By AIDAN KNIGHT
FOLLOWING the release of his recent single ‘Panic!’, Traralgon-raised pop artist Thomas Headon surprised fans with a new seven-track EP, wasn’t a fighting kid, accompanied by a 20-minute short film.
Announced less than a week before its release, this quick follow-up was welcomed by avid listeners, who expected Headon’s next musical release to be his debut album, which he declared finished in December 2023 via social media platform X. While the blossoming songwriter has shared stages with an impressive list of music’s elite, to his mother, Andrea, he’s still a Latrobe Valley boy whose passion for music began in their Traralgon home.
“I thought he was going to have a career in theatre”, Andrea Headon recalled.
“He was always performing”, attributing some of his ability to his involvement in Latrobe Valley musical theatre growing up.”
Thomas developed his natural performative abilities in several productions, including Latrobe Theatre Company’s rendition of The Sound Of Music, and later a lead role in Oliver.
“That’s where he really got a grasp on commanding an audience, early on,” his mother said.
Thomas did all this while also studying various instruments in and out of school, including the O’Dowd School of Singing in Moe, building the strongest foundation for his musical career he could.
It is clear from the 24-year old’s current standing in the music world that this constant dedication to his art gained him the traction he has today.
Andrea remembers a specific turning point for her son, during his high school years at St Pauls Anglican Grammar.
“It was in Year 9, during an assembly, when he got up with his guitar and loop pedals and performed an Ed Sheeran song, just him on stage in front of the whole school,” she said.
“The applause he got – I think that’s when he decided, ‘I want to do this.’ That was before he even started busking, and I reckon that’s when the bug hit.
“At that point it was the biggest crowd he’d played.”
That crowd was eclipsed some years later, and in the most dramatic way imaginable, when Thomas played in support of Elton John for his Farewell Yellow Brick Road at Hyde Park.
“That was absolutely nuts”, Andrea recalled.
“The weird thing was, the managers pitched to him thinking he wouldn’t to do it, because of the age demographic between someone like Elton John and a pop artist like Thomas in his 20s.”
But with works like The Lion King having a formative influence on the young Traralgon boy’s work, he jumped at the chance.
Elton John isn’t the only industry giant to be in the Thomas Headon corner.
The studio he works out of now in London is owned by producer Sacha Skarbek, who is best known for co-writing Miley Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball, and some of James Blunt’s biggest songs. It was people like Skarbek, and Thomas’s two German managers, Max and Titus, who eased Andrea’s concerns when Thomas moved to pursue his career.
“We packed him off on his own right after he finished Year 12 at Kurnai College”, where Thomas completed his final years of study, “and I was like, oh my god are these guys for real?”
The management had been in contact with Thomas for several years online after discovering the budding artist via his YouTube channel, where he had built a promising fanbase posting covers of Ed Sheeran and One Direction songs over his teenage years.
“I was honestly worried he would get to Heathrow and never hear from them again or be told to wait a few weeks on the promise of touching base later. In these kinds of industries you hear about people making all these promises that don’t come to fruition, but they picked him up personally from the airport and from that moment on have really looked after him as not only managers but mentors and friends,” Andrea said.
The gamble paid off, 100 million streams later, with 85 shows across 13 countries – all while still calling the Latrobe Valley home.
“He still has the same friends he had when he was growing up here, some even since primary school. He’s definitely still got his connection here with the Valley, and everyone in it,” Andrea said.
“When he’s home it’s like he never left. He may be painted as ‘the boy from Melbourne’ in interviews abroad, but he’s still a Traralgon kid at heart. The only thing that’s really changed is I don’t have to pay his rent anymore,” she laughed.
Thomas Headon’s new EP is available to stream and download now on all platforms, and the accompanying short film can be found on his YouTube channel.
