This Album Changed My Life: Georgia State Line On Sarah Klang’s ‘Virgo’

It’s been quite the year for Georgia State Line - the moniker for Americana singer-songwriter, Georgia Delves. This month alone, she’s scored a VIC Music Award nomination for ‘Best Country Work’ as well as an ARIA nomination for ‘Best Country Album’ for her debut, In Colour. 

Born and raised in the regional Victorian town of Bendigo, Georgia sang in Catholic school choirs by day and cut her teeth on the local pub music scene by night. It was her grandparents who introduced her to the ultimately catalytic American country music of the 1960s and 70s.

Armed with her guitar and a book of lyrics heartfelt and resolute, she moved to Melbourne, formed a band and released an EP called Heaven Knows in 2017. Georgia State Line has performed at a slew of music festivals and in 2018, the band joined American country-blues artist, Eilen Jewell on a four-date journey across the Australian mainland’s southernmost state. They also opened for Justin Townes Earle on his 2019 Australia & New Zealand Tour.

To learn more, we spoke to Georgia Delves about an album that changed her life.

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Georgia State Line on Virgo by Sarah Klang:

“I grew up in a household of music lovers who seemed to spin the most diverse, albeit random selection of music. One moment it’d be Enya (my Dad’s favourite), then my mum would be screaming Cold Chisel at the top of her lungs. Where my parents worked long hours, I’d go stay at my grandparent’s house, absorbing every country music video that CMC would play.

Safe to say there have been many artists that have inspired me, yet all reinforcing the importance of song when I needed it the most. It’s something transportive, and otherworldly, and as a writer I am drawn to things that to me, sound timeless.

Sarah Klang’s album Virgo (released mid-2021) is something that I feel fits the bill. She is a Swedish alt-country/ pop artist who I’ve discovered and come to admire, and I’ve since spun Virgo hundreds of times from start to finish. I’ve grown so much as a human and a writer across the past two years, and I think I found this album at a time that hit me where it hurt, and it left a mark.

The overall spaciness of the guitar and synth sounds, paired with catchy hooks is something that I love. Her melodies are memorable and to me the lyrical content speaks on love, heartbreak and the loss within failing expectations in a modern way that builds upon how love songs have previously been told. The world that Klang creates in Virgo is warm, comforting like an old friend, and her voice feels like a big hug. Something to hold on to within the heartbreak, and maybe something that has resonated to me within my own.

Key tracks are Ghost Killer, 17 Pounds and the perfect closer to such a chapter; The End. 

Go listen.”

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For more of our This Album Changed My Life series, go here.
Keep up to date with Georgia State Line on her Facebook page here.