A rising voice in Australian R&B, RIAH's sound is as diverse as her upbringing
Of Tongan, Fijian, Aboriginal and Italian heritage, RIAH was raised on a rich blend of cultures and as a result a wide variety of music.
Named after an R&B icon, RIAH's love for the genre runs deep: from the unmistakeable tones of Aaliyah and the impactful theatrics of Michael Jackson's artistry, through to modern stars including H.E.R., Summer Walker and more, RIAH has been influenced by artists who themselves refused to play within the borders of expectation.
Though her body of work is still growing, RIAH's vault of music yet to be released is extensive - as 2025 continues to roll out, listeners can expect to hear more from this exciting talent, taking strides forward with her sound.
Her namesake, Mariah Carey, would be proud.
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ABC News
42 minutes ago
- ABC News
Chasing Ghosts' Jimmy Kyle on new album Therapy, reconciliation and tackling tough topics
Content Warning: This article discusses suicide and domestic violence. The weight of an album's subject matter isn't always a good measure of its quality. But in the case of Chasing Ghosts and Therapy, one of the year's best albums, there's absolutely a positive correlation. Therapy lives up to its title, confronting topics even heavier than the down-tuned riffs and pummelling energy that define its hard rock sound. Mental health, domestic violence, suicide, intergenerational trauma — each song wrestles with difficult issues in catchy, cathartic anthems just as likely to make you tear up and reflect as they will have you shouting along. Witness the muscular IWPTEK (an acronym for 'I Wouldn't Profess To Even Know'), all cutting riffs and blood-pumping tempo as Jimmy Kyle, the group's proud Thungutti frontman, raises his voice to a throat-shredding roar of solidarity for trans family members: "I don't have to understand all the elements of someone's lived experience to understand what respect is," the musician tells Double J's Dylan Lewis. "My job isn't to figure out what your gender identity is, or your orientation … nor is it my business. My job is to love you while you figure it out. And that's it. That's what that song is about." That earnest, conversational tone filters into the chorus of Flowers: "Don't you lie to me/And tell me that you're okay, when you're not." It's a song about "dealing with the 'what could I have done?' The 'what ifs' when you lose someone to suicide," Kyle explains. It's even more poignant knowing Flowers is dedicated to his late friend Sean "SK" Kennedy, former bassist for fellow homegrown heavy acts I Killed The Prom Queen and Deez Nuts, who took his own life in 2021. Similarly, the power ballad Hurting Years is an ode to those that "didn't make it" and the resilience of those that did, the lyrics underscoring the fine line that can separate the two. "I implore you to tell your friends that you love them," Kyle sings, addressing the alarming rates of suicide among young Australians. "For First Nations communities, it's even higher still," he adds. Another national epidemic — domestic violence — is tackled in My Bingayi (translating to "My elder brother"), which zeros in on a heart-rending appeal to an individual perpetrator to end the cycles of abuse. The outcome manages to nail the tricky balance between being melodic and tender yet heavy hitting in tone. If you need help immediately call emergency services on triple-0 "It's a cautionary thing about recognising the potential of a person and not condemning them just purely as a monster. And that's a very nuanced conversation. And it's a dangerous conversation to stumble through recklessly," says the frontman. "But I'm hoping that some young man might see himself in a song like My Bingayi and think, 'There's a better version of me out there I can lean into. And this is not it.'" Chasing Ghosts began as a solo project of Kyle's more than a decade ago. From the raw, acoustic missives of 2011 debut Confessions From A Phone Booth, it has evolved into the five-piece band powering Therapy. It's easily the biggest and most polished Chasing Ghosts have ever sounded, courtesy of ARIA Award-nominated producer Stevie Knight, who brings extra punch and gloss to the mix. Hooky melodies and crunching, bellowing choruses are framed by strings, synths, and piano. Rather than merely prettying up these songs, these flourishes amplify their emotional intensity. Even as his songwriting has expanded dramatically in sound and scope over the years, the through-line has always been Kyle's passionate lyricism and authoritative honesty, particularly concerning the ongoing inequity and challenges First Nations people face. Therapy so often hits where it matters because Kyle isn't a rock star preaching platitudes from a soapbox. Instead, he comes across as a relatable guy; a working-class father just trying to pay the bills and get some darn sleep, whether through natural remedies (on Chamomile Tea) or prescriptive means (on the booming Ten Feet Tall). For all the weight Kyle shoulders, and the difficulties Therapy wrestles with, the music is more life-affirming than harrowing. It isn't raging against the machine, more rallying together to confront uncomfortable truths. He wanted these songs to engage in difficult conversations, "but I also didn't want to browbeat people. I think that's when we talk about why these songs are difficult to write. It's about shaving off the rough edges around difficult conversations. Being really mindful when you write a song about domestic violence [for example]". Fist-pumping single Amnesia Everybody addresses what Kyle calls a "head in the sand" attitude towards Australia's violent colonial history. "The short version of that is things like slavery, the massacres that occurred in this country and a lot of people probably aren't familiar with the fact that 50 per cent of those massacres were led by colonial police officers. That really set the dynamic for policing in Australia and especially for First Nations communities. "We have big gaps in our education system … that give people a very skewed understanding of how some huge historical events, which don't' seem to feature in any of our textbooks, have direct links to the circumstances and the context and the relationship and the dynamic we're in today between Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous Australians. "Many of us are pretty disenfranchised with the reconciliation movement, we feel a bit let down and disappointed, especially with recent events. People getting booed for acknowledging the historical truth and reality. "Myths are often what fills the place of facts in Australian history. And I think if we can get rid of the myth, if our communities can come together and stand with our allies, we can build momentum again to do something positive." The album ends on an optimistic note that rings sincere because it's hard-won, Kyle singing of "trying to be better each day" on closing track Trick or Treaty. Somebody striving to build upon the work of those who've gone before to leave the world in a better place for those that come after. "The most important thing for me — I have a son now, so I think about that — is treaty. We want a treaty between First Nations and non-Indigenous peoples in this country." He estimates the majority of "the Aboriginal community would agree with that" and see the potential of a unified Australia. "Where we have an intimate awareness of one another and we try and meet each other's needs to do positive things for the future generations," he elaborates. "Because my son's going to have to grow up in this country. I don't want him to face racism endlessly. His sentiments resonate with the current NAIDOC Week theme of "next generation: strength, vision and legacy". However, Kyle acknowledges there's a lot more work to be done, and a long history of mistreatment and mistrust to overcome, pointing towards landmark protests like the 1965 Freedom Ride and 1972 Aboriginal Tent Embassy. "Our communities, we challenge and we agitate to make change and that's why we do it. If we hadn't agitated, then change doesn't come. It's never been handed to us … And that's the truth. "I don't want people to misconstrue, when we criticise systemic racism and historical injustices. We want justice. That's a normal thing to want in a democratic society. So, it's not a personal punch down on non-Indigenous people, by any means. It's we want true reconciliation where we understand each other." He believes reconciliation and treaty are still within reach, with a shift in perspective and a healthy amount of respect and empathy necessary for living together. "Because no-one's going anywhere. There's 28 million of us all stuck on this big old island. We all gotta get along at some point, and the one thing I know is: respect is free. So, when someone disrespects Aboriginal people, it doesn't say anything about us. It says everything about them. "I believe the criticism sometimes that we bring to the table, people hear negatively, but I think if people could consider that we see the potential of an Australia of us all together, working together. "We're not asking non-Indigenous people to forget their British heritage or their Irish heritage or whatever their heritage is. We're not asking them to not be seen in public and to quieten down, so don't ask us to. We're not going to get quieter, I can guarantee that part." Speaking up and standing firm, rather than suffering through struggles in silence, is a unifying theme of Chasing Ghosts's new album. And the clue is right there in the title. Rather than being confrontational, Therapy's song-craft aims to be inclusive, offering catharsis and healing "Music is therapeutic by nature. It's not just my sort of cathartic release of things that sat on me," says Kyle. "So, whether or not it's my therapy, or whether it's your therapy, or whether we all go to therapy together — it's consistent in the idea of expressing things that make us a little bit scared." Therapy is out now.
SBS Australia
43 minutes ago
- SBS Australia
Why do some Australian musicians sing with a foreign accent?
Mitch Thompson from country/pop act Seaforth sounds straight out of Nashville — yet he grew up in Sydney. So why does he sing with an American accent? "I have to really think about it to sing in an Australian accent," Thompson, 35, told The Feed. "It's almost like a different section of the brain when I start singing — a different muscle memory of 'this is how words sound when I sing, this is how words sound when I talk'." Thompson recalls being at a singing competition where he was told he sounded too similar to Missy Higgins, who sings with a strong Australian accent. "One of the judges was like: 'You can't copy Miss Higgins' voice so much. It's a little too Aussie,'" Thompson said. So, his singing accent shifted, and by the time he moved to Nashville, the world's country music capital, almost a decade ago, Thompson had lost all trace of Missy Higgins. "Anytime I go off stage, there'll be at least one person that's like, 'Where's your accent go when you sing?' Or people that didn't know that Seaforth is Australian." Seaforth has now amassed close to 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Mitch Thompson sings with an American accent as frontman of the Australian country-pop duo Seaforth. Source: Getty / Michael Hickey "The accent and how I sing is just purely based off the music I was listening to," Thompson said. "There was never an active: 'I need to sound like Keith Urban' for it to work over here." There's been a significant drop in local acts making it into Australia's top charts, partly due to the rise of streaming services such as Spotify with algorithms that favour US and UK acts, according to music researcher and former record label manager Tim Kelly. "It used to be the case that you can make a living as an Australian artist in Australia ... like Hilltop Hoods ... or Powderfinger ... who sold most of their recordings and did most of their touring in Australia," Kelly told The Feed. "Now it's deemed that there isn't enough money in the Australian market and you've got to have two other markets as well as Australia." When the accent doesn't fit the song The Australian accent can feel like a hindrance, due to the pronunciation of certain sounds, particularly 's' and 'r', according to Ariana Rigazzi, a vocal coach based in Melbourne. "In one syllable you're pronouncing two vowels [in the Australian accent] … basically your tongue is moving while you're pronouncing that one syllable," Rigazzi said. "And that can be a hindrance while you're singing. So it's easier to do an American vowel instead of an Australian vowel to be able to actually get to the note and not have your tongue move." And Thompson says it would sound "jarring" if he sang in an Australian accent. "You lose the rhymes in certain words that in an American accent would rhyme with the next [word] — you can make it rhyme," he said. 'You've got to sound more like us' Australian artists are competing more than ever with the US and UK market to find an audience — and an accent or sound change may be encouraged by Australian labels to appeal to a wider audience, Kelly said. "There's this gravity of conformity that for new artists that would say, if you want to succeed over here [predominantly in the US and UK] ... you've got to sound more like us." "And the industry supports that pressure because managers and record labels and agents and everyone else is going: 'We want you to sound like the stuff that's doing well.'" Music researcher Tim Kelly says Australian artists are having to compete with the US and UK markets more than ever. Source: Supplied / casimaria Algorithms within music streaming services are how many people now discover new artists; it also plays into the demand for Australian artists to adapt their sound. "There's this pressure to get on the algorithm, to sound like other people, to be able to appeal to international markets by leaning into what works in those markets," Kelly says. Do Australian musicians have to change their sound to find success? Kelly says there's a cultural influence from international markets that has shaped the sound of Australian music — and it's worked. The Kid LAROI, Vance Joy, RÜFÜS DU SOL and Troye Sivan are among Australia's top streamed Spotify artists and yet international audiences would be forgiven for not realising they're Australian. "[There is] increased pressure for you to be able to succeed in other markets and not get locked into an Australian context. There is a debate about whether if you become a triple j favourite — that's great in Australia — but it might lock you out of other markets," he said. "Then you're just seen as an Australian artist." There are exceptions. Acts like Amyl and the Sniffers, Shady Nasty, DMA's, Sticky Fingers, Stella Donnelly, Courtney Barnett, and Hilltop Hoods, who all sound distinctly Australian and have found international success. "The artists that are doing well … Amyl and the Sniffers, King Gizzard, Tame Impala have an Australian-ess about them that has actually served them well in an international context," Kelly said. Amyl and the Sniffers, whose sound is defined by the distinctive voice and accent of lead singer Amy Taylor, recently played at Glastonbury festival in the UK: and Thompson believes global audiences are waiting with open arms to embrace more Australian-sounding music. "An Australian accent would actually stand out more than anything in this market."
ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
The Lingerie Makers who put Neil Armstrong on the Moon
You can probably picture that iconic moment, when Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon. But what if his 'one small step for man' was actually thanks to a group of unlikely women? In the 1960's when President JFK accelerated the space race, NASA needed someone to design a spacesuit capable of putting man on the moon. When the big defense contractors failed to meet the challenge, NASA had no choice but to work with the only company up to the job: Playtex - manufacturers of women's girdles and bras. The UK's best selling historian under 40 Kassia St Clair tells host Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) the incredible true story of the unsung heroes of the space race: the seamstresses who painstakingly sewed the Apollo 11 spacesuits. Binge all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming now on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. Get in touch: Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@
