PRINNIE + MAHALIA
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Friday, November 9
Waves
Tickets: 4283 3340 or www.moshtix.com.au
In the television world they were cast as rivals, pitted against each other on the talent show The Voice, where their "battles" were some of the season's highlights.
In the real world, though, Prinnie Stevens and Mahalia Barnes are the best of friends.
Now they have drawn on their friendship and on the buzz created by their performances to make an album of soul classics, Come Together, and to tour.
"We've known each other for about 12 years and we've been really close best friends for the past six," Barnes says.
"We grew up around the Sydney music scene," Stevens adds. "We have the same group of friends and we all grew up singing together and doing backing vocals, writing and gigging together."
"More than anything it has been about our friendship rather than music," Barnes says.
"We have never even tried to make music together before, which seems weird now in hindsight.
"When they put us together on the show we thought they were crazy. We thought, why would you put the two of us together when we are so different?
"We were pitted against each other in the battles and put up as rivals but I don' t think there was ever that feeling between us because of our friendship.
"It was a little bit bittersweet because we both wanted each other to go through and we wanted each other to win and we wanted ourselves to win."
Both singers say choosing songs for the album was easy. While
their careers and musical styles have taken different paths, they started from the same place.
"You can really hear the soul in both of our voices, but I do more pop, hip hop, R&B style music, and Mahalia does more soul, blues, rock style music," Stevens says.
"We started out listening to all those people - Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Billie Holiday, Stevie Wonder - all those great classic artists," Barnes says.
Then Stevens got into Janet Jackson and Whitney while Barnes got into Led Zeppelin.
"And we have very different voices. We laugh, because we are both jealous of what the other has.
"I will say, 'Oh, you just make it sound so easy all the time'," Barnes says.
"And I will say, 'Oh, you make it sound so hard!"' Stevens adds.
Both are excited about touring.
"When we get out on stage, even if there is just one person out there, we know we're going to have a ball," Barnes says.
"We're taking this amazing
show on tour - there's 10 or 11 of us, it's like horns and singers and it's really high energy."