Tim Minchin joins forces with Missy Higgins for Upright song

The two stars worked together for the first time to record Carry You, a song Tim Minchin wrote for the Foxtel series Upright.

‘A nice challenge’: Missy Higgins with Tim Minchin. Picture: David Geraghty

It’s no small thing for an ­acclaimed singer-songwriter to ask another acclaimed singer-songwriter to record a song that’s ­already been written, performed and captured on film as an emotional moment midway through a television miniseries.

Yet that was exactly the question Tim Minchin popped to Missy Higgins in a Canberra hotel room last year: would you please record my song Carry You, so that we can use it in the closing credits of Upright?

Trouper, and Minchin fan, that she is, Higgins said yes — and even re-recorded it after Minchin realised he needed a slower, more ambient version.

“It’s such a nice challenge to take on somebody else’s song and see if you can reinterpret it through your own lens,” Higgins told Minchin in a conversation recorded for The Australian.

The eight-part series Upright centres on two misfits — played by Minchin and Milly Alcock — thrown together by chance in the desert on a quest to transport a piano from one side of Australia to the other. It premiered on Foxtel in December, and can now be streamed on demand.

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Minchin’s character, Lucky Flynn, performs Carry You in the desert in episode five. For the end of the final episode, however, he wanted something different.

“I had this idea we should repeat the song over the credits, but it shouldn’t be him singing it, because he’s come on a journey and isn’t in the same headspace,” Minchin told Higgins. Her take is available as a single and marks the first time they have worked together. Given their ­mutual admiration, it might not be the last.