Australian singer Katie Noonan’s heartbreaking personal update

Beloved Aussie singer Katie Noonan has shared a heartbreaking personal update, revealing she’s suffered a string of losses in recent months.

Popular Australian singer Katie Noonan has shared a heartbreakingly personal update with fans, revealing she’s suffered “profound grief and loss” over the past year that’s left her “deeply hurt and exhausted”.

The frontwoman for the band George shared her experiences on Instagram yesterday, revealing she’d suffered a succession of losses over the past year including the death of her father and the breakdown of her marriage to husband Isaac Hurren, father to her two children.

The break-up was doubly hard, she said, given she and Hurren were also musical collaborators in the ARIA-winning jazz trio Elixir

“My relationship of 26 years died … My oldest continuing band elixir died with it,” she revealed.

Her friend, collaborator and “muse” for the last two Elixir albums, cartoonist Michael Leunig, also died in December last year, “exactly a month after my life was blown apart”, Noonan wrote.

Katie Noonan' is speaking about the difficult year she’s had. Picture: Instagram

The singer’s marriage of 20 years broke down last year.

“My body has been in a tailspin of grief, extraordinary stress and profound emotional and physical pain,” she confessed.

“‘The show must go on’ is all I know and I’ve had no choice to do so for so long, but I simply can’t sustain as I have and don’t know how to navigate this new me.

“As this chapter of my life dies, I am so grateful for you giving my notes a home, as I grieve this loss and the future I thought I was mine.”

The members of Elixir, L-R: Zac Hurren, Katie Noonan and Benjamin Hauptmann. Picture: Zoe Worth

Noonan ended her post on a hopeful note, saying that she knew she needed to “get better and look after myself – as nobody else will. All I know is music saves me and there is medicine in pain”.

The singer’s candid post struck a chord with her peers and fans, among them Darren Hayes – another Australian singer who has been honest about the difficulties of navigating life after the breakdown of a long-term relationship (the former Savage Garden frontman and his husband of 17 years split in 2023).

Singer Darren Hayes offered Noonan some words of comfort. Photo: James Reese

Noonan has been a prolific singer-songwriter since the late 90s.

“I relate to this more than could possibly know,” Hayes wrote under Noonan’s post.

“I think the only solace I’ve found is in the most simple and ancient words of comfort, knowing that ‘this too, shall pass’. It took me a long time to understand these words aren’t an attempt to brush aside grief. They’re a promise that even when we think we can’t survive something – one day we shall look back and realise that we did. Even the most unthinkable horror is only temporary. Sending you so much empathy and love.”

Others echoed Hayes’ sentiments, with many fans sharing memories of times Noonan’s music has helped them through their own difficult times.

Noonan and Hurren marked their 20th wedding anniversary in November last year, a milestone the singer celebrated publicly on social media, with no indication of their imminent split.

But in a post shared on social media in January, she told fans her circumstances had changed, writing: “I am profoundly sad I cannot make music with my partner of 26 years … a new and very strange grief.”

Originally published as Australian singer Katie Noonan’s heartbreaking personal update