The Indigenous musician was discovered as a teenager in the tiny community of Woorabinda. She talks about losing her beloved grandmother, finding poetry in pain and a transformative trip to the desert
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In the year after Miiesha Young won the 2020 Aria award for best soul/R&B release for her debut album, Nyaaringu, Australia’s most promising neo-soul singer resolved to give it all up.
“It was a very, very dark time in my life,” she explains on the phone from Brisbane, where the 23-year-old Anangu and Torres Strait Islander woman is searching for a place to rent between promotional duties for her new dual EP, Smoke & Mirrors. “I just wanted to give everything up – I wanted to throw it all away. I didn’t know who I was without my grandmother.”