Dan Sultan Thinks We Could All Be A Little More Like Homer Simpson

“At the moment, my daughter makes me laugh,” singer-songwriter Dan Sultan begins. “She's four months old and she's beautiful and hilarious and it's pure joy [to be a father] – it's awesome.”

The Arrernte and Gurindji man describes becoming a parent this year as “the biggest, most incredible thing in the world for me personally”. 

“She's just funny. She giggles a lot. She's a sweetheart and she's a happy little girl. It's a really beautiful thing to see someone you love so much be happy.

“If I can make her laugh then I'm doing my job, you know what I mean? I mean obviously being a father – there's a lot to it. There's a lot of responsibility in taking care of her, and making sure that she's healthy and happy and all that stuff. But you know, when we're mucking around and I make her smile and make her laugh, I mean, really, that's everything to me, and that just brightens up everything for me.” 

"I don't like to take myself too seriously."

He describes the personality she’s already forming, chuckling about how quickly she started to make facial expressions. “She's starting to make a lot of noises and really coming into her own a lot. She's always been a bit of an individual – from the moment she was born, she was doing that. It's just more and more every day.”

Sultan describes his sense of humour as “big”. “I don't like to take myself too seriously,” he says. “That's not to say sometimes I don't [do that]. Sometimes, just like anyone, I can get a bit bogged down in stuff, you know? I mean, at the end of the day, I like to keep things pretty simple: it's nice to be nice and it's fun to have fun.” 

He recalls an early childhood memory of laughing with – or perhaps the right word is ‘at’ – his father.  

“I was very little and I was with my dad on the beach and he went to pick up a shell. And it actually turned out to be a crab and the crab bit him on his finger a little bit. I seem to remember that was pretty funny at the time... We both had a good laugh about it.”

Sultan’s sense of humour hasn’t really changed as he’s gotten older, he muses, in that he’s always “enjoyed having a bit of a laugh and being a bit of a clown at times”. But he notes that the way you see things changes as you age. He points out the difference between what makes you laugh watching The Simpsons as a child, and the things you pick up on as an adult. 

“When you watch The Simpsons as a kid some things went over your head, and then as you get older you watch it and you're sort of understanding things that you didn't necessarily understand when you were a kid.” 

His favourite Simpsons bit? A moment in season nine (King Of The Hill) where Homer sets out to get fit, and tries to get his head around the idea of a ‘gym’ (pronounced gime). 

“You've gotta love Homer,” Sultan says. “We could all be a bit more like Homer. I think we'd be a bit happier.”

This year, Sultan released a children’s album, Nali & Friends, which has seen him play children’s shows across the country, including at Gold Coast’s HOTA.  Writing and performing the record has given him the opportunity to really use his sense of humour in his songwriting – writing songs about “farting gorillas and clumsy frill-necked lizards”. 

“I think farting's pretty funny, personally,” he chuckles. “It's one of the great levellers. It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from or what you might be doing, everyone does it and I think it's pretty funny.”

A sense of playfulness comes through on his records for adult audiences too, because, Sultan stresses, it’s just a fundamental part of life. 

“I think [a sense of humour is] an important part of just being a person out in the world, let alone a writer. But no matter what field you're in, you need to be able to see the funny side.” 

Songwriting has long been an outlet for Sultan. He’s always used it to, in his words, “get through some stuff”. 

“At the end of the day, I think I've always been pretty receptive to having fun and enjoying myself when I can,” he notes. “That's not to say that sometimes, like everybody, I can get a bit bogged down in stuff. I've got a beautiful little family now and things are really, really lovely. 

“Obviously I'm a songwriter and I've written about things—I've been through a lot in my life, some of it self-inflicted and some of it not. There's all of that stuff too, but also being a writer is a blessing. Being able to write about it is pretty cathartic and being able to sort of move past it and use [songwriting] to work through some stuff is something that I feel pretty fortunate for, to be able to do.” 

Sultan says that laughter gets him through difficult times “every time”. In mid-2018, Sultan was widely slammed after a “trainwreck” performance in Cairns, which saw him postpone dates on his Killer national tour. Afterwards, Sultan issued an apology, writing that he was “taking stock of [his] personal situation and […] seeking professional help”. He’s since gone sober. 

"Being able to laugh about [difficult things] is a great pressure release."

“I've been through a pretty up and down couple of years,” he explains. “I've been needing to take care of myself a lot better. It was just a bit of a wake up call. Being able to laugh about it is a great pressure release. If I can laugh about something, then that usually helps. It doesn't necessarily fix things right away, but it certainly helps in the moment.” 

For now, Sultan is focused on his young family, saying that the thing that most recently made him laugh was, again, his daughter: “She just makes me so happy every day.

“I stepped out this morning, I had to go and do another interview and I was out of the house a few hours. Then I came home and she was there smiling. It's a good deal [being a father], it's a beautiful thing.”