Deborah Conway AM has never been one to shy away from provocation. Across four decades in the Australian music landscape – from Do-Re-Mi’s 80s heydays to her ARIA Award-winning solo career and Platinum and Gold Album collaborations with her long-time creative and life partner Willy Zygier – Conway has remained steadfastly unwilling to play it safe.
And now, once again in collaboration with Willy Zygier, today she has announced that she is launching an audacious new album titled: Right Wing Propaganda.
The album, independently released and entirely self-produced from the pair’s Melbourne home studio, is underpinned by Zygier’s deft guitar work and Conway’s crystalline, unmistakable voice.
Honoured as National Living Legends, this is the couple’s eleventh album together – a trademark blend of folk-pop melodies and lyrical directness.
In an age of synthetic sounds and algorithm-driven art, Conway and Zygier have taken a radical stand by returning to the roots of musical expression for this album.
Right Wing Propaganda is an act of musical reductionism in an age of technological excess – a raw, acoustic collection of 14 songs written, performed and recorded solely by the long-time collaborators, joined only by the voices of their daughters Syd, Alma, and Hettie Zygier.
The album will be released independently on August 8th marking Conway’s 66th birthday – and will be supported by a national tour titled ‘Songs You Can Trust’ that will include both metro and regional venues.
The first shows on the tour are set for August 16 at Melbourne’s Memo Music Hall and August 17 at Sydney’s Camelot Lounge, with further shows in September and October in NSW, Victoria, WA, SA & Qld – tickets and venue details available at deborahconway.com
Of the new music Conway says, “Machines are making music right now, with and without human intervention, with no ‘care’ about connection, audience, or even remuneration. Music without body, without ego, without soul. This is not a judgement on the quality of the music, just an observation. Execute the prompt endlessly, meaning be damned. The history of recorded music has led us to this point. For many decades recorded music has sounded less and less like human beings and more and more like some machine/human hybrid. Don’t like that breath? Remove it. Bass note a smidge early? Move it. Can’t sing that high? Change the pitch. Can’t play in time together? Drop in. Who needs a human?
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, pretty much just our acoustic guitars and voices, and the voices of our daughters. We retreated inwards, no other musicians, a guitar on our laps just to see what we could wring out of the old ways. It was not done as a challenge, there’s plenty of acoustic music being made, more just a feeling of connection. Connection with each other, connection with the spark of musical impulse, connection with breath, with wood, with skin, with air. A centre in a whirling world of plenty. And hopefully a connection with a listener somewhere out there in the dark.”
The album’s subtitle, Songs You Can Trust, reads like both a pledge and a provocation.
Conway and Zygier are not interested in clickbait choruses or algorithmic harmonies. Instead, they’ve crafted a suite of songs that includes tracks like “We’d Rather Have Nothing,” “The Living & The Dead Song,” and the title track “Right Wing Propaganda,” that take listeners through a thematic labyrinth of songs that mirror the current swirl of issues.
There are no session musicians, no auto-tuning, no studio polish. Just guitars and voices. It’s both timeless and timely – an album that asks whether music still matters in a world of infinite content.
Of the new deeply personal album Zygier says, “These are songs from the point of view of people who would tear this place down, those who wish to enforce utopia; songs of human vs machine; songs that address those who can only see war; songs of friends lost to ideology & intolerance; songs of delusion; songs of love, the middle aged to elderly kind; songs of the dance between performer & audience; songs about those who wish to defend our imperfection; songs for hostages who will never return; songs for songs; songs for the mania that Covid was; songs for impermanence; songs for those who wish us not to sing. Songs for the whole, chaotic thing that is our existence.”
The album was mixed by Gideon Preiss, mastered by Lachlan Carrick, with artwork by Conway, Zygier and Dave Homer.
It will be available across all major streaming services and in physical formats (vinyl and CD) from August 8, 2025.
Tour tickets and music available at deborahconway.com
Robert is the founder of AustralianSenior.com.
He studied Journalism and Marketing at USC and TV Presentation at NIDA. He is passionate about advocating for seniors and presenting non-biased, fact-based news to enable those over 50 to thrive in an increasingly complicated digital world. He covers all areas of life and style, from pop culture to the economy and travel to events. If it's worth reading, it's worth writing about.
He loves to travel the globe and is a recently diagnosed, late-in-life Type One Diabetic.