All hail Her Royal Madness, Yunyu the songstress, for she is the (un)fair maiden hell-bent on shoving a huge dose of reality down the throats of those childhood stories we all know and love – without giving us that much needed spoonful of sugar to help the bad news go down.
The former triple j Unearthed winner has teamed up with a motley crew of creatives, including manga artist Queenie Chan, animators The Commonist and podcast extraordinaire, (Cool) Shite on the Tube to bring to life the lives of fairytales in our own modern universe.
Imagine Goldilocks coming into our world, where the men she dates seem to be too hot, too cold, too big or too small. Or how about Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, who, as a cosmonaut, realises that she cannot simply click her shoes and go home. Imagine even the little match girl as a drug addict, chasing her high every time she lights up. This is the world that Yunyu and her crew have created in an all out multi-genre musical, animation, 3D, manga, sensory overload – set to tour the east coast this week.
The idea for the concept came about after a game of Google roulette to cure a serious case of writers flood. Google roulette, much like the Russian variant sans the gun, is where you pull up three random links, and from those three you must choose one to write about. “It was as if the decision was made for me because the first two links were completely not safe for work” says Yunyu with a laugh, “the third one just happened to be about fairytales.”
“There was an article about Charles Perrault,” she continues “who wrote a lot of fairytales that we know and love – he was the guy who wrote all the morals at the end of each story… so I thought ‘you know what? That’s kinda cool,’ because I like trolling people like that. I decided that this could be like being an internet troll except I get to make a concept album out of it.”
This wild idea was thickened by Yunyu’s own childhood. Her father read her stories every night – only to creatively change and distort the ending. One night, for example, a young Yunyu heard a unique twist to the Three Little Pigs tale, where “the last pig who was the smart one, ended up hiring Don Corleone from the Godfather to solve the wolf problem.”
The three little pigs unfortunately never made it to the album. “It was my first thought, because it was the one that always stood out for me, but I couldn’t twist it further then [dad] did.” admits Yunyu. “I decided because I couldn’t beat it, I wouldn’t do it… I’m a sore loser that way!”
At the crux of this project, was a goal to unearth the strange and frightening little truths about fairytales, as well as to force people to understand that we are not protected in our reality the same way the fabled characters are in theirs. “The whole concept is about bringing fairytales to our reality and trying to find co-incidental similarities between their world and ours.”
For instance, the songstress found that the Pied Piper, portrayed as a cult leader on her album, did actually exist. Albeit it in a far more sinister form than what we were told as children. There is an account from the Middle Ages where about 150 children disappeared from a church in one night, never to be seen again.
Yunyu also questions the consequences of being taught that beauty is a virtue – in one manipulated story-slash-song she tells us how the princesses get together to sue the storyteller, whose demand for their perfection destroyed their lives. “They do not all have bad endings,” she describes “but I got a joy out of taking these tales and giving it that cold hard twist.”
Her Twisted Tales project wasn’t always intended as multimedia collabarotion though. In fact, the idea to expand beyond the album format came about after Yunyu had told her good friend Queenie Chan about her musical creation. “She was like, ‘Sounds like fun! I’ll see what I can do with it'” recalls Yunyu “I was like ‘hell yeah!’ and it really grew from there”
“Then we invited animators – which I guess became the next progression. Also Lee McIver, my manager, comes from a stage music background so he has helped in turning this universe into a live show – he really brought his stage expertise.”
Those willing to check out her live show are in for a unique treat. “The idea is that we are celebrating all forms of video” reveals Yunyu. “There are really new forms of storytelling in animation and live video manipulation – we will have a VJ [Video Jockey] on stage with us.”
“We’ve also got a whole bunch of stage designers who have basically designed the stage in a way that we are virtually bringing the characters with us on the journey. Without giving too much away, you will actually see each of the characters… but lets just say there is also a giant pumpkin. Because a lot of my tales are based on old stories, there is also an old form of story telling that is woven into the set.”
Intriguing, pressed for details she says only, “what we hope the end result will be is that for the one and a half hour set you will actually be living and breathing inside an alternate reality. You won’t be coming out until we let you out” she casually chuckled, “that’s your only warning.”
With any good artist you have some kind of opportunity to buy merchandise, a CD, or perhaps a t-shirt – however, because the norm seems too damn boring for Yunyu – punters will instead get two for the price of one. “We will be releasing each of the [songs as] a shirt – so when you wear it, you essentially wear the music.”
“You can also share the music though the shirt while you are wearing it,” adds Yunyu. “So you not only buy the right to have the music, you buy the right to officially share it with your friends with our blessing.” Aww, isn’t that nice?
Her Royal Madness, it seems, has a sweet and innocent side after all.
