I first met Bachelor Girl in person back when I lived in Melbourne, an experience that, if I'm being completely honest, excited my inner teenager rather more than was probably necessary.

It was wonderfully surreal sitting down over coffee with Tania Doko and James Roche, having spent years knowing their music, while also photographing them for the interview. Yet what struck me most wasn't the nostalgia. It was how genuinely warm and lovely they were. There was no sense of the distance that can sometimes exist between the artist you grew up listening to and the person sitting across from you. They were open, funny and completely unpretentious.

Years later, speaking with Tania again, that warmth is still immediately apparent. So too is the bounce in her personality. She talks quickly, laughs easily and has a wonderfully infectious habit of chasing one thought into another, occasionally taking a conversational detour and then somehow bringing it perfectly back to where she started.

That spirit feels particularly appropriate for Waiting For The Day: The Artist Sessions, Bachelor Girl's extraordinary reworking of their debut album.

There are plenty of ways an established artist can revisit an old record. Bachelor Girl could simply have remastered the original, toured it, or attempted to recreate the sound that made it successful in the first place. Instead, they have taken the songs apart and rebuilt them with a collection of artists who bring their own identities, influences and contemporary sensibilities to the material.

The result is one of the most imaginative album reworkings I've heard in years. What was already a stunning pop debut has become something surprisingly fresh: each song remains recognisably Bachelor Girl, while simultaneously belonging to the artist performing it and to the musical world of 2026.

For Doko, that freedom was the whole point.

“The goal was genuinely to have fun,” she tells me. “To take the shackles off.”

That sense of liberation comes through in the record. It is not a museum piece. Nor is it an attempt to pretend that Bachelor Girl's debut was released yesterday. Instead, The Artist Sessions finds a fascinating middle ground between memory and reinvention.

“We're independent artists, as many of us are these days, so what does that look like in 2026?” Doko says. “It means you can go back and enjoy that first body of work, possibly even more than you did the first time around.”

She pauses on the idea, before offering what has become something of a mantra for the project.

“Sometimes you have to go back to go forward, or look back to go forward.”

It is a simple idea, but one that perfectly explains why the album works. The original songs are not being treated as sacred objects. They are being given new lives.

“Why would we just regurgitate what we'd already done?” Doko asks. “That would be pointless because we've already done that. Let's put the songs in new clothes.”



And those new clothes are strikingly varied.

The guest list is impressive, but rather than simply assembling the biggest names available, Bachelor Girl allowed the production direction of each song to dictate who might fit.

“It was quite the task,” Doko laughs when I ask how they decided who to approach. “It was really a case of who could we ask — because we had so many people. It became a question of who we weren't going to ask.”

Her explanation quickly turns into one of those wonderfully Doko-esque digressions.

“If you think about all the people you collect through the years of working with people, whether you're an artist, a plumber or whatever — although maybe plumbers don't! — you collect and collaborate with so many people through festivals, songwriting, the industry and just life.”

From there, the choices begin to make sense.

Courtney Act was an obvious fit for the electro-infused, upbeat reimagining of a song with an anti-materialist streak. Doko clearly delights in the pairing.

“The first line, ‘I've got an ex-boyfriend who calls me up to blame me for his life,’ is pretty funny coming out of Courtney's mouth!”

Then there is Sheppard's George, whose smooth, funky vocal character helped shape the new version of My World.

“George has got this gorgeous, smooth, funky voice when he's working in that style. He absolutely nailed it.”

Jessica Mauboy, meanwhile, brought an opportunity to push the pop-R&B elements even further.

“We wanted to go a little bit pop-R&B with that song, but when Jess said yes, we turned it up even further. It was a resounding yes.”

That phrase — “turned it up” — could almost serve as the mission statement for the entire record.

The remarkable thing is that, despite the radical differences in production, the songs retain their DNA. Listen to the original album alongside The Artist Sessions and the connections are obvious, but so are the differences.

The two records don't compete with one another. They exist independently.

Doko is particularly pleased that the songs survived the transformation.

“Thank you for acknowledging that distinction — and for acknowledging that we didn't destroy the songs in the process!”

There is genuine affection in the way she talks about the originals, but there is no sense that Bachelor Girl are trapped by their past. If anything, returning to the songs has allowed them to discover just how far their influence travelled.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the project has been hearing from artists who grew up listening to Bachelor Girl themselves.

Doko mentions Guy Sebastian, Delta Goodrem and Mauboy, describing them as artists who came of age with Bachelor Girl's music in their lives.

And then came a moment that genuinely surprised her.

“Jessica actually said to us, ‘I learnt how to do ad-libs from your voice.’”

Doko's reaction is wonderfully incredulous.

“I was thinking, Oh my God! This is just so strange. We didn't even know that.”

That discovery seems to have become one of the unexpected gifts of The Artist Sessions: Bachelor Girl are not simply revisiting their own history. They are seeing that history reflected back at them through a generation of artists they helped inspire.

For a duo who have spent considerable time away from the spotlight, it feels like a particularly fitting way to return.

Bachelor Girl's absence has been significant. There were releases such as Speak and Calling Out Your Name, but nothing quite on this scale. Rather than simply announcing their return, The Artist Sessions feels like a statement of intent.

“We wanted to reawaken people with our songs,” Doko explains.

And perhaps more importantly, they wanted to do it on their own terms.

That independence also makes the prospect of what comes next particularly intriguing.

Doko's years in Sweden have given her another fascinating musical perspective. She became a songwriter there, writing for Melodifestivalen, and has a Swedish husband, making Eurovision and its surrounding culture something she knows considerably more intimately than most.

When the possibility of Eurovision comes up, her response is immediate laughter.

“Oh, Jeremy, I laugh because I've only just gotten over that whole episode of my life!”

She has enormous admiration for Delta Goodrem's recent Eurovision experience, particularly the work required away from the three-minute performance itself.

“I applaud Delta endlessly for what she's achieved — not just in those three-minute bursts on the Eurovision stage, but all the work around it.”

Could Bachelor Girl ever make that leap?

“Okay, ask!” she laughs. “But are we up to the task?”

Then comes the caveat.

“We'd have to get the most killer song of mankind. And that's not easy!”

For now, Doko seems happier appreciating Eurovision from the other side of the television.

“I love Eurovision, though. Being in Sweden all those years, I was a huge Melodifestivalen fan.”

Her years as a songwriter also gave her a different relationship with performing.

“That's why I love being a songwriter, because I got to play in other people's playgrounds. I didn't necessarily have to be the playground!”

But eventually, the artist in her wanted to come back out.

“After a while I got a little bit bored, got itchy feet again and wanted to do the artist thing.”

That itchiness is perhaps exactly what makes this new chapter so exciting. Waiting For The Day: The Artist Sessions doesn't sound like a band looking backwards. It sounds like two artists rediscovering the freedom to play.

And then there is Blown Away.

Featuring Ella Hooper and Tommy Emmanuel, it is arguably the most dramatic transformation on the record. Doko describes the pair with the kind of affection that makes it impossible not to smile.

“We call Tommy and Ella the female and male counterparts because they're like wacky cavoodles — or Cocker Spaniels — just bonkers people, but so lovable and so talented!”

The pairing makes perfect musical sense. Hooper's increasingly Americana-leaning work and Emmanuel's extraordinary guitar playing give Blown Away a completely different landscape.

“Ella's doing the Nashville and Americana thing now, and Tommy was born for that,” Doko says. “He can play anything, of course, but he's now based in Nashville.”

The new version is almost unrecognisable from the original at times, yet somehow remains completely faithful to the emotional heart of the song.

“I love this new version,” Doko says. “I love everything they've brought to it.”

That, ultimately, is what makes Waiting For The Day: The Artist Sessions so successful. It understands that reinvention doesn't have to mean erasure.

Bachelor Girl have taken songs that already meant something to people and allowed them to evolve. They have invited artists from different generations and genres into their world, then given them enough freedom to make the songs their own.

The result is a record that feels both nostalgic and forward-looking, familiar and unexpected.

It also feels like the beginning of something.

Bachelor Girl have been away long enough for the nostalgia to be genuine, but The Artist Sessions suggests they have no intention of simply trading on it. There is too much energy in these new versions, too much curiosity and too much obvious enjoyment in what they are doing.

And listening to Tania Doko talk about it, that same sense of fun is impossible to miss. The woman I remember from that Melbourne coffee — warm, funny, enthusiastic and completely genuine — is still there. Only now she seems to have found a new reason to be excited about songs we've been listening to for decades.

I sincerely hope the next chapter includes a UK visit.

Doko tells me she'd “do Mighty Hoopla in a heartbeat”, and given Bachelor Girl's history, their songs and the extraordinary new life they've found on The Artist Sessions, it feels like a festival crowd here would embrace them.

After having met them all those years ago, and having spent so long listening to Bachelor Girl from the other side of the world, I'd love nothing more than for them to finally announce some UK shows.

And this time, I'd really like to see them live. Surely 28 years is long enough a wait, let's make it happen Tania and James!