When Shannen Wick walked onto the stage of The Voice Australia, she was hoping for at least one coach to turn around after hearing her sing. Little did she know, her rendition of Sam Brown’s ‘Stop’ would be powerful enough to spin all four celebrity coaches’ chairs.
“When I went in and I stood on that stage, I sort of looked out to the audience, and I didn’t focus too much on the chairs,” she says, “and then it sort of took me a minute or two to look down and realise that they had all turned. That’s a moment that I definitely won’t forget.”
Music has long been a part of Wick’s life. She recalls starting to sing when she was just three years old, before her parents enrolled her in singing lessons when she was about eight or nine. After studying an education degree at university, she realised music was still her true calling and she eventually founded Melbourne soul band, Fulton Street in 2012. In 2019, Shannen started her own independent record label, Stoic Records. She’s also a high school music teacher, and it’s actually her Year 10 students who signed her up for The Voice.
“One day, they just said, ‘Oh Miss, we’re going to sign you up for The Voice’. And I just thought they were joking, to be honest,” she laughs, “but they went ahead and they did that, they wrote it on my behalf and submitted it.”
“But I just sort of treated it like I would any gig and I just went in and tried to be really positive about it, and just sort of held a mindset of, ‘I’m really doing it for my family and for the students that signed me up as well’.”
Born and brought up in Melbourne after her parents moved to Australia from Sri Lanka in the early 1990s, Wick struggled to see brown women who looked like her in the music and wider entertainment industry. She believes that to now be on The Voice, and to release music with her band and label as well, provides a platform to set an example for the next generation.
“I feel like when we were growing up, we didn’t really see much representation, and I think that’s really important now that I can make it my goal to show that to anybody that’s listening to Stoic Records or my own music –or you know, just even for my kids at school – to just realise that it doesn’t matter what your background is or where you come from or who you are… it’s just, if you’ve got a dream, just go for it and follow it.”…Read more by
