Missy Higgins Artistfacts

August 19, 1983
Born Melissa Morrison Higgins in Melbourne, Australia, Missy Higgins is an Australian pop singer-songwriter who broke through with her debut album, The Sound Of White, in 2004. The confessional lead single, "Scar," went to #1 on the ARIA Singles Chart, with the album also going to the top of the Australian Albums tally.
Higgins was introduced to the Australian airwaves after winning Triple J's Unearthed competition with her song "All For Believing." She wrote the tune for a school music assignment, and her older sister, Nicola, submitted it to the contest on her behalf.
She realized she wanted to be a singer after performing in her primary school's production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at age 12.
Higgins' frankness in early interviews landed her in hot water, particularly when she questioned the legitimacy of Australian Idol, whose contestants were taking over the ARIA charts. She was one of the few outside of the reality program to top the charts in 2004.

"It's not what music's about, it saddens me it's cheapened like that," she told The Age that year. "The Avril Lavignes - music doesn't seem to be an art-form any more, it's about image and celebrity status."

The previous year's Idol winner, Guy Sebastian, took offense and publicly fired back at Higgins' claims. They continued their heated exchanges through media statements until they met face to face at the ARIA Awards and buried the hatchet.
During Higgins' rise to fame, journalists relentlessly questioned the singer's sexuality, which was a subject she hadn't even come to terms with yet. When she toured America in the mid-2000s, she began a relationship with another woman for the first time when she fell in love with her female tour manager. In 2007, she announced her bisexuality on her MySpace page.
Higgins met her future husband, comedian/playwright Dan Lee, at the wedding of a mutual friend in 2013, where they sang a duet of Kiss' "I Was Made For Lovin' You." They reprised the performance for their own wedding in 2016. After two children and six years of marriage, the couple announced their separation and divorce. The split inspired Higgins' 2024 album, The Second Act.
Although she's had some positive co-writing experiences, the majority have been painful reminders of why she prefers to write alone. She told Songfacts in 2024: "All the ones that made it onto the albums have been wonderful experiences with wonderful musicians and songwriters, but there were dozens and dozens of horrible pop songs that I made with people that I really didn't gel with. It's very vulnerable."
Higgins has struggled with depression since she was a child and learned to use songwriting as a coping mechanism when she was a teenager. In 2015, she donated proceeds from her charity concert at The Vanguard to the Melbourne-based One In Five Foundation, which supports mental-health research.
Higgins was introduced to vegetarianism by an ex-boyfriend and adopted the lifestyle after reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, which is about the American factory farming industry. She is also an animal rights activist and has appeared in ads for PETA.
She made her acting debut in the 2009 Australian musical dramedy Bran Nue Dae as a hippie on the way to Perth with her boyfriend in the 1960s.
Higgins was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2024. During her 20-year career leading up to the honor, the singer earned nine ARIA Awards, including Best Pop Release and Album of the Year for her debut album, The Sound Of White.

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