Having lived much of her adult life online, Shaylee Curnow – better known as Peach PRC (or just Peach) – is now in her back-to-nature era. Seeking inspiration while living out of Airbnbs around Sydney, the musician took to wandering local neighbourhoods, curious about “what sort of trees the council was planting.” Eventually settling into a place of her own, complete with a modest courtyard and garden now familiar to her 2.2 million TikTok followers, she began volunteering at a local bush reserve alongside “all the little retired locals”.
“I felt really drawn to nature and the beauty I could find there,” Peach says. “And then that’s inspired a whole world of music.”
This reconnection with the natural world is deeply felt on her debut album, Porcelain, whose cover features the now-brunette star lying in a fetal pose on a bed of foliage – a departure from the pink-haired, candy-coloured aesthetic that has defined her career and image up to now.
After breaking out in 2021 with bad ex-boyfriend anthem Josh, Peach came out as a lesbian on social media the following year, joking that “the closet was made of glass”. This helped set the stage for her glossy and unapologetically queer club anthems such as Like A Girl Does and her snarky-but-sweet 2023 EP, Manic Dream Pixie.
While Peach’s sharp songwriting and melodious vocal tone thrive in this bubblegum pop package, Porcelain takes them further and balances fizzy fun with a surprising amount of softly-sung sincerity.
The cover of Porcelain. Photograph: Cybele Malinowski/Island Australia
We meet on Zoom, chatting between stops on Peach’s current Wandering Spirit tour. Mostly recovered from a flu that forced her to push two shows to July, she is relaxed on a couch in her home – pink, of course – and with gems dotted across her face. “I’ve never really done anything in a conventional way,” she says of touring before the album is out.
Her current show is structured in different “portals”, with a new plant-inspired costume for each city – an Australian violet for Melbourne, a foxglove for Sydney – as well as a performance alongside a snake plant hooked up to electrodes. “On the [new] songs that are a bit slower and very diaristic, people are so quiet and really listening,” she says. “Usually by the third chorus, I can hear a few voices singing along to the words.”
Porcelain was recorded “all over the place” in places like Sweden, Los Angeles and Byron Bay with a crack team of pop producers. “Halfway through, it sort of flipped into this other project,” she says, as she explored bolder production and singing in her own accent after years of masking it. “I thought if it sounded a bit more American, it’d be easier to understand.”
She also drew on her synaesthesia to shape songs like Piper, asking, “What instrument would a rose play? What would a wet rock sound like?”
Peach PRC’s video for Miss Erotica.
After 2022’s acid-dipped God Is A Freak (Peach PRC’s most-streamed song) took aim at Christian “purity culture”, Porcelain’s single Eucalyptus finds her unexpectedly connecting with a deeper power. “A lot of my inspiration for songwriting in the past has come from quite dark places and trying to heal,” she says. “So going outside and looking for new inspiration, and it’s actually positive, beautiful and enlightening, is really nice.”
While closeted queer longing underpins album highlight Out Loud, Porcelain reflects a period of comfort and security with her sexuality. “I think I did all of the inner work of figuring it all out, and I felt like I shared what I needed to share, and now I’m at a lot of peace with it,” she says.
Peach PRC performs on stage in 2023. Porcelain marks a departure from the pink-haired, candy-coloured aesthetic that has defined her career. Photograph: Wendell Teodoro/WireImage
But for all its earthiness, the album is frequently funny. I tell Peach that I laughed out loud at the surprise swerve that opens Oasis: “I’ve never read the Bible / But I’ve smoked a page or two.”
“I try to balance some heavy topics sometimes, and it can come off quite pretentious or self-gratifying if you don’t humanise it a little,” she says. “I have this very profound thought that I want to share in this song, but also, like, I’m just a regular idiot.”
That mix of self-effacing humour and earnestness makes her a natural on TikTok. “I just make stuff that I would want to see or talk in a way that I would talk to my friends,” she says, before mimicking the cynical artist promotion she avoids: “It’s like, ‘Hey, idiots in my phone, here’s a little thing – you like that, don’t you?’”
The album’s lead single, Miss Erotica, is a high-energy ode to the four years she spent stripping in her hometown of Adelaide from the age of 19, where where she first coined the stage name Peach Porcelain, later shortened to PRC. “I’ve got other songs around how sad it was for me, but there was so much joy and fun in it, and a sisterhood that I never had before,” she says.
After a recent show in Adelaide, she visited her former club Crazy Horse: “So many girls I used to work with were still there, and they were so sweet.”
Eucalyptus by Peach PRC.
On social media, Peach has been remarkably candid about her atypical life, including a chaotic childhood, mental health struggles and alcoholism. Committed to a dream of pop stardom from a young age, music was her lifeline – eventually leading to Republic Records signing her after discovering her on TikTok. “I remember doing Zoom calls with them [with a] mattress on the floor, bags of rubbish and my stripper heels in the background,” she says.
Having fought her way to a happier, more centred place, I ask how she hopes people will receive her new album. “I kind of want to leave it up to them,” she says. “But I also really hope that there’s at least one song on there that makes them feel appreciative to be alive; like, happy to be here on earth. Maybe there is some beauty out there to look for. It’s not all doom and gloom.”
‘It’s not all doom and gloom’ … Peach PRC. Photograph: Cybele MalinowskiPeach PRC’s songs to live by
Each month we ask our headline act to share the songs that have accompanied them through love, life, lust and death.
What’s the song you wish you wrote?
I love this question because it acknowledges the truth that art is an ethereal force and we are just the vessel. Songs float around us all the time; you just have to be tuned in enough to catch them. And when we do catch one, each artist leaves their unique fingerprint on it before sending it back out as a gift. One song that I wish had chosen me recently is Elevator by Absolutely. I’m very pleased it landed with her though.
What’s one song you wish you didn’t write?
I have never and would never regret writing a song because they are sacred gifts to me (even the silly ones). But there are songs I wish I kept close to my chest for a little longer before sending back out to the world. I would’ve liked to spend more time on the lyrics of Like a Girl Does. But I’ve made peace with the fact that she’s perfect exactly how she is.
What is your go-to karaoke song?
Alone by Heart
What underrated song deserves classic status?
Escape by Enrique Igelsias. I’m working hard on the PR, don’t worry.
What classic song should be stripped of its title?
Happy by Pharrell Williams. It’s corporate pop and I can’t stand it.It feels quite empty and soulless to me.
What is a song you loved as a teenager?
I had an emo phase in my teens so probably If I’m James Dean then You’re Audrey Hepburn by Sleeping with Sirens.
What is the first song/album you bought?
Probably a So Fresh CD but the first album I ever owned was Metamorphosis by Hilary Duff.
What song do you want played at your funeral?
I don’t care, I won’t be there. I think they should all write me one and sing it, actually.
What is the best song to have sex to?
I Want by Mk.gee