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You may not have heard of the 34-year-old from Fyansford, western Geelong, but it’s more than likely you’ve heard her work.
Aside from her work as a solo artist, Riordan composes for TV and film. Working for Universal Music, Atlantic and Roc Nation, she has composed songs for a host of major projects – among them Home and Away, the theme music for the AFL grand final and the Disney Channel, and a Kia commercial that ran during the 2018 South Korea Winter Olympics.
This second music career really took off when her song, I’m In Love with You, featured on Netflix show The Cable Girls and won the 2017 Mark Award – “the Grammys for film and production music”, in Riordan’s words.
Despite her resume, Riordan still gets pleasantly surprised when she hears her work featured in major productions.
“You often don’t know what your compositions are going to be used in until you get an invoice from APRA,” she says.
Riordan acknowledges some might find it strange that she remembers a moment from her miscarriage as being beautiful.
But then, Daisy – the daughter she lost that night – does seem to have a track record for turning tragedy into beauty.
In 2022, and while continuing fertility treatment, Riordan wrote the song that changed the course of her life: Daisies.
“You’d be gentle/you’d be helpful and kind/so creative/hopefully you’d have his mind,” begin the lyrics.
Riordan, explaining how Daisies came about, said: “I don’t think it [Daisy’s loss] was anything I really processed. Because we were still going through all of these fertility treatments, I just had to go onto the next. In my mind, that’s how I would deal with it.”
The Deep Satisfaction pita pocket, with lavish helpings of beef brisket.Credit: Lusi Ascui
“Years later, I was sitting at the piano practising something, and I made a mistake,” she says. “But that mistake was actually really beautiful, and it sounded so lovely I wanted to write a song around it. It was an hour between me making the mistake and what you hear in Daisies.
“It was just like, ‘Look, this [song] is who you’re going to be.’ I think that was me processing it.”
Understandably, Riordan was afraid at first to share a creation detailing such intense, intimate pain, except with Daniel.
“[He] was at work, and – it was probably a bad decision on my part – but I screenshot the lyrics that I wrote down and sent it to him,” she says.
“I was like, ‘I just wrote this: I think it needs to be something for us.’ And he said to me he had to step away from his desk, and he fell apart at his office. And I thought, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t even think of that!’
“But when I was putting [the album], Songs I wrote as therapy, together, I knew that I had to speak of this to help other people because if I didn’t share my story, there would be another person going through this that needed to hear Daisies but wouldn’t.”
In the three years she has been performing Daisies, Riordan has seen the value of her decision to share it with the world again and again.
It’s common for women to come up to her after shows, to share their own experiences with miscarriage.
“They tell me their [children’s] names, and share what happened to them,” she says.
“I was the speaker at an International Women’s Day event, and I had these elderly women come up to me saying, ‘I lost my baby, I could never speak of it.’ That’s the most special [thing] to me: when someone feels empowered enough to make space for their own experiences.”
Riordan gets goosebumps recalling this memory, and her voice wobbles – with gratitude more than sadness.
Daisies won the Australasian Pop category at the 2025 Intercontinental Music Awards, which are designed to recognise the best music from around the world.
I have to keep reminding myself to taste what I’m eating while she talks – to pull my mind back to the here and now, where the roasted cauliflower, tomato salsa, tahini and chilli in my pita pocket is making my taste buds pop and crackle in approval.
Riordan has chosen Miznon’s beef brisket pocket with mozzarella, mustard, sour cream, onion and pickles. It’s a creation called Deep Satisfaction, named after the facial expressions made by those who consume it, if Riordan is anything to go by.
The roasted whole cauliflower is a Miznon specialty.Credit: Lusi Ascui
Miznon, the Mediterranean street food hotspot in the CBD’s Hardware Lane, was always where she was going to choose to meet me. Riordan has fond memories of eating street food like these pockets on her previous visits to Jerusalem with Israeli-born Daniel.
Perhaps inevitably, our conversation strayed onto the topic of the Israel-Hamas war. As with her miscarriage, Riordan is sincere and straightforward when tackling it.
“I’ve written a few songs in Hebrew, but they’re not pop music,” she says. “The synagogue will commission me to write things for [services].
A set lunch menu will set you back $40 each.Credit: Luis Ascui
“Right now, I’m with a community in Caulfield so I do music for them, especially whenever we have festivals like Yom Kippur.”
Riordan says the songs she has been writing for Melbourne’s Jewish community have become more reflective since October 7, 2023.
“The last one I wrote was Shema Koli, which means ‘hear me’,” she says.
“It’s like, ‘With hope, oh God, we await you, surely you will answer. Hear me, hear me, forgive me, hear me.’
“It was a reflection about how we want to be heard as a community. When [in the song] I say, ‘slach li’ – ‘forgive me’ – [that means] we know there are innocents on both sides, and that it is a very complex issue, and I would want to be forgiven for anything that I might portray that isn’t someone else’s story and someone else’s perspective.
“I do hope that some of the community feel uplifted by the song, feel empowered and allowed to grieve our experience. I feel like we often have to dial down what we’re experiencing so that we don’t receive anything negative.”
In January, Riordan was asked to perform at the launch of a non-fiction book imagining a more peaceful Middle East. She sang Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now.
The “White” pita pocket made the writer’s tastebuds dance with joy.Credit: Alexander Darling
Much has happened since I met Riordan: Anti-war protesters targeted Miznon, and police eventually charged three of them.
Australia formally recognised the Palestinian state. On October 9, two years and two days after Hamas’ attacks, a ceasefire deal was announced, followed by Hamas releasing Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Riordan’s story reflects how terrorism and war affects lives even from half-a-world away.
Even so, her life isn’t defined by conflict. It’s defined by strength, despite challenge after challenge.
Fortune finally smiled on Riordan and her husband when their son, Archie – their 31st monthly attempt at becoming pregnant – was born happy and healthy.
But the hardship still wasn’t over: Riordan also had to come to terms with the fact she could not have any more children.
She needed a hysterectomy when she developed adenomyosis – another common condition similar to endometriosis, in which tissue grows within the muscle wall of the uterus.
“I had to make that decision just so that I could live the best life I could for Archie, [so] I didn’t have pain every day,” Riordan says.
“We had six embryos at that time, and my husband and I ... decided to have them cremated and buried with Daisy.
“So all of our babies are together at the same cemetery and on top of my piano. I have eight children, but I just have one in my house.”
Archie is now five and already adding drums to his mother’s compositions. Riordan has told him he has siblings like his daycare playmates do – it’s just that his are in heaven.
And whenever Archie sees an orange butterfly, he says, ‘Look, it’s Daisy.’
Riordan says after 10 years of professional triumph and personal hardship, she is now content with where she is.
“I am really grateful that my experiences have put me in a position where I can hear these stories and help more people,” she says.
“My biggest passion now is to actually make an impact through my music.”
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