“When I listen to this album it’s like reading the diary of myself as a teenager,” Missy Higgins tells Apple Music of her debut LP, The Sound of White. “I hear a young woman grappling with the confusion of entering womanhood and figuring out her place in the world and feeling things for the first time, like love and heartbreak and disillusionment, and asking some really big questions about meaning and existence. It’s the soundtrack to my adolescence.” Released when Higgins was 21, her debut full-length remains a landmark moment in Australian music history. Ask her to explain its ongoing popularity and she claims to have “no idea. A few people have said to me it’s because of my honesty and the way that I was—I seemed completely authentic and was telling stories that were specific to me but also relatable and universal at their heart.” That lyrical honesty stems from the fact the songs were written without an audience in mind or, indeed, any suggestion that an audience may one day even hear them. Accordingly, Higgins penned her lyrics without fear of external judgement, devoted only to exorcising her innermost thoughts around topics such as mental health (“Nightminds”) and the death of her cousin (the title track). “I wrote half the songs or so in my bedroom at my parents’ house, or my bedroom at boarding school,” she smiles. “I have a clear memory of writing some of them on my guitar or on the piano at school or the keyboard in the shed out the back of my parents’ house. I never expected anyone to listen to them, that’s why there’s such an un-self-consciousness to them.” Despite her inexperience as a recording artist, Higgins entered the Nashville sessions with producer John Porter (The Smiths, Ryan Adams) with a clear idea of how the album should sound. “I was adamant that I didn’t want to make a big shiny pop record. I was a real fan of Damien Rice at the time, and The Waifs and Ryan Adams. I loved their acoustic sounds and the fact that all the instruments sounded real. I just wanted it to be an acoustic singer-songwriter record that was recorded beautifully, so you could hear the room that it was recorded in. I also wanted to make sure I maintained my Aussie accent, because that was how I felt authentic.” This 20th anniversary edition of the album features bonus live recordings of each track, as well as a cover of classic American torch song “Cry Me a River”, the first number Higgins ever performed live at the age of 13. Here, she revisits some of the key moments from The Sound of White. “All for Believing” “I was running behind on my homework and I realised we had to write a composition that day, so I somehow went into the music room the recess before class and wrote that song. Which is strange because I’d only mucked around with songwriting a bit before then, I’d never written anything like ‘All for Believing’. I was listening to a lot of Sarah McLachlan at the time and that song just came out of me.” “Scar” “The record company wanted me to do some co-writes with professional songwriters for the album. I’d never done that before and I really didn’t like it. I had some good experiences, but I had some bad experiences early on that really shaped me. This song was written about two different people, a man and a woman who tried very hard to shape me into a different kind of singer and songwriter. They were trying to manipulate my lyrics so they would be more palatable for a young audience and be more radio-appropriate, and it just felt so yuck to me. It took all the magic out of songwriting because it was just writing for an audience or for radio or for the charts. I wanted to write a song to remind myself not to make the same mistake again and to trust my instincts and have more faith in myself as a songwriter.” “Nightminds” “I wrote that for my best friend in high school when she was having a really bad bout of mental health. I had had a similar bout of depression the year before—I’d had a bit of a breakdown actually and had to be hospitalised for a bit, and she had helped me through it. When she was going through a really tough time a year later, I wanted to write this song to let her know she wasn’t alone and I’d been somewhere similar to her before and I was there for her.” “Casualty” “I was influenced by my brother’s jazz band that I sung with on the weekend. From about the age of 14, I used to sing with his band around Melbourne in various jazz clubs. My brother also introduced me to funk and this band called The Brand New Heavies, and I feel like The Brand New Heavies were a bit of an influence on me and perhaps this song.” “Katie” “I wrote that song when I was at boarding school. I remember seeing a lot of kids get into drugs around Year 11 and 12. Some of them were fine but some of them were really starting to go off the rails and lose themselves. I was friends with some of them and I was starting to get really worried. So I think in that song there’s a real fear in me that these friends of mine were not quite going to make it through. It was all getting a bit out of control. Also there were a lot of girls around my age that were having body image issues and eating disorders. It’s just so intense being a teenager. There were a lot of kids that were really struggling to stay afloat.” “The River” “I don’t know where that came from, it’s a completely fictional story. I just wrote and recorded the music for it and then had it playing on my headphones and was trying to come up with a melody and some lyrics, and this story just popped into my head about this young girl who runs away from home in the middle of the night. I had a history as a kid of writing pretty dark fictional stories. I think part of me likes to explore the darker side of humanity.” “The Sound of White” “I love playing that song live now because it really brings [my cousin] back. I can feel it connect with every audience member who’s lost someone special to them as well. A few of the shows we’ve played recently, people have got out the light on their phone and have been swaying them. That’s been a beautiful thing to witness from the stage. It just felt like they were all inviting the memories of their loved ones to join us in the room. It felt like we were all remembering them together and it was a beautiful thing. I’m proud of that song.”