Reece Mastin: Reality bites back

                                                                                Photography: Ken Leanfore

07 May 2012

by Poppy Reid

The afternoon TMN planned to meet with Reece Mastin, The X Factor winner has already recorded his next single, propositioned Sunrise host Melissa Doyle and evaded a hoard of fans who followed him to Sydney’s Sony Music offices. Dressed top-to-toe in black, with thick rimmed black glasses framing his baby-face (sans lenses), 17-year-old Mastin looks more runway-ready than interview savvy - but he masterfully proves he’s both.

Television programmes like The X Factor, The Voice and Idol create consistent promotion for up and coming acts who in past eras would have little to no hope. Even with 21st Century formats like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter offering global reach, the likeliness of an Adelaide- based Brit topping the ARIA chart is akin to hell freezing over. Sony Music expertly spearhead the transition from television show commodity to touring superstar nowadays. As proven time and time again with acts like Australian Idol graduates Guy Sebastian and Jessica Mauboy, as well as UK sensation and X Factor finalists One Direction, Sony’s post-broadcast campaigns using social networks have shifted from nationwide targets to global operations. Case in point: after a One Direction promo tour earlier this year, the quintet have gone on to sell out a full Australian tour beginning in September 2013. Having said that, this has done nothing to quash the stigma attached to the aforementioned acts.

“I think a lot of people forget that we found Adam Lambert through a talent show and he’s an incredible singer,” says a hopeful Mastin. “We found artists like Guy, Jess and Stan Walker as well.” Like his predecessors, Mastin is well on his way to global domination. Just five months after The X Factor’s third instalment crowned him as winner and his self-titled debut entered the charts at #1, the teen has clocked up almost 110,000 followers on Twitter and more than 144,000 likes on Facebook. His recent tour of Australia and New Zealand saw him perform for over 12,000 in Perth and an arena of over 8,000 in Christchurch. With a target demographic currently resting among the tweens, Mastin admits his adenoidal zealots, were at times, confronting.

“Some crazy stuff happened [in Tasmania]. Some of it was really weird,” Mastin shifts on the couch uncomfortably. “Girls said stuff that they just shouldn’t say. It was pretty bad. I really shouldn’t repeat it. “There was one girl that, as I was going in the lift–and it was that bad that the security guards turned around and looked at me–in front of 400, 500 people she goes, ‘I wank over you every night.’ I’ve stood there, it’s a glass lift, all the security guards are looking at me; it was like, what would you say to anybody around you after you’ve heard something like that?”

On the same note, with lyrics like “Let’s turn all the lights out now, make out on your bedroom floor,” gracing his latest #2 charting single Shut Up & Kiss Me, it would be foolish to expect anything less. The ode to adolescent infatuation is the same track that brought Mastin down a peg (albeit just one chart placing) since his X Factor exposure. “Shut Up & Kiss Me didn’t take off straight away but we were like ‘okay we did have twelve weeks of promo behind [the first single]’,” he reasons. “But the kids are still buying it, it debuted at #2 on the ARIA chart which is good, Carly Rae Jepsen kicked me off.”

Mastin’s lyricism and instrumental input will be present on every track on his sophomore release, an album helped along by renowned songwriter/ producer Lindsay Rimes and pop-punk luminary Benji Madden.

“I don’t want to be stubborn but I really want to be on every song,” he says. “Writing is such a huge part of me, I’ll feel better singing a song that I’ve written. I love doing Guns ‘N’ Roses and that but I didn’t write it, I didn’t go through the experience it took to write their songs, it’s harder.”

Sparked from a late night phone call and an evening at a Sydney studio, the Madden-Mastin collaboration is the Superman referencing Give Up The Girl, and an inevitable mentorship where the Good Charlotte twin used his career to help steer his protégé’s.

“He said do whatever you want to do in the interviews but when you see something in the magazine and you know it’s not true, don’t bark back at it... The songs he’s written have gone to #1 and stayed there. What Good Charlotte used to do is the vibe of the angle I want to come from so it was cool to write something with a person like that.”

For Mastin though, his next release is as much about a #1 mainstay as it is about a reinvention. “I hope it sells well and people don’t just buy it because it’s my album. [I hope] they buy it because it’s good and they legitimately want to listen to rock ‘n’ roll instead of the generic doof doof.”

A life already charmed by any measure, Mastin freely admits to the enormous headstart he’s been given. However, with a 50/50 success rate of Australia’s past X Factor kings, this begs the question: is hunger enough to sway a nation pregnant with talent show pessimists?

“I think a lot of people do think it’s just that twelve-week gimmick,” he admits. “But I didn’t go on the TV show because I wanted to be a twelve-week gimmick, I wanted to get into the music industry and now that I’m in it it’s not like I’m going to piss it away.

Reece Mastin’s yet-to-be-named sophomore record is slated for a September release.