a chat to the panel tonight about Better in Blak, the title track off her new album, and how it speaks to the types of harassment she has dealt with as an Indigenous woman in the spotlight in Australia. “I guess I went through a pretty tricky time. I had a lot of… I guess, as the kids call them, ‘trolls’ online, and a lot of that was directed at me, like racially,” she said.” You know, it’s a pretty crazy feeling.”
“I’m sure that you can understand this, but when you have messages in your inbox of people saying really hurtful things and just because of who you are and what you look like, and it can be very… You know lots of people go, “Just put your phone away” but it also happens in real life, too. So it’s really hard and it’s really tricky and I think a lot of the time, you can take race away from the conversation.
“Because I don’t have that privilege. I always will be seen as an Aboriginal woman, which I’m very proud of. So you know, that’s what I wrote that song about.”
Plum also spoke about the experience of working with both Kelly and Paul McCartney on her track Made for You, which involved accidentally sending Kelly a text she had intended to send a friend right before rocking up at Kelly’s house: “I was very nervous. I remember going to send a message to my girlfriend. . . and I was like, “OMFG, I’m going to vomit” and I went to send it to my girlfriend and Paul was like, ‘You sent me a message? . . . Are you OK, are you feeling a bit sick?’”
You can watch the clip riiiight here:
