CHART BEATS: A JOURNEY
THROUGH POP

The problem with reaching number 1 with your very first single is that the only way is down after that. And so the only thing for it is...

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. The Human League. Ultravox. Heaven 17. Since the start of the decade, synthpop bands had flooded out of the UK and onto the Australian singles chart. By 1984, there was a growing list of homegrown electronic groups to compete with them. The faces of Australian synthpop in 1984 This week in 1984, three of the most successful Australian synthpop bands of the decade all debuted on the ARIA chart with their latest singles — and although none of

It's not easy keeping up a consistent strike rate of hits — even the biggest artists have their fair share of flops. It was also...

Exactly 12 months earlier, Ratcat had completed their transition from indie faves to chart-conquering stars as their Tingles EP finally...

Given the number 1 single of 1983 had been a comedy release, it's hardly surprising that novelty records were big business the following...

Australia was all about girl groups in April 1992. Two weeks earlier, retro-styled trio Teen Queens had debuted on the ARIA top 50 and...

If there was one thing that was in plentiful supply in the '80s, it was movie soundtrack hits. By my calculations, there were 19...

Back in 2017, I wrote this post when Ed Sheeran was challenging for the record of the longest-running number 1 in Australian chart...

If a picture is worth a thousand words, surely one image will introduce this week's big new entry better than I could. A photo like...

The return of the world's soon-to-be-biggest band? An ambitious double album by music's most inventive male artist? A landmark hip-hop track? In any other week, they'd be worth highlighting at the start of a post. Only takes a moment to become stars — Mel (left) and Kim got fresh in 1987 But not when there's the debut of one of the best pop duos of the '80s to talk about instead. Responsible for my second favourite album of all time — yes, really — the pair of East London sis

How things had changed by 1992. Dance music was so acceptable in the mainstream by then that a local club track had recently reached number 1, while a techno anthem was sitting pretty in the top 5. Dance music was alive and well in Australia in 1992 Joining both those hits on the top 50 was another Dutch techno duo's debut single, and the latest fusion of dance beats and Indigenous music to grace the ARIA chart. At the top of the chart this week in 1992, rock reasserted itsel

As clichés go, "third time's the charm" was never truer than in the case of Madonna. The future music megastar's third single became a...

Even the most popular bands can have off days. Or, as was the case this week in 1987, singles that don't connect for whatever reason. Two...

Girl groups had been around for decades, but so far in the early '90s, they'd been mostly going unnoticed in Australia. That was despite...

It didn't strike me at the time — since I was only nine in 1984 and everyone in music seemed incredibly old — but the top 50 wasn't as...

There are many reasons why a band's lead singer might decide to go solo, but usually somewhere in the mix is tension within the group....

Earlier today in my flashback to 1987 , we saw the solo debuts of Foreigner's Lou Gramm and Boy George. Five years later, it was the turn...

As a country where the primary language spoken is English, Australia hasn't welcomed that many foreign language songs onto the singles chart. Every so often, however, a single performed in a different tongue has broken through the language barrier and become a hit. She might not have liked "99 Red Balloons", but a red jumpsuit was another matter... This week in 1984, a German song that'd topped charts across Europe shot into the ARIA top 50. And while an English-language vers

It didn't have a proper music video. It was performed by a model discovered in a night club. It had some pretty dodgy lyrics. It was one...

Fifteen. That's how many songs we have ahead of us in this week's flashback to the ARIA singles chart from 1992. OK, 13 songs and two EPs if you want to get picky! A number 2, a number 3, a number 4 and a number 5 — but which is which? Not all of them were big hits, but four made the top 5. And although none reached the very top of the chart, one of the songs would out-sell all but one of 1992's number 1 singles... ...including the song that was spending its fourth and final