Let Her Go star Passenger on his year of being mixed up with a Disney character

Not animated ... Interviewers keep mixing up Passenger’s hit Let Her Go with the Disney theme of a similar name. Picture Cameron Richardson Source: News Corp Australia

MIKE Rosenberg has been letting it go for the last 12 months.

But when an ABC radio jock got it wrong yesterday, he decided it was time to set the record straight.

Rosenberg politely corrected his interviewer that his worldwide smash hit under his artistic pseudonym Passenger, which has sold more than six million copies globally for the English singer songwriter, is called Let Her Go.

It is a completely different song to the one which sold a few million copies less, won an Oscar and is performed by a Disney character called Elsa. That song is called Let It Go.

“It’s happened about 40 times in the last year, on the Today show yesterday and ABC this morning, introduced as “his hit single Let It Go’. I feel like I should be bursting into Let It Go, do a really emotive version of it,” he says, laughing.

Passenger - Let Her Go (Official Video)

If you are lucky, or not depending on your tolerance for Disney themes, Rosenberg just may do that during his Australian tour for a bit of a joke.

Early adopter Australian fans were already well aware of Passenger before Let Her Go took him on an 18-month touring odyssey as he chased its success across the globe,

Rosenberg started busking in Australia in 2009, spending several months building a fanbase — and a good-looking tan — on the streets and quickly making friends with the locals including Lior, Kate Miller-Heidke, Boy & Bear, Josh Pyke and Katie Noonan.

Flying high ... Passenger enjoyed the craziest year of his life chasing the success of Let Her Go around the world. Picture; Supplied. Source: Supplied

They would later contribute to his albums, recorded in Sydney with a close knit crew of musicians and producer Chris Vallejo, with his fifth LP Whispers released in mid 2014.

Rosenberg joked that his dream of establishing himself in Australia had as much to do with his grand plan of an endless summer.

“When I was busking, that was definitely the plan. The first hint of winter in Europe and I would head here. But the last few years, my trips to Australia have got quicker and quicker,” he says.

“But I’ve developed an amazing bond with this place so it makes me a bit sad I can’t spend six months of the year here any more.”

The 30-year-old musician arrived on the world stage around the same time as his good mate Ed Sheeran and while he won’t claim any of the credit for the explosion of “beardcore” folk music, he does recognise that his timing was perfect.

“I think it became a really good time for musicians like me as people again started embracing the song again, the art of songwriting, over the last five years,” he says.

“I don’t know if it was a backlash against the Idols and X Factors but you had Mumford and Sons, people like Ben Howard and Angus and Julia Stone and Ed come through.

“It proved again that if a song can work on just an acoustic guitar and stand on its own, then it works.”

He’s a player ... Passenger used to spend six months busking in Australia over summer before he hit the top of the charts. Picture: Adam Smith. Source: News Limited

He followed up the success of Let Her Go and his fourth album All the Little Lights with the Whispers record last year.

Rosenberg is sanguine about its commercial fortunes, knowing only a handful of artists ever get to enjoy having that one big hit which will take you around the world and win enough fans to just keep going.

He shakes his head when asked if he would like the same level of stardom enjoyed by Sheeran.

“I am genuinely good with only having one of them. Let Her Go was such a phenomenon and I had one of the funnest years of my life chasing that song around the world,” he says.

“Ed is brilliant at being Ed, he’s a machine, he never stops working but no, that’s not me.”

From playing to 50,000 at the Isle of Wight festival and selling out theatre and arena shows, Rosenberg still returns to the streets to play his beautiful songs of love won and lost, of life and death, joy and sadness.

Busking not only keeps his feet planted literally on the ground but it also sharpens those performance skills to win a crowd quickly.

And there is the giving-back aspect. Rosenberg never wants to be too expensive for his audience to see play live.

“I am aware how expensive tickets can be or that some fans are too young to go to a gig or just don’t feel comfortable going out to a show,” he says.

“I don’t do it to prove I am a nice guy or anything, I just love playing, I really do.”

See: Passenger, Palais Theatre, Melbourne, January Saturday (sold out) and Sunday. Ticketmaster

Qantas Credit Union Arena, January 23, Ticketek

Riverstage, January 25, Ticketmaster; Cairns Convention Centre, January 27, Ticketlink

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