Christine Anu

 ( Official ) 

She went on to sing back-up vocals for the Rainmakers, which included Neil Murray, formerly founder-member of the Warumpi Band, for a year. Her first recording was in 1993 with "Last Train", a dance remake of a Paul Kelly song. The follow-up, "Monkey and the Turtle", was based on a traditional nursery rhyme from the Torres Strait Islands.

In 1995, Neil Murray won an Australasian Performing Right Association songwriting award for writing "My Island Home". Anu covered the song, which gained immediate popularity, causing her to be remembered as the principal singer of the song. She released her first album, Stylin' Up, which went platinum, in 1995.

"Come On" was released as the fourth and final single from Stylin' Up. The song peaked at number 94 in Australia on the ARIA Charts. N.B. The HP column displays the highest peak reached. At the ARIA Music Awards of 1996 the song won two of three awards for which it was nominated, including Best Female Artist and Best Indigenous Release. In that year she also won a Deadly Award for best female artist.

Baz Luhrmann asked her to sing on the song "Now Until the Break of Day" on his 1997 album Something for Everybody album. It was released as a single, with the video winning another ARIA award in 1999, and led to her being cast in Moulin Rouge!.

In January 1998, Anu teamed up with Archie Roach, Paul Kelly, Judith Durham, Renee Geyer, Kutcha Edwards and Tiddas and formed Singers for the Red Black and Gold. Together they released a cover of "Yil Lull". In that year, she won the Female Artist of The Year Deadly Award.

In 2000, Anu released Come My Way which peaked at number 18 on the ARIA albums chart and went gold. She released the hit single "Sunshine on a Rainy Day", for which she won the ARIA Awards for both Best Female Artist and Engineer of the Year. In the same year, she sang the song "My Island Home" at the Sydney 2000 Olympics Closing Ceremony. Christine Anu's 45 Degrees. Abc.net.au. Retrieved on 12 June 2012.

In 2003, Anu released her third studio album, 45 Degrees, and in 2005 released Acoustically. In that year, she was again winner of the Deadly Award for Female Artist of the Year, and in 2004 she won Single of the Year for "Talk About Love".

In February and March 2007, Anu toured New South Wales with a new stage show, Black is Blue, singing the songs of blues legends such as Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Marlene Cummins, and Ella Fitzgerald. Also that year she toured a children's show and released an associate album titled Chrissy's Island Family. The album gained an ARIA Award nomination.

On 26 September 2010, she released a new single, "Come Home", but it was not successful. In 2012 she released the album Rewind: The Aretha Franklin Songbook.

On 7 November 2014, Anu released a Christmas music album, titled Island Christmas, and the following year released ReStylin' Up 20 Years.

In March 2018, Anu released a duet version of "Without You" from the musical Rent with Greg Gould. The lyric video featured photography from around the world, each photo with a splash of red for HIV/AIDS support and awareness.

Through 2023, Anu worked on her first album since 2015's live ReStylin' Up 20 Years. The project is using German ethnomusicologist Wolfgang Laade's recordings of Anu's grandfather, Nadi Anu, which are held by the Australian Institute Of Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Studies. The resulting album, , was released on 2 August 2024. Her daughter, Zipporah, wrote one of the songs on the album.

She appeared in Dating the Enemy, a 1996 Australian film starring Guy Pearce and Claudia Karvan. She has also hosted children's television programme Play School.

Anu appeared in an Australian production of the stage musical Little Shop of Horrors, and her stage career developed with a starring role as Mimi in the original Australian production of Rent in 1998 and 1999, which played to glowing reviews. Anu was offered a role in a Broadway production of this musical but had to decline due to commitments in recording her second album.

She had parts in the films Moulin Rouge! (2001) and The Matrix Reloaded (2003) as Kali. She also played Kali on the video game Enter the Matrix.