CHART BEATS: A JOURNEY
THROUGH POP

Sometimes it seemed like if a '90s dance track wasn't a flop the first time around, then it hadn't earned its right to be a success. From...

There are some acts you wish would be more successful, and others where it's a blessing they haven't had more hits. This week in 1980,...

American R&B music had really infiltrated the mainstream in Australia by 1995, so much so that no one blinked an eye when the debut...

It had to happen eventually. After weeks of seeing loads of classic tracks debut on the Australian singles top 50 from 1980, we've...

Over the last two weeks, we've seen some of my favourite dance tracks from 1995 (of which there were many) arrive on the ARIA singles...

So far in our trip back to the Australian singles chart of 1980, we've seen one-hit wonders Player [1] and Fiddler's Dram — two acts...

Sometimes less is more. If you only have a few great tracks in you, don't bother inflicting an album full of filler on the world. This...

I recently posted a video of my favourite Australian bands of the 1980s on the Chart Beats Facebook page, and someone noted the absence of AC/DC and The Angels. With some odd exceptions, my musical taste has always veered away from the harder end of the rock spectrum — thus, the subtitle of this blog: A Journey Through Pop. Give me US soul groups over pub rock any day Nothing illustrates that better than the three top 50 new entries (and some of the songs that missed the char

I'm currently counting down my favourite songs from 1995 on the Chart Beats Facebook page, and I'll tell you what: I listened to a lot of dance music that year. Probably because I spent a lot of time in clubs that year. These sounds certainly fell into my mind This week in 1995, three of the best dance tracks for the year all arrived on the ARIA singles chart. Interestingly, all of them just missed the top 10. A dance track that had made itself well and truly at home at numbe

It's hard to think of a genre in music as divisive as disco. How many other types of music have had calls for it to be killed off? By...

What was it with covers albums in the mid-'90s? Hot on the heels of collections of remakes by Gloria Estefan and Annie Lennox , my...

When is a one-hit wonder not a one-hit wonder? When they actually had a second huge hit that often gets forgetten about. This week in...

The ARIA top 50 chart might have featured singles by Boyz II Men, CDB, TLC and 4PM this week in 1995, but there was always room for more...

As much as I've always tried to keep on top of what's going on in music, it wasn't easy in the 1980s, especially when I was very young....

So far, in the battle of the '90s British boy bands, East 17 had trounced their biggest rivals, Take That, in Australia (although the...

In my 1995 flashbacks, we recently saw that despite going on to become one of this country's defining musical moments, Christine Anu's cover of "Island Home" failed to make much of an impression on the ARIA chart. Fifteen years earlier, another song that is inextricably linked with Australia's self-identity flopped just as monumentally. This Peter Allen song didn't find a home in very many Australians' record collections Whereas Christine Anu was an emerging artist, the man

Sometimes it's all just a matter of timing. One month's chart flop can be a massive hit at another time of year... as was the case with a...

Unless you happen to perform with your significant other (Sonny & Cher, Captain & Tennille) or record songs with them (Kylie Minogue and...

Variety is the spice of life, as the saying goes, and by the mid-'90s many releases had a range of remixes on offer. Didn't like one...

Every so often, a band comes along that is unlike any other. Like this week in 1980, when a new wave group from the US broke into the...