Three-time ARIA Award and 11 x Golden Guitar winning Shane Nicholson is back with his new single ‘And You Will Have Your Way,’ from his upcoming album Living In Colour, set for release on 20th August.
Nicholson is a skilfully talented individual; one who is equally adept at songwriting, producing, performing and recording. As he enters the third decade of his recording career, he grapples with his emotions in response to a good deal of personal turmoil. Appropriately, he has turned this emotion into a remarkable new single, ‘And You Will Have Your Way’. “In my 20s the world seemed basically full of possibilities”, says Nicholson. “I had this idea that there were elders to me that were learned, educated people, intelligent people, and they took care of everything. Then my 30s came along and I had kids. I started thinking about what the world would be like for them. By the time my 40’s arrived my old world-view had almost completely fallen apart, and I had reached peak cynicism.”
‘And You Will Have Your Way’ is an almost-jaunty shuffle that disguises some deep questions about who to trust, and who to love. Nicholson says: “I guess, in a broad sense, the song is an admission that I find it difficult to have love for everyone and everything that we are and that we’ve become. I sometimes struggle with that a lot.” A surprising admission indeed from Nicholson, a magnetic talent who has enjoyed the highest accolades in the Australian music scene.
Nicolson’s storied career started in the late 1990s with his first Brisbane based band Pretty Violet Stain. With a solo career launch in 2002 with the release of ‘It’s a Movie’, he’s since followed up with nine albums, including 2015 ARIA Award winning ‘Hell Breaks Loose’ and 2 x ARIA Award winning albums with Kasey Chambers – the platinum selling, ARIA No.1 album ‘Rattlin’ Bones’ and ‘Wreck and Ruin’. With 11 x CMAA Golden Guitar awards under his belt including 2021 APRA Song of the Year for ‘The High Price of Surviving’, Nicolson has also been recognised internationally with 2 nominations for USA Americana Music Association awards. As a seasoned producer, Nicholson has been busy working with Alex Lloyd, Tori Forsyth, Beccy Cole, Michael Waugh and Camille Trail.
Nicholson is a rare talent who has bridged the gap between Alt-country and the mainstream. He crafts his songs seamlessly and can wrap up difficult subject matters with music of uplifting beauty and charm. Today’s release of ‘And You Will Have Your Way’ captures Nicholson’s charismatic talent for writing striking songs that pay tribute to the unpredictability of human experience. The single follows on from ‘Harvest on Vinyl’, the jangly, heartfelt dedication to Neil Young’s 1971 masterwork, which charted at No.11 on The Music Network’s CountryTown Hot 50 airplay charts.
His forthcoming studio album Living In Colour is available to pre-order now and is out on August 20th. Nicholson will be hitting the road from August to December for a string of headline shows, and you can also catch him playing at festivals including the North Queensland Rockin’ Country Festival, Gympie Music Muster and Deni Ute Muster.