Miiesha was the latest artist to appear on triple j’s Like A Version, dropping a stunning cover of a Beyoncé song.
The Woorabinda singer-songwriter performed ‘Freedom’, taken from Beyoncé’s 2016 album Lemonade. Miiesha delivered the Beyoncé’s verses, with Bundjalung rapper JK-47 taking over for Kendrick Lamar’s lines. At one point, he added his own personal element, rapping, “We need freedom from all the trauma your laws have brought us”.
After her performance, Miiesha discussed how the line “I’ma wade, I’ma wave through the waters / Tell the tide, ‘Don’t move” particularly resonated with her for acting as a call to keep going. “I felt like that was a freedom song for me, as like a keep fighting song, you know? Not just for myself, but for my people and my ancestors,” she said.
Elsewhere in her Like A Version, Miiesha performed an original song, ‘Still Dream’, released earlier this year (see below).
Miiesha released the EP Mirrors earlier this month, the follow-up to 2021’s Smoke EP. The two EPs were paired together, with the singer explaining that they explore “broken family dynamics, searching for love and healing from two perspectives”, with the first centred around “survival” and the second on “looking back and understanding.”
She’s released one full studio album to date, 2020’s Nyaaringu, which was named as Tone Deaf‘s Album of the Week. “Miiesha shares her story in the way only she can, with a dazzling blend of smooth soulful vocals serving as a statement of self-belief,” we wrote at the time.
“Nyaaringu is a collection of stories that I wanted to tell,” Miiesha explained about the album. “For me it represents my journey and where I’m at now coming from Woorabinda. The interludes in the collection are recordings of my grandmother speaking. For me she was and always will stay with me as the strongest voice in my life so I felt she had to be a part of this with me.”
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JK-47, meanwhile, released his debut album, Made For This, last year. He’s yet to release any follow-up new music this year.