Missy Higgins is one of Australia’s most beloved singer/songwriters. She has struck a deep and enduring chord with her irresistible melodies and ‘arrow through the heart’ lyrics, delivered by a striking voice that clearly means it.
Since being Unearthed by Triple J back in 2002 when she was still at high school Missy has blazed a trail for female singer/songwriters. She has received 26 ARIA Award nominations and earned five #1’s in her homeland while also enjoying a gold certification in the USA.
2024 is shaping up as a huge year for Missy. In September, she will release a new album called The Second Act - “a kind of sequel” to her hugely influential debut The Sound Of White which is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary. That raw and introspective collection was about taking on the world as a 20-year-old while The Second Act is about taking on the world all over again as a 40-year-old, after the stories you told yourself turned out not to be true. Written, produced, and performed largely on her own, it’s a powerful statement, lead by the acclaimed single “You Better Run”.
The Second Act Tour will run from April through July this year, previewing new songs in the first act, then after intermission Missy will perform The Sound Of White in its entirety. It’s “an anniversary tour with a difference” and arguably the hottest Australian concert ticket of 2024. Almost 40 shows sold out within days to over 70,000 fans. To coincide with the start of this big tour Missy released The Second Act’s title track as a single and more of these starkly revealing songs will drop over the course of this year - leading to the release of the new album in September on the 20th anniversary of The Sound Of White’s release date.
The Sound Of White was 2005’s ARIA Album Of The Year featuring the hits ‘Scar’, ’Ten Days’ and ’The Special Two’. Missy’s 2007 follow up, On A Clear Night (featuring North American hit ‘Where I Stood’ plus Australian #1 single ‘Steer’) was the highest selling release in Australia for that year. After seven years of nonstop touring and recording, Missy quietly took a break from music for several years to pursue a course in Indigenous Studies, as well as making her acting debut in Australian film Bran Nue Dae before returning to music in 2012 with another chart topper - The Ol’ Razzle Dazzle (featuring ‘Everyone’s Waiting’ and ‘Hello Hello’).
By now her songwriting had largely shifted to a less introspective mode; exploring the world around her as she became active in various environmental and social justice causes. Two years later Missy released a unique book/covers album called OZ to rave reviews. She went on to strike chords with standalone singles like ‘Oh Canada’ (2016), inspired by the tragic images of infant Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi and ‘Torchlight’ (2017), a powerful, emotive ballad written for Australian film Don’t Tell. ‘Torchlight’ won Best Original Song Composed for the Screen at the 2017 APRA Screen Music Awards.
In 2018, Missy announced her long awaited fifth studio album, Solastalgia which explored the existential dread caused by the climate crisis. Its lead single ‘Futon Couch’ became her biggest radio success in a decade, and she was the main support on Ed Sheeran’s ÷ Tour – the largest concert series in Australian history with nearly 1 million tickets sold. Missy capped off that year with The Special Ones – a Best Of primer to one of Australian music’s strongest modern catalogues. The album featured four previously unreleased tracks including ‘Arrows’ and the previously unheard demo of ‘All For Believing’ that set her career in motion via Triple J Unearthed all those years ago.
From 2019 Missy wrote original songs for two series of Rachel Perkins’ acclaimed ABC TV show ‘Total Control’, leading to a 2022 soundtrack that charted in the national top 3. The show became the highest rated new Australian TV drama of the year, and the song ‘Edge of Something’ was nominated for an APRA Screen Music Award.
2020 began with her single ‘Carry You’, written by Tim Minchin for his TV show ‘Upright’ and they performed it together on the lockdown special ‘Music From The Home Front’ which yielded a #1 charting soundtrack album.
In 2022, Missy received the Melbourne Prize for Music. The triennial award honours Victorian artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to Australian music and to cultural life and she then spent the start of 2023 doing an epic 27 outdoor concerts across Australia with Paul Kelly and Bernard Fanning, playing to over 200,000 fans.
Over the last 20 years, The Sound Of White , and Missy’s entire career, have inspired dozens of young Australian women – including major artists like Amy Shark, Gretta Ray, Gordi and Angie McMahon - to sing their own songs in their own ways. As Missy heads into The Second Act of her career she continues to blaze trails – seeking to prove that if great male artists like Paul Kelly and Jimmy Barnes can enjoy lifelong conversations with their audiences then Australian women should be able to do it too.
“I wrote all those songs in my late teens when I never thought anyone would hear them, so they were very personal, like I was writing my secrets in a diary”, says Missy. “I did less of that on later albums for lots of reasons but lately I realized I’d gone back to that confessional mode of songwriting. I guess it’s been my way of dealing with the end of my marriage. So I feel like I’ve come full circle … I was starting life from scratch at 20 and now, like lots of people, I’m figuring out how to start life all over again at 40.”
“In that respect this new album will be a kind of sequel to The Sound Of White. They’re both looking forward nervously and wondering what comes next. They’re both asking questions like “who am I?” and “who do I want to be?” so I liked the idea of previewing some of this new material in the first act of a live show, then going back to the start of the story in the second act. Plus it will just be fun to play all those old songs again for the first time in ages. At very least it will be something different and if I’ve learned anything over the last year or two it’s that you’ve got to keep embracing new challenges!”
