Ben Lee has divided his audience’s opinion far more than most musicians, at least in his home country of Australia.
Over his 30-year career, he has never been one to be “liked” by the public, explaining in an interview last year, “It’s like a dance, you know?… Because my concern was never really with how the mainstream perceived me, it was with having the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do, make the projects I wanted to make. So where there’s love, I would return love, but I never courted it.”
Lee began his career at age 14 with his Sydney-based band Noise Addict, which began with a four-track demo recorded in Lee’s bedroom. Joining him were his schoolmates from Moriah College – Doron Kalinko on bass guitar and Josh Zoldan on drums, while he was on vocals and guitar.
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The band’s first gig was at a library book sale that happened to be attended by renowned music entrepreneur Steve Pavlovic, who immediately signed them to his label, Fellaheen Records.
The teenage band were soon recognised by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Beastie Boys’ Mike D, who helped release their songs in the US, shooting the boys to international fame before they had even finished high school.
Noise Addict’s fate was short, with the band only releasing a few songs and albums, including I Wish I Was Him (1993), The Frail Girl (1995), and Meet the Real You (1995), after which they became inactive.
Lee brought the band back together once in 2009 with new members Lou Barlow and Lara Meyerratken, for a second album, It Was Never About the Audience, but the band has not been active since.
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Lee began his solo career at age 16 while he was still a member of Noise Addict, beginning to produce music that would find its way into a number of American films and TV shows, such as Burn to Shine, which played over the end credits of the film Best Men and How to Survive a Broken Heart featured on the There’s Something About Mary soundtrack.
His songs have also featured in films Just Friends and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, as well as television series, Grey’s Anatomy, Hidden Palms and Scrubs.
Meanwhile, back at home, Lee was topping the ARIA charts with hits like Cigarettes Will Kill You (1998) from his album Breathing Tornados, which he declared to be “the greatest Australian album of all time”.
His claims caused Powderfinger’s Bernard Fanning to call him “a precocious little c—“, words that Lee later wore proudly emblazoned on a T-shirt.
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He also released favourites like Catch My Disease (2005), his 2007 album Ripe, which featured US musicians Benji Madden and Mandy Moore, and even an experimental studio album entitled Ayahuasca: Welcome to the Work, based on his personal experience with the psychoactive South American drug known as ayahuasca.
His stint in the US also landed him in a love affair with actress Claire Danes, who he dated for several years before they split in 2003.
Soon after, he met his wife, Ione Skye, getting engaged and married in 2008 in a Hindu wedding ceremony in India, despite neither of them being Hindu.
Lee cited his prolonged link to guru Sakthi Narayani Amma – whom he would travel to India to get guidance from for many years – as the reason why he and Skye chose the location for the wedding.
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This was not his only experience with different forms of spirituality, also drawing ire from the public for releasing an album titled Ben Lee Sings Songs About Islam for the Whole Family, in 2017.
“One of the cool things I took with me through all of my spiritual exploration is that if you don’t willingly welcome chaos or mystery into your life, it will find its way in on its own,” he told Broadsheet
During the pandemic, he moved back to Sydney with Skye, their daughter Goldie (born 2009) and his step-daughter Kate, when he found himself a mainstay of the Australian media and public.
He competed on The Masked Singer, debated with Kyle Sandilands and Guy Sebastian over vaccine mandates, and has even started a new label with wife Skye titled Weirder Together, launching a podcast of the same name.
His latest major work is his latest album, This One’s for the Old Headz, released in September.
His latest ventures have him reflecting, “It took 30 years for people to kind of understand what my attitude is, you know, and it just sort of clicked.”
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