Introducing: Miguel Brooking

Miguel Brooking doesn’t just release songs — he exhumes entire chapters of his life. His new single “She’s My Company” arrives as the closing of a nine-year loop, a track born in the cracked-guitar chaos of East London and finally completed in the creative electricity of Melbourne. Brooking speaks in images as vividly as he writes them: melted-wax flats above pubs, ticket inspectors who feel like villains, acting auditions that drain the soul, and the small, stubborn sparks that keep a young artist alive long enough to become an older one.

Now, with the song finally released into the world, Brooking looks back on the decade that shaped it — the frustration, the momentum, the wandering, the near-misses, and the long search for a sense of home that was never tied to geography. In his own words, here’s the story behind “She’s My Company.”

1. “She’s My Company” took nearly a decade to reach completion — what kept the song alive for you over all those years, and what finally unlocked it in Melbourne after beginning in East London?

Do you remember the film ‘Castaway?’ Tom Hanks remains stranded on the island for years, before eventually one day the conditions are perfect for him to jump on his life raft and make an almost impossible attempt at escape. Packages from the crash-landed Fedex plane aid his survival; a Wilson volleyball as his only companion - An ice skate fashioned as a spear; he keeps one left unopened for his entire time on the island. The hopeful prospect of delivering that package to its rightful owner is what maintained the survival instinct within him against all odds. At the time of writing the first verse of ‘She’s My Company’ I was very much stranded. My guitar being a metaphorical life-raft in a moment of spiritual bankruptcy - like my Wilson volleyball but it would speak back to me instead of staring blankly. That unfinished song served as my unopened package encapsulating that moment while reaching for a future self in which everything was ok. Melbourne 2024 came the moment to jump on the life raft. The conditions were perfect. I was gigging around the city, had met my producer, stumbled into my photographer and found myself playing with an incredible band of the city’s finest. The song had no choice but to rear its head and here we are. Package received. You followed your heart, kid and it was fucking worth it.

2. The song feels like a bridge between two versions of yourself — the broke, sofa-surfing actor in Shadwell and the artist you’ve become. How do you hear that transformation in the music or the lyrics today?

Thats 2 very different people meeting on a 9 year bridge - but some things have remained the same... I just get fined on the Melbourne tram instead of the London overground! Truth is I can’t stand on an amplified stage and sing unless it's coming from a place of real truth. When I wrote the first verse I had no intention of sharing it and my outward pursuit of music was deeply closeted. I now sing this song on a 9-year pile of surmounted experience; backed by musicians that have reached mastery and It's a beautiful viewpoint to express from. As long as I don’t forget that Miguel who first planted the seed in London, who hadn’t two pennies to rub together - I’ll be able to deliver its live performance. When I escape the confines of happy hour beers and late bill payments; when I eat out for dinner 3 times a week without a second glance at the check - maybe then I’ll struggle to sing the song, and to be honest - that’s probably the goal of this whole thing. I look forward to a time when you ask me how I sing the song when money is no longer an issue!

3. You write with raw honesty about frustration — with the industry, with money, with “the lie of success.” How important is anger or disillusionment as creative fuel for you?

To be completely honest negative sources have fuelled me greatly but they've needed time to boil and brew. This is why outlets are so important - especially in moments enshrouded with negative energy, because they provide you with the opportunity to create something positive. Songwriting became that for me. I remember my acting teacher and surrogate mother, Anna Niland once told me ‘I need you to get angry Miguel,’ and I didn't understand what she meant at the time. You hold yourself differently in life and on stage when you have a chip on your shoulder. And if you’re lucky enough to have a guitar lying around - you’ll have a tune or two when you come out the other side.

4. The imagery in your story — candlelit rooms, cracked guitars, ticket fines, fleeting connections — has a cinematic quality. Do you think your acting background influences the way you write or visualise songs?

I see acting as more of a cathartic pursuit than an artistic one. Having said that, ‘Fish Bowl Souls’ was inspired by a character I played in Terrence Rattigan’s ‘Deep Blue Sea’ - directed by Nancy Medina. That play gave me a scaffolding from which to assess human relationships in a unique way. I wrote a poem ‘In character’ and that became ‘Fish Bowl Souls.’ Playing that part shone light on unexpressed parts of a younger self that had waited years to let it out.

Sometimes the depth of work necessary to play a character provides a perspective or a palette that was previously inaccessible.

5. You describe the song as “a feeling that home is not a physical place.” After all these years and travels, do you think you’ve found that sense of home — or is the search itself part of the art?

Carl Jung said that life is just a circumambulation around the self, and therefore you’ll never feel truly at home until you reach a certain proximity of self-awareness. Songs give me the sense that I'm understanding myself and I feel at home mostly when I'm engaged in creative expression and progressively refining it. The more I understand myself the more I can connect with others and I've found that the further I refine that process the more it attracts the people that I'd want in my 'home.'