NEWS

ARE YOU ALL READY? ARE YOU READY? GET SET!
IT´S KATE MILLER-HEIDKE

New York, NY: If you live here and you tend, (like myself) to watch a lot of television, I would bet my lottery ticket on the fact that you’ve heard this song. But do you know from whence it came?

The New York Lottery anthem, “Are You Ready?” — the song you happily just can’t get away from. The song you warble through a mouthful of toothpaste every morning. The song you sing through those coffee-stained teeth on the subway platform, head cautiously bopping with the pulse beat, was perpetrated by none other than the charismatic Australian songwriter and vocal sensation, Kate Miller-Heidke.

“Are You Ready?” kicks off the eleven total on Kate’s brilliant new album, Liberty Bell, to be released on Sony Music Australia on October 11th. Kate’s take on the new stuff is, shall we say, fairly objective: “If you like my other music, you might not like this. Or you might, who knows?”

Delving in a little more, she says, “For a while, I dabbled with the idea of not releasing the album at all, or putting it out under a pseudonym, because it sounds so different to my other stuff. I was scared of alienating people, or confusing people. Then one day on the road, I played it to Ben Folds and he was hugely supportive; he's a big creative risk-taker. I appropriated some of his courage and decided to put it out under my own name.”

The entire affair, meaning Liberty Bell, of course, is yet another collaboration with husband/guitarist Keir Nuttall, who wrote the lion’s share of the songs on the record. And while the aforementioned single is getting tons of play with the omnipresent NY Lottery TV ads, Kate and Keir have made their own video for the song, which will premiere on VEVO on August 15th.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Kate Miller-Heidke, she is a rare gem, thus confirmed by fans and media worldwide. Her second album, Curiouser took the industry by storm, going double platinum in Australia and prompting sold out tour dates everywhere.

Curiouser featured the celebrated single and anti-bullying anthem, “Caught In The Crowd,” which afforded Kate the prestigious honor of being the very first Australian to win the Grand Prize in the Nashville-based International Songwriting Competition, wooing big shot judges like Tom Waits, the Cure’s Robert Smith, the Shins’ James Mercer, Neil Finn and Ray Davies.

A viral hit coincided, “Are You F**king Kidding Me? (Facebook Song)” and suddenly, the world was listening...

Then, she rocked em at Coachella, inspiring high praise from Jon Pareles of The New York Times, “Kate Miller-Heidke, an Australian songwriter who can be tenderly folky or sly and wry, has a warm voice with a secret extension: a high, operatic flutter, that had the crowd whooping every time she unleashed it. She used it sparingly, and every time was a zinger.” Two tours with buddy, Ben Folds ensued, as well as a headlining club tour, a Lilith Fair stint.

In addition, over the past three years Kate has journeyed extensively to Asia to lend her voice to the fight against human trafficking, performing as part of the MTV Exit Concert series - particularly in Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. Human trafficking is the second largest illegal trade in the world. 

And if all this isn’t enough, with chameleon like grace, Kate navigates the world of opera, as well. In fact, in addition to a flourishing career in pop music, she won critical acclaim for her performance as Baby Jane in Jerry Springer: The Opera at the Sydney Opera House.  Richard Thomas, who created the show, thought Kate was so fabulous; that he asked her to get involved in the creation of a new show Shoes, developed in conjunction with Sadler’s Wells, which debuted on London’s West End. Her latest is the English National Opera House production of The Death Of Klinghoffer due to premiere in early 2012.