INTERVIEW: Deborah Conway on her new album 'Right Wing Propaganda': "We don't write songs that tell you what to think, we hopefully write songs where people have to figure it out for themselves."
Interview: Shalane Connors
Published: 25 September 2025
The 1980s was an exciting era of experimentation, revolution and reinvention in the pop music world, and in Australia it was the awakening of a music scene that could more than hold its own against its bigger, better financed international relations.
One of the most legendary artists to emerge from that scene was Deborah Conway. First coming to attention as the lead singer of four piece group Do-Ré-Mi, their 1985 debut single ‘Man Overboard’ was a major hit in Australia, peaking at number 5 on the singles charts. Without a chorus, and lyrical references to pubic hair and penis envy, it put a brazen and exciting new face on Australian pop-rock at the time.
After the band disbanded in the late 1980s, Conway went on to have a successful solo career, with hits including ‘It’s Only The Beginning’ and ‘Under My Skin’ and five solo albums. Her music has attracted multiple awards including two ARIA Music Awards from nine nominations, and in 2020 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for her significant contribution to the performing arts.
Since 2004, Conway has recorded and released music with her life partner Willy Zygier, and in August this year they released their sixth album together Right Wing Propaganda (subtitle Songs You Can Trust)
The 14 tracks on the album are a gorgeous collection of acoustic folk-pop-rock with an almost rejection of technology embedded in its creation. Written, produced and performed solely by Conway and Zygier, with the only outside contribution coming from the vocals of their daughters Syd, Alma, and Hettie Zygier, it seeks to encourage a greater connection with the heart and soul of the songs.
“Machines are making music right now, with and without human intervention, with no ‘care’ about connection, audience, or even remuneration. This is not a judgement on the quality of the music, just an observation,” Conway says. “This is not a complaint. Wonderful music has been made this way and will continue to be made this way but for us, in a time of plenty, of musical super abundance, we have responded by making a record with as little on it as possible.”
With lyrics that try to make sense of our current world, or as Zygier says “Songs for the whole, chaotic thing that is our existence,” Conway’s still stunning voices moves between gentle, tender, warmth and passionate rage.
The title track ‘Right Wing Propaganda’ is a gorgeously subdued song that explores love as propaganda ‘I will no longer pander to what you say with candour / That love’s just right wing propaganda / Well I still love you.’ It builds into a lush finish with multiple vocal lines and beautiful vocals from Conway. ‘Let Your People Go’ with its heavy guitar line sees Conway railing against the state of the world ‘Sacrifice the mothers / Sacrifice the children / Sacrifice the earth….there will be nothing left.’
‘Tough Times’ brings a country twang to the album, while ‘When You Belonged To Me’ is a melancholic ballad. The penultimate song ‘They’ll Never Tear Me Down’ returns to defiant rock which tells a story of never giving up, before the album ends with the discordant instrumental ‘Left Wing Propaganda’.
Conway and Zygier are currently touring the album across Australia, with shows scheduled until 7 December, more information and tickets are here. We recently caught up with her to chat about the creation of the album and tour.
Hi Deborah! Your new album Right Wing Propaganda (Songs You Can Trust) was released last month - on your 66th birthday no less - and It's a very stripped back acoustic album, which I am a huge fan of. Tell me about that decision to do that.
Well. we had just we'd made [album] The Words of Men before in 2019 and within a few months, covid had happened and we were locked up in the house and sitting on the couch. I wrote a book during that time, and when we were thinking about making this next record, we just thought it would be a good idea to be very self sufficient and not depend on anybody else. So to that end, we honed everything back to the basic elements of what it was, how we write the songs. All of the records that we've ever made, you go out on tour, you have a big bang with the band that you've made the record with, and then you end up playing all of the songs as an acoustic duo anyway, because you can make some money that way, as opposed to going broke bringing the band with you everywhere!
So I guess we just cut out the first bit and it's been a really interesting exercise, because it has kept it musically much more streamlined and just less complex. Not that it's not complex, because we do approach these songs in a chamber music kind of a way. so there are parts that are layered and everything. You can do a lot with two instruments and two vocals,. But I guess the element of bringing the songs into a very different kind of place to where we started writing them, we miss out on that. Having said that, we actually brought our daughters in to sing backing vocals on the tracks and they really add a lot, they're beautiful.
A family affair. Are they on tour with you?
Oh my God, no! Heaven forfend! The middle one actually is a professional musician, and her name's Alma Zygier, and she put out a record earlier this year called Live, she's a jazz singer. The youngest one has been a songwriter and also a performer, and was in a punk band called Pin Stripes, and put out a few records and stuff, but she has recently discovered that food is where her passion truly lies, and has started making hummus online, and has managed to attract 40,000 viewers on her Instagram! It's sort of crazy, what a world we live in!
They're all fantastic singers. There was a song that that we had written and that I had tried to sing on a number of occasions before I just threw in the towel and said, we're just not going to put this song on the record. We thought about them singing it, and they did, and it's absolutely stunning,. ‘I Don't Want To Let Go Of You’. The three of them are singing that song without me, and it's so beautiful. I'm really glad that I didn't try and attempt it.
It’s not to say that we'll never work with other musicians, but this was a first for us. We've spent a lot of time together, writing a lot of songs over the last 34 years but this is the first time we've actually put out a record with just the two of us playing everything.
Has it been relaxing touring an album where the live sound directly reflects what is on the record?
I don't think it's relaxing at this point! It's a lot of work, there's a lot of words to remember, there's a lot of rhythm changes. Willie is a magnificent guitar player, I am an adequate guitar player, and it takes enormous amounts of concentration for me to really pull it together, which is fun, but also I wouldn't describe it as relaxing. I would describe it as exhausting! However, we played a show recently and so many people said, ‘I just love the way you guys are so relaxed’. So clearly I’m a great actress as well!
You're a real artist’s artist. Your lyrics are amazing, you can turn a phrase like no one else. I want to talk a bit about your approach to songwriting. Do you start with the lyrics first?
We write together, and it kind of depends. Sometimes it's just from a title, a phrase, sometimes it's from the music. But whichever way it works almost all of our songs are passed between us, for refinement, for editing, for rewriting, and so in the end it's pretty hard to figure out who wrote what not that that's not. But that's very good for the process, to have two sets of eyes, two sets of ears, always thinking about how the thing can be better. We're pretty tough on each other, but it's a very good relationship to have, where you can be fearlessly critical of the work in order to improve it. You have to trust someone completely to do that, and we do have that relationship. We might write a lot of dross, but we do eventually sift through to the to the golden reins at the bottom!
At 66 years of age and 40 years in the industry, I'm interested to know if you think there's been any changes in terms of the sexualisation of women in the industry and ageism, or this idea of an expiry date for women?I don't know if it's changed, I think it's always been the case. But rock and roll is sex. You have to be able to express a kind of raw sexuality when you're performing, male or female. I don't have a cleavage, I didn't feel comfortable strutting in that particular way. But I strutted - my goodness, I strutted! It was just a different kind of strutting. I never felt that I was out of control, being made to do things that I didn't want to do. Do-Ré-Mi were a fierce independent band who weren't going to be pushed around by the record company, and I kind of kept that attitude as a solo artist,
Ageism is a real thing, but having said that I see a lot of older women and older men doing their thing and being really appreciated. But I think we've got a much bigger problem than that. The bigger problem is that I don't think people like music that much anymore. And it doesn't matter how much cleavage you're exposing or how much strutting you're doing. People have got much shorter attention spans, and they're not really listening to music in the same way. It's just content, you can just as easily be entertained by a cooking video, or someone being run over by a police car. Actual music grips the imagination far less than it used to, and I think that's going to turn around and blight all of us at some point. And the problems that you have identified, with sexism or ageism, I think they're kind of irrelevant. Some of the biggest bands on on Spotify at the moment are AI bands. They don't exist at all. It's a very strange time.
Do you think there's a obvious divide in the sort of people who go to live music and cherish live music and the sorts of people that will happily listen to AI music?
I think the divide is getting much, much more blurry these days, because AI is is so sophisticated, and gets more sophisticated every 15 minutes. I don't know that everyone can hear the difference. I'm sure I can't hear the difference all the time. And people like old stuff, audiences love to relive the key moments of their youth in some way.
People love nostalgia, audiences love nostalgia so older acts are able to really tap into something incredibly vital and valuable. But the thing is, that can be boring for the performer. When you've put out songs 40 years ago and they're still the things the audiences want to hear, you have to find a way to present them to yourself where you don't feel like you're a charlatan, where you feel like you're saying something honest and vital too.
Do you worry about the future of live music?
Well, it's very strange times. First of all, you have streaming. The Internet has offered us all many, many gifts but it's also got a very dark reverse side. You can make a very cheap and effective record in your back room, but you're not going to ever be able to monetise that, because streaming pays a fraction of a cent every time someone actually listens to it. People don't have CD players anymore, and most people don't have turntables.
Then you've got AI competing for that space, then we had covid when all musicians were locked in their houses and couldn't get out to find an audience. It's a strange place and I don't quite know where we're heading. But I still love music, I still love playing, I still love performance and I love songwriting. And keep doing it because you're always striving to make something perfect, which fortunately you never can, otherwise you might stop!
You’ve spoke about the challenges facing music today, but I wanted to ask what was the music that really grabbed you back in your formative years?
Oh, everything. Everything grabbed me. I loved David Bowie, Al Green, Yes, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Gary Glitter, Suzi Quatro, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Dan Hicks, Randy Newman, Ella Fitzgerald, Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday…I loved music. I loved all kinds of music. I did love pop music as well, although there was lots of things that I found incredibly irritating I bought a lot of records, I've still got quite a lot of records from many decades ago.
I absolutely loved Elvis Costello, and some years back he was in town and I was invited onto the ABC to interview him, so I re listened to all those old records, and I was really disappointed. I just thought they sounded so mannered and careful, and that surprised me. I was such a huge Elvis Costello fan, but they didn't last the test of time for me.
Who were your biggest supporters, and conversely to that, your biggest naysayers at the start of your career?
My mother was a very big supporter, and my father sent me to a psychiatrist! He thought if I joined a band it would just be sex and drugs. And, you know, he had a fair point! Obviously, you can only advise your children to a certain extent, and you actually can't in the end really have that much of an influence.
I had a lot of support. I came out of the gates galloping, I was blessed. I joined a band that played all the time and then the drummer, and I moved to Sydney and formed a different band which suited our musical tastes more. The band [Do-Ré-Mi] was highly successful. Before we had played a gig, we made records and those records were being played on alternative radio around the country so when we played a gig, they were sold out. We signed to a major record label and made our first album in the UK. The first single off that album was a big hit (‘Man Overboard’), and then the album went gold, and we toured and toured and toured, and people loved us. I didn't really have anyone telling me, ‘you could do it better this way’. We got some fairly savage reviews from time to time, but then we got some fabulous reviews as well.
Was there ever alternate career path for you?
No, I don't think there was. I wouldn't say that I knew exactly that's what it would be, but I wasn't pursuing anything else. I did a little bit of modelling between 18 and 23 in order to pay the bills, and I also did a feature film, Running on Empty. I knew that I was a terrible actor, so I knew that was really not for me, although interestingly that film’s become a cult classic now, it’s hilarious.
I've been incredibly blessed in my career, and I don't know if that was the times, I suspect it was. I feel like the times are meaner now, and they're more judgmental, and people have to to work that much harder to try and figure out what they are. There's so much pressure and there's not that much encouragement. There are issues with young people, a lot of anxiety and all of that that I never had. I was incredibly lucky, and I don't know that my friends had it either. Not the kinds of stuff that I see now in my children's cohort. We were without that comparison to every other single person in the world, who's going to be more beautiful, or more talented, or smarter, or thinner than you. Without that, you can just be you and wear daggy purple jeans and striped orange jumpers, and no one cares, and no one's taking a photo of you all the time.
What do you hope people walk away with from Right Wing Propaganda?
I think it's an album that documents the first half of this decade sorrowfully and lovingly. It's songs of love and bewilderment, and I hope people give it a careful listen and understand what we're trying to get at. We don't write songs that tell you what to think, we hopefully write songs where people have to figure it out for themselves. I hope they do, whatever that might be.
Right Wing Propaganda is out now. You can buy and stream here.
Follow Deborah Conway on Instagram, Facebook and her website.
For tour dates and ticket information, click here
