Life of Montaigne



Montaigne is the stage name of the Australian singer of Filipino ancestry Jessica Cerro. The moniker Montaigne is a reference to the 16th century essayist Michel de Montaigne. Jessica Cerro was a triple j Unearthed High finalist of 2012 with indie pop song ‘Anyone But Me’. Jess decided to wait on pursuing their music career full-time in order to finish their secondary studies. They spent time refining and developing their songwriting skills under the guidance of Michael Szumowski of Alberts music. Consuming more of the fiction that feeds their introspectively self-conscious lyrics, their quest was to develop a more mature worldview. Late last year Montaigne recorded their first EP with producer Tony Buchen (The Preatures, Andy Bull). ‘I’m A Fantastic Wreck’ was the first offering from Montaigne’s debut EP, Life of Montaigne, released in 2014. The EP is like a book, each song a chapter. Each sound is unique, leaving us to understand the depths of our very private selves, with influences such as The National, Sigur Rós, Arcade Fire and Owen Pallett. They later released two albums: ‘Glorious Heights’ in 2016 and ‘Complex’ in 2019. In 2020 they won Australia Decides with their song ‘Don’t break me’ and got selected to represent their country in the 64th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, which was supposed to be held in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Unfortunately the contest was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, they represented Australia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2021 with the song Technicolour, but did not qualify from the semi-final, becoming the first Australian entrant not to qualify to the final since the debut of Australia in 2015. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.