It’s My Party and I’ll Burn It Down If I Want To: Meg Mac at Brisbane Powerhouse

Meg Mac | Brisbane Powerhouse

Friday, 20th March 2026

Friday night in Brisbane and the Powerhouse is already humming. Of course it is — second of two sold out shows. People filing in with drinks, chatter bouncing off the concrete, that low-level buzz that usually means something’s about to happen.

The stage gives it away early. Circular rug, confetti everywhere, a neatly set table dead centre. It looks more like a music video set than a gig. A party waiting to happen.

Then the lights drop.

Single spotlight. There she is.

Meg Mac doesn’t so much walk on as appear. Still, composed, completely in control. ‘Grace Gold’ opens things and immediately you can feel it — this is a different version of her. Same voice, but everything around it feels sharper, more deliberate. A bit more exposed.

From there, she moves through the catalogue, roughly in release order, but really it’s more like she’s walking us through her life. Stories between songs, bits of context, how things came together. ‘Every Lie’. ‘Should’ve Known Better’. The early stuff, but told without any rose-coloured nostalgia. Just calling it what it was.

And then she drops ‘Roll Up Your Sleeves’ and it nearly flattens the room. That’s an end-of-set song for most artists, but here it lands like a statement: we’re not pacing this, we’re going straight in. You can feel the crowd go with her instantly.

‘Low Blows’ from her debut album follows with that familiar weight, and then ‘Grandma’s Hands’ — yeah, the Bill Withers one — but she doesn’t treat it like a cover. She takes it and stretches it until it feels like hers. Bigger, heavier, properly owned.

What’s interesting is that for all the size of the sound, the show itself feels pretty intimate. She’s got Hannah (her sister) and Danielle on backing vocals, and the three of them together are kind of the core of it — voices locking in, lifting everything. Luke Davison (The Preatures) pops in on guitar and keys here and there, but a lot of it runs on backing tracks. Normally that would bug me a bit, but the show’s built around it. Visually, it needs it. And it works.

Photo by @jaredhinz

Because the whole thing is constantly shifting. No two songs look the same. The set moves, changes, resets itself. At one point she’s cross-legged on the table, running vocals through a delay pedal, building a song in front of us layer by layer. It’s basically her songwriting process, live, and it somehow holds the whole room. No hiding behind the band, no big moment — just her and the idea.

And then come the stories. Raw. Disarming. Sometimes funny, often cutting.

‘Give Me My Name Back’ is one of the more telling moments. A story about early label pressure, being sent songs to sing when she just wanted to write her own. It doesn’t come off bitter, just… settled. Like she’s figured out exactly where she stands on it now.

‘I’m Gonna ___ Somebody’ gets that stripped back, slightly weird treatment with the vocoder. Then ‘The Tune I’ll Be Singing When I’m Dead’ and ‘What Have You Done’ come in back-to-back and it’s obvious she hasn’t lost anything. If anything, she’s writing better now. More confident in what she wants to say and how she wants it to sound.

Then she flips it again. Full 60s girl group mode for ‘He Said No’. Choreography, attitude, the whole thing. Could feel gimmicky, but it doesn’t. It all ties back to the concept.

And that’s the thing — this is a concept show, but it never gets lost in it. Every choice feels like it’s pointing back to something real. Even Pass-The-Parcel with a Vanessa Amorosi soundtrack is wholesome as fuck. She reveals ‘Absolutely Everybody’ was a song she used to sing when she was very young and, to be completely frank, you can hear it now.

Photo by @jaredhinz

This version of Meg Mac is easily the best she’s been. There’s a moment during ‘Undone’ where the crowd lights up the room and you can feel it shift — that connection where the songs stop being hers and start belonging to everyone in there. Bit of a cliché, but it’s true.

Finally, she invites audience members to fill the seats on stage. She moves around the table, posing for photos with each of them. Then she softens things before ‘I’m Not Coming Back’, giving a shoutout to a young fan she’s been talking to on Instagram. It could tip into cheesy, but it doesn’t. It brings everything into focus.

She isn’t some pop star lapping up praise wherever she can. She’s talking to an 11-year-old fan online and recognising her name in a room full of people. That tells you everything.

By the time ‘It’s My Party’ lands, the whole idea clicks. Another cover — early ’60s, proper jukebox era — and Meg leans right into that innocence, threading it through her newer material. She climbs onto the table as confetti falls around her for the finale.

It actually is her party. Not the industry’s version of her. Not the earlier records. Not expectations.

Just her, doing exactly what she wants. She’s always had the voice. That was never the issue. Now she’s got the vision to back it up — and that’s the difference. She should be ruling the international zeitgeist by now — it feels like she’s one ‘Roll Up Your Sleeves’ away. This is a step closer. This doesn’t feel like Meg Mac executing a show. It feels like someone completely owning one.

Photo by @jaredhinz