Jaclyn swaps St Andrews for Hollywood
Prize for the best answer to ‘what did you get up to this summer?’ goes to Jaclyn Pearson from the School of Medicine, who was a special guest at the Hollywood movie premiere of Freakier Friday, starring Lindsey Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Jaclyn, who is a microbiologist and lecturer in the Infection and Global Health Division of the School of Medicine, is also a drummer in the Australian band Lash, whose song Take Me Away will be familiar to fans of the 2003 body-swap comedy Freaky Friday, to which Freakier Friday is the follow-up.
Jaclyn takes up the story: “Disney released a version of Freaky Friday in 2003 for which they used our song Take Me Away as the main song for the film and now the sequel Freakier Friday also uses it as it was a central part of the movie.
“We were invited to the Los Angeles Premiere at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, on 22 July, and got to attend the red-carpet event beforehand with all of the cast members and other celebrities, then a party on Hollywood Boulevard afterwards.
“It’s great recognition for the hard work we started as teenagers, back in 1996 where we all attended a Catholic all-girls school in Perth, Western Australia. The other girls were only 14, and I was 17, when we first won a statewide music competition (WAM – West Australian Music Awards) for the youth category. I played the drums, Jessicca Bennett played lead guitar, Micaela Slayford played bass and was the lead singer, and Belinda Lee Reid played guitar and also sang.
“From here, we played countless local pub gigs, with parents accompanying us as we were underage, and eventually got noticed and signed by a record company in 2000 (Engine Room Music and Mushroom Records).
“Take Me Away was released in 2001 and was nominated for an ARIA award for Best New Artist Single, it was the most added song to radio in its first week of release in the history of Australian radio.
“We released our debut album The Beautiful and the Damned in 2002 and released other songs including Beauty Queen and Don’t Ever Make My Mind up. We toured with top Australian and international bands including Ash, The Living End, Eskimo Joe and Alex Lloyd, and played numerous big festivals including the Big Day Out and the Rhumba festivals which included a line-up of Emma Bunton, Shaggy and Nelly Furtado.
“We also performed at Romania’s version of Eurovision, the Golden Stagg Festival, televised to over 5 million people and took out the award for the best artist. We toured Timor Leste with the Australian Army to perform for the troops in 2003.
“Although we went our separate ways in 2004, we remain in contact and close friends and have had numerous side projects together including The Silver Scene and The Preytells, all available on Spotify.
“This summer, we hit over 10.3 million streams for Take Me Away on Spotify, up from 3 million in March 2025, so the sequel of the film has really given the song a new lease of life, with Australian radio now playing it regularly again.”
Now that summer’s over, Jaclyn has swapped her amazing purple suit for a lab coat and is back in St Andrews ready for the start of semester.
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