Kate Ceberano

She's the very embodiment of Aussie pop — a hugely versatile performer with incredible range and thrice the standard allocation of soul. Our collection of Kate Ceberano's best tracks to date gets underway with the tunes you've countless times sung in the shower: the best-selling single of 1988, "Bedroom Eyes"; the '60s-styled "Pash"; and "I Don't Know How to Love Him," which arrived on the back of her role as Mary Magdalene in a 1992 production of Jesus Christ Superstar. Kate the young funkster appears along side her '00s incarnation, in Next Steps.

Like many pop icons, Kate started young — at 15, she was fronting funk outfit I'm Talking (a splinter group produced by the more experimental Essenden Airport), with whom she won a bunch of best-vocalist awards and delivered irresistible confections like "Lead the Way" — from sole album, 1986's Bear Witness. Two-decades-plus down the line, and Kate's star is as bright as ever: 2008's So Much Beauty is a mix of covers and original tracks (including the excellent "Never Say Never"). Boy George swoons as Kate gets her hands on his gem, in Deep Cuts.

When Kate walks in covers territory, she habitually redefines the very notion of making a track her own. Take Culture Club's "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" on her tribute to '80s music, 2007's Nine Lime Avenue, which is stripped to its very soul and transformed into a timeless swampy lament. As for jazz standards . . . Kate is fearless and assured in Nine Simone territory ("My Baby Just Cares for Me") and pumps a good-time swinger like "Heart" with playful insouciance.

Teenage funkster. Empress of soul, jazz, and pop. Winner of 2007's Dancing with the Stars. Scientologist, whose granny was governess for L. Ron Hubbard's kids, no less. We could be talking about only the immensely, unfairly talented Kate Ceberano, whose career spans the highly polished breakout '80s funk of I'm Talking to the world-class covers on her 2008 album, So Much Beauty. Here's a girl who can spritz up a beach party, smooth down a lounge bar, or raise the roof on a concert hall. How many other artists in Australia — or the world, for that matter — can break hearts with such diverse material as Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water", Kate Bush's "The Man with the Child in his Eyes," and the Verve's "The Drugs Don't Work"? Talent like Kate's is rare indeed.