Megan Alexanda Washington (born 7 January 1986) is an Australian musician, songwriter and voice actor. She previously released music mononymously as Washington, as well as Megan Washington, before assuming her current moniker Meg Washington in 2022. Originally performing jazz music, her style shifted to indie pop and alternative rock. She has released five studio albums, I Believe You Liar (July 2010), There There (September 2014), Batflowers (August 2020), Hot Fuss (2022) and GEM (2025). Both I Believe You Liar and There There reached the top 5 on the ARIA Albums Chart and Batflowers peaked in the top 25. Outside of music, she has become a screenwriter and film producer. She also voices primary school teacher Calypso in the animated series Bluey.
Her music was described on I-D Vice as "sexy synth-laden pop" and in 2019 The Sydney Morning Heralds Anna Rose said of her intimate tour run, that "Washington's impressive command of her relatively small stage gave proof her music can work anywhere, anyway, any time". She has won three ARIA Music Awards with two in 2010 for I Believe You Liar, Best Female Artist and Breakthrough Artist – Release. The other win was Best Cover Art for Batflowers in 2020.
Early life and education
Megan Alexanda Washington Note: For additional work user may have to select 'Search again' and then 'Enter a title:' &/or 'Performer:' was born on 7 January 1986 in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea to Australian parents. She grew up with her father, Rick Washington, a part-time DJ for "weddings, parties and balls"; her mother, Karen Amos, and an older sister named Sarah. Washington started primary school in Port Moresby and, in 1996, the family moved to Brisbane, where she attended a private all-girls school Moreton Bay College, from which she was expelled, and completed her final two years of secondary education at Sheldon College.
Washington developed a stutter just before primary school and explained that "The way that I speak is idiosyncratic because it's based on 20 years of 'loopholing', of avoiding words that trip me up. The only thing I still (she pauses briefly) have trouble with is sustained syllables – like s's and ts and fs together". Later she attended the Australian School of the Arts where she continued her interest in music. She studied for a Bachelor of Music degree at the Queensland University of Technology and then jazz voice at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music.
Career
2006–2009: Early career and EPs
Washington, with jazz instrumentalist Sean Foran, recorded her six-track debut extended play, Nightlight, in April 2006 for the Newmarket Music record label. She supplied lead vocals, with Foran on piano, John Parker on drums, Chris Pickering on guitar and Sam Vincent on double bass; Pickering recorded and mixed the tracks. It was re-released in June 2009 and appeared on the ARIA Albums Chart at No. 53 in October that year. ARIA chart positions (1–50): Nightlight (2006) and How to Tame Lions (2009): Rich Kids (2010): "Sunday Best" (2010): "Limitless": The EP won the 2008 Australian Jazz Bell Award for 'Best Australian Jazz Vocal Album'.
She followed with a second EP, Bennetts Lane, a collaboration with pianist Paul Grabowsky, which appeared in 2007. She acknowledged Grabowsky's assistance, "[I wrote] the lyrics while he wrote the music. He treated me as an equal – it was amazing". In January that year Washington had relocated to Melbourne and worked in a bagel shop and recalled that "It was not a good or glamorous time. And the irony is, across from the shop counter there was a huge plasma TV playing Australian film clips – so I'd see all my friend's clips all day and I'd be going, 'Would you like more cream cheese on your f---ing bagel?'"
Washington's music style moved from jazz when she backed a blues and roots musician, Old Man River, as keyboardist and harmony vocalist from 2006, including touring internationally in support of his debut album, Good Morning (March 2007). She also worked as keyboardist and backing vocalist for indie pop artist Ben Lee. In early 2008 she sang an acoustic cover version of Ross Wilson's "Bed of Nails" (1989), which was used as the theme song for three seasons of the ABC1 TV drama Bed of Roses (2008, 2010–2011). After Washington's commercial success, in early 2011 the track was released as a single by Ruby Entertainment.
In late 2008, Washington launched her mononymous band, Washington, with backing members John Castle on guitars, drums and bass guitar, Lance Ferguson (the Bamboos), Ross Irwin on vocals, Ryan Monro (the Cat Empire, Jackson Jackson) on bass guitar and Des White. The band released her third EP, the four-track effort Clementine, in January the following year. In November they were announced as Triple J's Unearthed winners and performed at the Melbourne leg of the Big Day Out.
Washington followed with a five-track fourth EP, How to Tame Lions, in September 2009; its lead track "Cement" and title track, received high rotation on youth radio Triple J. She provided vocals, piano, glockenspiel, synthesiser and guitar and was joined by Castle on guitar, bass guitar, drums, loops, tambo and autoharp. Castle engineered and mixed the work and co-produced it with Washington. Following appearances on Spicks and Specks in October and November that year, Washington attracted the attention of a wider audience. She observed that "You might think that most people get their information from the charts or something like that but I had so much great feedback after being on those shows". The EP reached the ARIA Charts top 100.
In December 2009, Washington won the inaugural Vanda & Young Global Songwriting Competition for the track "How to Tame Lions"; it is sponsored by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS). In that month she backed Sia on guitar at the Palace Theatre and a few days later performed a duet with Keith Urban during his Rod Laver Arena concert in Melbourne. "Cement" was listed on the Triple J Hottest 100, 2009.
2010–2012: I Believe You Liar to Insomnia
On 30 July 2010, Washington released her debut album, I Believe You Liar, on Universal Music Australia, which peaked at number three on the ARIA Albums Chart and, by the end of 2011, received platinum certification by ARIA for shipment of 70,000 copies. Three of its singles, "Rich Kids" (May 2010, also title track of an EP), "Sunday Best" (August) and "The Hardest Part" (October), were described by Australian musicologist, Ian McFarlane, "Although not chart hits, [they] were insistent and infectious, and when combined with her flamboyant, quirky stage presentation, heralded a major performer". All three tracks were listed on the Triple J Hottest 100, 2010.
In October 2010, Washington performed live during YouTube Play, curated in partnership by YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum.Megan Washington: excerpt from YouTube Play at the Guggenheim At the ARIA Music Awards of 2010 she won the Best Female Artist and Breakthrough Artist – Release for I Believe You Liar.Winners of the 2010 Aria Awards Announced Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). Retrieved 24 November 2010. She received further nominations for Album of the Year, Best Adult Alternative Album and Engineer of the Year (John Castle) for I Believe You Liar and the Single of the Year award for "How to Tame Lions".2010 ARIA Nominations Announced Take40 Australia (mcm entertainment). Retrieved 2010-09-29.
Washington released an eight-track EP, Insomnia, on Mercury in October 2011, which peaked at No. 24 on the ARIA Albums Chart. Emma Green of Beat Magazine found it, "marks a change of pace from upbeat pop-oriented tracks to slow and enchanting melodies that could be pulled from the soundtrack to her deepest, darkest dreams… If the singer's insomnia did inspire this album then she should stay on the caffeine, because whatever she's doing is definitely working". VSounds reviewer, Corey Tonkin, noticed, "[it] includes some of [her] most accomplished songs yet. From 'Skeleton Key' onwards, her songs are hauntingly beautiful, with an atmosphere that you didn't quite get from I Believe You, Liar… Accompanied with her lyrics about difficult personal experiences, it creates this raw emotion which is quite powerful".
In January of the following year, she presented the album at the Sydney Opera House; Tanya Ali of The AU Review observed, "Seeing [her] perform these songs made you understand how emotionally draining they could be to sing. The heart and soul with which [she] told her stories melodically was astounding and heartbreaking to watch". Washington was a mentor for the inaugural season of Australia's version of TV talent show, The Voice, for members of Keith Urban's team. The show aired from April to June in 2012.
2013–2015: There There During January 2013 Washington and fellow musician, Tim Rogers (of You Am I), had the lead roles in a musical-thriller film, The Boy Castaways. The shooting schedule was for three weeks and it premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in October of that year.
Following commitments of early 2013 Washington travelled to London from June of that year to work with Samuel Dixon, an Adelaide-born English-based musician and producer, to record her second album, There There (September 2014).Megan Washington – 'There There' on Facebook The two met when she was touring in support of Sia and Dixon was in that artist's backing band. Washington wanted to incorporate a "late-60s, early-70s, gold lame Shirley Bassey sound with trumpets and James Bond-y melodies" for her album. Writing was completed in late 2012. She felt it was recorded in a "spirit of honesty".
Washington provided a duet, "Ghost", with Kate Miller-Heidke, on that artist's fourth studio album, O Vertigo! (March 2014). She had performed with Miller-Heidke at the Darwin Festival in 2012. Washington delivered a talk at the TEDxSydney event in May of that year: she explained how her stuttering hampers communication during conversation or speeches, but disappears when she sings. At the event she performed a new track, "To or not Let Go".
Upon release of There There, she described how the bold truthfulness that defined that talk was transferred across to the writing process for the album. Also in May 2014, she announced her involvement in an art book by Iranian-New Zealand artist, Nabil Sabio Azadi, For You the Maker. On Twitter she detailed how other contributors, Rick Owens and Limi Yamamoto, would also appear. Her second full-length album, was released through Universal Music, under her full name, which peaked at number five.
Australian Rolling Stones reviewer, Darren Levin, rated it at four out-of five stars and explained, "'Do you want it back?' she asks the man she was supposed to marry, before devoting an entire verse to the awkward practicalities of an engagement gone sour. This man is not metaphorical, and neither is the marriage. Each song, says Washington, is connected to a real-life event – from the frank confession of infidelity on the raw ballad 'Begin Again' to 'Get Happy', where she falls in love over Eighties New Wave textures… On [this album], she's both fearless and direct".
It provided singles, "Who Are You" (February 2014), "Limitless" (May) and "My Heart Is a Wheel" (September); a music video was created for the latter. She explained that "My Heart Is a Wheel" was inspired by Kanye West's "Runaway". Co-producer Dixon told the media that the album is her, "saying … 'This happened and it's my fault.' She's putting her hand up and saying 'I stuffed up'" — he also praised the songwriter's courage. The singer-musician performed free "pop-up" shows in state capitals, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, in support of There There during the week of release. A national tour, in February 2015, followed.
2016–2019: Singles and touring