Peach PRC on Overnight Fame, Confessional Songwriting and Coming Out on TikTok

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There are few musicians as omnipresent online as the Adelaide-born popstar Peach PRC. Her candid TikToks – where she discusses everything from sobriety to sexuality – probably won’t be far from your FYP. Since her mammoth musical success, however, which began in earnest with the single “Josh,” released during lockdown in early 2021, you’re just as likely to see her riding high at the top of a Spotify playlist. 

Since then, she’s had a wild ride – she’s performing at some of Australia’s biggest events (her first ever live performance took place on TV) while still maintaining her deeply relatable online presence. As such, she’s a decidedly new type of popstar for a new type of era. We wanted to get the inside scoop on all things Peach PRC, so Deputy Editor Gina Tonic recently caught up with her, to chat about online honesty, snobbery around TikTok musicians, and bringing her queer bubblegum pop to the masses.

I know you performed at the ARIAs recently, and I love watching videos of you performing. How did it feel going from coming up during lockdown, where performing wasn't an option, to going straight onto these massive stages?

Yeah, like one of my first ever performances was live on TV. And it was similar to the ARIAs. Not as big of an awards show, but it was the TikTok awards. And it was a big deal for me because I'd never done any live performance stuff. I was really being thrown in the deep end. And I hated it! I remember saying backstage, “I'm just not a live performer. I'm a recording artist. And that's it, like I’ll songwrite? But I cannot get on stage and do it, I'm so terrified.” I was begging them to let me lip-sync. But they wouldn't and I was so scared! 

But now I really enjoy it, it’s really rewarding when I do feel confident about it. I'm sure the more I do it, the bigger shows like that, I won’t be so hard on myself. Hopefully. 

Do you enjoy performing more than doing the aesthetic or the visuals? Your music videos are so fucking cool. 

I think I probably enjoy the visual stuff more. I think because I can tweak it if I mess up and it's not so, you know, one take and I have to nail it. And I get to be really creative with it. With the live stuff I get do that too, but I think when I envisioned being a pop singer when I was younger, I didn't really think about the live stuff. I was just like, “I'm going to do music videos and record in a real studio, and I'm gonna write songs,” and all this stuff. And I forgot that I actually had to get up there and sing them!

Have you found it easier or harder to maintain your aesthetic vision and stay true to yourself as you've grown in popularity?

I’ve found it easier. I think now that I can visually see my audience and I can see the demographic that I have cultivated, and the people that are listening to the songs, it's like, “OK, here’s a reflection back of what I'm doing.” 

It must be so heartwarming to look out on a sea of like, fairy wings and be like, “That's me.”

It's so cute. I love it so much. 

Do you see Peach as a character? Or do you think you're one and the same? I just interviewed Chappell Roan recently, and she was like, “Chappell’s a character. I'm nothing like her.” So I wanted to ask you the same question.

I love Chappell. Yeah, I think it started out as one and the same! It was just like a name that I used because I was dancing and I wanted to put music out. But I think now as it's become more developed, I've really separated the two. I think Peach is a lot more of a character than my real person. She's a version that is a lot more extroverted. I've changed and I've kind of left her as this character and I kind of crawled out of it into my own person. 

I guess when you've got such a large audience as well, people project so much on you as an artist that you kind of have to become a character to survive.

I did feel at one point I kind of was stripped of any sort of… not individuality, but like maybe privacy, or any self. You know, it was like I was living in this character that was for everyone else. And I was like, I don't actually know what I am when there's no one watching.

That must be tough, especially with Tik Tok. I don't know about you, but I'm constantly just on my phone. You feel like the character that you're performing to people online even when you're just not making a video or something. I very much feel that way.

And in interviews as well, sometimes I can be a lot more shy and reserved, and people will often comment on it and be like “You're not at all like I expected you to be on TikTok, so like crazy and out there!” And I'm like, I actually don't think I am that person… I don’t think it’s pretending – it's not something I’m on purpose consciously pretending – but it's easier to be that extroverted and silly and crazy when I'm just alone in my house. But when I'm sat in front of someone, I don't really want to be like, “Wow, here's a funny story from a strip club.”

A lot of your music is really confessional though. I really love how vulnerable you are. What spurs you on to be so honest within your songwriting?

It feels like journaling to me. I feel like sometimes I can't really process what I'm thinking or feeling until I either verbalise it online or, or put it into music, which I think I'm more doing now than just getting on my phone and being like, “Here's every thought I've had today.” Sometimes I'll find that I dredge up things that I wasn't aware I was feeling until I'm trying to write a song about it, because you really have to think like, “What am I feeling or seeing or touching? What are the visuals? What do I dream about when I feel this thing? Or what do I act like when this is happening?” I bring up a lot of stuff, and it helps me process a lot. So it ends up being very honest music that way, by accident. 

You’re using it as a form of catharsis as well.

Yeah, I'm just journaling and making it rhyme. I've written some of the darkest stuff before then just made it like a real pop song. 

You’ve gotta laugh otherwise you'd cry you wouldn't you? 

Sometimes it's both!

You're always very candid on TikTok as well. I remember, this year one of your videos really got to me, it was one that was doing the rounds. You were crying and talking about your sobriety, and how hard you were finding it personality-wise. What do you think are the pros and cons of being so vulnerable online?

I think it can be really cathartic. And it can make things feel less lonely. Like when I post things like that, and I see hundreds of comments, being like, “Oh my god, me too. I didn't know anyone else felt like this. I feel the exact same way.” Seeing that is really affirming and really, like, “Okay, cool. I can take a breath. Like, it's not just me, I was freaking out. There's something wrong with me.” But it seems like we're all sort of in this. 

It can also be a bit scary to be so open, and when somebody doesn't know you in real life – and no one really can ever know me completely – and that's what they've seen of me online, just me hysterically crying. When that’s the opinion or vision that someone has of me, whether they've meant for it to be negative or not, it can still just be a little bit of a bummer. But you take the good with the bad, I guess.

I was reading an NME interview with you from the summer, and you were emphasising that you want to be referred to as a musician before a TikTok user, because you've always been a musician before you ever had social media, you’ve said in interviews that when you were a kid you knew you wanted to be a pop star, so that's what you want to be talked about as. And I interviewed Piri this summer, and she was also saying a similar thing, but also questioning why so many people have a snobbery towards people who are successful on TikTok, as well as having an artistic output, so I wanted your opinion on that.

Yeah, that's a good point. I think it's because it’s so new. And I think a lot of the big label people are a lot older. So it's not the way it's always been. So when it comes from a new app, and it's a lot of young people, it's like, “What are they doing? They're not real artists, and like, everything's contrived.” I think it might be looked down on in that way. But I think before that, there was YouTube – Justin Bieber came from YouTube. So I don't really see why there is such a thing about it. It doesn't come from me, where I don't want to be referred to as a TikToker – like, I am and it is what gave me this career. So I'm not unaware of that. I think it's the opinion that other people have of it that makes me think of it that way. 

I think because I got successful doing TikTok, people thought I was like “Okay, why don't I try and make a music career out of this too?” As if it’s something like an afterthought. But this is what I was always wanting to do. I think actors sometimes get that same treatment. If you were like a Disney actor, and suddenly they're a pop star. It's like, you just were trying to push them into this thing that they might have always wanted to be a singer and just started with acting like Demi Lovato or Selena Gomez or something like that.

I think like, that's a smart move to take if you want to push your career forward. Like if you've got the personality for it, and like the capacity for it. Why wouldn't you go down that route to become popular?

Yeah, I think it's really the only way you can now. I think we've kind of lost the era of celebrities or pop stars or whatever being this mysterious elusive person where you'd have to watch an interview or read about them to find anything out else about them. 

It’s been almost two years since you publicly came out on TikTok. I think it's been really good for the community having like, such solid femme representation. I was wondering how it's been for you?

Yeah, it's been really nice. Like, I mean, I've always been out as a queer artist, or queer person online, like, I was out as bi since I was like, 15. And I think people online watched that journey of discovery where I was like, “No, like, I like guys.” And like, I had all these boyfriends. And everyone was like, “Queen, I don't know.” 

And then it took a lot of back and forth. And because I'm so public with every thought I ever have, like, people really saw this progression. And so when I finally did come to that realisation, it was nice, it was very welcoming and celebratory. And everyone was like, “Yay, she worked it out!” It was like everyone else knew before me. It hasn't really changed, it's still been really lovely amongst the community that I am around.

I think it's really nice having a solid like lesbian representative. I feel like that word isn't as often used as it used to be or as like it should be.

Yeah, I feel like it's been pretty recent that we've had some like lesbian pop stars like FLETCHER. There's been a lot of really popular gay men in pop music in throughout the decades, but I don't really see a lot of openly accepted queer women. So it's nice that we're kind of in an era of that. I feel lucky that that's the time I'm in where I'm making music too – it’s nice that I get to be a part of it.

Words: Gina Tonic | Images: Jess Gleeson