Tia Gostelow’s ‘Strangers’ cracks 10 million streams on Spotify

The rise and rise of Tia Gostelow continue with ‘Strangers’ cracking 10 million streams on Spotify.

The track, which features Lanks and was certified Gold by ARIA in February, dropped in 2018.

It was co-written by Gostelow with Will Cuming and Lionel Towers at the 2017 Native Tongue Writers Camp, and was produced by Konstantin Kersting.

At the end of 2019, Spotify revealed that its five most-streamed Australian acts were Hilltop Hoods, 5 Seconds of Summer, Dean Lewis, Tones And I and Sticky Fingers.

In the meantime, the Queensland singer songwriter’s current single ‘Psycho’ generated 10,000 clicks on its first day and more streams than any of her singles in its first week.

It went on high rotation on triple j and she kept her profile up by appearing on the fourth edition of the Isol-Aid livestream festival.

‘Psycho’ was written at the start of 2019 at Plutonium Studios in Brisbane, where she moved at the age of 18 from her hometown Mackay.

Penned with Aidan Hogg, it was inspired by gaslighting’s prominence in social media posts.

She explained, “It forced me to really think about the situations and relationships I’ve been in where I have experienced gaslighting and how it made me go fucking crazy.

“I constantly thought I was the issue, that everything was my fault and I kept apologizing for things that I later realised weren’t my fault at all.

“When you are in these circumstances, sometimes it feels like you’re going insane, I felt like I was turning into this psycho person and it seemed like nobody else saw where I was coming from.

“However, seeing all of these other people speaking up about it, made me deal with my emotions and I finally felt like I could put all of my anger, frustration and hurt into something that means something.”

The track was the second release from her sessions with producer Oscar Dawson (Holy Holy, Alex Lahey), infusing the laid back guitar elements of her award-winning 2018 debut album Thick Skin.

Her second album is set for a 2020 release.