Voice coach Kate Miller-Heidke on the terror of nerves, ageism in music and working on Bluey

The new coach on The Voice, Kate Miller-Heidke opens up on the terror she felt before Eurovision and how she overcame ageism in a sometimes “brutal” and “artless” music industry.

Kate Miller-Heidke knows all too well the sheer terror that can come with singing in front of total strangers, which is why she was determined not to “crush anyone’s dreams” on the coming season of The Voice.

The multitalented, opera-trained, ARIA-nominated pop-artist, songwriter and Eurovision representative began her career in singing competitions and musical theatre and is still wracked by nerves even after more than two decades in the business.

So, when she was approached to replace outgoing coach Jessica Mauboy in the big red spinning chair for the 13th season of the reality TV singing competition, Miller-Heidke was determined to bring that experience and empathy with her. The appeal of The Voice, she says, is that it’s about helping singers find their voice rather than “making fun of people or cruelty”.

“It’s definitely not about trying to make people cry and feel like shit because I know what that’s like as a singer,” she says. “When I was young and a teenager I did so many auditions and it’s the most terrifying thing in the world to step out on to that silent stage and know that you’re being judged. It’s the most vulnerable thing a singer can do. So, I have so much empathy and admiration for those singers and I would hate to crush anyone’s dreams.”

Singer Kate Miller-Heidke performing on the new season of The Voice.

Miller-Heidke, whose hits include Words, Space They Cannot Touch and the three-times platinum selling Last Night On Earth, says that her own battle with nerves peaked with her 2019 performance as Australia’s representative at the Eurovision Song Contest. The combination of a TV audience in the hundreds of millions, the technical difficulty of her song Zero Gravity and the physical challenges of singing it while precariously perched on a bendy pole led to her having “a small crisis” that necessitated seeking professional help.

“I had to seek out a bunch of techniques to deal with nerves,” she says. “I have this amazing singing teacher called Alison Bell who taught me all of these neurological hacks to diffuse that part of your brain and take that fight or flight instinct and turn it into excitement and focus. So, that’s something that I shared with all of my artists because a competition situation is not natural and it can be overwhelmingly nerve-racking.”

Miller-Heidke’s professional singing career more or less corresponds to the rise of music reality TV shows in Australia at the dawn of the new millennium. She says she was obsessed with the original Popstars and watched every episode of early Australian Idol but it never really occurred to her that it was something she could do.

“As a kid from suburban Brisbane who had nothing to do with the music business it just I felt so far away,” she says. “It felt like I wouldn’t even know how to begin doing that. I never really saw singing as an actual career option it was just something that I loved. It wasn’t until I actually started doing it, and I realised ‘Oh shit, actually, this could be something’. But I did always love those shows.”

The Voice 2024 coaches: Adam Lambert, Kate Miller-Heidke, LeAnn Rimes, Guy Sebastian.

After singing in Brisbane bands and performing in musical theatre, Miller-Heidke came to a career crossroads in 2005 when she had two contracts in her hands.

“One was with Sony Music for a five album deal, and the other one was a contract with Opera Australia to do Pirates Of Penzance at the Sydney Opera House in the lead role,” she says.

Ultimately she chose the album deal because first and foremost she saw herself as a singer-songwriter and that was the best way to “scratch that itch”. But once she’d been in the business for a while, she also realised that “the machine can be pretty brutal sometimes and pretty artless”, particularly for the endless and seemingly disposable supply of singers who were churned through the era of peak music reality TV.

“At a time when singers were locked into contracts with juggernaut record labels and business practice was to just chew them up and spit them out,” she says. “Nobody actually cared enough to develop their art or help them find themselves as an artist and help them find what they wanted to say.

“They just wanted to make a quick buck, and then those artists would be dropped and then on to the next thing. I think what’s cool about this season is that part of the prize is you get to record your own album. You can do whatever you want, but you’re not shackled to one particular label.”

When Miller-Heidke embraced her pop career, she thought she’d left behind opera and musical theatre for good. In fact, she’s evolved into one Australia’s most versatile performers and creators, with five albums under her belt, a wide array of acting and performing engagements in Australia and around the world and composing credits for an opera based on John Marsden’s children’s book The Rabbits as well as a hit musical adaptation of the beloved 1994 movie Muriel’s Wedding. Indeed, she’s introduced on the first episode of The Voice, alongside fellow judges Guy Sebastian, Adam Lambert and LeAnn Rimes, as the only person to have sung at Coachella, Eurovision and the Met Opera in New York.

Kate Miller-Heidke performing at Eurovision in 2019.

She says that having such a broad musical background has been “the key to my career sustainability over a long period” and helps keep her engaged and interested. But she’s also grateful that having such a varied palette has helped her thrive beyond the traditionally short life span of that genre.

“Ageism is a real thing,” she says. “It’s funny, I’m 42 now but I actually feel like I went through it a decade ago because the age of 30 is where traditionally you age out of pop music in Australia – with the odd notable exception like Kylie and Sia.

“It’s very, very rare that any woman over the age of 30 gets played on mainstream radio so I kind of had that crisis a decade ago and then realised ‘f--- ‘em – fine, I’ll just keep doing my own music’. And in the end it was fine, and I am hopeful that things are changing in that regard.

“Commercial radio are not the only gatekeepers anymore to a fruitful music career. There’s so many different avenues and I don’t think the average person gives a shit how old the singer is – but it’s certainly still a thing.”

Kate Miller-Heidke and husband Keir Nuttall. Picture: Jonathan Ng

But of all her many career achievements, there’s one that stands head and shoulders above the rest – at least in the eyes of Ernie, her son with long-time husband and musical collaborator Keir Nuttall. Last year she appeared on the kids’ animated global sensation that is Bluey, providing the voice for Chilli’s mum in the episode titled Dragon.

“It’s the only thing I have ever done that’s impressed my son and his school friends,” she says with a laugh. “I will keep clinging on to that. I’m a Brissie girl and the fact that Bluey was written and made in Brisbane is a major source of pride. I think that Joe Brumm the creator and everyone involved in it are just geniuses. I am so proud.”

The Voice Australia, August 19, 7.30pm, Channel 7.