Coronavirus: From heartbreak to hit single for Birds of Tokyo frontman

With his acoustic performance of a highly personal song, Birds of Tokyo’s ian Kenny is the latest star of our Isolation Room video series.

Birds of Tokyo frontman Ian Kenny. Picture: Colin Murty

For Birds of Tokyo frontman Ian Kenny, there’s a bittersweet irony in the fact that an acutely painful experience led to him writing one of the band’s most popular songs.

So it is with Good Lord, a powerful track that chronicles the sudden end of his marriage of seven years. “Nobody loved you like I did / Thought you’d be mother to my kid,” he sings in the first verse. “But it all changed when I saw you with someone else.”

For The Australian’s Isolation Room video series, Kenny has recorded an exclusive acoustic version, at his home in Perth, which emphasises the highly personal narrative.

“I didn’t really f..k around there on the lyrics; it’s pretty straight up,” said Kenny. “And I think ­people who have been through something similar — or who at least can feel what that would have been like, where that song came from — can react and connect to that. It ­either hits you in the heart or kicks you in the nuts.”

At the APRA Music Awards next month, Good Lord is nominated in the most performed Australian work category. It is the second single from the Perth alternative rock band’s sixth album, Human Design, which is released on Friday.

As well as fronting Birds of Tokyo since it formed in 2004, Kenny is the vocalist for popular Perth progressive metal act Karnivool, which began seven years earlier. Few fans of either act will have ever seen him with an instrument in his hand until now, with his guitar playing previously kept out of sight for songwriting and ­arranging purposes.

Since writing and releasing Good Lord, the singer has found that sharing the pain has allowed him to move on. “Once you put it out there, it’s actually quite freeing: you’ve made your peace with things, you’ve accepted the terms you were given, and you’re able to move on — and then the song just becomes someone else’s,” he said.

Happily, the heartbreak he ­describes is in the rear-view mirror: he has a 13-month-old child with a new partner, whom he addresses on the band’s new album in a song named My Darling My Son.

With his contribution to Isolation Room, Kenny joins the likes of Sarah Blasko, Chris Cheney and singing sisters Vika and Linda Bull.

On Saturday, Men at Work’s Colin Hay will offer a fittingly optimistic song recorded at his home near Los Angeles.