Singing has always played a big part in the lives of Vika and Linda Bull. “When we were very young, our mother taught us how to sing in harmony,” Linda tells Apple Music. “She knew Vika had the naturally lower voice, I had the higher one, so she would teach us how to harmonize.” Born in Melbourne to an Australian father and a Tongan mother, the sisters grew up attending church, where they were exposed to the beautiful, rich sounds of their mother’s heritage. “We grew up listening to Tongan singing, and the way we harmonize is pretty much the way they do–they go for it and they give it their all,” says Linda. The pair have been giving it their all since finding fame in 1988, when they sang on The Black Sorrows’ album Hold On to Me. They’ve since released albums both as a duo and through collaborations with artists such as Paul Kelly, expanding their sound across the worlds of rock, country, soul, gospel, blues, and jazz. It’s all on display in this Essentials playlist. Here, Vika and Linda talk us through some of the key songs from their career. “When Will You Fall for Me” Linda: “Mark Seymour wrote that for us. We had worked with Hunters & Collectors. We toured with them in the ’90s for the Ghost Nation album, so we approached Mark to write a song because we got along. And he came up with ‘When Will You Fall for Me,’ but he didn’t have a bridge, so Vika and I wrote the bridge, and that was our input into the song. It was our first single, so it’s quite an important song for us—the first single off our debut album after we left the Sorrows.” Vika: “I thought it was an odd choice, but I think the record company chose that as the first single, and it was wise because triple j picked it up straight away.” Linda: “It was the weirdest clip in the world though! I wanted to make it in a skate park—to have us in the middle with people zooming around a skate bowl. It ended up being on a static swing in a sort of circus environment with us winking and eating pomegranates. I can’t look at it!” “'Akilotoa” Linda: “We sang this down a mine at Peter Gabriel’s studio in Bath. We sang with hard hats on.” Vika: “It was weird. I thought the engineer was cuckoo, making us go down this mine.” Linda: “It was great because he captured the sound from the mine. He wanted the resonance, for it to kind of echo down every shaft.” “Down on the Jetty” Linda: “We recorded that with Paul Kelly. But we wanted to rerecord our own version, because that’s Paul’s beautiful version and we love it. So we wanted to do that again. I wrote it with Paul on a fishing trip that Vika and I went on with him up to the Kimberley Gulf. Paul takes his guitar everywhere, it doesn’t matter if he’s on holiday. Vika was meant to be on one boat with him on this particular day, and she saw him get on with his guitar and so she pushed me on and jumped ship.” Vika: “I got on the other boat because I don’t like songwriting.” Linda: “We were taken on the fishing trip by friends of Paul’s, and they left their children behind for the first time. When they were standing on the jetty waving us off, they were crying, and that made us cry and it made the parents cry, and it was a very tough scene to watch. Sure enough, about half an hour up the gulf, Paul pulls out the guitar and says, ‘Do you want to a write a song?’ He doesn’t really say that, but it was obvious that he wanted to do something, and we thought of that moment when we were leaving, and that’s how those children inspired the song.” “Love Is Mighty Close” Linda: “Steven Cummings wrote that song. I think we were after a more gentle approach, maybe more a nod to country music. Our father had always said, ‘Why do you have to shout so much? Why can’t you take a little bit gentler approach?’ So that was really the inspiration behind that whole record [2002’s Love Is Mighty Close], and ‘Love Is Mighty Close’ is probably my favorite track off that record apart from ‘To Be Good Takes a Long Time.’ I just love the melody and the piano accordion. Everything came together really well in that song.” “My Man’s Got a Cold” Vika: “Paul Kelly wrote it on piano and asked me to sing it. I actually think he offered the song to Kira Puru first and she didn’t want to sing it, so I said, ‘Hell, I’ll sing it!’ So he came over and played it on the piano and we went and recorded it. I love the lyrics. I just immediately took to it. I thought, yep, that’s the song for me.” Linda: “I love the way you sing it and I love the audience’s reaction, ’cause they crack up.” “Never Let Me Go” Vika: “It was an incredibly hard session. I must have sung that song all day in the studio. Joe [Camilleri, The Black Sorrows’ frontman] made me try it every way, and I think it took eight hours. I was very young, I was 22, and it was like, okay, this is grueling. But in the end I was okay; I’m happy with it. It just made me tough. As a singer it was a big learning moment for me. Joe was searching for something, and I think he got it in the end. I only have fond memories of The Black Sorrows. They took us around the world, they were all fantastic musicians. We learnt a lot from them. Even though it was a hard session, it was a tough kind of lesson, but a really valuable one. It really taught us a lot about music, about performance.” “Chained to the Wheel” Vika: “When we joined The Black Sorrows, I remember we played in pubs in South Melbourne to 50 people. When ‘Chained to the Wheel’ came out, overnight it changed and we saw that going from 50 people in South Melbourne to people queued up around the Palais waiting to see the Sorrows play.” Linda: “I remember hearing it on the radio for the first time thinking it sounded great. I was like, ‘This is cool.’ I knew it was a hit.” Vika: “I had no idea.” Linda: “I knew. I could tell.”