✩₊.⋆ Stella Hannagan ✩₊.⋆
✩ My journey ✩
Hi, I'm Stella! I'm a 21-year-old singer-songwriter from the NSW Central Coast. My music is a unique fusion of acoustic and synthetic / electronic elements, coupled with soul-crushingly honest and deeply melancholic lyricism.
I was the winner of the 2022 Y4Y eMergent Sounds Song Competition for my original composition ‘Cassie’, and in 2023, was nominated for Encore Showcase for outstanding HSC Music 1 performances. 2023 also saw me placed as the opening act for my first festival – Central Coast Council’s ‘Light up the Lake’ in The Entrance – notably headlined by Australian duo Royel Otis. I have since received 3 Bouddi Foundation of the Arts grants, as well as the Graeme Anderson Encouragement Award, in the lead up to releasing my debut E.P. on October 17th, 2025.
Track 4 off my debut EP 'Home', 'Achilles', was played on both ABC Radio Central Coast and Triple J when it came out! Radio play was not in the cards for the first year of having music out, but clearly the universe had other plans and I'm so, so grateful.
I have now lived in Melbourne for a year, in which I have been immersing myself in the city’s vibrant gigging culture and meeting the most incredible musicians along the way. Above all, I am immensely excited and hopeful for what is to come.
Behind my debut single, 'The House'
The song originally used the house symbol as a reflection of my intense anxious spirals, in which I didn't feel 'real'. I was not in control of my brain and I felt completely at the mercy of my own emotions (I'm still working on this). A couple of years after writing it, we had to sell our beloved family home, and the lyrics took on a whole new devastation - I often joke that I may have accidentally manifested this. Nowadays, I think the song pays homage to building and losing homes in people you once loved, and the pain of having to walk away from that stability because you know it's for the best.
Behind my sophomore single: 'I Think It's Just My Brain'
This song is the most heartbreakingly honest and raw in my entire discography. It is a ballad borne from little to no guitar skills, an incredibly devastating birth-control-induced depression, and a lyrical motif I immortalised in song in a Nihilistic attempt to soothe myself - 'I think it's just my brain'. The line is particularly gutwrenching because while it provides an explanation for the way I was feeling, there was still no way for me to break the cycle. In the years following the creation of this song, I am (or, try to be) more and more gentle with myself everyday even when I sense those feelings still there, bubbling under the surface.
Behind my debut EP, 'Home'
This project is a culmination of 3 years of self-development and music-making, both alone in my room as well as with my long-term producer, collaborator and mentor Joseph Surgey. Together, we made 5 songs that embody - lyrically and melodically - the condition of being a fundamentally anxious soul searcher chronically searching for 'home' and a place in the world beyond myself. I am proud to call the EP a diverse, experiental listening experience unified by its crushing lyricism and blend of acoustic / electronic soundscapes. Starting with 'The House' and ending on its title track, 'Home', I feel like I've grown into myself as an artist and a human being throughout the process of making it - and I think that reflects in the music.