For some artists, a hit single can be a monkey on their back – especially if it’s a cover of another artist’s song. This is not the case for Christine Anu, who will almost certainly always be best known for her version of My Island Home, the 1987 Warumpi Band classic originally written for the group’s late singer, a Yolŋu man from Elcho Island.
The resonance isn’t lost on Anu, a Torres Strait Islander by descent. “What a privilege and honour it was,” she says. “This song was loved very much and very deeply by a whole audience before it even became a song that I knew about.”
