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Pop quiz: name the ten songs that best sum up Australia. Go on, we’ll wait. Now compare notes with your mates and watch the group chat explode, because the country has just made its official list.
Meet The National Songbook, a new annual honour from APRA AMCOS and the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA). Think of it as a hall of fame for the tunes that have soundtracked our lives, preserved in a permanent digital archive (with playlists on Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube Music, so you can start your own debate in the car). A panel of music experts picked the first batch, and the only rule is that a song has to have had a real impact on Australia.
And what a lineup. You’ve got the bush ballad every Aussie kid has sung at school, ‘Waltzing Matilda’, the 1966 weekday-grind anthem; ‘Friday on My Mind’, written by Harry Vanda and George Young, who met at Villawood Migrant Hostel; and Helen Reddy’s ‘I Am Woman’, one of the great feminist anthems.
Then there’s the protest power. Midnight Oil’s ‘Beds Are Burning’ was inspired by the band’s trips through central Australia and went on to get a global audience at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, with the band wearing “sorry” across their outfits. Yothu Yindi’s ‘Treaty’ turned a call for action into a dancefloor smash, and The Presets’ ‘My People’ proved a snarling synth banger can have a political bite.
The list also includes an orchestral work, an eerie score to cult thriller ‘The Boys’, and Ruby Hunter’s deeply moving ‘Down City Streets’.
APRA AMCOS CEO Dean Ormston admitted in a statement, “No ten songs could ever tell the whole story of Australia.” So if your favourite missed out (sorry, AC/DC and Cold Chisel fans), take heart. New songs will be added every year, so there’s still time to start campaigning.
The first 10 songs in Australia’s National Songbook:
- ‘Beds Are Burning’ – Midnight Oil (1987)
- ‘Down City Streets’ – Ruby Hunter (1990)
- ‘Earth Cry’ – Peter Sculthorpe (1990)
- ‘Friday on My Mind’ – The Easybeats (1966)
- ‘I Am Woman’ – Helen Reddy (1971)
- ‘My Island Home’ – Neil Murray, as recorded by Warumpi Band (1987) and Christine Anu (1995)
- ‘My People’ – The Presets (2007)
- The Boys soundtrack – The Necks (1998)
- ‘Treaty’ – Yothu Yindi (1991)
- ‘Waltzing Matilda’ – Banjo Paterson and Christina Macpherson (1927)