Do we like Kevin Parker?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Clean on harm and decent with people, but the record is thin on what he says about causes, so it stops short of a 9.
Kevin Parker is Tame Impala, more or less a one-man band. He grew up in Perth, jammed with his school mate Dominic Simper, and played as The Dee Dee Dums in 2005. In 2007 he put home-studio recordings on MySpace, and by 2008 he'd signed to Modular Recordings.
The albums kept coming: Innerspeaker, Lonerism, then Currents in 2015, his biggest seller at over 1.3 million copies. Tame Impala headlined Coachella, and The Slow Rush followed in 2020. It's a very Perth story: bedroom tinkerer becomes world headliner.
His one proper stoush was about money. In 2015 BMG took action over roughly US$450,000 in royalties allegedly withheld by his former label Modular. A New York judge dismissed the claims and the matter was reported as resolved, so Parker was on the receiving end of the dispute, not the accused.
The other blip was a song. Critics said Currents track 'Cause I'm A Man' came across as sexist. Parker denied it, saying he understood how it could be perceived that way but that he's not sexist in his heart, and admitting he half-expected the song to ruffle feathers. Where you land depends on whether you hear it as a clumsy lyric or a real attitude, and nothing else in the reporting backs the second reading.
On the harm test, we searched for anything on LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, vaccines, climate or politics and found nothing harmful in his own words, and no sign of a slide into grievance. We also found no campaigning on the other side. That's honestly a thin record rather than a glowing one. His 2025 Grammy was shared with French duo Justice, and the 2026 one came for 'End of Summer'.
The recent stuff is gloriously low-drama. Parker won Best Dance/Electronic Recording at the 2026 Grammys and then admitted he forgot the ceremony was even on. In September he drew a line on autographs, saying the numbers were getting out of control and security couldn't manage it.