Australia Decides 2022: Paulini

About the artist

Paulini was born in Suva, the capital city of Fiji, on 15 October 1982. She now lives in Sydney, New South Wales. Her family moved to Australia when she was just 4-years-old.

Paulini has had a stellar career as a singer, songwriter and actress. She performed from a young age, learning to sing within her musical family. Her talent didn't got unnoticed performing in music quests, and shows which led her to appear on the second season of Channel 9's 'StarStruck' back in 2001, which she ended up winning.

She came into prominence with the television show 'Australian Idol' in 2003. She finished in 4th place and competed with Australia's first competing Eurovision artist Guy Sebastian who took out the Idol crown. Paulini became a household.

Following her appearance on 'Australian Idol', Paulini went on to release music with Sony BMG. She earned a No. 1 debut single 'Angel Eyes' and a No. 1 debut album 'One Determined Heart' on the ARIA charts.

In 2006, she would go on to form part of the supergroup Young Divas with Ricki-Lee, Emily and Kate, all from various seasons of Australian Idol. Ricki-Lee would go on to leave the band and be replaced by Australia's 2018 Eurovision representative Jessica Mauboy.

Since then Paulini has competed in TV shows like 'The Masked Singer' and 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here'. She has also featured on the theatre stage in shows appearing as Rachel Marron from 'The Bodyguard', Dionne from 'Hair', and Svetlana from 'Chess' (created by ABBA's Benny and Bjorn).

About the Song - 'We Are One'

'We Are One' is a song written by Rick Price and John Capek. In an interview with Aussievision Paulini shared the process behind selecting and making the song her own:

"I had a vision of what kind of song I wanted... I pretty much said to them, okay, this is kind of things that I want to talk about in the song. And if you have anything in the portal that kind of talks about these things, and send them through, and I think I got five or six songs. And I basically just listened to those songs. I chose the one I liked the best and the one that I thought I could put my experiences in and make it as real as possible for myself and for others out there."

"I didn't want to get up there and just perform something that wasn't true to me. And I basically heard this song and lyrics and I had to do a few tweaks. Lyrically, I had to tweak, a few lyrics here and there. And the track, we basically, like, redid the whole track, so it is nothing like the original track that I first got. So yeah, it's exciting. Like I said, the process of creating something new, and just the whole performance side of of what I'm going to do on the night, that excites me, and I love the song. The song is is something that I believe in very much. And I stand by, you know, I think that's something that we all need to, we all need love at the end of the day."

What can we expect at Australia Decides?

In a recent interview on Channel 10's Studio 10 Paulini shared what to expect at the show:

"[My performance] is going to be quite epic. I've got a bit of a gospel kind of feel in the song, and it's going to be dramatic. My biggest strength is I love to story tell, I am going to try and do that on the night and let the dances do everything else."

Watch our interview with Paulini

Listen to our review and rank podcast episode

Other Aussievision Resources

• Getting to know Paulini

• Interview with Paulini

• Paulini to compete with the song 'We Are One' at 'Eurovision - Australia Decides' 2022

• Australia Decides 2022: Paulini releases her entry 'We Are One'

• Paulini releases lyric video and mixes for her Eurovision - Australia Decides 2022 song 'We Are One'

Article contributions by Kyriakos and Ford

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