The songs of Tim Rogers weave and glide across the field the way an elite footballer dances through the defence.

Thirty-one years after setting off on a great rock’n’ adventure with You Am I, Tim Rogers is still operating at the top of his game, not in retirement but writing songs as rich and memorable, and as heart-breaking too, as any he has ever written.

The evidence is there on this year’s The Lives of Others, the 11th studio album from You Am I. It is an album recorded under difficult circumstances during a pandemic yet soaring from the speakers with all the power and grace under pressure of the band’s earlier classics like Hi Fi Way and Hourly, Daily.

The Lives of Others follows the 2017 Rogers solo set An Actor Repairs, the kind of record which confirms that, in certain circumstances, a songwriter can keep on getting better through the years. It features The Umpires Son, a story of childhood so vivid that you can almost smell the liniment and hear the bounce of ball on turf. Other songs, like One More Late Night Conversation and A Mother Daughter Thing, reveal the emotional honesty that songwriters can find with a lifetime of experience.

If you didn’t already know that Rogers is one of the great lyricists as well as one of the finest writers of a melody that Australia has ever produced, these two albums will set you straight. 

A songwriter’s work is often seen by others as a personal soundtrack. But threaded through Rogers’ work are the fine details that so many identify with, whether it is the Arrowroot biscuits in You Just Don’t Do It For Me Friend (from the 1999 solo debut by Tim Rogers and the Twin Set, What Rhymes with Cars and Girls) or meeting on the town hall steps in If We Can’t Get It Together (from Hourly, Daily).

He released two albums with backing band The Temperance Union, Spit Polish in 2004 and Dirty Ron/Ghost Songs in 2005, with guest appearances from Missy Higgins and Rebecca Barnard, followed by solo sets The Luxury of Hysteria (2007) and Rogers Sings Rogerstein (2012). He worked with Tex Perkins as T’N’T for the 2006 album My Better Half, and with Lance Ferguson co-wrote the songs for The Rules of Attraction (2015) by Tim Rogers and the Bamboos.

Rogers made his stage debut as an actor in a 2009 production of Woyzeck, directed by Michael Kantor, and appeared in feature films Holy Smoke, The Boy Castaways and Tracks. He has written music for stage productions including The Story of Mary MacLane by Herself (2011), in which he also appeared as an actor, and the score for a 2012 production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding. He worked with Nick Launay on the soundtrack for 1999 film The Idiot Box and has written film soundtracks for Dirty Deeds (2002) and Wish You Were Here, a 2012 feature starring Joel Edgerton.

Rogers is a popular guest on Australian television shows from Rockwiz to The Fat and in 2013 hosted the interview show Studio at the Memo. In 2019 his Liquid Lunch show for Double J grew into the touring stage show Liquid Nights in Bohemia Heights, with Rogers playing the role of a small-town radio announcer hosting guests from the world of the arts and introducing a new generation of songwriters to a wider audience.

With You Am I and solo, Rogers has won 13 ARIA Awards including male artist of the year, best independent release, album of the year and best group.

You Am I’s Hi Fi Way (1995), Hourly, Daily (1996) and #4 Record (1998) debuted in Australia at No 1 and achieved multi-platinum sales. With his great friends in the band, Andy Kent, Russell Hopkinson and Davey Lane, Rogers has toured the world, played to huge audiences as a headliner and supported The Rolling Stones and The Who.

“That’s the great thing about creativity, isn’t it?” Rogers says. “You feel the next thing you do could be the best thing you have ever done.”