Little Birdy - Recording Career

Recording Career

Little Birdy released their self-titled debut EP Little Birdy in October 2003, which peaked at No. 27 on the ARIA Singles Chart. "Relapse" reached No. 16 on the Triple J Hottest 100 and "Baby Blue" attained No. 25. In September, Steele, in an interview on Whammo.com.au, described the band's progress: "I think we've already written a lot of the first album already. A lot of songs we play live would be awesome if they were recorded". The band played gigs in London and New York later that year, with interest from international record companies.

Their second EP, This Is a Love Song, was issued in March 2004 and debuted at No. 22. Also in that month, Steele won the inaugural Jessica Michalik Contemporary Music Award, presented by The Big Day Out. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2004, "Relapse" was nominated for 'Breakthrough Artist - Single'.

In October, the band released their debut album, BigBigLove, which was produced and engineered by Paul McKercher (The Cruel Sea, Spiderbait, Augie March) and peaked at No. 5 on the ARIA Albums Chart. It contains new versions of "Beautiful" (renamed "Beautiful to Me") and "Relapse", and includes "I Should've Known" with its original title of "Andy Warhol". The album received generally positive critical reviews. Two tracks reached the Triple J Hottest 100 of 2004, "Beautiful to Me" at No. 8 and "Tonight's the Night" at No. 78. Another track, "This Is a Love Song", taken from their This Is a Love Song, attained No. 40.

In 2005, at the WAMi Awards, Steele won 'Best Female Vocalist' and "Beautiful to Me" won 'Most Popular Music Video'. Additional nominations were, Leach for 'Best Guitarist', the band for 'Best Popular Act', 'Most Popular Commercial Pop Act' and 'Best Indie/Pop Act', and BigBigLove as 'Most Popular Album'. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2005, BigBigLove was nominated in four categories: 'Breakthrough Artist - Album', 'Best Rock Album', 'Producer of the Year" (McKercher), and 'Engineer of the Year' (McKercher). Also that year, Little Birdy's version of "Six Months in a Leaky Boat" from the tribute album, She Will Have Her Way, of Neil and Tim Finn songs performed by female Australian and New Zealand musicians, reached No. 96 on Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2005.

During 2006, the band recorded tracks for their second album, Hollywood, which peaked at No. 9 in October. The first single was "Come on Come on", in September, which reached No. 18 – the group's highest charting single to date. It was placed 11th on the Triple J Hottest 100, 2006.

In 2008, the band relocated to Melbourne and started recording a third album, Confetti, which they released in May 2009 and peaked at No. 6. A website was created for previews of new recordings and videos of studio sessions. The album was self-produced and the band worked with engineer-mixer Steven Schram. It was nominated for 'Best Adult Contemporary Album' and 'Engineer of the Year' (Schram) at the ARIA Music Awards of 2009. In February, they issued a music video for the first song, "Brother". The song features Paul Kelly on backing vocals and harmonica.

The experience of working with Paul just reminded me of why he’s such a legend. It wasn’t like he just rocked up to the studio to do a session – he really poured everything into it. We kinda felt like he joined our band for that day and that was a pretty great feeling. —Katy Steele

Confetti's first official single, "Summarize", was released in April, it was followed by "Hairdo" and "Stay Wild". In February 2010, Chequer announced on the band's website that Steele moved to New York and expected to work on her debut solo album, Leach was working on solo material, O'Donoghue was working with other bands, and Chequer himself was doing production work. Steel trialled some solo material at four Australian concerts in May.