It’s been six years since Missy Higgins released a full-length album but in a way that highly anticipated release, The Second Act, has been two decades in the making. Written and co-produced at home by Missy and released exactly on the 20th anniversary of her groundbreaking opus The Sound Of White, these deeply personal new songs bring the beloved singer/songwriter full circle; back to the intimate, confessional intensity that propelled her trailblazing 2004 debut, The Sound Of White.
“When I was a teenager I wrote and recorded songs in a little shed out the back of my parent’s house. It was like writing in a diary that I never expected anyone else to read”, Missy explains. “That was how I worked through the things lots of people struggle with at that age – “who am I? who do I want to be?”.
Those internal monologues ended up striking a deep and enduring chord with millions who recognized a kindred spirit. The Sound Of White topped the charts and scooped the ARIA Awards.
“It was a strange time. I’d never really considered what it would feel like to have everyone knowing my deepest, darkest feelings, so in the following years I moved away from that confessional songwriting mode. It wasn’t a conscious thing, I just wasn’t comfortable with all that scrutiny so I started writing more about the outside world. But after my husband and I separated a couple of years ago, I found myself sitting alone in a dark room out the back of my house, writing songs as a form of therapy again – like I’d done as a teenager. It was the only way I knew to try and make sense of our world being turned upside down. I realized that all the books I’d read, and the movies I’d watched, had led me to create a big story in my head about how life was supposed to turn out – you get married, you have kids, then you all live happily ever after – so most of these new songs are about trying to figure out what to do when your story turns out differently. How do you start all over again when you’re a 40-year-old mum with two young children? It was basically the midlife version of those same questions I’d been obsessed with as a teenager – “who am I? And who do I want to be?”.”
Twenty years ago, on her signature ballad, “The Special Two”, Missy wrote “when you’re young you have this image of your life, that you’ll be scrupulous and one day even make a wife”. Now on “Story For The Ages” she sings, “It was never meant to be like this … the book went up in flames”. On the new album’s opening track, “You Should Run” the singer who famously asked, “can you leave me with a scar?”, now stares defiantly at the prospect of a new beginning; “Here’s my body. Here’s my scars. Now show me what kind of man you are!”
These sorts of echoes between the two albums led Missy to describe The Second Act as “a kind of sequel” to The Sound Of White. It also inspired her to create The Second Act Tour – a unique concert in which she initially previewed some new songs in a stripped back acoustic set, then returned after intermission to perform The Sound Of White in its entirety with her band, celebrating that album’s anniversary. The tour has proved a phenomenon across 2024, with over 80,000 people attending 40 sold out dates, so far. Later this year, due to popular demand, Missy will stage a final handful of encore shows for The Second Act Tour. These concerts will happen in the biggest venues she has headlined since 2005 including the Myer Music Bowl and the Sydney Opera House Forecourt. They will follow her November induction into the ARIA Hall Of Fame and thus cap a year which has been – in every respect – transformative for this enduring Australian artist.
The Second Act Tour has also drawn rave reviews with critics and fans focussing on the raw, open heartedness that threads through Missy’s work. Each night audiences have been moved to tears by new songs like “A Complicated Truth” (an attempt to answer a daughter’s heartbreaking questions about her parents’ separation) and “Blue Velvet Dress” (which recounts the night everything came crashing down amid a national television appearance).
Over the course of this unique tour it became clear that, just like Missy, most of the audience was facing their own midlife shakeups. Whether it was losing loved ones, career pivots or relationship struggles these new songs were serving a similar purpose to all those ones she’d written back in the day – giving a healing voice to deep feelings that most of us struggle to articulate.
Many of The Second Act’s most powerful moments revolve around the challenges of parenting. The achingly beautiful “Hush Now”, the melancholic “When Four Became Three” and the searing “A Complicated Truth” each explore this situation from a different perspective. Together they reveal a three dimensional whole.
The album also has plenty of hopeful moments. Missy is quick to point out: “It’s not a breakup album. It’s an album about trying to figure out what the hell you’re supposed to do next.” As such there’s a dark humour propelling the upbeat stomp of “Craters”. Elsewhere, like someone making a promise to their diary, she vows “I’m not gonna fall for the broken ones anymore”. And on “The In Between” she yearns: “I’m not who I used to be, not yet who I’ll become, this is the in between … I guess.”
But it’s the album’s title track that really lets in the light. On that sweet and irresistible ballad Missy looks forward to starting a whole new chapter – just like she did as a teenager – asking those same questions but for different reasons … “who am I? And who do I want to be?”
“I think I’m ready for the story to change”, she sings. “Hey are we ready for the Second Act?”.
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!”