Golden Guitar winner Ashleigh Dallas ponders this question in her upbeat new single.
“The song is a balance between real life and dreaming,” the Tamworth singer-songwriter said. “My husband works away with his job and being a musician means I’m often away with work, in normal times, so it’s that zone of wishing, knowing we have great things around us and winning the lottery wouldn’t be about material things, but to have an essence of freedom, rather than worrying about budgets and also being able to travel in a non-COVID world.”
Ashleigh wrote ‘Lottery’ while preparing for her upcoming album, and this is the third single she’s released this year in preparation for her next full-length offering.
“I wrote this as a letter to (husband) Chris and I,” she said. “We do the balance quite well, but sometimes it tips and this song is all about celebrating the fact that you can live like you’ve won the lottery even if that’s sitting outside and not worrying about work for a little bit.” The premise of the song is how we always put things off and we keep working and that’s where the idea of living like we won lottery.
“I reckon this pandemic has really cemented what you want more from life,” Ashleigh said. “It’s about allowing yourself to do things that make yourself feel good and are fun, which could be a stress on the budget, but the memories are worth more. I do hope that people take the fact out of it that sometimes it’s good not to look at the bills, don’t get into debt, but live simply and do what makes you feel great with the people who make you feel good.”
Produced by Brett Dallas, ‘Lottery’ is another track with Ashleigh’s country style written all over it with a solid 90’s country driving feel. “I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to create with this and it feels nostalgic for me because it combines the inspirations of what I listened to when I was a kid,” Ashleigh said. “The pandemic has forced us all to create in different ways, as this is the first time that we haven’t had to record solely on a weekend”.
“I also still wanted to give this song the visual that I think it needed with Chris, my husband, on the video camera and we shot our parts over three days locally, which was a lot of fun and it gives me a new respect for what videographers do. Our vision came to light with Jay Seeney from Blacklist Productions using the footage we shot, along with other footage he had.”