John Butler’s first attempt at making PRISM took place five years before it was finally finished. The process broke him to the point where he gave up. “I hit a bit of a stumbling block,” he tells Apple Music. “I couldn’t complete it, for probably more personal and spiritual reasons than ability. I had to walk away. I had to surrender.” In the background, Butler’s personal and professional lives were going through seismic changes. His two-plus decades marriage of more than 20 years to Danielle Caruana, aka singer-songwriter Mama Kin, had hit turbulent waters. Their respective fathers passed away during COVID within 40 hours of each other. His band, the John Butler Trio, was also in a state of flux. When Butler finally stepped back from PRISM and took time to sit and contemplate everything that was happening around him, he started to see a way through. “I had an epiphany: four seasons as a way of building back to something,” he says. “The seasons were ‘heal yourself’, ‘begin again’, ‘go solo’, ‘band’.” The “heal yourself” component saw him fulfil a long-held ambition of making an ambient album with 2024’s Running River. The “begin again” season followed with a 2024 instrumental busking EP called Still Searching, a sequel of sorts to his first busking release, 1996’s Searching for Heritage. Having regained his confidence via these projects he approached the third season, “go solo”, by trying to complete PRISM. (The “band” season, he thinks, will see him reunite the John Butler Trio.) On his first ill-fated attempt, he was determined to do everything himself, but this time around, he enlisted the services of producer James Ireland (Pond, San Cisco) to engineer and collaborate. “He’s such a great beatmaker, and I love rhythm and beats,” says Butler. “There were already a shit ton on what I’d been doing, and he just made them better and added his own flair.” The duo began building songs around Butler’s guitar percussion, layering beats, synths and guitars over the top, a musical bed on which the singer could purge the devastatingly raw emotions and events of the previous few years. Here, Butler walks Apple Music through the turmoil and hope of PRISM, track by track. “Going Solo” “I remember being in an alley, crying. I was in a bit of a dark place. Things were changing. My band was changing, the players wanted to move on. My marriage had reached an expiry date, and in order to renew we had to fill out new contracts, basically, and we weren’t ready to. We didn’t know what we wanted. My dad and my father-in-law both passed away during COVID. So there was all this movement taking place. And ‘Going Solo’ was a bit like, ‘I’ve gotta step back, listen to what’s going on,’ and at the same time, throwing your hands up to the sky and saying, ‘I’m really scared.’ You’ve come to this mid-life moment where everything reevaluates. It’s like, ‘Who are you?’ ‘Going Solo’ is about that.” “King of California” “Things were looking pretty south [for] my wife and I. We went in [to marriage] with the best of intentions, but we were kids. And we’re not as perfect as we thought, and we thought we’d be so much better than our parents. But [it’s saying], ‘That aside, you’re really great, I really love you, and we’ve been on a ride, and we might have to recontract this union, but I still want to do it with you. You’re still my main queen, you’re the person I want to grow old with. But holy shit, didn’t we just have a time.’” “Gets No Better” (with Dingo Spender) “I went out bush in the Pilbara by myself and stayed under the stars for two weeks straight. It’s about being on that beautiful country and celebrating it and going, ‘I’m so happy to be right next to this fire. Not next to a phone, not next to all the bullshit that’s going on in this world, but just to sit next to the simplest element and love up that country and have that country love up you.’” “So Sorry” “I don’t think any of us go through marriage without doing something we regret. There’s also like, ‘Hey, have we forgotten who we are?’ It was written at a time where you’re like, ‘What the fuck happened? You’re an amazing woman, why can’t I see you? And I know I’m a good man. Why are we struggling? We were so boggled. We were trying so hard.’ Somewhere in amongst it you’re like, ‘I’m sorry. I love you heaps. I’m so sorry for what’s happening to us, I’m so sorry that when I say that or try to meet you there, it triggers you. And I know you’re really trying to help and I’m feeling unmet and I don’t know what’s happening.’ It was written in that desperate stage.” “The Way Back” “I was lucky to be one of the busier musicians during COVID. I was in the Blue Mountains, I was with my recording gear and just watching the world vomit on its chest. Watching the anti-vax conspiracy, BLM, post-#MeToo, Trump—it was like, ‘Fuck, this world is having a go at all the things at once.’ And I couldn’t not write about it. Then just going, ‘There’s something really kind of beautiful about COVID. Everybody’s shoulders dropped for a second.’ It felt like, ‘Oh God, that was crazy—can we stop this?’ And this sense of ‘How do we get back to something that is pre-fake news? I want to go back, but not back to the patriarchal, colonial, systemic racism world. But where the fuck are we?’” “Doing Just Fine” “It was right in the middle of COVID. I got asked to be on the Vax the Nation website and sign my thing to that, and I didn’t. Not because I was against vaccinations, I just didn’t want to tell people what to put in their body. I was vaccinated. The haters online were just cranking up. All of a sudden it was like I’m working for the government, and they’re all like, ‘You’re on that website!’ ‘Look on the website, I’m not on it!’ Never talk to a troll. So there was a sense of ‘Are you with us or against us?’ To me it was like, ‘I’m going to get vaccinated, you do what you do, but don’t ask me to fucking fly your flag or get on your side. I’m not taking a side. Your sides are both fucked.’” “Hand in Mine” “It made sense in the stark reality of all the things I was coming to terms with. Amongst all that fray and confusion, can somebody just hold my hand? Don’t give me any answers. You won’t be able to answer it for me, ’cause no one can answer this. Amongst this little storm, just hold my hand.” “Trippin on You” “There’s a certain time in a marriage, usually a few years after the kids are born, where all of a sudden, you look at each other one day and you’re like, ‘Why don’t I know you?’ Or, I have all these memories of you, they’re like stories I’ve put on top of you. The classic ones are, why didn’t he realise that dinner needed to be made? Why didn’t he realise the clothes needed to be washed? He’s not looking, he’s not dependable. I’ve learned to be dependable and think about those things, but [I’m] still being seen that way. We keep old memories, we don’t refresh the new memories. And that’s tripping on somebody. You have to go, ‘Hey, we’ve been running from old programmes on each other that are obsolete. We’d better do a refresh of where we’re at because we’re tripping.’” “Outta My Head” “Some philosopher once said, ‘Man’s greatest threat is not ecological destruction, it’s not political decay, it’s not economic collapse, it’s global insanity.’ We’ll actually lose our minds. That’s going to be the biggest challenge now.” “Let Yourself Go” “Traversing the conflicted paradox which is my relationship with my father. Loving him so much and learning so much from him, and also being on the receiving end of a lot of trauma and violence over the years. It’s tragically sublime taking care of someone during their death. At the same time, dealing with the aftermath of all this stuff that’s left behind.” “Leave the Rest to Earth” “James Ireland’s father passed just after we finished that song. Dan’s father had passed, my father had passed. Dealing with that profound thing—oh, people just go. When you lose someone close, you’re pretty existential about what this is all about, and I could be gone tomorrow and what am I doing today? You get pretty deer-in-the-headlights. It’s just kind of dealing with all that. Just really settling in, almost in a stoic way, to I shall die one day.” “Wings to Fly” “I did that song a lot playing solo around the world—it’s on the [John Butler Trio’s 2023] Live in Paris album—but it never made it to [a studio] album. And I really thought it deserved to. I was like, ‘I wonder if I could write a song about climate change without saying climate change. How can I write about this without sounding cringey? How do I cover all its complexities and duality and hypocrisy?’ And this came out. It’s a real sign of our times, where we’re at now, and it’s my job to document what’s going on in me, but also what’s going on in the world. It felt like a song for now.”