In her twenties, Missy Higgins released her first album The Sound Of White, which would go on to serenade the broken hearts of so many Aussies and fans around the world.
The album she launched into stardom and another four albums (soon to be five) later she has become a beloved icon of the Australian music scene.
But at the time, despite her musical genius and career success, there was one thing the media became fixated on – her sexuality.
At the time, Higgins was still navigating what her sexuality meant to her while she was “hounded” with questions about it from the media.
Watch the video above.
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“It was pretty different 20 years ago,” the Aussie singer told Abbie Chatfield on LiSTNR’s It’s A Lot with Abbie Chatfield referring to the attitudes towards queerness in the early 2000s.
“And also, I think I was still discovering it myself at the time.”
Higgins said she and her first girlfriend Emma Goodland, who hadn’t yet come out to her family, were still figuring out their sexuality as journalists continued to question it.
“It was new for both of us, and I didn’t want to be talking to f—ing journalists about something that I was still, like, I was like, ‘Am I gay, am I bi? Should I even put a label on this at all?'” she recalled.
“It just felt very sacred in a way and not something that I wanted to talk publicly about yet.”
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Eventually, Higgins decided to put an end to the constant questioning.
”I made a statement eventually that I was bisexual because I just felt so hounded by every single journalist,” she explained.
“I felt like in every interview they were trying to trick me into using pronouns for my songs. Like, every single question.
“I became so on edge before every interview because I was like, it just felt like going into battle … like, ‘How am I going to answer this question without giving them what they want?’”
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“I just felt like my sexuality was very fluid but if you had to put me in a box, I would say bisexual,” she explained.
Later in the chat, Higgins touched on how the public fixation with her sexuality was indicative of the landscape at the time.
“Back then, it really did feel like a scoop. It was like, ‘Who’s hiding their sexuality?'” she said.
“Twenty years ago, it was still something that, you know, record companies were scared about. They used to tell people to hold on to that bit of information about themselves as long as they possibly could.
“It’s hard to imagine now.”
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