Do we like Missy Higgins?
Our score: 8 out of 10. No harmful words, acts or company turned up, and a long run of cause work, but the record I could verify is thinner than a decade of fame deserves.
Missy Higgins is a Melbourne singer-songwriter whose career started by accident. Her sister entered her school-assignment song “All For Believing” in Triple J's Unearthed comp without telling her, and it won. Her 2004 debut, The Sound of White, then spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the ARIA albums chart.
She has won nine ARIA Awards from 25 nominations and, per ARIA, was set to be inducted into its Hall of Fame in 2024. Some commentators grumbled that she was too mid-career for the honour. That was a stoush about the criteria, not about anything she did.
On the harm test, the search came up clean. I found no remarks against LGBTQ+ people, women or migrants, no climate or vaccine nonsense, and no worrying collaborators. The record on the other side is her refugee advocacy: she has said some sections of the media have “helped turn these poor people into criminals”.
Her own story is part of why queer fans love her. As she told a 2021 interview, she faced years of press speculation about her sexuality in the early days and felt pressure to pick a label. She came out as bisexual in 2007, and says talking about it now is easy because she has nothing to hide.
She nearly quit music after about seven years of touring, then came back after joining Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair. Nothing recent turned up in the news, apart from touring, so there's no fresh drama to report. On the page's two tests she passes both, and that's a pretty easy yes.