Starley Belts Queer Acceptance with “Love is Love”

When Australian musician Starley Hope, who goes by the stage name Starley, released her single “Call On Me” in 2016, little did she know how big it would get. The song reached Top 10 on the charts in dozens of countries, and became one of the most streamed songs of 2017.

But when she wrote it, she was about to give up on music. After moving to London to pursue a musical career, she’d had little mainstream success and moved back to Australia to live with her parents. She wrote “Call On Me” in her bedroom, and all of the sudden, she had a hit.

Then, her life took another turn. Raised by traditional Christian parents, she had only ever dated men. But in the midst of her rising fame, a more internal change was taking place: she gradually realized that she liked women, too, and wanted to be with one.

“I was traveling the world and I was touring a lot, but at the same time I fell in love with a woman, which was something I didn’t think could happen,” Starley told OUT FRONT.

She met American TV host and DJ Hannah Rad during an interview. They later became friends, and Starley gradually realized her romantic feelings for Rad. The two have been in a relationship now for more than a year, and they live together in L.A.

Breaking the news to her parents that she was bisexual was challenging for Starley. She had always been close to them, and at first it was hard for them to understand her sexuality.

It would have been easier to keep such a challenging situation to herself, but Starley decided to share her story in song.

“I had some quite hard experiences with my family last year regarding the nature of my sexuality,” Starley said. “For me, writing is my therapy. It helps me comprehend things and get through life. So I put it in the song and shared it with the world.”

“Love is Love” chronicles her experience of coming out to her family and embracing her sexuality. Both bittersweet and triumphant, it details her family’s disappointment, along with her own determination to love herself for who she is.

“You asked me if it’s your fault for letting me play with trucks when I was younger, and then you went on to say, ‘how will I break the news to your mother?’” the song opens.

The lyrics center on her relationship with her father, whom Starley said took her coming out very hard.

“And you say you cried for three days straight daddy, and I don’t understand you, ‘cause loving her, it ain’t an illness; she makes me happy,” Starley sings.

The message of “Love Is Love” clearly didn’t resonate with Starley alone. It got more than 30,000 views on YouTube in just two weeks. But, even better than the popularity are the messages Starley said she’s received from fans.

“Some people have reached out to me and said “Love Is Love’ makes me feel like I’m not alone with what I’m going through with my family,’ and that is an awesome feeling,” Starley said. “Even if I just heard that from one person I would feel validated in putting that song out, and I’ve been hearing it from quite a few people.”

The original version of the song was less personal, but Starley said after showing it to some of her friends, she realized she needed to share more to make it resonate.

“It seemed it wasn’t hitting home all the way, and I realized it was because I was leaving out the parts of the story I felt uncomfortable sharing,” she said. “I decided to re-write it and dig deeper. That felt scary and liberating at the same time.”

While all this was going on, Australia legalized same-sex marriage via survey in late 2017, which Starley felt was “amazing” timing.

“I was still going through issues with my family at the time, and the fact that it was legalized in Australia made me and my girlfriend feel pretty great,” Starley said. “We went to Australia for Christmas and it made us feel more accepted.”

Starley was a headliner at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in 2018, an LGBTQ festival and parade held in Australia every February, and said that seeing how happy everyone was after the referendum and watching people getting married on parade floats was an incredible experience.

Despite all this success, she has a lot more on the horizon. Starley will be performing with Katy Perry as part of the Australia leg of Perry’s “Witness” tour, and is releasing her first full-length album later this year. She can’t wait to have a body of work to share with her fans, and has been working hard to get it ready.

In the meantime, she hopes people appreciate the message of “Love Is Love.”

“We’re all just here to love one another and that’s it; that’s all we have,” she said.