Barn-storming songs from each of them \u2014 Wish You Well and Catch My Disease \u2014 were inescapable.<\/p>\n
Infectious, warm and open-hearted, they rightly topped the Hottest 100 of 2005 and remain Australian classics that soundtrack events, cause sing-a-longs at live gigs and see a new life in remixes.<\/p>\n
But it’s much more than that.<\/p>\n
Hitting the bottom and bouncing<\/p>\n
Despite the pair being vastly different people, the parallels of their immensely hopeful albums are astonishing, espousing kindness and a peaceful strength.<\/p>\n
They were, and are, templates for hope in difficult times.<\/p>\n
Fanning’s older brother, John, had died of cancer, his long-term relationship had ended and his band, Powderfinger \u2014 the most famous in the country \u2014 was taking a year off, beaten down by relentless touring and recording.<\/p>\n
![\"Man](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/34767e9c4373d2082e7b11a460760b2b.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Ben Lee and Claire Danes split in 2003 after six years together. (Getty: Steve Granitz)<\/p>\n
Lee had separated from Claire Danes \u2014 a gen X icon, stealing hearts in Baz Luhrmann’s electric 1996 film Romeo + Juliet \u2014 and was going through a “spiritual crisis” amid that implosion.<\/p>\n
It was the end of a Bondi-to-Hollywood fairytale.<\/p>\n
The actress began a new relationship with Billy Crudup that also left adrift actress Mary-Louise Parker, heavily pregnant at the time with baby Crudup.<\/p>\n
Two very different men<\/p>\n
For two men in a narrow field \u2014 super-famous male Australian musicians \u2014 Ben Lee and Bernard Fanning are very different people.<\/p>\n
The frontman of one of the nation’s most enduring bands, Powderfinger, Fanning had ground out an unsuccessful first album before the group exploded in popularity with its next effort, Double Allergic<\/a>, in 1996.<\/p>\n By contrast, Lee broke out with punk band Noise Addict in 1995, barely 16 years old, before a hit solo record Breathing Tornados in 1998.<\/p>\n Abrasive, ambitious and filled with accolades, he proclaimed himself the saviour of Australian music.<\/p>\n Fanning called him a “precocious little c***”.<\/p>\n Their most famous run-in illustrates the essentially good-natured vibe of our music industry. We can talk about it as one of the great feuds of Australian music \u2014 when it was three words and Fanning later apologised.<\/p>\n Ben Lee’s latest quirky career move<\/a><\/p>\n Ben Lee has always been a fearless experimenter. But might his new gig selling essential oils puncture his popularity?<\/p>\n Lee was precocious \u2014 literally a child star, in a punk band in his early teens.<\/p>\n A better description is that, in parallel with his light and love, Lee can be pugnacious.<\/p>\n Awake Is The New Sleep is heavily influenced by his time in the US.<\/p>\n “I’m walking down Broadway \/ Each footstep is a new love letter,” he coos on Begin, before the album goes on to name-check Beyonc\u00e9 and his mates Good Charlotte.<\/p>\n In the US, bigness is celebrated and brashness is just show business. When Lee describes gigs as hand-to-hand combat, he’s not actually punching punters.<\/p>\n But he doesn’t seem to mind the tension.<\/p>\n “They don’t play me on the radio,” he sings. “And that’s the way I like it”.<\/p>\n By contrast, Fanning is more of a Mr Australia (although not actually related to surfing champion Mick, as many believe).<\/p>\n Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n He self-deprecatingly describes the album as “West End porch music” and you can picture him and friends back then, strumming under the verandah of a rambling Queenslander, tooling around with an album that would still resonate 20 years on.<\/p>\n Where they were, where they are<\/p>\n I saw both play gigs soon after the albums were released.<\/p>\n At a sweaty show in Melbourne’s Corner Hotel, Lee’s small stage was festooned with flowers, a nod to the album artwork. For someone who’d been through a lot, Lee seemed to be in a state of Zen-like calm throughout.<\/p>\n The soft guitar and keyboard intro of slow-burn Apple Candy began, a song about the triangular romantic situation.<\/p>\n A crowd member cracked the silence.<\/p>\n “F*** you, Billy!” they spat with venom.<\/p>\n Lee didn’t even quiver. He kept strumming, serenely and slowly shaking his head.<\/p>\n Smiling, he continued to play the song.<\/p>\n Inside Bernard Fanning’s legendary debut album<\/a><\/p>\n “I happen to be in a band that’s quite popular, but I don’t really give a shit,” Bernard Fanning said in 2005. “For me, the important thing is to be able to keep writing songs.”<\/p>\n Fanning played Melbourne’s Festival Hall on what he called the “last night of our world tour”.<\/p>\n I’ve been lucky enough to see everyone from Soundgarden, INXS and Oasis to Kanye West and the Sugababes in that massive venue. But the roar when Wish You Well started is right up there.<\/p>\n Singers Sime Nugent and Clare Bowditch joined him for Watch Over Me, rounding out a night that thousands of Melburnians will remember with great affection.<\/p>\n Far from over<\/p>\n Lee spent last year on an anniversary tour for the album. The response was rapturous.<\/p>\n At the Melbourne gig, he ended each song with reverb, the sound wobbling out as the roars of applause took over.<\/p>\n For people who loved those albums \u2014 and those who’ve discovered them in the years since \u2014 many will have experienced a similar reverb in their own lives.<\/p>\n Fanning did a one-off gig in Queensland, which sold out in minutes, and is touring this year.<\/p>\n Powderfinger would squeeze out two more albums before they called it a day: Dream Days at the Hotel Existence and Golden Rule. The band broke up in 2010.<\/p>\n Both Fanning and Lee kept creating.<\/p>\n Lee tours relentlessly. He has a podcast, Weirder Together, with his wife, actress Ione Skye, that mixes big questions, domestic challenges and top-tier name-dropping of late 90s, early 2000s US cultural icons. He keeps releasing new singles.<\/p>\n Fanning put out more excellent solo albums and in 2024 teamed up with Something For Kate frontman Paul Dempsey<\/a> to create a supergroup self-titled album: Fanning Dempsey National Park.<\/p>\n