Missy Higgins has come a long way since being Unearthed by triple j back in 2001.

She's released a whole stack of albums, packed with some of the most adored pop songs ever committed to tape in this country.

Her knack for infectious melodies and deep but relatable lyrics has resonated with fans all over Australia. She is a multiple-ARIA award winner and one of the highest selling singer-songwriters of our era, yet she’s completely unafraid to try different approaches when it comes to her craft.

Ahead of her intimate Missy Higgins & Friends performance this month, she took us through her illustrious career thus far.

The Story

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Missy Higgins has always wanted to sing.

“My brother is seven years older than me, he was a musician for as long as I can remember, and really, really brilliant. We always used to go and watch him play as a family.

“It was just a natural progression from me admiring my brother and wanting to be like him, to him getting me up to sing in his band on the weekends - I used to sneak in to these jazz clubs underage and sing and sneak home.

“I knew I wanted to be a singer from that point onwards, but I didn't realise that I wanted to be a singer-songwriter until I started writing my own songs a couple of years later.”

In another world, Missy Higgins probably would have been a star regardless of the intervention of triple j Unearthed. Her talent was surely always going to be uncovered. But the influence of what was then a regional-specific competition cannot be denied.

“I won triple j Unearthed, which made me think that maybe my songs were alright, and maybe I could make a career out of it,” Missy remembers.

The story of Missy and Unearthed has become quite legendary. The young singer-songwriter didn’t even enter the competition herself.

“My sister was going out with this guy who was in a band,” Missy says. “He'd said to her, 'Hey, your sister's song's really good. We should send it in to Unearthed.' So, they kinda just told me they were doing it.

“I hadn't heard of Unearthed at the time, so I didn't really know what had happened. I didn't realise the enormity of it when they'd told me I'd won.”

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The song that won it for her was the beautiful ‘All For Believing’. A song that still sounds so beautifully mature all these years on, that it’s staggering to hear how it came to life.

“It was one of the first songs I ever wrote. It was about my first real love. My first boyfriend,” Missy recalls.

“That song really poured out of me quite quickly. Funnily enough, I wrote it for a school music project. I hadn't done my homework, so I went in to the music room and wrote this song during recess.

“It was one of those weird times where it happens really quickly without you thinking. It bypasses your critical brain. I think that's when the best songs happen, when you don't think too much about it. When you channel something subconsciously.”

Relive the stunning Missy Higgins & Friends show right now Missy Higgins, Peter Garrett, Gretta Ray, Dan Sultan and more joined forces to celebrate Ausmusic Month.

Out of nowhere, this young woman was thrust into the spotlight. She released her debut album The Sound of White as a 21-year-old, but the hype surrounding Missy Higgins and her songs was in full force well before then.

“I had no idea things were about to change so rapidly,” she says. “After I won that – I was in Year 12 at the time – a few months later I signed a record deal on my 18th birthday and then, a couple of years after that I had my first album out. It really was the moment where everything changed.”

While it all seems so fun and exciting in hindsight, fame was a struggle for the young woman.

“I've been going down memory lane, watching these old YouTube clips of me singing when I was 19 or 20; I was really just clinging on for my life, I can see it in my face,” she says.

“I was, at time, struggling to handle how fast it was all going, and the fact that people were recognising me on the street and knowing my songs and singing my songs back to me. It was really a bizarre thing to experience.

“Over the years I've digested it all and I've come to terms with it. It's also slowed down heaps since then. I can cope with it all a lot better now. It's much more chilled out for me. But back then it was really crazy.

“I look back at baby Missy and I think, 'Oh you poor thing. That was mental! Hang in there!'”

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This wasn’t the plan for young Melissa Higgins. It’s not that she was unhappy to be recognised for her own work, she was just surprised.

“I hadn't really formed a strong dream about being famous or having success with my own songs,” she reflects. “My biggest dream was to sing in front of a huge audience, like thousands of people, but I didn't realise it would be with my own music. So, when that started happening, it was like, 'What's going on? This wasn't part of the dream!'.”

It may not have been part of the dream, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t amazing.

“It was a lot of fun,” Missy remembers. “I loved all the touring, that was my favourite bit. I got to tour America and England and South Africa, really amazing places.

“At that stage I didn't have a family or anything, so I remember thinking, 'I could just do this forever. I could just never settle down,'. But eventually it gets a little bit tiring and you want a solid base.”

The Songs

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Missy Higgins fans feel a definite affinity with her songs, something that never fails to surprise and delight the artist.

“It's so nice when I hear that people I've never meet, and quite probably will never meet, have such a personal, intimate experience with my music,” she says. “It kind of blows my mind.

“The fact that my music is in their homes, playing through their stereos, and they feel as though it's speaking to them is pretty weird but pretty cool at the same time.

“I'm very flattered by it. Because the people I have listened to over the years who have done that for me, I consider them so important.”

Her songs are undoubtedly personal. But Missy acknowledges that she considers how her audience will respond when they hear her work.

“What I strive to do is communicate what I'm feeling in the most succinct way possible. To encapsulate this universal truth. To unpack it, I guess. In a way you are thinking about who you're singing it to. Because it's a communication of sorts.”

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Missy is not dismissive of the genuine emotional importance of a great song. As someone who has not only written such affecting work, but embraced the work of other artists so wholly, she knows the power of song.

“A good song doesn't have to be about anything specific, or even remind you of anything specific, it can just hit a raw nerve,” she says.

“I think songs should just make you feel. So often we just walk around and try to numb ourselves from the world and shy away from feeling things too strongly, because we're scared of it. But I think a good song will let you do that, it will give you permission.”

The idea that a fan can have a completely different interpretation to a song than the creator is a very important one for Missy.

“That's the whole idea; you write something about your own life, but the thing that resonates with people is something at its core that's universal,” she says. “It's so nice.

“Most of the time when somebody says, 'We played your song at our wedding' or 'That's the song that I have with my wife or husband' I think, 'Oh god, if you only knew what that song was really about! But I'm not gonna tell you, because it's beautiful that you have it attached to that meaning.'”

The Relationships

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Like most great solo artists, Missy Higgins is an open-hearted collaborator. And it’s something that continues to drive her creatively.

“I think I'm drawn to them because they bring something else out in you. Bouncing off somebody else always enables you to find something else in yourself. I always find that I feel like a better musician afterwards. I feel like it's expanded me in some way. And it's just fun.

“I love songwriting with other people too, for that very reason. You find yourself writing or performing in a way that you wouldn't have done otherwise. You can get stuck in your own little ways and keep going down the same pathways after a while. So, it kind of snaps you out of those habits and brings you into the moment and makes it feel fresh.”

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The list of artists she has performed with on stage and on record is giddying.

“I had a great collaboration with Neil Finn on my second album, which not that many people know,” she says. “He played electric guitar on 'Peachy' and he sung harmony on 'Going North'.

“It was so amazing having him in the studio, especially singing with him, because I grew up listening to Crowded House and singing 'Better Be Home Soon' with my brother. That was a really special moment.

“I collaborated with Randy Newman on one of his songs, 'Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear', which was just amazing. I'm such a huge fan.

Feature Album: Missy Higgins – Oz Oz shows us a few interesting things about Missy Higgins.

“On my covers album I did heaps of really cool collabs: Vicki Simpson came in and played harmonica and sung harmony. Dan Sultan, Kate Miller-Heidke, Jane Tyrrell... I've done so many and I feel really lucky.

“I've sung with so many people I really admire. I got to sing with Sarah McLachlan which was an absolute dream come true.”

But there was one live experience that hit Missy harder than most.

“The performance that was the most special to me, as far as collaborations go, was when I toured with the Indigo Girls and sung on stage with them,” she says.

“We did an a capella song and I lost all feeling in my body. By the end of the song I couldn't feel my arms and I could hardly walk off stage. I was just in such a state of reverie and in such a trance.

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“To sing harmony with those ladies, who are known for their incredible harmonies and who were another group I'd grown up listening to, it was a real pinch myself moment.”

She’s not done, wither. There are plenty of artists she’d love to work with given the opportunity. And the idea of any of these coming to fruition is incredibly tantalising.

“I reckon Gillian Welch, Ryan Adams and Patti Griffin would be up there; the alt-country singers who've been such an inspiration,” she says. “Or Fiona Apple, she was a massive inspiration for me too.”

The Future

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Life is very different for Missy Higgins these days. She has five albums, a best-of collection, a family and a legacy that one imagines will not diminish any time soon.

But, by and large, her dreams remain the same.

“I never really plan. I never really project much into the future. All I know is I want to keep doing music,” Missy says.

“But I guess when you have an artistic career you have to wait until the inspiration strikes. If you push it too much then it's gonna sound contrived and it's not gonna touch people, it's not gonna be very powerful. I need to wait until something builds up in me that i feel I need to say.

“What usually inspires me is collaborating with new people, trying something new, trying something that excites me. That's always what I strive for, trying to do something other people won't expect and that I won't expect; something to throw you out of your comfort zone, so I hope to keep doing that. But I have no idea what the timeline will be. Things are pretty hectic at the moment…"

Reflecting on the career she has built, Higgins believes she has finally reached a place where she can be genuinely proud of her achievements.

“I feel proud of myself,” she says. “It's taken a while to get to that point. I never thought I'd get to the point where I'd have five albums out and a few EPs.

“When you're writing songs, it feels like every day could be the day that all your songs dry up and you never write a song again. I'm so grateful that they've kept coming and I've kept finding things to be inspired by.

“I feel really grateful that people have stuck by me. People keep wanting to come to my shows and hear what I have to say and listen to my songs. It's something I've never taken for granted and I think I'm even more grateful these days because I never thought I'd be around this long.

“I'm really happy with where I am. I have no idea where things will go in the future. If this is all I ever do, then that's alright.”

Catch Missy Higgins & Friends on Double J and ABC TV on Sunday November 25 at 8.40pm