For the majority of our interview, I could barely hear Meg Mac. Over the pulsing rhythm of Depeche Mode’s classic “Personal Jesus” from the Mercury Lounge’s loud bar speakers, the Australian singer’s surprisingly soft-spoken voice was strangely drowned out. Three hours later, you could hear a pin drop as she held the sold out crowd at the famed music venue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the palm of her hand.
Once Meg Mac-whose full name is Megan McInerney—hit the stage, everything about her changes, and suddenly the shy girl from across the globe with jarring Cara Delevingne-esque eyebrows transforms into a star, belting out uplifting and transcendental pop ballads with all of the confidence in the world. As she told me before her show, “I guess it’s way easier to believe in yourself when you’re on the radio.”
Although she may seem shy in an interview setting, it’s clear her aforementioned confidence is more than bubbling just below the surface. That night’s show was a milestone moment for the rising musician as she sold out her first-ever headlining show in the United States. With the Mercury Lounge more packed than I’d ever seen it, Meg Mac ran through each of the tracks from her debut self-titled EP, packed with songs that are sneaking their way into the US Billboard Charts.
Although Meg Mac’s rise has seemed relatively seamless thus far, there have definitely been some unexpected bumps in the road along the way. Mac’s dream 2015 has featured increased radio airplay both stateside and abroad, a successful South by Southwest, a record deal with 300 Entertainment, and a coveted opening slot for R&B legend D’Angelo, but cut off sets and broken bones have added a couple of nightmares into the mix.
“I was about to play my single,” Mac reminisces of her time at SXSW, “and a person started talking in my foldback speaker, being like, ‘you don’t have time for another song.’ We only got 12 minutes!”
When I asked how her foot injury compared to Florence Welch’s Coachella fracture or Dave Grohl’s broken leg from falling off the stage in Sweden, Mac lamented, “I wish I had some cool story, but I don’t.” Elaborating more in a recent NPR World Cafe interview, it turns out that she fractured her foot “being an idiot in her hotel room after a show in Atlanta” when she jumped off her bed. The singer sported a black cast prior to show time, but it was nowhere to be seen once she hit the stage.
Meg Mac didn’t need a chair like Florence or a Game of Thrones inspired guitar throne a la Dave Grohl; if it weren’t for our prior interactions, I would have had no idea that Mac’s left foot was broken. The show went completely unhindered and although the stage movements were generally held to a minimum, the lack of a cast added to her allure, portraying the aforementioned quiet confidence and swagger, adding a level of-dare I say it-baddassery.
From the life-affirming “everything is gonna be alright” refrain from “Roll Up Your Sleeves” to the brooding, James Blake-influenced Bill Withers cover, “Grandma’s Hands,” it’s clear that Mac is here to stay, warranting every Adele comparison and then some. However, Adele and other contemporary pop stars don’t register as influences for Mac-rather, she frequently mentions Sam Cooke, James Blake and Bon Iver as her favorite artists. “I don’t ever think about what I’m writing when I’m writing because I feel that you can’t write a song if you do,” she mentions. “I didn’t really analyze what genre I was or anything until I released music and the press was writing about it.”
Well, the press has been writing about her for quite a while now. The winner of Triple J 2014 Unearthed Artist of the Year, an Australian radio competition devoted to finding new artists, Meg Mac’s star has risen exponentially back home. “When I recorded my EP, there wasn’t a plan to record an EP,” Mac explained. “I recorded one song and I put it online on Triple J Unearthed and once that started getting played, I was getting emails from record labels and I thought, ‘uh oh, I better record more songs!’”