On the eve of his forthcoming album, DC Maxwell today shares the final single, ‘The Singer’, marking his Australian album tour dates this August. Tickets are on sale now ahead of The Singer’s independent release on May 22. LISTEN HERE + WATCH HERE + BUY TIX HERE + PRE-SAVE LP HERE.

Marking The Singer’s imminent release, the title track makes clear DC Maxwell’s mission on the forthcoming record with a bold objection to the romanticised ‘tortured poet’ trope. “The Singer is a song about the false but commonly held idea that art is disposable and artists deserve to die young,” DC Maxwell shares. The song starts with a police officer who has found the body of a singer buried in a rolled up rug and dug up by dogs, gratefully moaning that he is glad he doesn’t have a musicians life.

While the song starts off with this grotesque and darkly comic image, it goes onto say something profound about the way society dismisses and normalises the deaths of artists. DC continues, “I wrote ‘The Singer’ after seeing the way that the media and the non-music community reacted to the deaths of two close friends of mine who died young and had their wonderful, rich and multifaceted lives portrayed in this way. I was and remain frustrated with how common this kind of ‘death of a suffering artist’ narrative is, and wanted this song to protest against that idea.”

WATCH: ‘The Singer’ (Official Video)

Part Cops part hostage found footage, visually ‘The Singer’ combines fear and claustrophobia with farce via lip syncing to music – demonstrating the absurdity and moral intensity of being an artist in a dying world. Directed by Joseph Griffin (Lorde), the video’s hijinks ensue in the back of a van speeding down Melbourne’s Inner North, as the pop melodies of the song give way to the gritty intensity of the message behind the music.

Speaking to the video accompaniment, Maxwell explains, “The video purposefully reframes the role of a singer as a dangerous enterprise to reflect the chaos of making art in the current moment and the bravery of artists of all stripes pushing back against a rising tide of these evil times. I wanted this song to fight back against this idea and to show that being an artist in a tumultuous world is a brave and noble thing. To show that it is ridiculous to think a singer deserves to die. To prove that writing songs is a celebration of life, not a courting of death.”

Today’s announcement follows DC Maxwell’s recent intimate show “In The Round at Emerald Hall”, a stripped-back homage to 90s MTV Unplugged, which saw the singer perform with striking semi-orchestral arrangements of his new songs. The austere approach showed that his music is enough to stand on their own, and remain in step with DC’s longstanding live reputation to deliver memorable experiences no matter the format. Experience The Singer live this August – see all tour routing and ticketing details BELOW.