From a tiny bedroom in Bendigo, Australia, to the expansive stages of Groovin’ The Moo Festival, Fae Scott, known as yergurl, is one of Australia’s most exciting young artists. As someone who is “inspired by ‘moments’ in music, not so much particular artists, genres or even songs,” creative enthusiasm has been in Fae’s blood since she was born; some of her earliest artistic memories were scribbling down short stories into a notebook with her twin sister, Marci, and creating little improvised songs on her Photo Booth app, until she entered the world of music production in her early teens.
It was only when Fae reached adolescence and discovered the magnetism of poetry that these little melodies started to develop into fully fleshed-out tracks. With a notebook clutched under one arm and a tiny Casio keyboard under the other, she learned that writing music was one of the best forms of expressing her feelings - especially when many of her songs detailed the complications of “obsession-inducing” heartbreaks with high school boyfriends. According to Fae, her music was made “purely to evoke a certain feeling”. During this time, the pseudonym “yergurl” also began to float in circulation, named after a lyric Fae jotted down which read, “I’ll be yer gurl,” as an ode to a boyfriend. Soon, alongside a faithful pursuit in gaining more music production knowledge and laying down some fresh new demos, Fae was ready to release some of her work onto the world, beginning with her (now-deleted) Soundcloud track, “BLEED.”
It wasn’t long after the release of her earliest demos that Fae’s career began to take off in a big way. On her eighteenth birthday, she received the announcement that yergurl had been named a finalist in triple j’s Unearthed High. By the time January 2019 had rolled around, Fae had been signed to the record label, Future Classic, and was in the process of developing her debut EP, Love Bite. Written, recorded, produced and performed by Fae herself, Love Bite was a five-track versatile assortment of new original songs including “Skateboard” and an ethereal cover of Outkast’s “Hey Ya.” The EP sustained Fae’s launch into the dreamy and eclectic world of bedroom pop. One of Fae’s most popular singles, “Girls Like Me,” stayed true to her original nature of “boyfriend” themed tracks and slammed an “ex of Fae’s who happens to date the same kind of blonde, skinny mentally unstable girls [as her].”
It was also at this time that Fae was invited to perform at BIGSOUND, an annual Australian music festival and industry conference, and was celebrated in triple j’s Unearthed Feature Artist category, and as FBi Radio’s Independent Artist of the Week. In 2020 after the wake of her high school graduation, Fae wrote and developed one of her most musically advanced tracks yet, entitled “until we meet again.” In fact, Slayyyter, an internationally famous American pop star described the song as “her favourite,” in a review of new hyperpop tracks, due to “the vocals [being] so beautiful and bright and [having] so much emotion.”
Nowadays, Fae steadily continues to build her name as a vocalist, producer, and performer, and she’s here to tell you, she’s planning to come for 2022’s throat. With the gut-stomping single, “PUPPY DOG,” released on February 24th, this is a new dawn for the yergurl movement. No more noise, no more inhibition, no more unwarranted advice… This is Fae’s time, and she’s taking no prisoners.
As described by Fae herself, “PUPPY DOG is about a lot of things. Primarily, it’s a “fuck you” to fake people who try to fly around your circle and ride on your back for their own benefit; people who make fun of you to others but try to be your bestie to benefit themselves. “But it’s also a song I wrote hoping I'd empower others, especially my girlies. When I wrote this song I was sick to death of feeling like I had to make myself smaller, keep my mouth shut, be more mysterious, be humble and stay a young girl rather than a woman. I’m saying I’m a woman now - I’m loud, I’m proud and I won’t sit the fuck down.”
In relation to the assertive lyrics of the track, Fae stated: “I just decided to let go of my inhibitions and go nuts with the lyrics, be as ballsy and free as I could. Sometimes I still feel uncomfortable listening to these lyrics and hearing how uninhibited I was when I wrote it but, fuck, I think everyone needs to embody this energy all the time. It’s so freeing and this song really helps me accept myself for who I am.”
But, what’s next for yergurl? Alongside the release of “PUPPY DOG,” you can look forward to a lot more from Fae throughout the course of the new year. “We’re planning to have a number of releases out in 2022, much more than I’ve released per year in previous years,” she says. “I’m really excited to actually start building up my discography and not just with SoundCloud songs people already half-knew. I feel like I can actually start to fully introduce myself as an artist this year, while finally feeling like I can openly explore all styles of music and not feel guilty for doing so.”
“As an artist, I love making weird experimental shit, even if to others it doesn’t sound that weird, or it sounds super weird,” she adds. “I’m still a pop artist at the end of the day, but pop is just an umbrella term and I can pull elements from anywhere. That’s what’s fun about writing my own music.”