Missy Higgins speaks truth to power and challenges the status quo on her new mini-album Total Control

When she appeared on ABC TV's Q&A panel in 2018 she didn't hold back on the Australian Government's treatment of refugees, telling the audience her 2016 song Oh Canada was about three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, whose body was found washed up on a Turkish beach in 2015.

"He was carried from the water by a soldier ... And the picture screams a thousand different words ... He was running from the terror with his father ... Who once believed that nothing could be worse."

Late last year she returned to Q&A to discuss the increased number of women in Australia speaking out against institutional abuses of power. People like Brittany Higgins and 2021 Australian of the Year Grace Tame.

Higgins closed the show with her song Edge of Something.

"I'm a mother with a daughter ...I got plenty of fight left ... We're on the edge of something ... But we gotta jump now ... 'Cause we're doing it for them."

She wrote the song while working on the soundtrack to the ABC TV series Total Control starring Rachel Griffiths as the Australian prime minister who recruits an Indigenous woman (Deborah Mailman) as a senator.

The show premiered in 2019 and explores issues of power, corruption and racism in Australian politics.

What started as brief instrumentals and musical fragments created by Higgins to fit certain scenes in the Total Control soundtrack gradually grew lyrics. Some expanded into full songs while Higgins was in lockdown at home in Victoria.

Those songs became a mini-album of the same name, with lyrics about empowering women and challenging a status quo that perpetuates a "victim blaming" narrative.

"I was writing for the show and thought how relevant it all was, mirroring topics that are so at the forefront of people's minds at the moment," Higgins explains.

"In Total Control the lead character Alex Irving, played by Deborah Mailman, is this incredible, strong Indigenous woman from a small country town who enters politics and goes to Canberra and really calls them out on all their bulls--t and shakes things up.

"Australian women were doing the same thing last year, walking into parliament and really shaking things up and creating a new paradigm."

The title track of the mini-album - a hauntingly beautiful cover by Higgins of The Motels' 1980's classic - takes on a whole new meaning in light of this political backdrop.

"I've always loved that song. I don't know why it's always resonated with me, I'm not even sure that I know what it's really about, but when I hear it I really feel something," Higgins says.

"It shares a certain longing for something you can't quite have and the pain that comes with desire. When I sing that song I feel immersed in the sonic mood of it.

"Anyway, they wanted me to record a version of that song for the show, for the scene where Alex Irving is dancing at the pub and trying to forget her worries, and there's a slightly sinister undertone to it all, so we decided to record our own version of it and it just seemed apt to put it on the album."

When she appeared on Q&A last year, Higgins revealed strong calls for change by leading voices like Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame had inspired her to write the songs Watch Out and I Take It Back.

"I take it back .. You're going down ... I've had enough of you dragging all of my shame around ... You had my trust ... I gave you that ... Gave you my power ... But I take it back."

She credits the bravery of people like Brittany Higgins and Tame for "changing the whole narrative of our culture and our country ... by standing up and telling their stories".

"I found it so inspiring to watch this character do this in the show and live vicariously through her, and then to see these two women in real life doing the same thing," she continues.

"It brought a lot of stuff up with me, especially being a mum to a little girl. I really want her to inherit a world where she feels safe and empowered, and where she feels her voice deserves to be heard."

Higgins has enjoyed phenomenal success worldwide since winning Triple J's Unearthed competition in 2001 while still in high school. She is a five-time chart topper and nine-time ARIA Award winner whose ARIA-winning debut album The Sound Of White (2004) gave us Scar, Ten Days and The Special Two. On A Clear Night (2007) featured the wonderful Where I Stood and Steer.

In 2018 her long-awaited fifth studio album Solastalgia with its lead single Futon Couch convinced Ed Sheeran to ask Higgins to accompany him on his Australian tour. That same year she also released The Special Ones, a best-of collection.

Higgins took a break from music for several years to pursue other interests including a course in Indigenous Studies, and made her acting debut in the Australian film Bran Nue Dae.

In 2020 she released the single Carry You written by Tim Minchin for his TV show Upright. The song featured on the Music From The Home Front album and was nominated for song of the year at the 2021 APRA Music Awards.

And this year she wrote an original song for Nightlight alongside Kate Miller-Heidke, Megan Washington, Mama Kin, Emily Wurramara, Naomi Crellin, and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. It's an annual initiative by The Hush Foundation to create music that brings calm and optimism to patients and their families in stressful hospital and healthcare environments.

Higgins says the Total Control mini-album, though, is "a bit of a standalone collection" in her album releases to date.

"I'm certain that sharing stories helps people," she says.

"All the victim blaming still going on is really sad, but I also feel the culture is shifting and there are a lot more people in favour of the truth coming out and believing the victim rather than shaming them.

"The people doing the oppressing now know that the culture is shifting to a culture of transparency, and that means that it's going to start happening less because they're not going to be able to get away with it.

"It's not going to be overlooked or fobbed off as it has in the past, you know, that 'boys will be boys' attitude.

"I'm sure things will keep going in that direction if we keep fighting the good fight. All the women have to get out there and vote!"

When asked about her next full-length album Higgins says she "doesn't feel any great urge" to write one.

"If I had that many songs in me at the moment to write, I might. But the thing is, with everybody doing mini-albums and EPs and singles - sure, it's kind of sad not as many people do full-length albums now - but as an artist I actually find it quite freeing.

"With Total Control I wrote the songs not very long ago and recorded them straight away and released them fairly soon after so they feel very relevant to me still.

"A full album can take me over a year to write and six months to record, and by the time it's out you've kind of forgotten what your connection with the songs is, in a way.

"I love the idea of keeping things really fresh, and really recent, because the more recent a song is the more connected I feel to it.

"Also, I feel that I don't necessarily have to come up with 12 songs that are part of a cohesive body of work that all have some overarching message.

"Instead I'm like 'I'm just going to have this creative splurge and get it all out there and then move on to whatever next inspires me', and it can be completely unconnected to the last thing I wrote about."

IN THE NEWS:

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: