The Melbourne-based folkster exacts revenge on her new single.

We’ve all been through a relationship or no someone who has been in a relationship where the other person kinda sucks. If you haven’t experienced this, you may be the sucky person (sorry to break it to ya), or maybe you’re extremely lucky…. Either way, it’s a phenomenon that singer-songwriter Ruby Gill has dealt with and moulded into a new song ‘Have Another Beer’.

Critiquing a former lover with the chipper-yet-melancholy ballad style that we heard on her 2018 single ‘Your Mum’, Ruby pulls no punches. You almost feel bad for the person she’s singing about, then you remind yourself that they probably were/are a complete douche and you can’t help but smile as she thrust dagger after dagger into their ego. Oh, I forgot to mention, it’s also a beautiful performance.

We cuaght up with Ruby to to get the inside word on the “meanest song ever she’s ever written”, check out the interview below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtdHnXNHVQA

Firstly, how is life in isolation been treating you?

It’s been a strange but important time. I’m still working nine hours a day on this fkn laptop so I haven’t had the infamous boredom and economic crash that many musicians have faced. That’s lucky, but it’s been difficult in its own way. My visa’s in the balance, my family are facing pretty shit conditions elsewhere in the world and I’m very bad at being in my head all the time. So as grateful as I am for the sunsets and my health etc I would like to punch a lot of walls.

How long ago did you write ‘Have Another Beer’?

It’s almost embarrassingly old? Potentially coming up to six years. It was my first real heartache and I was a child but the things I felt then still feel like the things that lots of people feel every day and practically every relationship I’ve had has ended with that song. There will always be annoying men roaming around with bad tattoos and weird beards so it might be ancient but might also stay relevant forever.

Has putting it out been a cathartic experience?

I guess it always is, isn’t it? It’s nice to let things go from you. I’ve been holding on to that song almost as well as I hold on to grudges, thinking one day there’d be a reason to share it but obviously there’s never a reason and it was good to just let it go. Great to hear that other people have also hated their ex-boyfriends with as much of a dedication as I have.

Do you reckon the person who is the subject of the song has heard it? Do you care?

I do not reckon and I do not care. I didn’t write it for him, I wrote it for me. Also I am a cold-hearted sociopath etc.

You say it’s your meanest song, but what’s the meanest thing you’ve ever done?

My brother bit a large chunk of skin out of my left bum cheek when he was an angry three-year-old. So I told him with all the big-sister sincerity I could muster that he would one day become a murderer and spend his life in jail. It hasn’t happened and he’s a great man now but I’ve always felt a deep guilt for planting that seed in a three-year-old’s head when he probably just needed to be hugged.

What is the meanest chord in music, what instrument is it played on, and why is it so?

An F# Dim. add9 on a very out of tune electric guitar that you found in your jazz friend’s garage, except you played it better than them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50r8XSYLdPk

What was the experience of recording the tune like?

Well I was high on diuretics and hadn’t eaten in three days and I was staying in an Airbnb next to the Royal Albert Hospital because I had to go in for a colonoscopy the next morning so that recording was pretty uniquely messed up. Thank you for asking.

‘Your Mum’ was a bit of a breakthrough tune for you – it’s got over half a million Spotify streams now… Has much changed since its release?

It’s been 18 months since Your Mum so it’s sometimes hard to separate what changes were from the song and what are just time-related. But ya, my life is new. I’ve been afforded so many incredible tours and new friends and band members and cities since then. And I’ve changed in myself, less afraid of the world, more sure of what I want music to sound like and how to do it, more comfortable sharing my insides (maybe too comfortable?) and very grateful for this stupid temporary visa I’m on and the life that it’s allowed me to live here.

Is there a Ruby Gill EP or album on the horizon?

I have made an album and now I just have to make a plan to release it. It’s called I’m Gonna Die With This Frown On My Face and it will be out later this year.