Eddie Perfect - #303 & #304

Apr 4

A songwriter, singer, pianist, actor, and comedian known for his caustic sociopolitical humor, Eddie Perfect (IG: @edmundperfect) (TW:@theeddieperfect) released his first comedy album, Welcome to the Inside of Ed's Head, in 2003. Having already worked original songs into his live comedy act, he wrote the satirical Shane Warne: The Musical, based on the life of the Australian cricketer. It premiered in 2008. Starting in 2010, he spent six years on the TV comedy-drama Offspring, and appeared as a judge on Australia's Got Talent's eighth season in 2016. Trying his hand at Broadway, he found work as a lyricist on King Kong in 2018. A year later, Perfect received a Tony Award nomination for his playful score to Broadway's Beetlejuice.

A native of Mentone, Victoria, Perfect earned a bachelor's degree from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2001. While honing his live stage material, he landed guests spots on Australian TV series such as the drama Blue Heelers and sitcom Kath & Kim. He released his first two comedy albums, Welcome to the Inside of Ed's Head and Angry Eddie, in 2003 and 2005, respectively.

His live show The Big Con, a collaboration with actor Max Gillies, toured theaters in 2005. Also that year, he premiered his own comedy show, Drink Pepsi, Bitch!, releasing an album of the same name in 2006. The year 2007 saw Perfectplaying multiple characters in Casey Bennetto's Keating! The Musical, about former prime minister Paul Keating. Perfect's own Shane Warne: The Musical opened at the Melbourne Athenaeum Theatre in December 2008, with a national tour to follow. The show won the Helpmann Award for Best New Australian Work. Meanwhile, Eddie Perfect & the Renovators contributed two songs to the March 2009 Vitamin Records release The Colors Tribute Album, Vol. 1. The show-business polymath next directed and hosted all ten episodes of reality show The Ultimate School Musical and performed the autobiographical song cycle Songs from the Middle, both in 2010.

Later in 2010, he took the role of Mick Holland in the hit Channel Ten comedy-drama series Offspring, where he stayed through 2016. In the meantime, he played Mack the Knife in two different productions of the musical play The Threepenny Opera, and his show Misanthropology, a mix of music and social satire, premiered at the Sydney Festival in 2011. A live album of the show arrived later that year. Perfectstarred in an updated version of Shane Warne: The Musical in 2013, with a cast recording to follow a year later. In 2015, a revived Songs from the Middle was captured live at the Sydney Opera House, featuring Perfect, Iain Grandage, and the Brodsky Quartet.

Around the end of his run on Offspring in 2016, Perfect appeared as a judge on the eighth edition of Australia's Got Talent, alongside Kelly Osbourne, writer/actor Ian Dickson, and actress Sophie Monk. By then, Perfect had moved his home base to New York City, where, partly inspired by the success of countryman Tim Minchin, he pursued a career on Broadway. His first credit was writing lyrics for the Broadway version King Kong. With music by Marius de Vries, the musical had premiered in Melbourne in 2013, with a reworked version making its New York debut in October 2018. Featuring music and lyrics by Perfect and a book by Scott Brown and Anthony King, the stage musical Beetlejuice (based on the 1988 Tim Burton film) premiered in Washington, D.C., that same month before moving to Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre in April 2019. The show went on to receive eight Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical and Best Original Score. The cast album was released by Ghostlight in June 2019 and reached the Top Ten of Billboard's independent albums chart.