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Having spent fully half of his 28 years crafting some of the catchiest tunes to be heard at discriminating radio everywhere, Lee is now poised to reap the same kind of mass appeal that he’s already established in his native Australia. Lee’s headed the well-regarded teen-pop act Noise Addict when he was 14, drawing the attention of such well-respected names as Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and the Beastie Boys’ Mike D., who released Lee’s first two solo albums on their Grand Royal label.
“It was a slow and steady, but ridiculously early start,” Lee laughs. “But overall I’d say it gave me an advantage. I’ve learned what to do, and what not to do.” Lee’s first New West release, 2005’s Awake is the New Sleep, was the one to put him over the top, won him four ARIA Awards (Australia’s version of the Grammys®) and contained the worldwide smash “Catch My Disease,” as heard on everything from TV shows Grey’s Anatomy to a massive Dell computer TV ad campaign. “That song was like a fungal virus,” he says. “I wrote it at a time when I was looking very seriously at my music career and wondering if maybe I should try something else. It seemed like everyone had a cause – Bono with Africa, that sort of thing – and it became clear to me that what I could do was simply bring people joy through pop songs. I realized that people came to my shows for comfort and release, and I started to really believe that I had something to give them.
“I think this [new] record [Ripe] will connect with anyone who has a genuine love of pop music,” Lee says of his second effort for New West Records. “This isn’t about using ‘pop’ as a means to a fast buck, or in a condescending way – it’s about how things used to be, when quality pop records won out, and the best selling records were, simply, the best records.”
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