An Affair Rekindled

Sometimes we have to be reminded that the old clichés about fame and money not necessarily bringing happiness really do ring true. A few years back young singer/songwriter Missy Higgins seemed to have the world at her feet; both of her first two albums – 2004 debut The Sound Of White and its 2007 follow-up On A Clear Night – had topped the Australian charts, and the latter was gaining solid traction in America. She was a beloved fixture on the live scene in Australia and increasingly abroad, and from an outsider's perspective it really was difficult to fault her career trajectory.

But inside the bubble – away from the public eye – things weren't all wine and roses for the talented young musician. Sudden success and fame can be difficult to come to terms with for anyone, let alone someone barely into her 20s when it knocked at her door, and the seemingly grounded Higgins was suddenly finding it hard to reconcile the attention and accolades she was receiving, and questioning her own talent and ability to be this person that already meant so much to so many. When these doubts transferred into writer's block whilst she was trying to pen songs for her third album it became clear that a break was needed to find perspective and reignite her passion for music, so that's just what she did.

With little or no fanfare Higgins retired from the public eye and decided to get on with her life, enrolling in an Indigenous Studies course at University Of Melbourne, indulging in a spot of acting (she appeared in the 2010 film adaption of musical Bran Nue Dae) and basically just reacquainting herself with life as a young 20-something in Australia. In time she began to remember what drove her towards writing and performing in the first place, the creative juices began flowing again, and eventually Higgins stepped back up to the plate, first diving back into writing and then decamping to Nashville with co-producer Butterfly Boucher to record what would ultimately become her third album, The Ol' Razzle Dazzle. Missy Higgins is back and she couldn't be happier, even as she recalls that dark period when she was questioning the viability of her role as a musical icon.

“It was a conscious decision [to walk away from music], or eventually it became a conscious decision, but at the start I was really wanting to keep doing music, because it was all that I knew,” she reflects wistfully. “When I finished all of the touring for my second album, which was a lot of touring, I was in the States for a couple of years – I went straight into trying to write for this album, and it just really wasn't working. The songs weren't coming, and I was just overthinking every aspect of the song – I was way overthinking the lyrics, I just really didn't know what to say. Eventually after about a year of that I had to face the reality that I couldn't keep trying forever – eventually I had to walk away from it and start trying to find some other purpose for my life. It was as though the decision was made for me, really.”

Even with the decision being thrust upon the young songwriter, walking away from such a successful (and potentially lucrative) vocation wasn't an easy task, but fortunately she had the unyielding support of her friends and family to get her through the confusion. “My family were definitely supportive – they could see how unhappy my writer's block was making me, and I think they knew that if I just kept going the way I was going then I was just going to dig myself into an even deeper hole,” Higgins recalls. “They just want me to be happy really, and my dad said to me, 'You've had two really successful albums – you've achieved more already than most people could hope to achieve in a lifetime – you can be excused for walking away from music, don't feel bad about it'. But it was really hard for me, I didn't really want to walk away from music, I just felt like I had no choice.

“And a lot of my friends were supportive, although a few of them were kind of confused because to them it seemed like such a natural thing for me to do music – they've always seen me as the musician and the songwriter, and every part of my life has always pointed towards music and songwriting, and I don't think that they could seriously imagine me doing anything else. I had to go away I think just to find out.

“I've always been pretty hard on myself, I guess. Record sales have never equated to success for me, it's always been more of a subjective, personal opinion – whether I've done the best that I can do. If I'm really proud of my album and of my work then that's all I can hope for, but I think I'm one of those people where after I've finished anything I'm onto the next thing – I'm never dwelling on how successful it was, it's always, 'How can I make the next one better?' That's really great in a way because it pushes you to keep striving to make your music better, but on the other hand it can be quite a hard standard to live up to if you keep on saying that your next thing has to be better than anything else you've ever done before.”

As well as this internal pressure that Higgins was placing on herself there was the insidious nature of the more tabloid-oriented music press, who seemed suddenly hell-bent on delving into her private life and sexuality, an area of her life that Higgins had always kept close to her chest.

“Yeah, I think that was part of the problem,” she ponders. “It was an accumulation of things I think – even when I was recording the second album I was pretty overwhelmed buy it all, and I kept saying to everyone, 'After this album I'm going to take a break!' Then that album ended up taking off in the States and I toured it for a year in Australia and two years over there, and that's when all of the stuff about my private life was coming out too, so I just felt like the lines were really blurred between what was personal to me and what was public property – it was all just pretty confusing, and I think I just needed to get out of there.”

Fortunately for all involved, the time away from the limelight did indeed reignite her musical spark, as well as giving Higgins perspective on just what she wanted to do with her life. “Yeah, definitely,” she concurs. “I think basing myself in Melbourne for a couple of years was such a great idea, because I guess I felt secure again and I was around my family and my friends on a consistent basis. I was that person who could say, 'Yes!' to all the invitations all of a sudden! I'd always been the person missing out on birthdays and weddings and births, but now I feel that I've really put my roots down in Melbourne and I've got this really awesome group of friends, and I'm really close to my new little nephew and my family – it really helps to have that solid base to be able to go away and feel as though you've got something to come back to.”

And while it was hard to walk away from music, Higgins didn't find it hard returning to the fold in the slightest.

“No, not at all! I was so excited about coming back,” she laughs. “I think in those few years off I really couldn't find anything that made me as happy as music used to. I mourned the loss of music in my life, and I wanted to get rid of the fear inside of me about music, but for so long it wouldn't go away so I didn't have any choice. But when that finally lifted and I got inspired again I just got so excited – it was like being reunited with this old friend who'd run away all of a sudden. As soon as I got inspired again I wanted to write so many songs and I wanted to get playing – all of a sudden I was saying to my manager, 'Can't we organise a tour now?' I'm really excited to get back on the road and to do it all again, I just feel like I've been rejuvenated.”

Having questioned the role of music in her life and reaffirming that she's indeed on the right track must have been an incredibly validating experience for Higgins. “Yeah, I think so,” she mulls. “I never want to do anything in life out of a sense of obligation, and everybody was telling me that, 'This is what you're meant to do! This is your path!', but I just wasn't feeling it myself. I guess I had to go away and discover that for myself, and walk down some different paths and realise what music really means to me. For all I know this could be my last album – although I don't think so – but I'm never going to be one of those people who releases an album every two years, there's definitely going to be big breaks because I love living the home life a bit too much. But I think I'll always have music in my life because I really don't know what else I'd do with myself – I love it too much.”

THIRD TIME'S A CHARM

Despite all of the hurdles Missy Higgins has returned to the fold armed with her eclectic third album, The Ol' Razzle Dazzle.

“We had no agenda other than to make an interesting, creative, beautiful-sounding record,” she recalls. “I didn't want it to sound like my other two – I wanted to move away from the acoustic, stripped-back folky sound of the last two records and just have a bit more fun with the instrumentation. We were really adventurous with different sounds and different textures.

“All of my albums are quite diverse, but I think this is definitely the most all over the place. I just really enjoy writing in different ways and different styles; it just makes it way more interesting. I've definitely got so many different types of influences too – bluesy, rocky, electronic, jazz, classical piano – there's all these different styles that make it on there, and I think that makes for a really interesting-sounding album.”

The Ol' Razzle Dazzle is an intrinsically personal batch of songs – is there an overarching theme?

“By far the most common theme is my relationship to music. Over the last few years music has been such an elusive... lover, almost. It kept running away from me and then it would appear all of a sudden, but I never really knew how to get a hold of it. The only way I really knew how to get through my writer's block was to really just write about music, and to write about all of the different emotions that I was feeling towards being a performer, and that feeling of confusion as to where the public side of my life ended and where the private side began. I guess that's why it's called The Ol' Razzle Dazzle; it's pretty ironic because I never really engaged in the razzle dazzle side of the industry – it just never really sat well with me – and I think that a lot of the songs definitely deal with that.”