“There’s a deeper hope behind my songs, something that not everybody gets to see unless I share it.” HELEN MUSA talks to singer Jessica Mauboy about her autobiographical new show, The Story of Me.

Jessica Mauboy has been very busy. 

She’s been in Hobart working on one project, then spending time at Universal Studios in Hollywood writing her next record.

And she’s been preparing for a new concert, The Story of Me: A Musical Journey Through My Career, coming to the Canberra Theatre in early October.

“This show is going to be quite different from what I usually do,” she tells me. 

“Of course it’s going to have beautiful music, but I’m going to create a space for all kinds of people. I’m starting with my story, but I hope it will mirror their experiences. I’m going into depth in the story of my life.”

And what a life.

Brought up in multicultural Darwin, her mother, Therese, is a First Nations woman of the Kuku Yalanji people, and her West Timorese father, Ferdy, is a leading figure in the Karama Indonesian Uniting Church in Darwin, where she started singing. 

Mauboy is now one of Australia’s most successful female artists, with six top-10 albums, including two number-one releases, and 16 top-20 singles. She has won two ARIA Awards, toured with Beyoncé and Chris Brown, performed for Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres and Barack Obama, represented Australia at Eurovision in 2018 and, from 2021 to 2023, served as a coach on The Voice Australia. In 2025 she was inducted into the National Indigenous Music Awards Hall of Fame.

But behind the achievements, she says, there is a profounder story.

“There’s a deeper hope behind my songs, something that not everybody gets to see unless I share it,” she says.

“I’ll be talking about taking control in my life, about the changes that are needed for that and the courage.”

The concert will see her reflecting on her life and struggles through intimate arrangements featuring piano and strings.

One of the emotional high points will be a personal favourite, Brooks & Dunn’s Neon Moon; another, Abba’s Thank You For The Music, will be sung as a tribute to her late music mentor, choir teacher Judy Weepers from Wulagi Primary School in Darwin.

“She was a proper lady, who dressed stylishly,” Mauboy recalls.

“Sing up and out, Jessica,” Weepers would tell her.

And she did.

Although often characterised as an R&B singer, Mauboy’s musical roots lie elsewhere. Like so many singers, she started in church, yet it was country music, beloved by the older generation on her mum’s side as an expression of hardship and resilience, that first captured her imagination.

“I’ll tell the audience about my first recording with Warren H Williams when I was about 11 years old ,” she says. “He understood that songs were storytelling. I got to sing Let It Rain. It never came out, but it was my first experience of hearing my own voice.”

“There’s such a difference between singing country music and when you get into those powerful international music machines,” she says, looking back to that very experience of the singing sisters in The Sapphires, for her role in which she won an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award.

“In my show I get to remix a lot of soul music, jazz and country. It’s a wonderful feeling to translate it.”

The exercise of building a show around her own life, remarkable given she is still only 37, has prompted her to think about legacy, empowerment and what really matters.

Still a person of faith who grew up in the Uniting Church, she says those values remain central.

“It taught me the value of being a kind person. That gave me a lot of strength and hope, small-town dreaming and believing.

“It makes me so proud to have that belief and I personally believe we human beings can be good.”

Away from music, Mauboy has also shown herself to be a resourceful businesswoman. Alongside launching her own record label, Jamally, she has recently launched a SPF 50+ hydrating sun-care brand called Desert Road.

She says the idea grew from frustration with misconceptions about darker skin and from learning about traditional remedies used by older generations.

“As I’ve got older, although in my industry I get to wear a lot of make-up, I want to wear less,” she says. “I want to have that conversation about how to make yourself feel beautiful, to feel special, and to educate people about it.”

Jessica Mauboy: The Story of Me, Canberra Theatre, October 3.

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