Renee Cassar

Label: Island Records Australia (UMA)
Management: Jake Challenor @ Billy Blue Music

- #1 Unsigned Artist on MySpace for all of 08/09 w/ 7.6 million plays

- Renee sold 18,000+ downloads on iTunes independently

- Renee’s EP was produced by Darren Middleton of Powderfinger

- Renee is now signed to Island Records Australia/UMA and published by Peer Music in the US

- Recently featured in a Billboard article about new international talent to watch

- Debut set-up single, It’s Not You, received airplay on all major metro radio networks and was Top 10 breaker for five weeks

- Video for ‘It’s Not You’ was the most requested at ChannelV.com.au for 11 consecutive weeks

- Current single, Live and Learn, synched in the Greys Anatomy/Private Practice TVC on the Seven Network

- Next single, You Broke Up With Me, scheduled for servicing in February 2011

- Supports include Sundance Kids, John Farnham, Jimmy Barnes, Shannon Noll, Thirsty Merc and Orianthi

LIVE & LEARN is the sensational debut album from a rocking young singer/songwriter out of Melbourne, Renee Cassar.

The most remarkable thing about Renee Cassar’s debut album is that it’s hard to believe it’s a debut album at all. As it is, LIVE & LEARN is an amazing introduction to one of the truly great new female rock voices of this generation.

Just listen to the opening track, a thumping rocker called “It’s Not You” – you’ll be singing along with your fist punching the air before you know what’s going on. Keep an eye out for the song’s stunning music video, directed by 2008 Tropfest winning director, Michelle Lehman.

Renee comes rocking and rolling straight out of the box, sounding like she’s been making great pop/rock records her entire life. In fact, she’s only had an independent EP to her credit up until now, albeit it a fantastic debut EP she sold at her shows, produced by Powderfinger’s Darren Middleton [who also makes a guest appearance here on the new album] and featured the track “Dreary Day” [which was picked up by Triple J, Channel [V] and Rage].

Yet Renee has already established herself an enormous fanbase all across the world in the short time since she first picked up a guitar and unveiled this powerful, unique vocal talent of hers. Think a mix between a young Alanis Morissette and a clean-living Courtney Love.

If only the young Renee Cassar had a dollar for every play she’s scored through her MySpace page so far, she would be a very rich young lady: Renee’s MySpace play-count is, believe it or not, just about to top the 7.5 million mark … and counting.

From the solitude of her bedroom in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, Renee quietly and tirelessly worked away on perfecting her edgy, heart-felt pop/rock songs and personally taking them to the world, long before a record company or manager or publisher came along. Even before signing to anyone or anything, Renee’s self-generated MySpace success led to her selling an extraordinary 18,000 downloads through iTunes.

But once the good folk at MySpace labelled Renee as Australia’s Number One unsigned talent, a title she incredibly held onto for a year, it was inevitable that everyone would come knocking on that bedroom door. “It all fell together in a couple of months,” says the effervescent 22-year-old singer of her step up into the majors. “I think it was just fate I was meant to be with the team that I’ve got around me right now. Good old MySpace – it’ll help you along,” she laughs.

Renee had already amassed a collection of 50 or so self-penned songs before she started work proper on LIVE & LEARN. Three of these earliest tracks, her biggest MySpace hits – the edgy and thumping “Are You Happy Now?”, the epic ballad “Forget To Breathe” and the pained, lilting “Waiting” – have survived the long journey to be re-recorded for her debut. “I was definitely sure those three songs were going to make the album,” Renee says.

It’s the heart and soul in this trilogy of virtual classic hits that encapsulates Renee’s untainted musical spirit and what’s made her music so instantly connectable to so many. “Those songs are just really real,” she says. “I sat down and wrote those about specific situations and told the exact story of how I felt at that time. I think because they’re so real, there’s no bullshit. It was exactly as it was at the time. It wasn’t conjured up, it’s not like someone else’s situation, which I like to do as well – I like to listen to someone’s story and go back and write it.

“But these three songs in particular were definitely about what had happened in my life at that time. So I think that helps when people listen to the songs. They can also take parts out and relate it with what’s going on with them at the time as well. Just the realness of it, I think, that’s the main thing.”

Brand spanking new featured tracks on LIVE & LEARN include the album’s soaring title track, an emotive mid-tempo rock ballad that feels like an instant alt-rock cl