Megan Washington 2014 album There, there.22 September, 2014 3:45PM AEDTMegan Washington on choosing hopeBy Carol DuncanAustralian musician Megan Washington joined ABC Newcastle's Carol Duncan for a chat about her new album, 'There, There'.​

Megan Washington says that 'Skyline', one of the tracks on her new album 'There, There' is about 'choosing hope'."I think that's a choice we have to make daily. Choosing happiness and choosing positivity is something that you have to make a priority. For me, it's a daily thing.""That song was inspired a few years when I became very ill and woke up in hospital, figuring out how I felt in that moment and what it meant. Those moments can be extremely formulative? Is that a word? The highest of highs and the lowest of lows is when you galvanise your resolve to overcome things and that was one of mine."Whilst not new to the music industry it would be surprising if her audience hadn't increased substantially after her appearance on ABC TV's Australian Story and her frank discussion of growing up with a stutter. It was wonderful to watch the flood of support from many thousands of people sent to her via social media after the program aired."To be honest with you, I cried a lot after that. I watched the show - because I couldn't not watch it - with some friends and we made a dinner and watched it.""Afterwards, the overwhelming - you used the word 'flood' - and I think that's a great description of it, all these people ... it wasn't so much the goodwill that struck me, it was the resonance, the 'me toos', that I heard and I found really moving. I found it incredible that people could see some of themselves in what I had said.""You've got to understand, I don't know any other version of life than my life. It isn't like I never had a stutter and then I suddenly got one. This is how existence is. To see that brought so many other people together with each other, not so much with me, there was a real sense of us being on the same side, the same team. It's great.""I think it's universal. When I meet anybody the first thing they want to do is tell you their story. People like to tell each other who they are. It's not surprising to me when people do this and drop the act, stop acting out their role."The shortest song on Megan Washington's new album was written in just a few minutes and she says she had the aim of trying to describe a sensation."There must be a word for that like 'onomatopoeiac' but that describes the sensation, the sound reflects the sensation. There must a word for it, a German word!""I wanted to write a song about falling in love that was less about falling in 'lurve' than literally FALLING in love, falling down the stairs or something. The dizziness or giddyness that comes with that. That was the plan. It is the shortest song I've ever written."