Rick Price’s “Heaven Knows” has done something most songs from 1992 can’t pull off: it’s genuinely relevant again.
Not in that forced “retro playlist” way, but as a new release with Melbourne singer issi that’s actually worth your time.
The 2025 duet version dropped in July through Price’s own label, Clarice Records. Issi’s the first signing, which is either brilliant or risky depending on how you look at it.
The story of how they met (Price playing her parents’ bar during his 2022 Australian tour, a year of quietly working together before this announcement) reads better than most origin stories you’ll hear this year.
What’s interesting isn’t just that Price keeps returning to this song. It’s why the song keeps letting him. Written after a proper breakup (the kind where you’re genuinely wrecked), Price has spent decades unpacking what it actually means.
Not just heartbreak, he’s said, but the harder bit: learning you can’t own someone, that loving with detachment isn’t cold, it’s necessary.
That perspective makes “Heaven Knows” less of a wallowing ballad and more of a mature reckoning. Similar territory to other breakup songs that age well rather than sounding dated.
For more thoughtful breakdowns and lyric stories like this, on Neon Music we regularly explore the meaning behind timeless tracks; from The Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” to our feature on the greatest breakup songs, keeping the legacy of heartfelt songwriting alive.
The original 1992 version was mostly piano and voice. Sparse in a way that felt risky then, sounds classic now. Peaked at No. 6 on the ARIA charts, won APRA Song of the Year.
A not so unsual success story for Australian artists domestically, but here’s where it gets strange: the song absolutely exploded in Asia.
Number one in the Philippines for November and December 1992, four weeks at the top in Malaysia. That’s not just chart success. That’s cultural penetration.
Twenty-five years later, Filipino radio still plays it. Price has done duet versions before (Morissette in 2020, which made perfect sense given the song’s Philippines connection).
This new version with issi feels different though. She’s unknown. The label’s new. This isn’t a nostalgia cash-in; it’s Price using his biggest song as a launchpad for someone else’s career.
Clarice Records (named after Price’s mother, which tells you something about his approach) positions itself around “real artistry and raw talent.”
The kind of mission statement that usually means nothing but might actually mean something here. Giving your inaugural release to an unknown singer, having that release be a duet of your signature song?
That’s either mentorship or madness. Maybe both. It’s certainly a collaboration approach worth watching.
Price himself doesn’t entirely understand why “Heaven Knows” stuck around. Fair enough. Most artists can’t explain why one song breaks through when others don’t.
What he has identified is the universality of holding onto something that’s already gone, of feelings that persist beyond their reasonable expiration date.
That specific emotional mess doesn’t age out. Still relevant in 2025, will be relevant in 2035.
That’s the difference between a hit and a standard, really: whether it captures something that keeps happening to people. Contemporary music analysis continues exploring these themes because they don’t resolve.
Whether the 2025 version charts like the original did in Asia remains to be seen. Probably won’t. Streaming’s changed how songs travel, how they find audiences.
But the fact that people are talking about it, that it’s landing with listeners who weren’t born when the original came out?
That says something about the song’s construction, about Price’s instinct for what translates across decades.
Not a bad payoff for a few chords scribbled down in a fit of heartbreak thirty-three years ago.
For more information about Rick Price, visit his official website.