What Missy Higgins Knows About Shame

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Somehow along the way, I'd made really bad decisions, or I'd not been strong enough, or something like that, and so I was dealing with so much shame. And as soon as I sat down at the piano, the first line I sung was it was never meant to be like this. It was never meant to be like this. And I just sang that line over and over again and cried because it just opened up something in me.

Hello, and welcome to but Are You Happy? The podcast that asked the questions you've always wanted to know from the people who appear to have it all. I'm Claire Stevens, and on today's episode, I'm talking to somebody who I was very nervous to share a room with because she's the person who wrote the words and the score to My emotional Journey to adulthood. Missy Higgins is a multi award winning singer songwriter whose raw and vulnerable songs have

I did have a happy childhood. Actually, I had a really happy childhood.

I mean, as far as my home family life goes, my family was really really close and always felt like a very secure grounding place for me.

They were my safe place. I remember I was a really.

Outgoing kid until I turned about six, and then I started to get very introspective and introverted, and then I struggled at school a bit. I remember wanting to switch schools, and when my mum finally.

Agreed, I literally walked.

Out of my primary school with my backpack without looking back, didn't say goodbye to anyone. I was like good riddance, and then I started somewhere else that I really enjoyed. But I do remember in high school feeling like I was very different from everybody else. All my diary entries were like was I born on another planet? Like why do I feel like such an alien? And why am

And when you were in later high school, you had an episode of depression, and you found out that your dad and some people in his family had experienced it as well. Do you think you could tell that growing up? Could you tell that your dad struggled with happiness at all?

No?

That was the thing that was the thing that shocked me. I had this breakdown in year eleven where I literally collapsed and they couldn't wake me up, and I had to go to hospital. I was semi conscious, so I do remember it, which is weird, but I couldn't open my eyes.

I was like locked in my body.

But I remember having a conversation with him after that, saying, think I'm depressed, and depressed or depression back then was not a word that everybody used like they did now. It was a little bit like it was almost like a very medical term, and not many people talked about it. And I said that to him, and he was just quiet for a bit, and then he said, well, I think it's probably about time that I told you that.

I've had it to.

My whole adult life, and I've been medicated on and off, and it's in our family. Our family have struggled with it for generations. And I was so so taken aback when he told me that, because he'd always been like father Christmas in a way. Dad was just the loveliest, warmest, happiest person who was always just so thrilled to see his kids every day when he came home from school. I remember running up the hallway to meet him and hold on to his legs as soon as he came

Yeah.

So when he told me that, I was really really surprised. And it's also the thing of like, oh, my parents are humans and they've got a whole inner world. It was really the first time that I learned that about him.

Do you think it connected you to him in a different way, understanding like an emotional reality that you haven't seen.

Yeah, definitely, I think so.

I mean I felt a bit unstable, I think at first hearing that, because I was like, well, You're supposed to be the rock for me, you know, like you're supposed to be the one that has it all together, and now do I have to look back at my whole childhood and go, oh, my dad was just pretending Or there was that whole kind of feeling of like

You then went on medication, and would you have been on medication when you wrote the Sound of White.

Yeah, I've been on medication when I've written all of my albums, which there's only a very small racket of my adult life that I haven't been on medication.

Which I find I think that's actually quite moving to know, because some of the stigma around medication can be that it dulls or numbs or emotions. And to me, I'm like, well, clearly you have access to the full range of human emotions. If you've written such powerful music while on medication, have you ever felt that it's dulled or kind of MUTI I.

Mean, the thing is, it's different for everybody, and some people I hear it does do that for them and they feel a bit zonked out. But most artistic people I know who suffer from depression get so crippled by their depression that they can't write and they're in a kind of haze or malaise. And that's what I was like, if I'm depressed, I can't get out of bed, let alone, go and sit at the piano and you know, pour my heart out. I don't want to speak to anyone.

To me, it can feel like I think the biggest thing with depression that maybe if you had never experienced it you wouldn't know, is that it's about energy. It can feel like you just have absolutely no energy, and to me, medication can provide just that little bit of energy to then get momentum. And once you have momentum, it's a lot easier to get out of bed and do the things that give you some joy.

Yeah. Absolutely, it makes me feel like I'm made of concrete. Yeah.

And I remember in my mid twenties I tried. I tried to go off the meds, which I do pretty regularly, just to see if I can do it. And it works for a while, but then I always end up having to go back, but I tried for a couple of years to go off them, and I went on this massive, big journey of self discovery, reading all these wellness books about I don't know. I thought spiritually, I

Do you think of yourself in terms of depression? Do you think of it as you have depressive episodes or do you think there's such thing as a depressive personality? Do you see depression as part of who you are or distinct from who you are?

I see it as part of who I am, despite not wanting it to be who I am. But I think looking at the patterns over the past fourteen fifteen, sorry, hang on now, I'm older than that. Twenty four twenty five years Jesus Christ. I think the ups and downs are part of who I am, and I think I've tried to fight it for so long, and I think that's probably part of the problem. I think what's helped as I've gotten older is realizing that it's just something that's going to pass through if I don't fight it

Yeah, you released the Sound of White and your profile just exploded. You were everywhere, and I imagine to you it felt like it was quite quick because you won Triple J on Earthed, but then went overseas and then came back and everything just went nuts. Did fame feel how you expected it to feel?

To be honest, I'm not sure I ever tried to imagine what fame would feel like. Because it happened so young and so quickly.

Were you thinking about as a teenage girl being like, but what would it feel like to be famous?

I don't think I really was.

All I was thinking about was what would it feel like to sing in front of a lot of people? Because that's what I wanted to do. I loved performing so much. I was like, and I was singing a lot of cover songs and jazz songs. I was like, what would it feel like to sing in front of four hundred people? And because I got such a rush from singing in front of a small crowd, I thought, imagine if it was a big crowd, how much of a rush that would be. But I never thought about

It was a different kind of fame when your music first really hit Australian audiences, I feel like it was right now we've got more of like a fractured idea of fame because we're all watching different things. We're on different platforms. There are people who are famous that I've never heard of, and people you might think are famous. But in the era where it was you, you were a household name, people would just absolutely obsessed with Missy Higgins. How did it feel to like walk down the street.

I remember seeing a therapist quite a lot back in those days and just saying, I'd become so paranoid about people recognizing me that I was hearing my name everywhere, And because Missy has two s's in it, anytime anyone was talking and I could hear the s, I always just thought, oh my god, the same Missy, the same Missy.

You know.

So I became kind of hyper aware slash paranoid about it. And Yeah, it just made me really anxious. And I don't like being looked at or talked about. And I'd just come out of a pretty toxic relationship to where the guy I was with was really ridiculing me and my music and made me feel really horrible about myself. So in my mind I was projecting that those people were saying really horrible things about me and ridiculing me. So yeah, it became really hard to leave the house.

Yeah, and I bought exact same ones. It was just so embarrassing to look back on.

But I left the house in that and you just look so much more like you're a famous face and trying to hide behind these glasses. But yeah, I did that just not wanting to be noticed. I'm not sure it worked.

So sound of white goes absolutely nuts. Do the people that are already in your life, like friends from school or acquaintances that you weren't that close to, do people behave differently to you? Does it change the nature of your relationships?

Yeah? Absolutely.

I mean I think I'm a pretty good judge of character and I always have been, so I remember feeling like I can tell the people that are being genuine to me because they are genuinely nice people, and the people who were you just sick of fanting. But it was a strange thing to get used to. I remember when I went to America a couple of years later, I was.

Like, oh my god, people are being rude to me. It's awesome.

It was this like there was this authentic interaction that I was having with people for the first time in so long that it was kind of jarring at first, but then refreshing because.

People in the industry or like social.

Interactions literally, you know, at the corner store.

Yeah, Americans can be rude.

But it wasn't.

It wasn't really that they were being rude. It was a normal interaction. They didn't give a shit about me, because why would you. I'm just a customer. But I was used to people going.

Oh, hello, yes, what can I do to help you, which is pretty strange for that to start happening all of a sudden when you're just a nobody.

Yeah, do you think you develop an ego?

I didn't because I thought that they were all a bit weird for doing that. Like I just thought that those people must have an issue. There must be something wrong with those people if they're being around me. And also they just felt like such a distinction and a separation between the Missy Higgins that they thought I was and the Missy Higgins I knew that I was.

It was like they were looking at this.

Mirage that was superimposed over my face when they were looking at me.

Which is probably a really healthy way to look at fame. Like that's probably if someone were to analyze it, it is that idea of like there's the actual you and there's a projection of you, and that projection has nothing to do with who you actually are.

I think it's probably good.

Yeah, yeah, I can't remember anybody ever saying anything negative about miss Higgins in that era, and I can remember all the media coverage being really really positive. But I can imagine that the Internet was kind of around, and I can imagine that there would have been things that weren't that nice. How did you take that on? And were you able to separate yourself from what people were saying about you?

Well, that's the kind of ironic thing, is that I didn't take on any of the nice things. But yeah, whenever I heard anything negative, it was like I couldn't sleep for days and it was all that I could think about. And I still remember the negative things that were said about me.

What do people say?

Well, I remember the early days of Internet. There were forums, like I guess there's forums now on Reddit and stuff was when I read it.

Back then, there was.

Like specific websites that were set up as fan forums, and I had one, and in that website there was like different categories of Miss Higgins that you could talk about and dissect, and I had I think it was maybe my second album ish where I had changed my live band, I'd swapped some of the musicians out to be different players. And my hardcore fans that felt this sense of ownership because they'd been with me since the beginning, since before the Sound of White, they would not stand

I don't want to read reviews.

I don't want to read articles unless somebody literally sends me at going, this is very flattering. You should read this about yourself. I'm not going to do it because I'm just too sensitive. I think I just take too much of it on board.

Do you ever come across stuff accidentally or.

Like comm comments?

Yeah, yeah, definitely, but I tried. They don't happen very much on Instagram. I find I don't ever look on Facebook because the algorithm means that people that aren't following me can see it, which means that there's always going to people that don't like what I'm doing. I definitely don't go on Twitter because that's a fucking binfire.

I one should go on Twitter, ever.

And so I've found that because people following me, they're usually pretty supportive on Instagram.

What's the kind of stuff that I find that when you're kind of doing anything creative, there's certain things people can say that just doesn't affect you. You're like, okay, cool, I'm not for you. That's all good, But then there are certain things that really do cut through. And what you say about the band was the thing that was upsetting the fact that people were like assuming your intention or assuming the fact that you thought you were too

I think at that point in my career, I was starting to get a bit jaded, because I was feeling very scrutiny and very judged at that point because so many people were having opinions about me and my image and my sexuality and just wanting to know way too

I was in a kind of a bit of a loop feedback loop.

When you are incredibly successful, money often follows did money change your lif life? From your music and you're touring around America. I can imagine you had more money than other people your age who you might have grown up with. Did it make you happy?

I do remember getting a big check. I think it was maybe about a year after the Sound of White came out, and I was like, I could buy a house and I'm twenty one. Oh, and it was this real, like oh my god, what has happened to my life kind of thing. But I was also on this, you know, I was still riding the roller coaster of how the hell am I at this point at such a young age and successful album and famous and all that kind of stuff.

So yeah, I was pretty stoked.

I think the fact that I had managed to make a career out of music when my dad had always told me, he was always supportive of it. He always said, you need to get a UNI degree. At the very least, go and get an arts degree so you have something to fall back on, you know, if you're going to do music, kind of implying that it's almost impossible to make a career out of music.

And then when that happened, I was like, I think I've done it.

I think that this means that I can probably keep doing it for the rest of my life, so it kind of, yeah, it felt extremely gratifying that I could relax about having to get a back up job or have a backup plan.

Did you spend it on exciting things like when you're twenty? I can't imagine having access to any kind of I bought a house.

I put a down payment on a house.

I should say, oh my gosh, not even stupid clothes or anything like that.

No. I was never a closed person, That's the thing. I was never a things person. But I bought a little unit and my sister and I moved into it and it was just the best feeling ever.

After the break, Missy opens up about how grief and shame inspired her new album and why her music holds so much significance to her. I have a theory that the world lies to us a bit about happiness, and sometimes it's those moments that are really shiny and exciting from the outside that actually aren't on the inside. And kind of the way we live now, especially on social media, where people are flattened to two dimensional images, it kind

I guess it's tricky with me because most of my songs are miserable. So I don't know if anyone thinks that I'm happy but you're it's probably the opposite for me. People think I'm miserable, but I'm actually most of the time quite a happy person.

Yeah.

I mean, like I was talking about before, in the early days in my early twenties, with those first couple of albums, when I was touring America, I did so many shows in the space of a year. I think that I completely burnt myself out. But I was finally getting somewhere over there, Like I went gold with my second album, and that was something that I'd been building

I tried writing. I tried for two years to write for my third album. Thing came.

I remember hiring this tiny little room above a flower shop in Northcote in Melbourne and going there every day thinking I was nick Cave with my briefcase and my suit, treating it like a job, treating it like a nine to five, and it still didn't work. And after two years of that, I just I took my manager out for lunch and I told him that I had just nothing left.

I couldn't write. I was miserable.

Yes, I'd reached a level of success in Australia and America that you know, I could have only dreamed of, but I wasn't happy.

Do you think the success was paralyzing like when you were trying to write and you couldn't. Was it that you felt like you had nothing to write about? Or was it that you were aware that whatever you wrote would be heard by so many people? And there was pressure on it in a way.

That Yeah, I think I felt very scrutinized from every direction, like in my personal life and with my music. There was a massive amount of pressure to back that up with another successful album. But I think it probably came down to the fact that I just I didn't enjoy what I did anymore, Like I didn't enjoy playing live shows anymore because of the fact that I had been doing it for too long without a break. You know, if you do anything for too long without a break,

You've said that you also worried that music was selfish and you weren't contributing enough to the world. It's funny you're not the first musician, Like we've had another musician on this show who said that, And I think it's interesting that musicians say it because I think there's like an emotional intelligence slash depth that makes you constantly question your place in the world. Whereas I think it's funny. I think a lot of say influences aren't questioning.

Yeah, I'm very influential. I must be effectively the world positively.

But it's interesting that you do kind of grapple with that, like have a crisis of meaning and you went and tried to do other things. It came back to music, and it was a bit of a weird like the universe was directing you back to music. With Sarah McLaughlan and the opportunity you got in terms of music and whether it's selfish, How do you feel about that now?

I feel like yes, it's selfish, but that's completely okay, and ultimately that's kind of what helps people the most. Meaning if you write music from a completely selfish place, it has a better chance of really hitting home for somebody because you're not trying to make anything that sells. You're not trying to make something that as many people as possible can relate to. You're just being honest, and honest is the thing that cuts through, and authenticity is

Oh my god, how hard is life like? This life thing?

It's really bloody hard, guys that you agree, Yeah, And with this new album, I just I didn't think about an audience. I sat down because I was really really trying to grapple with the fact my marriage had fallen apart and all I ever wanted was to find someone to be with forever and stay as a family unit forever. And I felt like such a failure for that not happening, and I felt like it was my responsibility to keep

It feels that your album The Second Act almost feels like uncharted territory artistically, which seems so bizarre when we know that a huge number of women who are in their thirties, forties fifty sixty marriages have ended. Why do you think there's such shame? Why do you think you felt such shame?

I don't know, but I know it has something to do with being a woman and feeling like it's our responsibility to make sure everyone is okay and keep everyone together, keep everyone happy. I definitely felt like I was the one that should have tried harder to make it work, and somehow I failed to give my kids the family that I.

Grew up with.

And as far as why people haven't written songs about it before, I don't really know. I think I do feel like there is that pressure as a songwriter and as an artist to come up with songs that do sound more empowered. As a woman, I think there's that vulnerability and fragility that you don't really want to admit to, and I think in the back of your head, you're like, no one wants to hear how miserable I am, and

Who listens to the radio anyone?

Sorry, But I mean, I just think that I feel really lucky to have a fan base that have followed me through my whole career and still want to hear what I have to say and what I put out. So I don't know, I think I felt like I didn't have to cater to anybody because I'm comfortable. I don't need to sell too many units in order to kind of put food on my kid's table. I can just write what I want at this point in my life, and I feel like I probably have enough validation and

And it is. I said at the beginning of this that for me, you've been this, you know, soundtrack to my life, and it's eerie how much what you write about has always mirrored where I am, and that is not unique to me, that is why you're so incredibly successful. But I have friends who say, if you think your relationship is good, have a child, and it's like putting it into a blender. That's how she describes it, that the first year after having a childhood's like putting a

Yeah, that's all it was about.

I mean my happiness and my partner's happiness. We were both miserable and had been for a while, and we just looked at each other and went It started off with I think that we should live in separate houses, and then that kind of slowly progressed to well, I mean we're living in separate houses. We're pretty much separated, and yeah, throwing kids into the mix. I think what's tricky about having kids with somebody is you have no idea what the other person's going to be like, has.

No idea, You have no idea. You think that you do.

You think you're like, they're a really good person. They're crying with kids.

Yeah, yeah, And I'm not saying that to say my partner's a bad dad because he's an excellent dad, But you have to have the same parenting style as that person as well, And depending on how you grew up, how you were parented, you're going to have different ideas of discipline, what to do when a child's kind of loud and messy and chaotic, and how to handle that.

And I don't know.

I think in the end, we just went, is this going to be easier if we're not in same house together, Like, if we can do this on our own, separately, And ultimately that's going to be better for the kids because it's going to make happier parents and it's going to make calmer parents. And what they need is as much stability as we can possibly give them. And we realized that it's going to make for a much more stable vibe at home if we can do it separately.

One of the songs on your album is called Blue Velvet Dress, and it's about you performing on New Year's Eve and it's kind of that tension between how things look on the outside and what was going on behind the scenes. Can you tell us the story of what was happening that night when you're performing?

Yeah, so him and I had broken up that day, and I was set to perform at the ABC New Year's Eve broadcast in twenty twenty one. I'd also been sick and kind of isolating in a hotel room for the past two days, so it was really intense. You know, these were COVID days. I remember thinking, I have to get up in front of millions of people on live television and sing and put on a brave face.

And I didn't know how I was going to do it. I'd been crying all day.

And I put on my blue velvet dress and I got up there and I did it, and I smiled and I did my best acting job ever.

And I don't know. It was bizarre, because in a way, it was actually.

A really good excuse to forget about what had been happening, because I had no choice. I was like, you're in performance mode now, don't think about it. So I didn't for those ten minutes that I was on stage.

And then when I.

Got off, the fireworks started over the Sydney huber Ridge and the girls in my band and I just all held each other and looked up at the fireworks and cried, or I cried, and they held me, and it was kind of an amazing feeling because I was so miserable. But I was also watching these fireworks, going it's a new year, it's a new year, and it's a new chapter, and my life will never be the same again. And it was terrifying and a little bit exhilarating at the

I think that is such a powerful example of how you never know what someone's going through, Like you would have anybody in the audience, anybody watching, would have seen you performing and thought that someone who has it all together, because you're brilliant every time you perform, and the dress is beautiful, and they would have just thought that everything was completely fine and not had any idea of that

Yeah, I think I don't know if it's opened the door for happiness. I think my happiness and sense of mental well being is always going to be a process, and I'm always going to be someone that's hyper sensitive to the world and everything going on around me. But that's something I've come to accept and I've come to realize that it's probably why I'm good at writing songs, because I just I take everything in and I feel things very very strongly. But I feel like I'm in

Do you think it is happiness or do you think it's something else? Like do you think that maybe it's not happiness you're pursuing, it's like clarity or meaning, or like something bigger than happiness.

I think, more than anything, if I'm really honest with myself, I think that I want to be known. I want to be really known and understood because I think that everybody is such a complex person and you only show people little tidbits here and there, and to be really known and to be loved for exactly who you are, I think that that's what I want more than anything, and I have that with my friends and my family. So I think intimacy and connection is what I cherish the most.

So if I have that.

As well as a sense of meaning and purpose, as long as I'm doing what I feel like I was meant to do and what I'm good at, and it's helping people in any sort of way. I feel like that's a really, really satisfying feeling to know that I'm doing I'm doing the thing that I was meant to do.

I don't know about happiness. I do like being happy.

It happens ocasion, but I think, yeah, a sense of purpose and meaning and connection is probably more.

Important to me.

More of my conversation with Missy Higgins after this short break. Speaking of meaning and connection, you have a song called Song for Sammy that my sister and I have shared with each other, and we say that it makes us vomit with emotion. It is the best representation of how it feels to be a parent. It's just it's so beautiful and also sad, and also the idea of the nightmare. What do your kids bring to you?

My kids definitely bring to me a sense of purpose and meaning, probably more than anything else. But I don't want to rely on them as my soul as the sole giver of meaning in my life or the things that are going to make me feel.

Appreciated or loved. They definitely make me feel loved.

But I think it can be tough being a parent, and particularly a single parent, because you know, there's a lot of demands and bad moods that you have to cop the brunt of, and a lot of my self narrative is going, don't take it personally, Missy. They're dispending, they're dispanding, they don't really hate you, and you're not really ruining their life. So it's like you really do need to get gratification outside of your parenting.

I think that that's very healthy.

But I know that I am I'm their rock, and that gives me a sense of purpose. The fact that I'm consisting distantly there for them. I'm consistently loving and supporting of them, or at least I try to be. I think that that gives me a sense of meaning, probably more than anything else. I don't know, maybe probably equal to music, though, to be honest, at this point in my life, I really get so much gratification out of what I do.

I think because I've been through.

That whole existential crisis in my twenties about whether what I do has any meaning or makes any difference.

I've been through that.

I feel like I'm back to music now with a renewed sense of gratitude, and I know that what I do makes.

An impact, even if it's small, it does make an impact. And that's enough.

That's enough for me, and that's more than you can really ask for in life. So yeah, music and parenting, I think are the things that give me the most sense of fulfillment.

Has been a mum changed the way you look at the world.

Oh yeah, I mean, how could it not.

It changes your entire being, although I think that it really changes when they get older. I think I was very consumed with being a parent for the first I don't know, maybe six years or so, maybe longer, and just now I'm getting to the point where I'm like, I can see myself again when I look in the mirror, Like I don't just see a mother of my kids, I see myself. Maybe it's because i'm single again too.

I'm like, I'm on the mine.

But I'm also really remembering who I was before I was a parent, And that's kind of a relief, because I mean, I think that this is probably what needs to happen. You do need to be so consumed by your kids in the early years because they need you so badly. But once they start getting a little bit more independent, you start having to loosen your grip on them again, which is healthy and I imagine keeps happening.

Until leave home more and more.

But I feel like it's loosened up a little bit enough now that I'm like, Okay, so what do I like to do again, and what do I want to do with my free time?

And who am I?

And you know, starting to look at myself again as an individual person rather than constantly tethered to my two little offspring.

When you think about being an old woman, I'm looking back at your life, what do you think it will be that will have made you happy?

Like?

What gives you the perspective when you're kind of really in the grind of day to day life and you take second to zoom out, what do you think it will be that gave you a happy life?

I mean, it's a cliche, but family and friends. It's always those moments of connection and communion with people that I love that really know me. I guess because over my life there's been a lot of people that have come and gone, but my friends who know me for who I am behind the scenes, not as Missy Higgins. But just you know, Missy, they're really dear to me, and they're really important to me, And you know, I think I'll remember specific occasions where we've all gone away

What would you say is your biggest challenge to happiness at the moment.

Oh, that's a good question.

I mean, I am my own worst enemy when it comes to self criticism.

I think I overthink everything.

What do you tend to beat yourself up about? Like, surely not music.

I know I'm very very proud of myself at the moment for this new album. I think it's the best thing I've ever done. But I guess in general, I tend to just talk back to myself and go, you need to do more, you need to be better, you need to be this or that I have. I'm possibly high standards for myself, so I'm always self critical. I think that that's part of the reason why I've got where I am, because I do hold myself to a

Me, And I'm like, I really really love the.

Fact that you want to be there for me, but I process things in a different way to you, Like I honestly don't want to talk it out, and I don't think it would be good for me because it drains me and I really just need to spend time by myself, be with my kids. I'll process this in my own time. I'm not just saying that I want to be alone. I really actually I do want to be alone and I need to be so I think that that can be a little bit hard and sometimes

Right now, you've got this album. You've been through really challenging a few years, where you've talked about the fact that you didn't think this was the direction that your life was going to go in. But right now, are you happy?

Yeah?

I'm very happy at the moment. Yeah, I can honestly say that. I mean I wasn't at the beginning of this tour. During rehearsals, I was bulling my eyes out while playing these songs, going I don't know how I'm going to get through this, but I think the cathartism of playing these songs every night and talking to the audience about what I've been going through and probably just time, you know, like heartbreak takes time. I feel like I'm in a really good place right now where I don't

Got a better off go away. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it, no worries.

Thanks for having me.

Something that has always struck me about Missy Higgins is that there's an integrity and a depth there where she seems to be able to see through superficial distractions. She knows what's important and what isn't and I really want that for myself. For more from Missy, go and listen to her brand new album, The Second Act, and you can find dates for her final encore shows on her website.