Alex the Astronaut’s songs have always skirted the line between charming and mawkish. They brim with references to pop culture and the minutiae of existence, painting – either in painstaking or painful detail – diaristic vignettes of falling in and out of love, growing older (though not necessarily wiser), and zipping back and forth between continents.
The best and best-known example is her 2017 track Not Worth Hiding. In it, the Australian singer-songwriter – born and now based in Sydney, after stints in London and New York – recounts her adolescent experience of queerness, sizing up boys and trying on dresses while secretly harbouring feelings for girls. At any other point in time, the single could’ve chugged along slowly with its folksy strums and unadorned vocals, telling a sweet – though perhaps unremarkable – story of self-discovery. But in the midst of a torturous federal referendum, it went gangbusters, becoming a torch song for marriage equality.
