Latest news with #Defiant
Sky News AU
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sky News AU
Jimmy Barnes' missing teen family member found after Aussie rockstar's desperate plea for 14-year-old's whereabouts
A missing teenage family member of Jimmy Barnes has been found after the rocker made a desperate plea for his whereabouts. A spokesperson for The Hills Police in Sydney's northwest took to Facebook on Sunday with the news that Blake Powell, the nephew of Barnes' son Jackie James, was located after he went missing on Friday. "The 14-year-old boy reported missing from Castle Hill has been found and is safe - thanks to everyone who shared our appeal for help!" the status read. Family member Sean Powell expressed his gratitude, revealing more than 6,000 people had shared the initial missing persons report. 'Facebook Fam, Blake is home. We're so relieved!' Powell wrote. He thanked the concerned Sydney siders who on the weekend spent hours driving, on trains and in shopping centres trying to find the teen. 'To those who rode the metro, drove around and did laps on foot of the shopping centres — no words can describe our love and gratitude," Powell wrote. "It felt like a needle in a haystack to find him. 'Life's not a smooth run. Hug your little ones tight tonight.' The news of Blake's safety comes hours after Barnes reshared the initial report in the hopes his fans would help find his family member. "Please help us find Blake, Jackie's nephew," the Aussie rockstar wrote. The report said Blake went missing in Castle Hill on Friday and hadn't been since 4 pm that afternoon, with a description of the teen. "He is 185cm tall, of thin build, 70kg, Caucasian appearance with an olive complexion, brown hair and eyes," it read. The report also stated Blake regularly travels by public transport and spends time in shopping centres. "Police and Family hold concerns for his welfare given his young age." "Any information - please call Crime Stoppers on 1800333000 or Castle Hill Police." Blake's uncle, Jackie James Barnes, is a drummer and the third child and only son of Barnes and his wife, Jane. He has sisters, Mahalia, Eliza-Jane 'E.J.', and Elly-May Barnes; a half-brother, singer David Campbell, from Barnes' teenage relationship with Kim Campbell; and three half-sisters from his father's other relationships. The Cold Chisel star is in the midst of his Defiant tour in Australia, which celebrates the release of his 21st studio album of the same name, following a series of health issues which sidelined him from performing. Barnes underwent open-heart surgery in 2023 after a bacterial infection spread to a heart valve. In August of that year, while on his Hell of a Time tour, the infection reached his hip and saw him be treated in intensive care. Although he was initially fitted with a temporary hip, the 69-year-old singer later had a second surgery to replace it with a permanent joint.
The Age
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
An undiminished Jimmy Barnes had fans on their feet for this classic
MUSIC Jimmy Barnes ★★★ Palais Theatre, June 13 When I was a child, I got a Jimmy Barnes CD out of a packet of muesli bars. I didn't have a CD player, so I just had to imagine what it might sound like. I already had enough Barnesy in my blood to have a good guess. His songs are part of the Australian collective unconscious. They play in our dreams. They give them away in muesli bar packets. Barnes is now touring his 21st studio album, Defiant. A few hours before he took to the stage, it went to No. 1 in the album charts. It's his 15th No.1 album (19th if you count Cold Chisel). He plays virtually all of that record tonight. His gruff yarl is undiminished by age and recent heart surgery. However, the new songs – gruff pub rock beasts about struggle and defiance – struggle themselves. The essence is all here, but the lyrics are a bit live-laugh-love ('It's a new day / I can feel the sun shining down on me'). It all buckles under the weight of a nine-piece band. Songs like The Long Road and Dig Deep are rote, mid-tempo, middle-of-the-road Barnesy. They could have come out any time since 1991. Album opener That's What You Do For Love gives it all a lift (possibly because it reminds me of Born To Run). Taken all at once, it's a slog. The audience waits (mostly) patiently, as the new material is scattered with familiar stuff like Choirgirl and I'd Die To Be Alone With You Tonight. It's when the opening piano of Flame Trees kicks in that everything changes. 'A real one,' my friend says. The crowd stand up en masse. People join in on the second line. By the chorus, it's a choir. 'But oh,' he sings, 'who needs that sentimental bullshit, anyway?' It's a beautiful song about the past escaping from us.
Sydney Morning Herald
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
An undiminished Jimmy Barnes had fans on their feet for this classic
MUSIC Jimmy Barnes ★★★ Palais Theatre, June 13 When I was a child, I got a Jimmy Barnes CD out of a packet of muesli bars. I didn't have a CD player, so I just had to imagine what it might sound like. I already had enough Barnesy in my blood to have a good guess. His songs are part of the Australian collective unconscious. They play in our dreams. They give them away in muesli bar packets. Barnes is now touring his 21st studio album, Defiant. A few hours before he took to the stage, it went to No. 1 in the album charts. It's his 15th No.1 album (19th if you count Cold Chisel). He plays virtually all of that record tonight. His gruff yarl is undiminished by age and recent heart surgery. However, the new songs – gruff pub rock beasts about struggle and defiance – struggle themselves. The essence is all here, but the lyrics are a bit live-laugh-love ('It's a new day / I can feel the sun shining down on me'). It all buckles under the weight of a nine-piece band. Songs like The Long Road and Dig Deep are rote, mid-tempo, middle-of-the-road Barnesy. They could have come out any time since 1991. Album opener That's What You Do For Love gives it all a lift (possibly because it reminds me of Born To Run). Taken all at once, it's a slog. The audience waits (mostly) patiently, as the new material is scattered with familiar stuff like Choirgirl and I'd Die To Be Alone With You Tonight. It's when the opening piano of Flame Trees kicks in that everything changes. 'A real one,' my friend says. The crowd stand up en masse. People join in on the second line. By the chorus, it's a choir. 'But oh,' he sings, 'who needs that sentimental bullshit, anyway?' It's a beautiful song about the past escaping from us.
Scoop
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Jimmy Barnes Releases 21st Studio Album 'DEFIANT'
[6th June 2025] Today the inimitable Jimmy Barnes unleashes his 21st studio album DEFIANT. An album so clear in its message and resounding in its conviction, Barnes shares 10 new songs that can only be classed as triumphant, including lead single 'New Day', title track 'Defiant' and live favourite 'That's What You Do For Love'. The album releases on the eve of his national tour, starting tomorrow night in Adelaide. Over the last few years, several major surgeries, including a life-threatening heart operation, put the iconic rocker flat on his back. Each time he clambered to his feet, some other medical drama knocked him down again. As always Jimmy's response was to just keep getting up and punching back – firstly with Cold Chisel's triumphant The Big Five-0 anniversary tour late last year, and now a brand-new solo album and tour called… appropriately… DEFIANT. These are clearly the songs of a man who still has a point to prove: raw and inspiring. And he is in career-best voice – riding and driving an emotional rollercoaster from soothing croons to wailing abandon. They are the sounds of a singer who has finally arrived at the point of complete instrumental control. About Jimmy Barnes... Jimmy Barnes is the heart and the soul of Australian rock and roll. His name evokes the sound of ear-splitting rock classics plus signature readings of soul standards. He has enjoyed twenty-one #1 albums here – more than The Beatles - and sold more records in this country than any other local artist. For well over 45 years he has delivered some of our most intense and iconic live performances and sung unforgettable hits like 'Working Class Man', 'Flame Trees', 'No Second Prize', 'Khe Sanh' and 'Shutting Down Our Town'. From a wild youth fronting the legendary Cold Chisel to his more recent years as a beloved family man, Jimmy has been through it all and literally lived to tell the tales. He is truly in a league of his own, having been inducted into the ARIA Hall of fame ... twice.
The Guardian
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Jimmy Barnes: Defiant review – familiar but reliable territory from the indestructible rocker
'He's been wondering lately, where did all the good times go?' While this line in the opening song on Jimmy Barnes' new album is ostensibly about a couple struggling to make ends meet, it's hard not to think of Barnes lying in a hospital bed, a recurring sight in recent years: recovering from infection, then hip surgery, then bacterial pneumonia, then open heart surgery, then hip surgery again … but eventually 'it's a new day', as Barnes sings on the second track, a sentiment delivered without a question mark. If you're wondering where all the good times are, it seems Barnes' answer is: wherever the hell I want them to be and, until it all ends, I'm going to be a rock star. Specifically a rock star of the late 80s and early 90s, when he didn't have to dress down, à la grunge, or gloss up, à la ozone-depleting poodle metal, and instead slipped on a leather jacket and leaned into the camera as a freight train pulled out behind him. Defiant lands smack bang in the middle of that Peak Barnes Moment and it is no coincidence that while Barnes shared the songwriting with some old hands and near-family, the production is given over to that master of Australiana rock, Kevin Shirley. You'd know his work from early Silverchair, the Screaming Jets, the Angels, Baby Animals, Cold Chisel … and Tina Arena. You'd know his work by the ringing clarity in your ears. It's in the in-your-face drum sound (that snare snap is sharpened to a point) and forward-facing guitars (you could do your hair in the reflection from the shine on them), and it's in the careful middle ground of keyboards and a smattering of modern country to show range. You can recognise it in the prominence given to every corrugation of that lived-through voice and the softening agent of rich backing vocals and, in the powered-up ballad Beyond The Riverbend, even in the bagpipes. If this album were any more 1990s, it would come with a Hawkeian cigar and a Rachel haircut. A song like Damned If I Do, Damned If I Don't has the skinny-arse shaking beat of the Rolling Stones or the Faces, but those drums won't let you do anything other than stomp. Things are a little lighter in opener That's What You Do For Love, its 'woah-ohs' softening the ground, but the backing vocals of an escalating chorus and a hero-cast guitar solo don't resist the temptation to go full back-of-the-beerbarn anthemic. If the muscular rock of Nothing Comes For Nothing and the brassy southern soul Sea Of Love, possibly the most satisfying song on the album, gives Barnes a moment to ease back on the throat – but there's little evidence he was looking for respite. He rips it up in the title track and pushes it to the edges in the husky Never Stop Loving You; even at half-force in Dig Deep he feels powerful, controlled rather than raw against the saloon piano. What heart operation? That operation and its aftermath, however, does play through Barnes' lyrical focus. Not just in the obvious I-get-knocked-down-I-get-up-again rugged roar of the title track's 'I don't get tired, I just higher/I stand defiant', but in the reflections of a man given yet another chance. There are throwbacks to the stories he's told us in his series of hugely successful memoirs. Of mistakes and repair, like The Long Road's declaration that 'I'm on the long road to perdition', and of coming through a childhood where 'if you showed any weakness, the streets will make you bleed', as he sings in Dig Deep. And there is Never Stop Loving You's clear view of the complications and satisfactions of a long love affair that was not only life-saving but life-affirming. It's true that this makes for an album that could hardly be said to break new ground or reach stellar heights. But it's also true that it nails the essentials of Jimmy Barnes – and even more so, the Jimmy Barnes that people wanted to hear in the good and the bad times almost half a century ago. Defiant is out now (Mushroom)
