After years of keeping her degenerative nerve disorder hidden, Eliza Hull has laid her feelings about her condition bare in her powerful new single “Running Underwater.”
“For a long time, I hid my disability, especially in the music industry. This was due to under-representation of disabled musicians and I was constantly shown that disability was a deficit or something that should be feared and hidden. It was such a heavy weight holding onto these beliefs, it was exhausting to constantly hide,” she admitted. “This song is about pushing up against society’s view of disability, it’s about letting go of the fear and being authentic and true to myself and showing that it’s OK to be different.”
The single’s power is matched by the video, which features dancer roya the destroyer, a fellow disability advocate and creative force.
“The music video features my very good friend ‘roya the destroya’. She is a brilliant disabled dancer who moves like nobody I know. She actually started busking with an early version of the song and sent me a video of her performing with it. When I watched that video I knew I had to collaborate with her on the official music video,” Eliza added. “She has a beautiful ability to inhibit what I am feeling in my music and then express that through movement. In the music video she is like my alter-ego, almost like the spirit part of what I am feeling in the lyrics. Keiran Watson-Bonnice is the director of the music video. We have worked together in the past on the ABC Kids TV show And Then Something Changed, which I produced and wrote the music for. We shot the clip in one day, in mostly one take in the Goods Shed on a freezing winter’s day. “
Fresh from dates in the United Kingdom, Eliza will play the following local shows in August and September.
26 August 2023 – Melbourne Recital Centre, Naarm/Melbourne
10 September 2023 – Riverside Theatre, Eora/Sydney
22 September 2023 – Undercover Festival, Meeanjin/Brisbane
Image used with permission from beehive; credit: Michelle Grace Hunder
