EP 101: From pop star to an interior designer with Australian singer Belinda Chapple
“It’s extremely hard to be in this fame bubble, where you’re looked after, to then just be tossed out… A while after I had some counselling about it all, I just felt like a failure.”
Today my guest is the incredibly creative Belinda Chapple, who rose to fame in the early noughties as a member of all-female Australian pop group, Bardot.
In late 1999, at the age of 24, Chapple auditioned for the first Australian series of reality TV talent competition, Popstars, landing her dream job in a girl band.
However, Belinda had been in entertainment since she was just 13, having spent her teenage years singing and dancing at the Johnny Young Talent School (Australian listeners may remember the related TV Show Young Talent Time, which was a launching pad for several Australian performers, such as Dannii Minogue.) and then as a touring singer and dancer for shows across Asia.
Bardot exploded on to the Australian music scene and became one of the most iconic girl bands in Australian history but after just 2.5 years the band dissolved, which proved to be one of the hardest times in Belinda’s life.
Belinda went on to launch two singles on her own, including Where It All Began, which became the anthem for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens but a solo career just wasn’t meant to be.
“The hardest part for me was putting my passions away, my song and dance,” she says. “I found myself on stage thinking about my washing, I was on auto-pilot.”
We talk about what it was like for Belinda to step away from the limelight to work behind the scenes and how that led to a new career in interior design.
The influence travel has had on her career and interior design business
Living across three different countries; Australia, Marbella and Singapore
Using singing as a form of meditation
Moving on after the pandemic
Find out more about House of Chapple Interiors at houseofchappleinteriors.com and on Instagram @houseofchappleinteriors.