Ben Lee has divided his viewers’s opinion excess of most musicians, at the least in his residence nation of Australia.
Over his 30-year profession, he has by no means been one to be “appreciated” by the general public, explaining in an interview final yr, “It is like a dance, you understand?… As a result of my concern was by no means actually with how the mainstream perceived me, it was with having the liberty to do no matter I needed to do, make the initiatives I needed to make. So the place there’s love, I might return love, however I by no means courted it.”
Lee started his profession at age 14 along with his Sydney-based band Noise Addict, which started with a four-track demo recorded in Lee’s bed room. Becoming a member of him have been his schoolmates from Moriah School – Doron Kalinko on bass guitar and Josh Zoldan on drums, whereas he was on vocals and guitar.
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The band’s first gig was at a library ebook sale that occurred to be attended by famend music entrepreneur Steve Pavlovic, who instantly signed them to his label, Fellaheen Information.
The teenage band have been quickly recognised by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Beastie Boys’ Mike D, who helped launch their songs within the US, capturing the boys to worldwide fame earlier than that they had even completed highschool.
Noise Addict’s destiny was quick, with the band solely releasing a couple of songs and albums, together with I Want I Was Him (1993), The Frail Woman (1995), and Meet the Actual You (1995), after which they grew to become inactive.
Lee introduced the band again collectively as soon as in 2009 with new members Lou Barlow and Lara Meyerratken, for a second album, It Was By no means In regards to the Viewers, however the band has not been lively since.
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Lee started his solo profession at age 16 whereas he was nonetheless a member of Noise Addict, starting to provide music that may discover its method into a lot of American movies and TV reveals, comparable to Burn to Shine, which performed over the tip credit of the movie Greatest Males and Easy methods to Survive a Damaged Coronary heart featured on the There’s One thing About Mary soundtrack.
His songs have additionally featured in movies Simply Associates and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, in addition to tv collection, Gray’s Anatomy, Hidden Palms and Scrubs.
In the meantime, again at residence, Lee was topping the ARIA charts with hits like Cigarettes Will Kill You (1998) from his album Respiration Tornados, which he declared to be “the best Australian album of all time”.
His claims induced Powderfinger’s Bernard Fanning to name him “a precocious little c—“, phrases that Lee later wore proudly emblazoned on a T-shirt.
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He additionally launched favourites like Catch My Illness (2005), his 2007 album Ripe, which featured US musicians Benji Madden and Mandy Moore, and even an experimental studio album entitled Ayahuasca: Welcome to the Work, based mostly on his private expertise with the psychoactive South American drug often called ayahuasca.
His stint within the US additionally landed him in a love affair with actress Claire Danes, who he dated for a number of years earlier than they break up in 2003.
Quickly after, he met his spouse, Ione Skye, getting engaged and married in 2008 in a Hindu marriage ceremony ceremony in India, regardless of neither of them being Hindu.
Lee cited his extended hyperlink to guru Sakthi Narayani Amma – whom he would journey to India to get steering from for a few years – as the rationale why he and Skye selected the placement for the marriage.
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This was not his solely expertise with completely different types of spirituality, additionally drawing ire from the general public for releasing an album titled Ben Lee Sings Songs About Islam for the Complete Household, in 2017.
“One of many cool issues I took with me by means of all of my non secular exploration is that should you do not willingly welcome chaos or thriller into your life, it is going to discover its method in by itself,” he informed Broadsheet
Throughout the pandemic, he moved again to Sydney with Skye, their daughter Goldie (born 2009) and his step-daughter Kate, when he discovered himself a mainstay of the Australian media and public.
He competed on The Masked Singer, debated with Kyle Sandilands and Man Sebastian over vaccine mandates, and has even began a brand new label with spouse Skye titled Weirder Collectively, launching a podcast of the identical identify.
His newest main work is his newest album, This One’s for the Outdated Headz, launched in September.
His newest ventures have him reflecting, “It took 30 years for folks to type of perceive what my perspective is, you understand, and it simply kind of clicked.”
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