About Rochelle O’Reilly
Rochelle O’Reilly Background
Rochelle was born in Huntly on New Zealand’s North Island. “With all the church services, celebrations or funerals in the small towns there was always a waiata (song),” she says.
Rochelle learnt the piano from the age of nine and later put that that aside and moved to Perth to be with her family. She joined a cover band called The Worx and played gigs around Perth and Kalgoorlie. She possessed a certain something, which was noticed by a co-vocalist who encouraged Rochelle to think about forming a band and writing original songs.
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“I had never even written a song,” Rochelle recalls from her earlier cover singing days, “but she said it because of the way I performed and the way I could tell the story of the song.”
It was following a case of adolescent love gone wrong, however, that Rochelle finally began to write.
“One night I went home and had the keyboard there and I just came up with a song called Miss Personality,” s piano from the past was there and I was just coming out with all these chords and writing all these bridges.”
Rochelle O’Reilly Achievements
In August Rochelle won the Global Category of the 2024 WAM Song Of The Year Awards for her composition, The Water, recorded with the help of good friends and local musicians in Bali. Feeling ignored at times by the wider music industry, it is a song about resilience that has fittingly brought the recognition she has long deserved.
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“I wrote The Water from a vision of a woman carrying a pail of water up a hill,” she reveals. “It’s really heavy and she’s carrying it and no one’s helping her, but when she reaches the top of the hill it becomes a crown. It turns into a crown because she’s carried it herself. That’s the meaning of The Water – to carry your shit, don’t worry about everyone else, carry it because it becomes your strength.
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Rochelle is recording three new songs at Kitchen Cooked Studio with Peter Oats with a band line-up that is achieving the sounds she’s always dreamed of. They will be debuted at Ellington Jazz Club in April, followed by a mini-tour down south. Like Rochelle, the songs contain colourful, fun and funky multitudes – The Hustler is a hip hop track while The Break is ska-styled and features rapping.
Cathy – debuted during Rochelle’s female-fronted Manjimup Bridgetown Times front-page-making Blues at Bridgetown appearance – is a blues song that encapsulates her struggles, her strengths and where she is now - on her way forward with new bricks lining the road.
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“Cathy is about not giving up on your dreams,” Rochelle states. “This is all about a woman that is a mother of four, a wife, a nurse working full-time with nightshifts as well, managing 100 musicians, keeping on recording, keeping on applying.
“Guess what? I’m an underdog, but there is a reason why this is working… I believe in my songs.”
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Rochelle O'Reilly is quickly establishing herself as one of W.A.'s most exciting and genre-defying artists. In 2024, her track The Water won the Global category at the WAM Song of the Year Awards, marking her as a standout lyricist with an evolving sound that blends jazz, hip-hop, reggae, soul, and blues.Her versatility has landed her on a wide range of stages, from Fremantle's Outer-national Bob Marley Festival to the iconic Blues at Bridgetown. Most recently, she showcased her latest album, The Hustler, during a regional tour from Perth to Busselton. Rochelle's music resonates deeply through themes of healing, empowerment, and joy.Her latest album, The Hustler, has earned a 2025 WAMSOTY nomination, a powerful recognition of her songwriting and creative freedom. On stage, her live shows deliver a raw, groove-driven energy that makes it impossible not to move. With a sound that refuses to be boxed in, Rochelle O'Reilly is an unstoppable force in the music world, constantly pushing boundaries and redefining what it means to be an artist.