Sarah Blasko

Australian songwriter Sarah Blasko reached the United States in 2005 already carrying an impressive string of ARIA Award nominations for Best Album, Best Female Artist, Best Breakthrough Artist, and Best Pop Release. Her distinctive style featured an airy, emotionally charged vocal approach paired with elegant instrumentation and a generally introspective, melancholic tone.

The daughter of missionary parents, Blasko first performed in church services with her tone-deaf mother, yet the sounds that shaped her work more directly stemmed from childhood exposure to 1980s broadcasts featuring Prince, David Bowie, and Eurythmics. These were joined by classical composers—Rachmaninov, Schubert, and Bach—introduced by her professor father, creating a varied mix she would later refine into thoughtful, accessible pop. During high school she fronted a jazz- and blues-tinged group alongside her sister; although that ensemble disbanded and several others followed, she soon committed to performing alone.

Her debut EP, the six-track Prelusive, appeared in 2004 and was frequently described as “homespun,” yet its evident potential led to the full-length The Overture & the Underscore later that same year. After building an audience in Australia, she traveled to Hollywood. Once the album reached American listeners in 2005, she joined tours alongside Ray LaMontagne and Martha Wainwright. Her next studio release, What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have, came out in Australia in 2006 and entered the ARIA chart at number seven. Two years afterward she moved to Sweden to collaborate with producer Björn Yttling on 2009’s As Day Follows Night, which rose to number five domestically and was later expanded with the fifteen-song Live at the Forum.

In 2012 Blasko issued another Top Ten album, I Awake, recorded with the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra. Captured live in 2013, I Awake: Live at Sydney Opera House appeared the following year. Her fifth studio effort, Eternal Return, surfaced near the end of 2015 and reached number six, marking her fourth consecutive solo Top Ten album. The creation of her sixth album was chronicled in the hour-long documentary Blasko, broadcast on Australia’s ABC network in November 2017, with the resulting Depth of Field arriving in early 2018.