About

VIKA & LINDA
“Vika and Linda Bull have enchanted Australian music fans for the past three decades with their effervescent performance and effortless harmonies.” – Kathy McCabe, The Daily Telegraph
You can’t beat siblings singing together, Paul Kelly observed when Vika & Linda released their 2020 anthology, ‘Akilotoa. “They make the air beat in sync.”
It comes naturally to Melbourne’s Bull sisters – they’ve been singing together their entire lives, starting in church with their mother, Siniva, who came to Australia as a nursing student in 1959. “Tongans by nature are fun, always laughing, always eating, always singing and always praying,” Vika explains.
“We learned to sing at church,” Linda adds. “Our mother was our teacher and we loved listening to the Tongans singing. It was joyous.”
From church to the charts, Vika & Linda have enjoyed a remarkable musical journey.
A snapshot of the highlights: After three classic albums with The Black Sorrows, Vika & Linda have released eight studio albums, two live albums and a chart-topping anthology. They have also sung on number one albums by Paul Kelly, Kasey Chambers and John Farnham, done gigs for the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and the King of Tonga, and been nominated for six ARIA Awards.
And in 2022, Vika & Linda were awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, for their service to the performing arts. The sisters were humbled by the award. “I’m so rapt, I am going to wear it down the shops,” Linda said.
The OAM was recognition of more than three decades of making music. “When you set out to be a singer, you sing because you love it, it’s your passion,” Linda noted. “But when you’re recognised by your country for it, for your service to it, that’s a whole other level.”
After making their public singing debut – performing ‘Everything Is Hunky Dory Children Of The Lord’ in church – Vika & Linda formed their own band, The Honeymooners, in 1987. The following year, after being recommended by drummer Peter Luscombe, they joined The Black Sorrows – initially for a six-week tour; they stayed for six years.

Kiwi star Marlon Williams is enraptured by Vika & Linda’s compelling live show. “You ask anyone who’s seen the Bull sisters live and they’ll tell you that the moment they come on stage the temperature just changes in the room. There’s just so much heat.”
Tim Rogers calls them “the most generous performers that I know” and remains in awe of their vocal prowess. “People often say it’s a gift from God to sing like that and it is a thing of wonder.”
“Their voices combined sound salty-sweet,” Paul Kelly says, “and have that elusive twinned quality you only get when siblings sing together – two swallows swooping and spiralling in the air as if invisibly girded. Vika has great cut and articulation and can really open up the throttle. Linda is warm and mellow like honey. But they can switch roles. They can both be tough and tender.”
Vika & Linda have also been long-term members of Paul Kelly’s band and have sung on several of his chart-topping albums. “I’ve come to realise,” Paul says, “largely from working with Vika & Linda, that I really like having another voice on a record besides mine.”
“I like the way we sound when we sing together,” Vika says of working with Paul. “It’s like a family group, like The Carter Family or The Staple Singers.”
In 2016, Vika & Linda sang for 100,000 people when they performed the national anthem at the AFL Grand Final. The Herald Sun’s Cameron Adams wrote, “Anyone who has to sing the national anthem at a major sporting event in the future needs to YouTube this as research.”
Also in 2016, Vika & Linda received a Special Recognition Award at the Pacific Music Awards, presented in New Zealand. And they were inducted into the Music Victoria Hall of Fame in 2019 by their good friend Kate Ceberano. “And now together,” Kate said, “always together – forever together – we celebrate their important position in the history of Australian music.”

For their own music, Vika & Linda have traversed rock, country, gospel, reggae, R&B, soul and blues, as well as paying tribute to their rich Tongan heritage.
“Singing so many different styles has made us hard to pigeonhole, but it has made us the singers we are today.”
In 2022, the sisters released their first Christmas album, Gee Whiz, It’s Christmas! (an “all-killer stocking-filler”, according to Rhythms magazine). Anyone expecting a set of gospel tracks or traditional Christmas carols was in for a surprise as Vika & Linda delivered their joyous take on seasonal songs by Slade, the Ramones, Wizzard, Queen and Tom Petty.
The Christmas collection coincided with the release of No Bull, the sisters’ memoir documenting their journey from Doncaster, in suburban Melbourne, to the top of the charts.
Vika & Linda have also carved their own careers on the theatre stage, with Vika touring the world as the lead in At Last: The Etta James Story. Vika has also starred in Let’s Get It On: The Life and Music of Marvin Gaye and Tapestry: The Songs of Carole King, while Linda has starred in Stardust: The Songs of Willie Nelson. And the sisters tell their own story, through stories and song, in the acclaimed Between Two Shores, which premiered at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2019.
“Through all this,” Vika says, “we’ve learnt to be honest with ourselves, work as hard as we can, to take full responsibility for our decisions – both good and bad – and, most importantly, to get the job done and to enjoy ourselves.”
“After 35 years, we feel we are just hitting our stride,” Linda adds. “We have never been in a hurry to get to the top. That has never been our goal. Longevity has.”
Mission accomplished.
‘Akilotoa – named after a Tongan song about love that the sisters listened to when they were growing up, and later recorded for their second album, Princess Tabu – marked the end of one chapter in Vika & Linda’s remarkable story.