Sahara Beck

Sahara Beck has been in it for the long haul since she was a teenager.

Born in Darwin and raised on the Sunshine Coast, she was writing originals before high school was over and released her debut album Volume One at just fourteen, then moved to Brisbane on her own to finish school and plug into the city’s live scene.

Across albums Panacea and All Attention On Your Emotions, plus a run of EPs from You Could Be Happy and Bloomthrough to Queen of Hearts and And Her Kryptonite, you can hear that shift from folk and blues-leaning songwriter to a sharper, more colourful alt-pop writer who still thinks like a band kid.

The industry has been paying attention for a while. Beck has picked up multiple Queensland Music Awards, from her early school-age win for “You Could Be Happy” to gongs for “Mother Mother”, “Here We Go Again”, “Nothing Wrong With That” and “Compromise”. She also landed third place in the Vanda & Young Global Songwriting Competition, and has taken home honours like the Carol Lloyd Award and the Grant McLennan Fellowship, which are usually reserved for writers people expect to go the distance.

Along the way she has opened for artists like Xavier Rudd, The Cat Empire and Katie Noonan, sung with an orchestra for a Queensland tourism campaign, and quietly built a catalogue that moves between intimate storytelling and big, hook-driven choruses.

Recent work, including singles “Kryptonite”, “Nothing Wrong With That”, “Like You” and “Compromise”, shows a writer leaning into groove and texture without losing the directness that was there on the early acoustic releases. You can also hear her songs travelling further, through collaborations with names like Purple Disco Machine, Mell Hall and Toby Romeo, which pull her writing into club territory without sanding off the personality.

Sahara Beck sits in that lane of Australian artists who have grown up alongside their audience. The sound has moved from folk rooms to bigger, more polished productions, but the perspective is still hers, built from years of shows, experiments, and songs that started out as sketches in small rooms before ending up on festival stages and international playlists.