Character study in harmony: Tim Minchin and Missy Higgins collaborate for the first time
Tim Minchin and Missy Higgins describe the secrets of song, in their own words.
For the closing credits of Upright, songwriter and actor Tim Minchin was struck by the idea of repeating a song that he had sung earlier in the eight-part television series, which is centred on two misfits thrown together by chance in the middle of the Australian desert on a quest to transport a piano from one side of the country to the other.
But rather than using his voice again, Minchin enlisted fellow singer-songwriter Missy Higgins to add her distinctive colour and tone to his words. The pair had not collaborated before, and here, in a conversation recorded exclusively for The Australian, the two musicians discuss how they came to work together on Carry You.
Missy Higgins: What made you decide to ask me?
Tim Minchin: So we have Sarah Belkner, who plays keyboards and sings in both our bands — yours for some years, right?
MH: Yes, she was mine before you stole her (laughs).
TM: Yeah, I totally stole her. I stole all my band off various people. So I had a connection to you. My memory is, until this project, we’d only met once before.
MH: I remember you being so gregarious and almost like hyped-up, and just super excited and friendly.
TM: To meet you?
MH: No, just in general, you were really extroverted. And then the next time I met you, in Canberra, you seemed quite sombre and introspective, and really getting into the workings of this song and explaining it to me. It was like two different people, but it was about four or five years apart, and I think that you had been through a lot, maybe.
TM: Maybe a bit more battered. And also I was on tour when we met in Canberra. So as you know, every day is like: “How do I get back there? How am I going to get that energy at 7.30?’’ You sort of save yourself during the day. So to Sarah Belkner, I said: “I’ve got this song — do you reckon Missy would do it?’’ Because I was in post-production for Upright, and the song — for those who haven’t seen it — exists in the world of Upright. The character Lucky plays it in the middle of the desert, in episode five, and I had this idea that we should repeat the song over the credits, but that it shouldn’t be him singing it because he’s come on a whole journey and he’s not in the same headspace. I wanted the audience to have that reflective thing. And I thought it’d be really good to be a female voice, and it’s very Australian — anyway, it seemed so obvious to me that you were the right person to sing it. And Sarah mentioned that you were in Canberra, so we just got together.
MH: Were you nervous about writing a song that was much more earnest and heartfelt than most of your comedic things?
TM: Yeah, and it’s so nice to hear someone who’s a proper vocalist singing my stuff as well because my voice is a storytelling machine. It’s not a beautiful thing; it has a function. But it was amazing — my son said: “This is like a proper song!’’ (Laughs.) You probably relate: there’s a way you’re perceived, and there’s a way you perceive yourself. And in some ways they cross over, but I just see myself as a songwriter, and the fact that I got known for comedy is more about what the audience thought, rather than what (I thought).
MH: Yeah, that’s the thing they responded to.
TM: And I definitely am not a good pop songwriter. I don’t really know how to do that, but I back myself.
MH: I don’t know — Carry You is a pop song.
TM: I guess it is. So after we got together in Canberra, and then you performed it in Melbourne (last year), and then just the next day we were in the studio, right, in Melbourne? I got to hear you sing it again and again, and it’s quite humbling, watching someone like you singing, because I don’t think your brain has “out of tune’’ in it. I think you can’t not be in tune, basically, can you?
MH: Yeah, I find it very hard.
TM: I think you’re just wired — you can only hear in tune. My voice, although it’s gross compared to yours, it tends to do that as well. But I definitely listen back and go: “Oh, why was I a bit flat there?’’ I never heard you sing a flat note in that three hours or whatever. So weird. And then that was it, and you knew the song very well by then. You’d sung it dozens of times in the seven-day period, and then it went to production, and we actually re-recorded it because we decided it should be slower. Is that right?
MH: Yeah, slower and more ambient.
TM: So you very kindly went back in and did the whole thing again, and I’m so glad we did the new version.
MH: Me too. How’s the response to the series been for you?
TM: It’s been amazing. I’m sure you relate to this, as well: when you take two years to make something, I find it very hard to get the distance required to have any sense of how it’s going to land. Especially with my concerts. I always walk on stage at the beginning of a tour going: “I don’t know why, this is going to be a flop. People are not going to laugh. I don’t feel funny or smart or good.’’ And then, by the end of the show, you’re like king of the world. Whereas weirdly, with Upright, because it was so collaborative, and I was one of four writers, and the writers are all my friends, and I’d been overseas for so long — the whole process felt like a hug. It was hard work.
MH: How did you collaborate? In the same room?
TM: Yeah, we spent a lot of time in the same room, and then you go away and write your draft. So there were four writers and we did two scripts each. But the plotting is all together and you’re sort of bashing it out. And then pre-production, and then I was on set every day, all day, because the camera’s in Lucky’s world all the time. You don’t ever leave them, Lucky and Meg. And then I was very heavily involved in post-production, which is when all this happened. Even though I was on tour, I was going in and doing edits and stuff.
And all along, for the first time in my life — probably since (2010 musical) Matilda — I thought: “This is good.’’ I never had a massive crisis of confidence about Upright. I just went: “I think this is the sort of thing I want to be involved in.’’ And (in) so many things we were very lucky in the people we found to work on it, all the way down to being able to get you to do the final moment. Sometimes things fall your way, and a lot of things fell our way. So thanks for doing that for us, for our show.
MH: Such a pleasure. I loved it. It’s such a nice challenge, in a way, to take on somebody else’s song and see if you can reinterpret it through your own lens. I immediately loved it when you played it to me.
TM: Yay — we put out a song!
Carry You is out now via EMI Music. Upright screens on Foxtel. Missy Higgins performs at Melbourne Zoo on Friday, Saturday and Sunday; Tim Minchin’s national tour begins in Perth on March 6.
