Jimmy Barnes

Jimmy Barnes is the Bruce Springsteen of Australia—a heart-on-sleeve songwriter with a soulful, weathered voice who has spent decades chronicling the triumphs and troubles of everyday people. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1956, Barnes first found fame as the frontman of the soulful pub-rock band Cold Chisel. The Adelaide-formed group dominated Australian music in the late ’70s and early ’80s with big choruses and lyrics that meditated on post-Vietnam War life (the rootsy, country-inflected 1978 single “Khe Sanh”) and getting back to simpler times (the Joe Jackson-esque bar ballad “Cheap Wine”). After Cold Chisel broke up in 1983, Barnes went solo and immediately found more success, racking up five straight No. 1 studio albums and a string of hit singles on the Australian charts. The anthemic 1984 rocker “No Second Prize” led to a 1986 collaboration with INXS on a cover of The Easybeats’ “Good Times”; the following year’s bluesy, evocative single “Too Much Ain’t Enough Love” was an Australian No. 1. In subsequent years, Barnes has juggled his work with a reformed Cold Chisel (which embark on occasional tours and released an album in 2019, Blood Moon) with solo albums, including 2021’s Flesh and Blood, which was promoted by the title track—an appropriately heartfelt, sentimental rumination on the importance of family.