Missy Higgins

From the first seconds of 'The Sound Of White', two things are clear. The broad vowels tell you that Missy Higgins comes from Australia, and everything else announces that she is about to make her presence known far beyond her homeland.

Critics and the general listening public agreed. Her songs balance intensity and craft, eloquence and honesty. Her singing is a contradictory wonder, polished by lessons learned from jazz singers and composers. Pour all these elements into one disc and you get 'The Sound Of White' - a fiery brew in a delicate vessel.

Growing up in Melbourne, Missy came late to pop music. Her father played the piano; her older brother gigged with a jazz band. Without other influences Missy imagined herself first as a chanteuse, a singer of standards.

At thirteen she began a five-year stretch at a dormitory school. and living in close quarters with other students motivated her to find a place to be alone.

That turned out to be the main room in the music school. 'It was massive,' she remembers, 'with a beautiful grand piano that reverberated against the wooden floors and hard walls. I used to skip doing homework, go in there, and just sing at the top of my voice. It was wonderful.'

Her ears were opening too. No longer sheltered at home, she heard Nirvana, Courtney Love, and other alternative artists for the first time. The piano lessons, which had begun seven years earlier, stopped, and Missy began teaching herself guitar. 'My friends and I were rebelling; I guess we all felt we could relate to Courtney Love's angst,' she says.

She also began writing songs. Just sixteen at the time, she had put off an assignment to write an original composition for her music class, so she locked herself into a practice room just a half hour before it was due.

'I had some vague idea about the melody I would use,' she says. 'When I sat down it came together somehow -- my first real song, with verses and choruses. I was really proud of it, but there was no way, in my wildest imagination, that I thought anyone outside of the ten people in my music class would ever hear it.'

That song, 'All For Believing,' wouldn't stay stuck in that classroom. Encouraged by her teacher, Missy cut it on a demo. When her brother heard, it he started persisting - nonsensically, she thought at the time - that she present it to record companies. When her sister demanded that she submit it to Unearthed, the national song competition run by the influential national alternative radio network, Triple J, Missy hadn't any idea what she was talking about. But she told her sister to go ahead, if that's what she wanted to do.

'About a month later I get this phone call,' Missy smiles. 'This woman says, 'Are you sitting down?' I said I was. She said, 'You've just won Triple J Unearthed!' I didn't have a clue what she meant -- and then I remembered. And I was blown away.'

With 'All For Believing' playing all over Australia, Missy found it hard to focus on finishing her senior year. Yet she did hang in there; and by the time she'd gotten her degree, her impulse to burst into the spotlight had turned into a more measured plan.

She received numerous offers from record companies, most of whom urged her to seize her moment of opportunity; to leave school and rush release an album. However, after giving it some thought she decided to take a different path.

'I didn't want to be a one-hit wonder,' she says. 'I'd seen all these other girls who'd left the music industry almost as soon as they'd entered it. I had too much respect for myself -- and for music -- to let that happen. To do that, I had to grow up a little bit. I had to experience life.'

And so she left to backpack for six months through Europe.

While in London she received an email summons to Los Angeles, where tastemaker station KCRW had gotten a copy of Missy performing 'All For Believing' live onstage and put it into prominent rotation. This led to a quick flight around the world, a showcase performance, and a connection with Warner Bros./Reprise Records that turned into a confirmed deal. Missy has since received an overwhelming response to first album 'The Sound Of White'. Not only did the album go quadruple platnum, win her a swag of ARIAs, a world wide touring schedule, but it made her a household name across Australia. Missy is currently recording her follow up offering.

By Stephen Mai