Then Again...

It might’ve taken him 14 studio albums to get there, but 1990’s much-lauded <i>Chain Reaction</i> finally saw John Farnham co-writing the bulk of his own songs with stunning success. Farnham’s 15th record, 1993’s <i>Then Again…</i>, once again saw the Australian singer share writing credits on nine of its 14 tracks to pleasing effect—and all but shed his pop idol pedigree entirely in favour of the adult and contemporary. The first sign that Farnham was much more involved in the curation of his own album is something very left-of-centre: A curious cover of shock-rocker Alice Cooper’s atypical ode to femininity, “Only Women Bleed”, that arrives early in the running order instead of being relegated to last place where one might expect such an endeavour. While Farnham further establishes his knack for rising, Genesis-esque ballads (“When All Else Fails”) and Dragon-inspired descents into grooving confessional (“What You Don’t Know”), it’s the extra hands that bookended <i>Then Again…</i> with enduring appeal. American songwriting duo Tom Kimmel and Jennifer Kimball’s work on opener “Angels” made it a staple of Farnham’s live shows to this day, while Australian folk-rocker and Goanna mainstay Shane Howard’s closer “Talk of the Town” provided future performances with the fiddle-laden jig they were missing.