With a gentle guitar introduction, singer Mike Waters delivers a powerful message in a three minute, immensely listenable tune – reminiscent of Brit Ed Sheeran .
I’m Doing Fine, released this week, deals with mental health and the importance of reaching out to friends and family.
“Keep your head, keep your head up, be strong. Don’t get emotional. Where were you when your father told you. Boys don’t cry, don’t you know?” The Adelaide-born singer sings in this timely song full of raw lyricism and emotional depth.
The with a band now behind him, singer songwriter then leads into a heart breaking chorus “I let the waves crash down. And keep it all inside. Don’t try to work me out. I’ve done it all my life.”
Before he eventually comes full circle and in the final chorus we hear “I’m not doing fine” the full band disappears again and we are back to the lone guitar.
It’s catchy but heart breaking and heartfelt and it’s a message he obviously wants to bring to a wider audience.
“It came from me telling my own story of when I was hit by a really intense bout of deep, dark depression, that I’ve never experienced before. I learned that the thing I needed to do to get through that was to talk to people,” he explained.
“ This song is about people who say to their friends that they are fine but on the inside they are falling apart.”
A self-confessed ‘late bloomer’, Waters didn’t start writing songs until he was 26, never really expressing an interest in music growing up. It wasn’t until he hit the vibrant pub scene in inner-Melbourne that he decided “I can do that.”
Two years later he moved to LA, where he gained a publishing deal and was working with some of the biggest names in music today including Louis Tomlinson and Demi Lovato, building up a fan base through Spotify where he has a million monthly listeners and more than 25 million streams from his previous independent releases.
He helped co-write Mitch James’ hit ‘Sunday Morning’ and most recently one of John Legend’s new songs ’I Move, U Move’ feat Jhene Aiko but has now returned to Australia, basing himself back in Melbourne where the tech nerd (with a background in coding) is living with his wife and his pet dog Mia.
