Missy’s Second Act scores first place

Missy Higgins’ first full-length album in six years, The Second Act, roars onto the chart at #1.

It’s 20 years since her first album, The Sound Of White, topped the chart where it stayed for seven non-consecutive weeks. Her next two albums – On A Clear Night in 2007 and The Ol’ Razzle Dazzle in 2012 – also reached #1. She then scored a trio of #3 peaking albums with Oz in 2014, Solastalgia in 2018 and Total Control in 2022. Her compilation album The Special Ones reached #7 in 2018. 

Missy has won nine ARIA Awards, including Album of the Year in 2005 for The Sound Of White, and will be inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame during the 2024 ARIA Awards on 20 November. 

On her triumph, Missy said: “I could not be happier or more grateful. This album was just so important to me and I just want to say a massive thank you to all the fans. I’m so touched. I wanted this #1 more than any other album I think. It’s 20 years since The Sound of White went #1 so I feel like the luckiest person alive to still be doing what I do to this day. Thank you guys to much. This means the world to me.”

ARIA CEO, Annabelle Herd, said: “Enormous congratulations to Missy and her team for a phenomenal debut for The Second Act. Today she becomes only the seventh Australian artist in history to have #1 albums in at least three consecutive decades. We cannot wait to induct her into the ARIA Hall Of Fame in November and celebrate a huge year – and career – for this storied Australian artist.” 

English producer Fred Again.. is new at #3 with Ten Days. He reached #8 in 2022 with Actual Life 3 and #4 in June this year with USB. 

Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour’s fifth solo album Luck and Strange debuts at #6. It’s his third album to chart here: On An Island got to #23 in 2006 and Rattle That Lock peaked at #2 in 2015.

As a member of Pink Floyd, he has racked up 20 top 50 albums, hitting the summit with Wish You Were Here in 1975, The Wall in 1979, The Division Bell in 1994 and Pulse in 1995 (their biggest selling album, The Dark Side Of The Moon, stopped at #2 here in 1973). 

The 10th anniversary edition of Vance Joy’s debut album Dream Your Life Away lands at #41. The album spent one week at #1 in September 2024. Vance went to #1 in 2018 with Nation Of Two and #3 in 2022 with In Our Own Sweet Time and has collected four ARIA Awards. His 2013 breakout hit Riptide has sold more than six million units worldwide and is at #21 on the ARIA Singles Chart this week. 

On the Singles Chart, it’s three weeks at #1 for Sabrina Carpenter’s Taste, making it the longest-running chart topper of her three #1 hits this year. 

Linkin Park return to the singles chart with The Emptiness Machine, new at #27. It’s the first release from Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson, Phoenix and Joe Hahn and new members Emily Armstrong as co-vocalist and Colin Brittain as drummer, and the group’s first new material without late vocalist Chester Bennington.