Australian music has never been hotter, from both a local and international point of view. Young Aussie kids are forming awesome new bands or starting bedroom projects every day and the rest of the world is well and truly paying attention to Australia.
Inspired by the current state of the Aussie scene, we’ve decided to look back on some of the big moments in Australian popular music. This is just a sample, of course, and we could really go on for ages. But here are 14 of OzPop’s most essential moments.
Human Nature – ‘Eternal Flame’
Australia occasionally tries to imitate the US music industry but we’ve never really had enough of an economy to sustain their levels of excess, so we really only ever had one boy band and this was it. Human Nature were our boy band and this is still their defining moment.
Gotye – ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’
With ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’, Gotye pretty much redefined what it meant to have a breakout hit for the new millennium. At 13 million copies sold, Gotye’s collaboration with Kiwi songstress Kimbra was an international, Hottest 100-topping smash.
Kylie Minogue – ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’
Speaking of smashes, Kylie has always been a star in her home country and England where she’s equally successful. But it was with this stylish metronome of a song that the rest of the world got a taste of Kylie fever, ultimately resulting in seven million copies sold.
Vance Joy – ‘Riptide’
If anyone’s going to give Gotye a run for his money, it’s Vance Joy, who became an bonafide star overseas ever since he won the Hottest 100 with this ukelele-driven hit. It earned Vance Joy a triple platinum certification Stateside and was managed to end up as a record holder for the longest standing single in the Top 100 of the ARIA Singles Chart.
Crowded House – ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’
You know when they talk about pop music alchemy? The perfect mix of melody, chord progression, lyrics, production, and that indefinable something that just speaks to your soul? This is pretty much what they’re talking about right here.
Kate Ceberano – ‘Pash’
It spent twenty-one weeks in the Australian singles charts, but only ever peaked at number 10, which seems kind of strange to us because we honestly remember this song being pretty much inescapable in 1997. The track got Ceberano nominated for an ARIA Award for Best Female Artist but she lost out to another artist on this list…
Savage Garden – ‘I Want You’
This is where it all started for Savage Garden, one of the single most successful pop entities ever to come out of Australia. They really were an anomaly when you think about it. At a time when the world was obsessed with boy bands, a couple of blokes from Brisbane used a guitar and a drum machine to take over the charts.
John Farnham – ‘You’re The Voice’
John Farnham, or Farnsy as we affectionately know him, might be the quintessential Australian pop star and Whispering Jack and it’s lead single, ‘You’re The Voice’ are his most defining recordings. Rousing and uplifting, nothing gets you amped up quite like a mulleted Farnsy.
Olivia Newton John – ‘Physical’
Yes, it’s daggy as all hell and you think of it as the music your mum liked in the ’80s, but this song was a huge success both at home and overseas, nabbing a Platinum certification in the US, where the clip was huge on MTV and was even the first music video featured on Beavis and Butt-head.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FRsZx17cEk
The Divinyls – ‘I Touch Myself’
The Divinyls were an anomaly in that they were simultaneously chart-busting power pop stars and gutsy pub rockers at the same time. Whilst on the surface this is a dirty little ditty about self-love, it’s actually an incredible romantic ode once you actually take in the lyrics.
Yothu Yindi – ‘Treaty’
You may know this song best for the hugely popular remix by Filthy Lucre, which was the version that was usually played on television and radio and made this fiery, socially conscious tune by Yothu Yindi the first song in any Aboriginal Australian language to gain international attention.
Men At Work – ‘Down Under’
Remember that scene in the Australian episode of The Simpsons where a diplomat explains how the US had a brief cultural flirtation with Australia in the ’80s, showing slides of Paul Hogan and Yahoo Serious? This was part of that movement, but man is it ever a banger.
The Easybeats – ‘Friday On My Mind’
The history of Australian popular music has a giant, gaping hole in it without ‘Friday On My Mind’. The very essence of Australian homegrown rock and pop is contained in this single. APRA even voted it the Best Australian Song of all time at one point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBJLoYd8xak
Natalie Imbruglia – ‘Torn’
A lot of people don’t actually realise this is a cover, but it was in fact a rendition of a song by American alt-rockers Ednaswap. However, it was a young Berkeley Vale girl who made it an international hit. It was even nominated for a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance but lost to Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’ because yeah.
