Catherine was her muse

WA singer-songwriter Magdalena Muse channels centuries of medieval and traditional folk music with her new single, Venus Was Her Name. Ahead of performances at Gypsy Tapas Bar in Fremantle on Sunday, August 18, and Thursday, August 22, BOB GORDON caught up with Magdalena Muse to find out about the origins of the song and its main character. 

Pop culture fans may recognise the title as the recurrent phrase of Shocking Blue’s 1969 hit Venus (also a hit for Bananarama in 1986), but Magdalena Muse’s new single, Venus Was Her Name, comes from a much more ethereal origin, telling the story of a woman named Catherine who mourns the loss of her unborn child.

“There was no plan, or there was no kind of structure to the way it happened,” Muse explains. “It just kind of happened all together at the same time. The character and the name Catherine just came through when I was strumming, and then her story just started to come out of my mouth.”

“I’m thinking, ‘Who is this girl?’ because I’ve never had a miscarriage, and it was just strange how it happened, but, being a woman, when I sing, I do feel what I’m singing about.”

Muse was in the midst of the popular I Heart Songwriting Club mentor course, where the online study group was given a theme to work with, in this case Aphrodite, the Goddess of Desire. It was a concept that didn’t immediately resonate with her.

“When I researched who she was, it was basically a Goddess of Love, like romantic love, and I felt a bit of boredom around that theme,” Muse recalls. “I was thinking, ‘it’s going to be a love song’, but I didn’t really brainstorm or anything like that, I just felt a bit stuck. So I just started to play on the guitar and just allow… something. Literally, the song that I’ve written here is really what came through on that day.”

“So there wasn’t really much structure to it, and I’ve left it like that because that’s how I feel about my songwriting. I don’t polish it too much. I just want it to be from a different realm where it’s come through something bigger than us.”

The fact that Muse was confronted with an obstacle that might have ended up in writer’s block but persisted to the point where she not only ended up with a song but a character that lives seems testament in itself to the more mysterious elements of songwriting.

“It really was like that, and then I was really intrigued by this girl, Catherine, and I felt like she was from a medieval time, a long, long time ago, where people prayed to people to gods or goddesses that we don’t pray to now,” she expands.

“So I was, and I am still intrigued. I thought about trying to find out who Catherine is, like in history books or something, because I feel like she’s real, but I haven’t done that yet. There could be another song (laughs).”

Within its contemporary feel, there is a medieval essence that is reminiscent of Sandy Denny’s work with Fairport Convention, although Muse’s bond with traditional and folk music harks back to her early childhood in Poland.

“I left Poland when I was eight,” she recalls. “With the songs that were sung to me, it was a way for my family to heal because it was very stressful living there at that time. So when we didn’t have electricity, we had to sit around a candle and waste time, I guess, to distract ourselves. And so they used to bring out the Polish folk music—my dad played guitar and my mum sang, so it’s just literally in my soul. Like, I’m not even aware of it; I just know.”

“The only reason I became aware of it was because I had to write a bio. And I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s in my soul’. There was nothing I could do about it. It was just the way it was, you know? The loss and the whole experience that I felt as a child…music just heals us.”

“I still feel like I’m emerging always. I’m just stepping more into my uniqueness and using that as my superpower.”

Venus Was Her Name was recorded with producer Andrew Wright at Forrest Studios, with whom Muse will be recording several more singles this year. She is also collaborating with Peter Renzullo of Scudley Films for the music videos that accompany her songs and plans to increase her live performance schedule to complement her 2024 releases.

“I definitely feel like I’m stepping into something unknown, and I want to push through the barriers of normal songwriting,” Muse states. “That’s how I feel. My songwriting is different; it’s not conventional. I did the I Heart Songwriting Club course, but I also just feel like there’s part of me that wants to stay there because it’s something that’s unique about me, and I feel like that’s my niche. I feel like that’s something exciting about me that I like and want to share with people.”

“It’s that part of you that you shouldn’t share, but you share it anyway. It takes a lot of courage.”