Angelina Curtis and the colour of music

Emerging Perth singer/songwriter Angelina Curtis has released her debut EP, still, and will launch it at the Indian Ocean Hotel on Friday, August 28, with special guests Meja and Jack Hamilton. From a state of synesthesia to Australian Idol, it’s been a whirlwind young life, as she explores a fresh, alt-pop style. BOB GORDON reports.

Angelina Curtis was 12 years old when she came to the realisation that her experience of music was different to that of most people. The 2023 Australian Idol Top 8 finalist had been playing piano since the age of six. Immersed in her own world of music, notes and melodies spoke to Curtis in colours. While she thought that everyone felt music in this way, it was in fact synesthesia, a neurological condition where one experiences sensory crossover. Curtis can literally see music.

“I didn’t realise that people didn’t see colours with music,” she explains. “I first realised that wasn’t normal when I was 12, talking to my mum in the car and asking her what colour a song was to her and what colours she sees. She thought I was crazy. “I found out I had synesthesia. That’s why I’d always been drawn to music, because my brain literally interprets music in a 3-D sense, like the Aurora lights. So I wrote songs based on colours. I can never imagine how someone wasn’t in love with music, because for me, it was always a surreal experience.”

Curtis is in esteemed company, with the likes of Billie Eilish, Pharrell Williams, Billy Joel, Charlie XCX, Frank Ocean and Kevin Parker all sensing music in colour, and using it in their compositions.

“It really helps with the flow of songs and keeping songs continuously in the same mood,” Curtis says, “and out of everything for me in my songs, the harmony is the most important thing. There’s harmony between the lyrics, and there’s harmony between the chords that I use, the colour of the key that it’s in, then that matches the emotional vibe that I get. I can make rainbows with my colours, and I can write songs that have a peculiar mix of colours that make your ears perk up.”

Complementing that natural gift is Curtis’ strong self-motivation, with piano recitals and vocal performances throughout her young life leading her to join the Australian Girls Choir. Now 18, songwriting has been a passion for Curtis since the age of nine, and she estimates to have written around 300 songs in that time.

While noting that at such a young age she didn’t have a lot of life experience to draw from, this changed in dramatic fashion during Curtis’ successful run on Australian Idol.

“If anything, Idol taught me so many things about songwriting and artists, and it gave me so much to write about. So much fuel for songwriting, so much pain as well,” she explains. “It was such a unique experience at such a young age. So I just took it and ran with it. I was 15 and hadn’t even started Year 10, and it was a completely different world. I’d gone from being a normal teenager to then being in the public eye for a solid eight weeks. Live shows, so much pressure, getting judged by pop stars on national broadcast TV with a million people watching each night.

“It was terrifying, but because I loved performing so much, and I had performed so much in the previous years, it led me to being on Idol and even thinking of auditioning. “I have nerves of steel. Stage fright, and I were not friends. I have a lot of confidence in doing what I love. I think, if anything, my synesthesia distracts me from any nerves, because I’m so excited to feel that synesthesia on stage; it’s like a natural drug. So if people are there, cool, I love it, but they don’t need to be for me to feel the magic.”

“I’ve really transformed from an artist who’s been afraid of showing weakness. On Idol, you didn’t want to show any weakness because you’d get picked on from the judges, or you’d be eliminated. I think that because my brain was so malleable at that point, weakness scared me, but as a teenager, growing up in real time, I’ve realised that music is about personal expression. As someone who feels everything very deeply, and I’m very sensitive, I need to embrace that aspect of me instead of hiding it.”

Curtis’ dedication to songwriting has met with consistent reward. For six years running she has been a Top 5 category nominee in WAM Song of the Year, winning the ‘14 & Under’ prize in 2021 with Old Land’s Tale, and has received commendations from the International Songwriting Contest and Unsigned Only USA Awards. Last year saw the release of her seventh single, Stereo.

“It was a lot more commercial, a lot more surface level,” she says of the song. “It’s still my vibe; I still love that song. It’s all indie pop, but I’m really delving into that alternative, Lizzy McAlpine/Sarah Kinsley pop style… very independent music and really emotion-based and confessional.”

With that in mind, Curtis has just released her debut EP, still. The release is already a semi-finalist in this year’s Unsigned Only Music Awards USA in the ‘Folk Singer/Songwriter’ category. Focusing more on her alt-pop and indie leanings, the first single, I Caved, showcases that willingness to be open and vulnerable as an artist.

“It’s definitely a song that makes me feel like I have my heart in my throat,” she reveals. “It’s such a raw, personal song, and I wrote it at my lowest point after Idol. That song feels like such a raw, open wound for me still. And I wrote it with my synesthesia vision being like a deep pink, red, which is like a raw wound, and it’s in the key of A major, which is the colour that I see for it. “I wrote it while bawling my eyes out in 15 minutes because I had so much to say and so much pent-up negative energy. I just needed to get it out onto paper and out of my brain to give it room to breathe. That was therapeutic for me, but it was also painful. Recording it this year was also painful but so good. So bad, but so good!”

Although Curtis considers piano as being her “soul instrument”, the EP’s title track, still—which she recently performed at Optus Stadium before the Fremantle Dockers/Sydney Swans game— was written on guitar. Even so, it comes from that same emotional space and was indeed a benchmark song for her more recent writing.

“That was one of the first songs I wrote where I really laid everything out to bear,” she notes. “That was super vulnerable, so it took me months to share, and when I did, it was like, ‘Damn, it’s too good not to release. I’m gonna have to release it. ’ “still is my favourite song I’ve written, because it is such a crucial part of my life after a breakup. It feels so relatable, and I think a lot of people my age—specially girls my age—will also feel like that song hurts as much as it hurts me.”

Curtis has always been at one with music in her world. The longer it goes on, the deeper that gets… but in many ways it’s only just begun.

“I feel things very deeply, and I’ve had a whirlwind of a life so far,” she ponders. “I’ve had very unique experiences, a lot of ups and a lot of downs. I’m only 18, but I’m using all of that—all of the downs—to create something that’s meaningful.”

“I’m not going to let those negative emotions just sit and stir in the back of my mind. I need to push them into something that is positive and, like those experiences, are meaningful towards my life.”

Angelina Curtis launches her debut EP still at the Indian Ocean Hotel on Friday, August 28, 2026. Tickets are on sale now from oztix.com.au