Brooke Fraser

Although I've been listening and loving her music ever since I heard her song "Lifeline" I think 5 years ago, I've always thought she was already way too known to post on this blog. But when I started listening to her last album "Flags" a few weeks ago I realised that no matter how many of my readers already listen to her music she deserves that extra attention, especially after releasing an album as great as "Flags". New Zealand born Brooke Fraser has a life-long history steeped in music. Her mom discovered her plinking out “Do-Re-Mi” from The Sound of Music on the piano when she was two, and made sure her daughter had access to instruments. At seven, she began piano lessons. At 12, she began writing songs after a music teacher asked her class to compose an original tune about Christmas. “I discovered that I felt at home in the process of creating words and melodies,” she recalls. “And I’ve been writing ever since.” In 2002, when she was 18, Fraser signed with Sony Music and moved to Auckland where she played regularly at local venues while she wrote the songs that would appear on her debut album, What To Do With Daylight. That album, released in New Zealand in 2003. In 2005, Brooke took a trip to Rwanda, 11 years after a genocide that claimed the lives of nearly one million people. During the journey, she met and befriended a number of Rwandans who entrusted their stories to her, including an orphan named Albertine, the namesake of her second album, which was released in the U.S. in May 2008. Now she’s starting anew with Flags, the title inspired by her writing trips into the more remote parts of the U.S. “Our lives are like flags – flying for a short while, a stake in the ground, marking our territory,’” she says. “We fly our colors – our history, belief system, culture, identity – but eventually our flag will wear out and return to the ground and someone else’s flag will replace our own. I feel like that theme weaves its way through my new songs, like ‘Ice On Her Lashes’, ‘Crows and Locusts’ and of course ‘Flags’. The characters in these songs were flags, and now we’ve come to plant our flags in the ground where they once were.” Don't miss out!

@ Sydney, Australia

♫ Folk, Pop

♥ Betty (mp3)

♥ Who Are We Fooling? (mp3)

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▸ Official Website