LILLI - Anthropology

LILLI's DEBUT ALBUM:
The $11 Train Ticket to Anthropology

Australian Christian Music News

June 2026

UPCOMING SHOWS:

OneSydney, June 14 (NSW)

OZ 5 CHART

1. FOR KING & COUNTRY - WORLD ON FIRE

2. Nathan Tasker - Never Too Far Gone

3. For King & Country - Ever & Ever Before

4. Jesus In These Shoes - Nathan Plumridge feat. Compliments of Gus

5. Tarryn Stokes - Rubies & Gold

*Compiled by TCM based on Australian Christian radio airplay from the preceding month.

LILLI's DEBUT ALBUM: The $11 Train Ticket to Anthropology

DJ Paine, June 1, 2026

LILLI is changing the rules of independent Christian pop in Australia. At just 22, she has released her debut album Anthropology on the back of recognition from both Australia's Christian and secular scene; hitting a national #2 on the AMRAP national community radio charts for 'O Philosopher', and a finalist in last year's South Australian Music Awards for the pop category.

Longstanding radio broadcaster and supporter of Australian Christian music, DJ Paine catches up with LILLI for this feature interview.

I’ve been doing this Christian radio gig for over 30 years now and interviewing music artists for different on air spots is part of the job description. Most of the time you get a very polished version of each artist's persona. They have their talking points lined up. They have an album to sell. They know exactly how to smile for the webcam and give you the approved narrative about how God birthed a specific song during a quiet time of reflection… yada yada yada.

And that’s fine. We all have a job to do. But sometimes it feels a bit like you are interviewing a brand rather than a human being.

Then you meet someone like Lilli Fulwood.

I actually completely botched my first attempt to interview her. We had a last minute 'scheduling glitch' on my end and the whole thing fell over. I had to go back to her with my tail between my legs and ask for a do-over. A lot of artists would have been annoyed, or at least sighed heavily off-camera. Lilli just laughed it off. She told me I was "just building anticipation, my brother" and happily jumped back on the Zoom call.

That interaction tells you almost everything you need to know about the 22-year-old from South Australia. She is genuinely unflappable. She is entirely unpretentious. And she is about to release a debut album that proves you don't need a slick production or a massive label budget to say something profound about faith.

LILLI is a bold ray of colourful sunshine splashing the world from her home in Mt Gambier, South Australia.

Let's be honest about the reality of Australia's independent Christian music scene though. It is a tough, tough gig. You don't do this for the money! You do it because you can't sleep until the song is out of your head. As Lilli told me straight up,

"It's a stack of hard work, but it means that you're only gonna do it if you love it. Which I think kind of probably weeds out some of the people that maybe don't wanna do it as much as they thought they wanted to."

Lilli knows this grind intimately. She currently funds her music career by working casual shifts at a local cinema. She sweeps popcorn off the floor so she can pay for studio time. She also happens to be a tactical genius when it comes to the Victorian public transport system!

To record her upcoming album, she had to travel from her home in Mount Gambier to work with legendary producer Jared Hashek in Melbourne. For those of you not familiar with Aussie geography Mount Gambier sits right near the Victorian state border. Lilli figured out that thanks to a state government transit cap, she could get to the studio for pocket change.

"You can get on a bus, then board a train and go from Mount Gambier to Warrnambool and from Warrnambool to Southern Cross Station for $11 - or less if it's a Sunday," she laughed.

"Guys, that's a bargain! You can't drive with that price. So I would just jump on the public transport and, yeah, would just dip over for, like, a week at a time."

She commuted across state lines for the price of a inner Melbourne cold drip coffee. She crashed with friends. She stayed in at least one highly questionable Airbnb that was dodgy enough for producer Jared's wife to offer a rescue mission. She did whatever it took to get the songs recorded.

Where does that kind of drive come from? You have to look at how she grew up.

Lilli is an eldest child. As a fellow eldest child myself, I know we share that weird innate pressure to set the standard. But Lilli carries it with a lot of grace, mostly because of the environment her parents built.

Her family homeschooled the kids in Mount Gambier. They didn't do it to hide from the world. They did it to build a creative greenhouse. Her dad is a director and editor who spent years shooting missional documentaries in developing nations. Her mum is a professional actress. The house was always full of music.

O Philosopher has topped the national AMRAP pop chart

"I am so blessed, DJ, with the family that I have," she told me.

"We are really close. My family are all my best friends. And you will see their fingerprints over all of the creative projects that I do because they're all creatives themselves. So the music video that we've just been working on, my dad shot, my mum produced, and my littlest sister pressed play on the backing track!”

But growing up in a creative house doesn't automatically mean you want to do it for a living. For a long time, Lilli actually fought against the idea of a music career. She thought about being a scientist. She considered history. She wondered if she should be a missionary.

Music felt too risky. She told herself you couldn't make an actual living from it. That sounded like common sense at the time. It sounded like the responsible, practical thing an eldest child should say.

But faith has a funny way of interrogating our common sense. As she grew older, she realised her hesitation wasn't actually about being practical.

"At the end of the day, the insecurity was pride," she admitted to me. "It was me saying, I don't think that God can use this. And God's like, 'Excuse me. I can."

Once she realised that, everything shifted. She stopped living in fear of what might happen if she failed.

"I feel like now I'm fully committed to giving this music thing like a red hot crack, like a 110% and going: here I am, Lord. Use me in that space."

She enrolled in a Bachelor of Music at Tabor Institute of Music in Adelaide, focusing on jazz vocals. And she started knocking on doors.

A lot of young musicians sit around waiting to be discovered. Lilli booked a trip to America. As part of her degree, she travelled to New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Nashville. She didn't know anyone. She just showed up.

"Honestly, I had some audacity and some nerve rocking up to Nashville the way I did," she laughed. "I didn't know nothing about nothing. I still know nothing about nothing! But I would just, like, 'Hello, everybody. I'm Lilli. I'm from Australia, and I don't know what I'm doing, but I'd love to chat with you!’”

That classic Aussie 'she'll be right' attitude worked. Thanks to connections made by Aaron Duff from Australian Christian Records, she found herself sitting in rooms with industry heavyweights. She spent an hour chatting with John Mays from Centricity Music - that same guy who discovered Lauren Daigle. She played a gig in a little bar in Printer's Alley. She performed for CCM Magazine. She asked a LOT of questions and actually listened.

All of that life experience, that hustle, and that grounded faith has bled straight into Anthropology.

Anthropology was released May 22 and can be found on CD, vinyl, download and streaming sites

The album took six months of back-and-forth travel to put together. As mentioned, Compliments of Gus alumni Jared Hashek produced it, and Lilli couldn't speak highly enough of our mate:

"It's just this incredible miracle that he's as excellent at what he does as he is an excellent person," she said. "He embraced all my weird ideas."

And the record has some wonderfully weird, brilliant ideas on it. The opening track features a guy named Ted Yoder playing the hammer dulcimer. You might remember him as the guy who went viral playing Tears for Fears on YouTube before running into his basement to hide from a tornado. That is the exact kind of obscure, brilliant collaboration this album thrives on.

But what actually is this album? The title sounds heavy. Lilli told me she tried to workshop other names but kept coming back to Anthropology. The record is quite literally her study of the human experience.

It is not a Sunday morning worship album. You’re not going to hear these tracks played before a sermon with the lyrics projected on a screen. And Lilli is completely fine with that. She doesn't want to write congregational anthems. She wants to write evangelistic tools.

At this point in our conversation we bonded over an American duo: Lilli is a massive Twenty One Pilots fan. When she first heard their music, it blew her mind. The sound was this wild mix of pop and alternative grunge. But the lyrics were dealing with the heavy, crushing weight of the world.

"I went, 'Wow. You can do both,'" she remembered. "Like, you can sound great, and talk about something really powerful. I don't wanna do it like Twenty One Pilots because I can't be the second Twenty One Pilots. I can only be the first Lilli."

That is what she is doing here. She is writing songs for the person who feels completely alone. There is no forced happy endings in Lilli's music. She isn't pretending that following Jesus makes all your problems evaporate. She is stepping right into the mess of life and pointing to the grace hidden inside it.

"My hope and prayer is that there will be other people of all ages but especially young people, and I guess young girls that will find this music and go, 'Oh, I didn't know someone else thought this too,'" she told me.

"I see this as an evangelistic tool. The album itself is not a worship album at all. Like, you wouldn't play this music in church... But (even) if I have to keep cleaning popcorn off the floor at my local cinema as a casual to just feed myself, but God is using this music in some way just to impact one person. It's worth it. Like, how much is a soul worth?"

'Full-time Jesus freak, part-time Jedi.'
(from LILLI's instagram bio)

You can't manufacture that kind of heart. She is incredibly ambitious. She wants to take this music on the road, play live shows, and connect with people face-to-face. But she refuses to take herself too seriously.

Track four on the new album is called 'Close Encounters'. It is a massive nod to her love of sci-fi. We spent a good chunk at the end of our interview talking about Star Wars. She is an original trilogy purist ("100% the best," she confirmed), which is obviously the correct theological position to hold. She even has a collection of lightsabers sitting in her room.

She also casually challenged me on air to connect her with Paul Meany, the producer for Twenty One Pilots and former Mutemath frontman. She promised me a free t-shirt, shipping included, if I could make the introduction. I am still working on that one.

Anthropology is out now. The lead single "Dangerous Game" is out now. Do yourself a favour and track her down. Find her on Instagram at @lilli_fulwood_music and jump on board early. Buy the t-shirt. Support an independent Aussie artist who is doing the hard yards.

Because we need more artists like Lilli. We need people who are willing to be entirely human, completely honest, and ready to have a good laugh.