Melissa Morrison Higgins (born 19 August 1983) is an Australian singer-songwriter and musician. Her Australian number-one albums are The Sound of White (2004), On a Clear Night (2007) and The Ol’ Razzle Dazzle (2012), and her singles include “Scar”, “Steer” and “Where I Stood”. Higgins was nominated for five ARIA Music Awards in 2004 and won ‘Best Pop Release’ for “Scar”. In 2005, she was nominated for seven more awards and won five. Higgins won her seventh ARIA in 2007. Her third album, The Ol’ Razzle Dazzle, was released in Australia in June 2012 (July 2012 in the US). As of August 2014, Higgins’ first three studio albums had sold over one million units.

Higgins’ fourth studio album, OZ, was released in September 2014 and consists of cover versions of Australian composers, as well as a book of related essays.

Alongside her music career, Higgins pursues interests in animal rights and the environment, endeavouring to make her tours carbon neutral. In 2010 she made her acting debut in the feature film Bran Nue Dae and also performed on its soundtrack.

Higgins was born in Melbourne, to Christopher Higgins, an English-Australian general practitioner, and Margaret (née Morrison), an Australian childcare centre operator. Her sister, Nicola, is seven years older and her brother, David, six years older. Higgins learned to play classical piano from age six, following in the footsteps of Christopher and David, but realised she wanted to be a singer at about 12, when she appeared in an Armadale Primary School production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Bored with practice, she gave up playing piano at that time. Hoping for more freedom, she urged her parents to send her to Geelong Grammar School, an independent boarding school that her siblings attended. At Geelong, Higgins took up the piano again, this time playing jazz and performing with her brother David’s group on weekends.[6] Introverted by nature, Higgins found that piano practice helped her cope with living at boarding school.

At 15, while attending Geelong Grammar’s Timbertop, she wrote “All for Believing” for a school music assignment, completing it just hours before the deadline. The assignment earned an A and she performed her song in front of classmates. She approached a Melbourne record company and was told that they wanted more than one song. She wrote more songs and worked with the Kool Skools project, which enables students to record music. In 2001, Missy’s sister Nicola entered “All for Believing” on her behalf in Unearthed, radio station Triple J’s competition for unsigned artists. The song won the competition and was added to the station’s play list.

Two record companies showed an interest in Higgins—Sony and Eleven. She signed with Eleven, partly because they agreed that she would not be “made into a pop star” and partly because they were happy for her to take time off for a backpacking holiday. Higgins’ manager is Eleven’s John Watson, who also managed rock band Silverchair. Watson later disclosed that “Missy’s the only time in my career I knew after 90 seconds I really wanted to sign her.” The backpacking trip had been planned with a friend for years and the pair spent most of 2002 in Europe; while Higgins was travelling, “All for Believing” started to receive airplay on Los Angeles radio station KCRW. Such radio exposure attracted the attention of American record labels and, by year’s end, an international recording deal with Warner Bros. had been negotiated.

Higgins was the support act on a 2003 Australian tour by folk rock band The Waifs and rock band george. She travelled to the US to work with John Porter, who produced her first EP, The Missy Higgins EP, which was released in November and entered the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Singles Chart Top 50 in August 2004.

She toured Australia, supporting Pete Murray and John Butler Trio. Her four-track single “Scar'” was released in July 2004 and debuted at No. 1 on the ARIA Charts. Her first album, The Sound of White, was released in September, and debuted at No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart. Also produced by Porter, it sold over 500,000 copies. She was nominated in five categories at the ARIA Music Awards of 2004 for “Scar”: Best Female Artist’, ‘Single of the Year’, ‘Best Pop Release’, ‘Breakthrough Artist – Single’ and ‘Best Video’ (directed by Squareyed Films). At the awards ceremony on 17 October, she received the award for Best Pop Release, beating Delta Goodrem, The Dissociatives, Kylie Minogue and Pete Murray. This was followed by her first national headline tour. Her second single “Ten Days” was co-written with Jay Clifford (guitarist in US band Jump, Little Children) and was inspired by Higgins’ 2002 break-up with her boyfriend before she travelled to Europe. Released in November, it peaked at No. 12.

Cave and Powderfinger at the WaveAid fundraising concert in the Sydney Cricket Ground. The concert raised A$2.3 million for four charities supporting the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. In March Higgins performed at the MTV Australia Awards and won the prize for ‘Breakthrough Artist of the Year’. The following month she released her third single, “The Special Two”, which was a radio hit and reached No. 2. “The Special Two” was released on an EP which included her cover of the Skyhooks song, “You Just Like Me Cos I’m Good in Bed”, recorded for Triple J’s 30th anniversary. The song had been the first track played on Triple J when it launched (as Double J) in 1975. In May, Higgins won the ‘Song of the Year’ and ‘Breakthrough’ awards for “Scar” from the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA). She continued touring in mid-2005 and released her fourth single, “The Sound of White”, in August. In September she played a sold-out performance at the Vanguard in Sydney with the proceeds going to charity. She was nominated for seven more ARIAs and in October won ‘Album of the Year’, ‘Best Pop Release’, ‘Breakthrough Artist – Album’ and ‘Highest Selling Album’ (all for The Sound of White) and ‘Best Female Artist’ (for “Scar”). She teamed up with fellow ARIA award-winning singer Ben Lee in late 2005 for a national tour.