Ruel: Australian Singer, Songwriter, Albums, Songs and Career

Who is Ruel?

Ruel is an Australian singer and songwriter whose music moves between pop, R&B and soul, with his distinctive vocal range at the centre of his recordings.

Born Ruel Vincent van Dijk in Isleworth, London, on 29 October 2002, he is the son of English mother Kate Vincent and Dutch-born, New Zealand-raised father Ralph van Dijk. The family relocated to Sydney in 2006, and it was in Australia that Ruel grew up and began developing his musical career.

His path into the industry started remarkably early. In 2015, when Ruel was still at school, his father sent a recording of him singing James Bay's Let It Go to Australian producer M-Phazes, whose production and songwriting credits would eventually make him one of Ruel's most important creative collaborators.

That introduction helped set in motion a career that moved quickly. Within a few years Ruel had appeared on national radio, toured with major international artists, signed an international record deal and become the youngest solo performer at the time to win an ARIA Award.

Ruel's early career

Ruel released his debut single, Golden Years, with M-Phazes in April 2017. His national breakthrough gathered momentum two months later when he appeared on triple j's Like a Version.

At 14, Ruel became the youngest featured performer the long-running segment had hosted at that point, performing Jack Garratt's Weathered. The appearance placed an adolescent singer with an unexpectedly deep and controlled voice before a much larger Australian audience.

Don't Tell Me followed in July 2017 and became his first appearance on the ARIA Singles Chart, reaching No. 86. The song also attracted a notable supporter overseas: Elton John played it on BBC Radio 1 and publicly praised Ruel's voice.

By the end of the year, the young singer was gaining valuable live experience beyond his own shows. He joined Khalid for the Australian and New Zealand dates of the American Teen Tour and signed internationally with RCA Records in November 2017.

Those developments established the basic pattern of Ruel's early career. Rather than waiting for a conventional debut album, he built his audience through singles, EPs, touring and collaborations, gradually moving from a teenage Australian discovery into an artist with an international following.

Ready and the ARIA breakthrough

Ruel's profile rose considerably during 2018. He performed in Japan at Pop Spring Festival and appeared at the opening ceremony of the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games before releasing his debut EP, Ready, in June.

Ready included Dazed & Confused, Younger and Don't Tell Me, recordings that established the polished mixture of pop songwriting, R&B phrasing and soul-influenced vocals associated with his early work.

Dazed & Confused produced a major milestone at the 2018 ARIA Awards. Ruel won Breakthrough Artist for the release, becoming, at 16, the youngest solo artist to win an ARIA Award at that time.

The achievement was significant not simply because of his age. Ruel had gone from releasing his first single to winning one of Australian music's major industry awards in less than two years.

Younger also became an important early recording. Its success helped demonstrate that the attention surrounding Ruel was extending beyond a single breakout track, while his expanding touring schedule gave him an increasingly international audience.

Painkiller and Free Time

The next phase of Ruel's career brought one of his best-known songs. Painkiller arrived in May 2019 as the lead single from his second EP, Free Time.

Free Time was released in September 2019 and further developed Ruel's approach to contemporary pop and R&B. Other tracks from the period included Face to Face, whose video was filmed while he was touring in France.

His collaborations were expanding as well. Ruel appeared on Fire & Grace from Hilltop Hoods' 2019 album The Great Expanse, while his live career included opening dates for Shawn Mendes in Australia.

The awards continued. In 2019 he won Favourite Aussie/Kiwi at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, Best Australian Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards and Live Voice of the Year at Australia's National Live Music Awards.

Painkiller later received an ARIA Song of the Year nomination, while Free Time was nominated for Best Male Artist. The song also finished third in the 2020 Vanda & Young Global Songwriting Competition.

Bright Lights, Red Eyes

Ruel entered another stage of his recording career in 2020 with Bright Lights, Red Eyes, his third EP.

As Long as You Care preceded the EP, premiering on triple j before its release in September. Bright Lights, Red Eyes followed on 23 October 2020.

The project completed a run of three EPs in three years: Ready in 2018, Free Time in 2019 and Bright Lights, Red Eyes in 2020.

That sequence gave Ruel an unusually extensive catalogue before he had released a studio album. It also allowed his songwriting and sound to develop publicly during the years when he was making the transition from teenage performer to adult artist.

Around the same period he continued collaborating with other Australian musicians, including Sydney electronic duo Cosmo's Midnight on the 2020 track Down for You.

Ruel's debut album 4TH WALL

Despite years of releases and touring, Ruel did not issue his debut studio album until 2023.

4TH WALL arrived on 3 March 2023 after a lengthy writing process. Ruel said he spent about three years working on the record and accumulated more than 100 songs, rewriting and re-recording material before settling on the finished album.

The result represented a deliberate move away from the EP-led structure of his teenage career. Songs associated with the album included GROWING UP IS____, MUST BE NICE, SOMEONE ELSE'S PROBLEM, I DON'T WANNA BE LIKE YOU, GO ON WITHOUT ME and JAPANESE WHISKEY.

4TH WALL reached No. 3 on the ARIA Albums Chart.

The record also documented a different stage of Ruel's life. The teenager introduced to audiences through Like a Version was now in his twenties, and the songwriting increasingly dealt with adulthood, relationships and the uncertainty that accompanied growing up under public scrutiny.

GROWING UP IS_____ earned further industry recognition, including an ARIA nomination for Best Solo Artist in 2022 and APRA nominations the following year.

DMA'S collaboration and Adaptations

After 4TH WALL, Ruel began another period of experimentation and collaboration.

In 2024 he worked with Sydney band DMA'S, releasing What a Life and We're a Pair of Diamonds. The latter had an unusual path to release. Ruel joined DMA'S for an acoustic performance of the then-unreleased song at Sydney's Enmore Theatre, and the response to the performance helped revive a track originally written during the 4TH WALL sessions.

Ruel also revisited other artists' material during this period. In June 2024 he released a version of Sixpence None the Richer's late-1990s hit Kiss Me as part of his Adaptations project.

The release coincided with a change in the business side of his career. After his earlier years associated with RCA and Sony Music Australia, his subsequent releases appeared through Giant Music.

Kicking My Feet

Ruel's second studio album, Kicking My Feet, arrived in October 2025 and opened another chapter in his career.

By this stage he had relocated from Sydney to Los Angeles and had again generated a large quantity of material. Around 200 songs were reportedly considered before the project was reduced to its final 11 tracks.

The record reunited him with M-Phazes while broadening his group of collaborators. Dan Wilson worked on Wild Guess and Destroyer, while Kenny Beats produced the latter. The album also included Only Ever, When You Walk in the Room, I Can Die Now, Not What's Going On, The Suburbs, No News Is Good News, Even Angels Won't and the title track.

The Suburbs became particularly important to Ruel's development as a songwriter.

In January 2026, the song was announced as the first-prize winner of the 2025 Vanda & Young Global Songwriting Competition. Ruel shared the writing credit with M-Phazes, Elias Danielson, Chelsea Lena and Fran Hall.

The competition judges considered more than 4,000 entries from 52 countries, with submissions assessed anonymously by a panel of more than 70 music-industry professionals. First prize carried $50,000.

The result gave Ruel another significant songwriting distinction years after Painkiller had finished third in the same competition.

Kicking My Feet & Screaming

Rather than treating the Kicking My Feet sessions as finished business, Ruel turned the large body of material into a two-part project.

Kicking My Feet & Screaming was released on 12 June 2026, adding 10 new songs and extending the project to 21 tracks across its two parts.

Ruel explained that the songs accumulated during the writing process appeared to fall into two contrasting emotional groups. Kicking My Feet presented one side, while its companion explored a harsher view of relationships, including turbulence, heartbreak and romantic delusion.

The second instalment continued his work with collaborators including M-Phazes, Dan Wilson and Kenny Beats, with production contributions also including Julian Bunetta and Joel Little.

Tracks on Kicking My Feet & Screaming include Hate Myself, In Your Mind, Faking Smiles and Don't Say That. The project retains Ruel's pop and R&B foundations while giving greater space to the falsetto and atmospheric production that have become increasingly prominent in his adult recordings.

Its release was supported in Australia by listening events in cities including Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney, reconnecting an increasingly Los Angeles-based artist with the country in which his career began.

Ruel's songwriting and musical style

Ruel's catalogue has generally occupied the space between pop, R&B and soul, but his development has been as much about songwriting as vocal technique.

His voice initially provided the obvious point of distinction. As a young teenager he possessed a depth and control that sounded strikingly mature, helping his early radio performances attract attention before he had accumulated a substantial catalogue.

As his career progressed, the focus broadened. The three early EPs established a melodic contemporary pop style; 4TH WALL gave him the scale of a full album to examine growing up and relationships; and the Kicking My Feet projects pushed further into adult romantic experience.

M-Phazes has been an important figure throughout that progression. The producer received the demo that helped launch Ruel's career and subsequently became a recurring collaborator, from the earliest recordings through later albums and the award-winning The Suburbs.

Ruel also plays guitar and piano, although his voice remains the defining instrument across his recordings.

Awards and recognition

The 2018 ARIA Breakthrough Artist victory remains a defining landmark because Ruel achieved it at just 16. His subsequent nominations have covered songwriting, performance and production-associated categories.

At the 2020 ARIA Awards, Free Time was nominated for Best Male Artist and Painkiller for Song of the Year, while M-Phazes received a Producer of the Year nomination for his work on the EP. Ruel later received a Best Solo Artist nomination for GROWING UP IS_____.

His honours outside the ARIAs have included the 2019 MTV Europe Music Award for Best Australian Act, a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award and recognition from the National Live Music Awards.

The Vanda & Young Global Songwriting Competition provides another useful measure of his progression. Painkiller placed third in 2020; five years later, The Suburbs won first prize.

Ruel as a live performer

Touring has been central to Ruel's career since his teenage years.

Before establishing his own international headline schedule, he supported performers including Khalid, Gallant and Shawn Mendes. Those appearances exposed him to arena-sized audiences while he was still building his catalogue.

His own headline tours have included the Dazed & Confused and Ready tours in 2018, Asian dates, the Painkiller Tour and Free Time World Tour in 2019, the Growing Up Is _____ Tour in 2022 and the 4TH WALL Tour in 2023.

The Kicking My Feet era returned Ruel to extensive touring in 2026, by which point his live repertoire could draw on nearly a decade of releases stretching from Golden Years and Don't Tell Me through Painkiller, 4TH WALL and his newer albums.

From Sydney teenager to international artist

Ruel's career has unfolded in distinct stages unusually visible to the public.

He entered the Australian music industry as a school-aged singer whose vocal ability seemed far older than his years. His Like a Version performance provided an early national platform; Don't Tell Me attracted international attention; Ready and Dazed & Confused turned that attention into an ARIA-winning breakthrough.

The years that followed required a different kind of development. Free Time, Bright Lights, Red Eyes and an increasingly demanding touring schedule allowed him to build a catalogue without rushing into an album, while 4TH WALL finally gave him the opportunity to define himself beyond the teenage-prodigy narrative.

Kicking My Feet and Kicking My Feet & Screaming have taken that transition further. Now based in Los Angeles but still closely identified with the Australian music industry that launched him, Ruel has moved into his twenties with a larger role in shaping the emotional and songwriting identity of his records.

Nearly a decade after his first single, the unusual depth of the teenage voice that initially attracted attention is only part of the story. Ruel's longer trajectory has been one of turning early promise into a sustained catalogue, international touring career and increasingly recognised body of songwriting.