80s Pop Icon Mari Wilson Is Releasing A Brand New Album Titled Girl About Town.

Uh, well, uh, my family were quite musical.

Um, I mean, they weren't professional musicians or anything, but my, my mum had a really beautiful voice, and my dad, and my brother is also a musician and, uh, and my sister is also very musical, but she's not a musician.

But we all sang at home and w- there was this corner of the room where we would do our party piece and things like that.

Um, and, uh, my brother got a guitar when he was about 12, 13, and so we would sing together and harmonize together and things like that.

And then, um, when I saw Judy Garland on TV, it was like, oh, I wanna, I wanna be like that, you know? Um, I mean, I was only about six when I saw her on TV.

She was on the, uh, Sunday Night at the London Palladium.

So that's kind of what inspired me and what got me going, and then my musical taste, because of my parents and my brother and sister, all these different influences, you know, from The Beatles and The Bee Gees to, to blues, um, and Dusty Springfield and, uh, and Motown and Stax and even bands like, um, you know, The Crusaders-

Mm-hmm

... um, um, Chicago.

Not Chi- not the Chicago that we know with If You Leave Me Now, but the Chicago Transit Authority when they first started, and they were much more of a sort of fusion band really.

They were, they were an, an electric band with horns, which was unusual.

That had never really happened before.

So I just had so many influences, you know, um, and I knew it was what I wanted to do really from quite a young age.