New artist Starley lives up to her name with “Call on Me” success, live “GMA” debut

ABC NewsRising star Starley — yes, that’s her real name — made her worldwide live TV debut Monday on ABC’s Good Morning America Oscars recap show, performing her hit “Call on Me.” The Australian singer says her parents were so psyched that they woke up in Australia at 3 a.m. to catch her live.

“Oh man, they’re so excited,” Starley told ABC Radio after her performance.  “They said it was so amazing, and they’re so stoked.”

“They’re more excited than I am!” she laughs.  “It makes me super happy ’cause they finally feel, ‘All these years we believed in her…and now we don’t look crazy anymore!'”

Starley wrote “Call on Me” during a low point in her life: She’d moved to London to try and be a songwriter, but wasn’t having much success.  She returned to Australia, moved back in with her parents, and wrote “Call on Me” in her bedroom as a pep talk to herself. 

“When I finished writing it, I felt, ‘Well, no one else is gonna deliver this like I can, ’cause this is really my life, so I’m gonna give it one last shot,'” she recalls.  “When I sent it out to a bunch of producers, I got a version back…and I played it in my car…and…I cried.”

She adds, “I was like, ‘There’s something special about this record, I’m gonna go for it’….and things just snowballed from there.”

As for her GMA performance of “Call on Me,” Starley says, “It was full on!  It was so cool…it was the Oscars recap thing and there was…a lot of people dancing.  It was great, ’cause my song’s very uptempo, so having people around to give me the energy was awesome.”  

Starley will be opening for the U.K. trio Clean Bandit on their U.S. tour starting next month.