CHART BEATS: A JOURNEY
THROUGH POP

For the second week in a row, there's a deluge of new rock songs to talk about as we look back at the ARIA singles chart from this week...

Sometimes this blog truly is a labour of love, when "labour" is the operative word and there's not much to love at all. Like this week in...

Some music acts are so inextricably linked to a certain time and place that it's impossible for them to succeed outside their era. And in...

A cappella singles don't come around that often, but when they do, they tend to have mixed fortunes on the Australian chart. For every "Caravan Of Love" or "Don't Worry Be Happy" , there was a single like The Flying Pickets' remake of Yazoo's "Only You" , which reached number 1 in the UK but flopped here. Shai weren't shy about showing off their vocal prowess This week in 1993, a brand new vocal harmony group landed themselves a big hit with a song that, in its best version

Yep, here I go again. This week's ARIA top 50 from 1993 allows me to once again talk about my favourite chart topic: one-hit wonders. Both of the new entries on the chart are the second hits by acts frequently considered to have only been successful once. The singles that prevented Billy Ray Cyrus and Sonia Dada from becoming one-hit wonders In one case, I'll concede it's fair enough to disregard the relatively minor follow-up to 1992's highest-selling single , but in the oth

What do "High" by The Cure, "Metropolis" by The Church and Duran Duran's "The Wild Boys" have in common? They're all, somewhat...

It seemed like the perfect recipe for TV success — pretty twentysomethings + angsty pop/rock + primetime drama = ratings gold. But for...

Having seen what New Kids On The Block had achieved around the world as the '80s became the '90s, British record companies wanted in on...

By this point in 1993, American R&B hits were more readily snapped up by Australian music fans than they had been just a few years...

A new year, and with the dawn of 1993 came a new musical trend: world music goes electronic. The biggest of the five new entries on the first ARIA chart for the year did for pan pipes and foreign language lyrics what Enigma did for Gregorian chant a couple of years earlier. 1993's first musical trend: world music goes mainstream The song was a worldwide sensation, but I always associate it with another '90s phenomenon: chart rigging. I'll explain why when we get to it... Spe