Soon to be triple j breakfast co-host Abby Butler told a story about putting on Lily Allen’s 2025 album West End Girl for the first time, late one evening. As the title track washed over her, Abby, who normally isn’t one to examine lyrics too hard, was poleaxed by the unfolding story. So much so that she went and shook her partner awake:
“She going there! Lily Allen is actually going there!”
It doesn’t really matter whether you do or don’t know what Abby is talking about (although I know in my soul some of you will deep dive now – just because) If you are a music lover, chances are you will have encountered some song or album yourself where you have experienced a similar visceral response or epiphany and wanted to wake your beloved, best friend or the neighbours.
Tyrone Pynor, Abby’s best friend and co-host with her of triple j Drive, now breakfast, first heard Olivia Dean when he was host of triple j’s soul ctrl. Via her 2023 debut album Messy, in fact before it was released, Tyrone felt that there was something special about the English singer songwriter. He was there from the beginning to later watching Olivia reach No 1 on 2025’s triple j Hottest 100 (and charts across the world) with Man I Need.
As someone said on Instagram:
‘Never doubt a Tyrone tip.’
I’ve been following Abby & Tyrone, like Tyrone followed Olivia Dean, for years, and with hopefully the same sort of outcome.
Among the many, many things I like about them is that they both worked their arses off to get to this position and look with a kind of awe, respect and deep appreciation toward predecessors like Wil and Adam, Helen Razor and Mikey Robbins, and particularly Matt Okine and Alex Dyson who Abby would schedule her day around circa 2016.
Triple j breakfast is truly national and has shaped the music listening habits of young Australians for fifty years. But in recent times the impact, reach and ratings of the station has significantly declined.
I may have aged out of triple j but it has and still provides me with such riches of new music that I feel forever in its debt. Where did you first hear Olivia Dean, Chappell Roan, Riptide, Indie Kylie, Closer to God by the NIN, Jeff Buckley, Pauline Pantsdown or You just like me cos I’m good in bed?
Chances are, on triple j.
And speaking of Chappell, Abby and Tyrone have interviewed the notoriously private star twice and she not only remembers them but loved that they were the most ‘normal djs’ she’d ever had the pleasure of speaking with on ‘triple gay’.
@flabbygutler full interview on @triple j youtube, more triple gay on @Abby & Tyrone 💋 @chappell roan #chappellroan #hottogo #goodluckbabe ♬ Good Luck, Babe! – Chappell Roan
If you know and follow Chappell you’ll know that no one else gets this kind of love.
Abby worked behind the scenes at places like the Seven Network before she ended up at FBi Radio while doing her Bachelor of Media at UNSW. An early women centric podcast later she joined triple j Unearthed in February 2020, literally as covid hit.
Tyrone was at TAFE, working in banking and various other jobs, when his dreams of screen photography were amplified via a role with SBS. He pitched a TV concept which aired a couple of times in the dead of night. The ABC were watching though, and he joined the broadcaster late 2019.
In 2021 Abby overheard that someone needed to do something for Mardi Gras, when it was held at the SCG is a weird fusion of covid restrictions, rugby league venue and Olympic Games opener styling.
Abby cornered Tyrone to host it together, then management. On the day they had been given all sorts of hints and tools toward padding and filling gaps, but it simply wasn’t necessary. Both found the ying to their yang and their friendship has filled not just their professional lives but also their personal, with Abby saying that her Dad now just expects Tyrone at family get togethers.
The question they get asked the most, funnily enough, is, is that chemistry real?
You need only listen for five minutes, and you’ll know.
What matters to them is representation, diversity, joy, fun, new music, random callers and showing Ben Latimer and Lachlan Macara that this belief and investment will pay off.
It’s an old school radio approach to a very modern breakfast show. I believe that others will resonate with their work ethic, capacity to pick an up and coming star and song, and that they are just two tremendous human beings who love working together, their job and the responsibility that comes with that.
The question I put to everyone I chat to now is a recommendation for a song I should be listening to and, if you can put aside ten minutes, let me pass forward Abby and Tyrone’s, both Australian selections.
The day we spoke was Concetta and Luka’s last breakfast show. Concetta Caristo is leaving the network and Luka Muller shifting to Drive with Jordan Barr. It had been a very emotional morning but with a highlight of Jem Cassar-Daley, the daughter of Troy and former longtime 4KQ breakfast presenter Laurel Edwards, coming in for Like a Version and reimagining a Men at Work Classic, alongside Dan Sultan:
Tyrone’s selection was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Recorded by Drifting Clouds, in Indigenous language but with an 80s George Michael vibe, Bawuypawuy said things I innately understood:
Across the decades I have shared songs I have discovered via triple j thousands of times. Over this last weekend I forwarded Abby and Tyrone’s recommendations to people I knew would love them too. Triple j is a family song tree that continues to spread its limbs and seeds across generations of music lovers.
That’s the easy part.
Whether you are 17 or 71, find triple j and give Abby & Tyrone a spin when they launch on Breakfast on July 13. New music is not the domain of youth any more than classic hits belongs to the boomers. And radio is thriving in young spaces.
What I hope is that you will embed Abby and Tyrone into your lives alongside the music they uncover and the conversations they initiate. They, like your favourite musical acts, will meet you where you are and be there when you need them.
Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo. Email: [email protected]. You can subscribe to this publication for just $199 per annum (less for community stations, students and pensioners) and support local media. Celebrate Radioinfo in its 30th year.