If you’re only familiar with Pinky Beecroft’s music as the frontman of Machine Gun Fellatio, his latest single might take you a little off guard. “My Heart Is In the Wrong Place” is a gentle soul song, a world away from the brash alternative rock his old band was known for. I guess we all mellow with age, but don’t mistake a gentle sound with being boring. This song draws you in, wraps around you, and encourages you to stay a while.
“’My Heart Is In The Wrong Place’ is a song I first heard at my local pub in the Hunter Valley, watching Ben Salter play a solo show. It was an incredible gig – and halfway through he played this song and it blew my mind. I walked home afterwards and I was humming the melody; it just lodged in my brain,” Pink recalled.
“Some months later I was in a studio on the outskirts of Melbourne recording with Damian Cafarella, a producer, multi-instrumentalist and all-round genius musician. I’d gone there to put vocals on one song for him, on a record he was making — but we ended up recording for days. We accidentally made an entire album together. At that stage, this song was not part of my plans. By then I’d found out that Ben Salter originally wrote it for Vika & Linda; they’d recorded a version and released it a few years back — I thought well, OK… and I had enough of my own material anyway. But then I kept singing it, in the studio, in between breaks — and Damian said ‘Can we just quickly record this so you can get it out of your system?’ So we did. And I fell in love with the song all over again.
“It’s not just the melody, although it is a really simple, beautiful melody. The words of the song struck me – the whole story of friends struggling, trying to stay afloat in a time that can be pretty dark. I think we can all relate to that right now. But Ben turned it into a song of hope. I don’t do a lot of hope, in my own work — it’s hard to do, without being cheesy or saccharine. And I’m not a very hopeful person, by nature. So… yeah. This song affected me, a lot. It still does, when I perform it. I did a version at a gig in Hobart recently and it was kind of nerve-wracking — playing this song on Ben Salter’s home turf. But I think it went OK. I love it and respect it as a beautiful piece of songwriting. I hope I do it justice.”
“My Heart Is In the Wrong Place” comes from Pinky’s forthcoming album Lonesome Wolf, which we’ll hear in August. Fans in Eora/Sydney will get a little taste of his new music when Pinky plays The Factory Theatre on May 29.