Warning: Episode contains explicit language
My Kind of Scene acknowledges and pays respect to the past, present, and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of the nation many of us call Australia.
This episode explores the longest-running Australian number one songs by Australian artists, from the 1950s to today.
Find the episode playlist on the Cara Diaria Spotify artist page. Send questions, suggestions or compliments to mykindofscenepod[@]gmail.com.
Sources:
If you appreciate the gift of music and want to give back, Support Act is a fantastic charity that delivers crisis relief to Aussie musicians and music workers in need. Donate or find other ways to help here!
Warning: Episode contains explicit language
My Kind of Scene acknowledges and pays respect to the past, present, and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of the nation many of us call Australia.
This episode explores the longest-running Australian number one songs by Australian artists, from the 1950s to today.
Find the episode playlist on the Cara Diaria Spotify artist page. Send questions, suggestions or compliments to mykindofscenepod[@]gmail.com.
Sources:
If you appreciate the gift of music and want to give back, Support Act is a fantastic charity that delivers crisis relief to Aussie musicians and music workers in need. Donate or find other ways to help here!
Intro 00:00
Welcome to My Kind of Scene; where we uncover the past and present of Australian music.
I'm Cara Diaria, indie musician and music nerd, bringing my unique perspective to the hits and misses, the movers and shakers, the goodness and greatness that makes the Australian music scene, My Kind of Scene.
All the research I've been doing lately has had me thinking a lot about the Australian charts, and the Aussie artists who top them. When you think about our most popular and enduring songs, no doubt some absolute classics come to mind.
But were these as popular at the time as they seem to have been in retrospect? And did that popularity allow them to reach, and hold onto that coveted number one position?
I found myself on a quest to discover: what is the longest-running Australian number one single by an Australian artist?
John Farnham 02:08
The recent news about John Farnham's marathon surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his mouth came as a shock to many Australians. Especially on the heels of the passing of Olivia Newton-John from cancer – were we about to lose another Aussie icon? Would "The Voice" be silenced forever?
John Farnham's 1986 album "Whispering Jack" is to date the highest selling album by an Australian artist. It has achieved 24 times platinum, making it the second-highest selling album in Australian history, by any artist, Australian or otherwise. Trivia buffs will want to know who it sits behind. Dad, are you listening? I bet you know this. It's American theatrical rock singer Meat Loaf's 1977 opus "Bat Out of Hell," which achieved 26 times platinum. And "Whispering Jack" is one of eleven number one albums for Farnham, all from the second portion of his career, spanning from 1980 to now. Two of those albums were recorded with Olivia Newton-John, making his cancer battle feel even more poignant.
As we've covered in previous episodes, Farnham had two number one singles in his first incarnation as Johnny Farnham. "Sadie" topped the Aussie charts for 5 weeks in 1968, and in 1970, his cover of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" held the number one position for 7 weeks.
It might surprise you to learn that Farnham has only had two number one singles since then – both eighties anthems. "You're the Voice," which cemented his comeback and position as Australian music royalty with 7 weeks at number one in 1986, and "Age of Reason," which spent 4 weeks at number one in 1988. And it surprised me to discover that the dinky seventies hit, "Raindrops," topped the charts for the same length of time as the enduring power-belter, "You're the Voice."
I had assumed that surely "You're the Voice" had been one of the longest-running Australian number ones of all time. But although seven weeks is a solid run, and the album it was cut from certainly has gone down in chart history, the single was actually only a fairly average performer, when it comes to chart longevity.
So, what is the longest-running Australian number one of all time? Keep listening – I think the answer will surprise you!
Australian Chart History 06:11
Before we get into it, I just wanted to give you a little history about number ones in Australia. Today's Australian Record Industry Association – or ARIA – charts aim to record the highest-selling songs in various genres in Australia. National chart history goes back to October 1966, when the Go-Set, Australia's first pop music newspaper, compiled top singles from radio station charts in 5 state capitals to arrive at an Australian top 40, published weekly. The radio station charts were compiled primarily using data collected from local record stores. The first Australian Go-Set national number one was Johnny Young & Kompany's "Step Back" which only held the top spot for one week in November 1966.
The Go-Set Top 40 was the national singles chart until 1974, when a chart compiled by music enthusiast and former record label employee, David Kent, became the official chart. The Kent Music Report amalgamated radio station charts using a points ranking system Kent developed, and supplemented with data he collected from retail stores. This retail data eventually replaced the radio charts as the report's primary information source. In 1982, ARIA was established by the major labels and from the following year, the association started licensing Kent's top 50 under their own banner. About 5 years later, ARIA ended the arrangement and started compiling its own chart in-house.
Since then, David Kent has retrospectively compiled national charts back as far as 1940, using state-based radio chart data, and we'll reference some of those charts in this episode.
Since the eighties, the ARIA chart has remained the dominant Australian authority on the most popular music week-to-week, although it has evolved over the years. In 1997, ARIA transitioned from surveying retailers about the most-sold music, to using point-of-sale data to compile the charts – a much more accurate measure.
Shout out to my auntie Lou, who, prior to this change, as an impossibly cool late teen or twenty-something working as a sales associate at the then ubiquitous record store, Brashs, may or may not have tweaked the survey data she submitted to make sure the most hip singles got their deserved cred on the charts.
In 2006, ARIA began publishing a Digital Tracks Chart, to reflect download sales from digital retailers iTunes and BigPond Music. This was short-lived… six months later, digital sales were folded into the regular singles chart, although songs had to have a physical single release to be included. A year later, this stipulation was dropped, and digital-only singles were able to chart. Rihanna had the first digital-only number one in 2008 with "Don't Stop the Music." Unfortunately, not Australian, but let's give it a spin anyway, since it's on topic!
Of course, we're still talking about purchased downloads at this point; streaming wasn't invented yet. That came in 2012, when ARIA launched a Streaming Tracks Chart to reflect music streamed on platforms like Spotify, and later, Apple Music. Once again, this data was folded into the regular singles chart, in this case, in November 2014. And in 2018, they changed the chart methodology to give more emphasis to paid subscription streams over ad-supported ones. And as recently as March 2022, the chart calculations changed again, this time to incorporate YouTube streaming data from logged-in users.
In addition to the singles chart, ARIA also has charts tracking the highest selling albums, and singles in specific genres, but for this episode, we'll be focusing on the national singles chart, in its various incarnations.
Ok, so let's get into it! Let's discover the longest-running Australian number one, by an Australian artist, of all time.
The 1950s and '60s 10:32
In the 1950s and 60s, there were very few hits by Australian artists on the Australian charts. The radio airwaves and record stores were dominated by mainly American artists – in the '50s, crooners like Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and Doris Day. Only two Australian artists had short runs at number one – Slim Dusty's novelty song "A Pub With No Beer" for a single week in 1958, and, in '59, Col Joye and the Joy Boys had the second-last number one of the decade, and the first Australian made number one of the rock 'n roll era, spending 4 weeks at the top with "Oh Yeah Uh Huh."
In the first part of the '60s, Elvis fever swept the nation and dominated the charts. American balladeer Roy Orbison also chalked up multiple number ones. Local rock 'n roll hero Johnny O'Keefe had a string of four breakthrough number ones, but these were relatively short-lived – between one and three weeks. The only other Aussie number ones were more on the novelty and/or instrumental side, like Lucky Starr's "I've Been Everywhere", and The Atlantics' surf-rock jam "Bombora," both number one for just 2 weeks, or Rob E.G.'s frankly baffling and very cringeworthy four-week chart topper, "55 Days at Peking," which seems to have been a pop interpretation of the theme to the Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner movie of the same name.
In 1964, Beatlemania hit our shores and various Beatles singles held the number one position for 39 of the year's 52 weeks. No Aussies had number ones that year. For the remainder of the '60s, The Beatles ruled the Australian charts but we started to see a few more appearances by Aussies in the top position. In '65 and '66, The Seekers had a 3-week and a 6-week run with "I'll Never Find Another You" and "The Carnival Is Over," plus a lone week at number one two years later with "Georgy Girl." The Easybeats had a string of three number ones in '66, but none held the spot for more than 2 weeks. Some more enduring number ones were "Hitch Hiker" by beat pop duo Bobby & Laurie in '66, and Johnny Farnham's "Sadie," in '68, both holding the number one spot for 5 weeks. But the longest-held number one by an Australian artist in the '60s was Normie Rowe and the Playboys' double-A sided blockbuster, featuring a Merseybeat reworking of Doris Day's hit "Que Sera Sera" and a cover of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates' "Shakin All Over." The single topped the charts for 8 weeks and reportedly sold between 80 and 100 thousand copies – likely the biggest-selling Australian single of the '60s.
The 1970s 15:23
In the 1970s, there were few rivals to Normie Rowe's 8-week chart-topping record. The decade kicked off with Johnny Farnham's 7-week run with "Raindrops," shortly followed by The Mixture's "In the Summertime" which held the top spot for 6 weeks. In '74, former Easybeats member Stevie Wright also had a 6-week number one run with his three-part epic "Evie." Penned by former bandmates and top songwriting duo Vanda & Young, and featuring AC/DC's Malcolm Young on guitar, "Evie" is said to be the first 11-minute song to chart anywhere in the world, and was the first Australian single to top the new Kent Music Report. Also spending six weeks at number one in the '70s was "Jump In My Car" by Ted Mulry Gang in '76. By the way, I just checked out "Jump In My Car" on YouTube. Is it just me, or is Ted Mulry performing this song in front of the Sydney Opera House the spitting image of a young Tim Rodgers fronting up-and-coming '90s darlings You Am I?
In '77 and '78 there were a couple of 7-week chart toppers by the brothers Gibb – the first, "I Just Want To Be Your Everything" by younger brother Andy Gibb, and the second, "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees, featured in the Hollywood sensation, Saturday Night Fever, starring John Travolta. I know including the Gibb brothers in this list may be controversial – they weren't born in Australia, but lived there for about a decade before returning to the UK as they started to gain international success. Anyway – both singles enjoyed 7 weeks at the top of the Aussie charts.
Only two singles by Australian artists in the '70s held the number one position for as long as Normie Rowe had in the sixties. One of them also has a John Travolta connection! It's a duet with the American actor, and part of the soundtrack of another major Hollywood musical film. You guessed it – "You're The One That I Want" by John Travolta and Aussie songstress Olivia Newton-John, from the smash-hit musical Grease, held the top spot on the Aussie charts for 9 weeks in 1978. Although the movie and song were released just before I was born, the Grease VHS tape was on high rotation in my childhood. I don't think I ever actually owned the soundtrack, but I knew every word of every song through sheer hours spent watching the video. Except for "Beauty School Dropout." Fast forward that one!
The other single well and truly belongs on our list. In 1971 it broke records, holding the national number one spot for 10 weeks, and also the Melbourne number one for 17 weeks. Daddy Cool's "Eagle Rock" is a great candidate for the longest-held Australian number one of all time. It's certainly one of the most beloved and influential – it even inspired Elton John and Bernie Taupin to write their own nostalgic hit, "Crocodile Rock." The British pair were quite the fans of the Aussie rockers, having seen them on tour in '72, and sported Daddy Cool pins and memorabilia on several of their album covers. By the way, this won't be the last time we'll hear about Elton John in this episode – somehow he continues to have a connection to the biggest Aussie hits for decades to come.
What was "Eagle Rock" all about, anyway? Although the title refers to a 1920s African American dance featuring outstretched arms, years later it spawned its own dance craze, that involved dropping your pants and dancing in your underwear. And the Eagle Rock just might also be a cheeky reference to another kind of dance… once that's usually done horizontally… with a partner… you know ;)
So, have any other songs by Australian artists come close to beating Daddy Cool's 10-week run at the top of the charts?
Yes, but it took a while.
The 1980s and '90s 22:32
Through the '80s, 6-week stints at number one were held by Moving Pictures' "What About Me," (by the way, were frontman Garry Frost and John Farnham vocally separated at birth, or what?), Men At Work's "Down Under," Midnight Oil's EP "Species Deceases," and Kylie Minogue's "I Should Be So Lucky."
Kylie also had a 7-week run with "Locomotion," matching John Farnham's 7 weeks at the top of the chart with "You're The Voice," and Pseudo Echo's with their cover of "Funky Town."
Only a few '80s artists joined Normie Rowe's 8-week club. In 1980 and into 81, Joe Dolce Music Theatre's "Shaddup You Face" had an 8-week run. Another novelty offering, "Australiana" an Australian pun-filled spoken word comedy single by Austen Tayshus, topped the charts for a broken 8 weeks during 1983, by the way, switching back and forth with a chart topper dear to my heart, although not Australian. Irene Cara's "Flashdance (What A Feeling)" was an absolute favorite of mine, thanks to firstly, its slow, dreamy start that breaks into an uplifting, upbeat pop anthem; secondly, its association with Flashdance, one of the many '80s dance films that filled my five-year-old heart with lycra- and legwarmer-based joy; and thirdly, our shared name, Cara, which allowed me to imagine myself one day, maybe, performing on stage.
Okay! That was a fun sidebar.
The 1990s was a very lean decade for Australian number ones. Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta had a second run at it with the "Grease Megamix," topping the charts for 5 weeks in '91. In '94, teen grunge sensations silverchair won a talent contest run by SBS TV and Triple J radio, and wound up topping the charts for 6 weeks with their single "Tomorrow." The following year, Merril Bainbridge's cutesily suggestive single "Mouth" also spent 6 weeks at the top. The only '90s member of the 8-week club was also the last Australian number one of the twentieth century – Savage Garden's 1997 pop ballad "Truly Madly Deeply."
Let's pause for a moment here to talk about this achievement. "Truly Madly Deeply" was one of the few Australian number ones that also made it to the coveted top spot on the US singles chart, a chart it spent over a year on, and half that year within the top 10. In fact, it was the first song in the Billboard Hot 100's history to spend its first 52 weeks inside the top 30. The song also spent a record 123 weeks on the US Hot Adult Contemporary chart, a record that was eventually broken almost two years later, by Savage Garden themselves, when their single "I Knew I Loved You" from the album Affirmation spent 124 weeks on that chart.
I first became aware of Savage Garden kind of by accident. When they first came on the scene, I was in year 12, and not really paying attention to the pop charts. I was well and truly down the rabbit hole of grunge and alternative music, like international stalwarts Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Radiohead, and local heroes Spiderbait, Regurgitator and Magic Dirt, to name a few. There were only about three girls in my entire year level at my all-girls high school, that even knew who half of these bands were. So, when my friend Kate Davis enthusiastically said to me on the bus one morning, "Have you heard the new Soundgarden song?" I got kind of excited. Maybe, finally, people were starting to get it. "No, I didn't know they had a new song," I said. She told me she'd heard it on the radio yesterday and it was wicked.
On the way home that night, Kate grabbed me on the arm and pointed to the tinny bus speakers as a smooth male voice sang about chick-a-cherry cola over a highly produced beat. "This is it! This is Soundgarden!" she exclaimed, excited to find a musical point of connection with me. "I don't think so," I said dubiously. I couldn't hear any evidence of Soundgarden's signature heavy riffs or Chris Cornell's humungous vocal range. Good instincts, 17-year-old Cara! At the end of the – admittedly quite catchy – track, the announcer told us it was the debut single "I Want You" from Brisbane pop outfit Savage Garden. Aha! That made much more sense.
Anyway, Savage Garden's incredibly successful third single "Truly Madly Deeply" still wasn't able to beat Daddy Cool's "Eagle Rock" as the longest-running number one in Australian history.
The 2000s and 2010s 31:34
In the new millennium, the naughties saw a lot more Australian number ones by Australian artists, but much shorter stints in the number one spot, primarily driven by the introduction of music-based reality TV competitions, Popstars and Australian Idol; and perhaps also by the introduction of the mp3, which changed the way people consumed music, first with illegal downloads, and later, with legal, paid downloads. The longest time spent in the number one spot by any Australian artist between 2000 and 2009 was 5 weeks, an honor which went to four artists. Two Idol contestants: Anthony Callea for "The Prayer," and Lee Harding for "Wasabi;" dance duo TV Rock, who had a broken 5-week run with "Flaunt It (featuring Seany B);" as did Winehouse- and Duffy-evoking songstress Gabriella Cilmi, with "Sweet About Me."
The 2010s saw in another member of the 8-week club – "Somebody That I Used to Know" by Melbourne artist Gotye featuring New Zealand singer, Kimbra, was in the top spot from August through to October 2011.
This particular number one has a special place in my heart, not only because of how unique and full of melodic and lyrical hooks it is, or because of the incredibly simple yet effective music video, or the vast number of interpretative covers that sprang up after its release. It's special to me and my now-husband Adam because of its absolute ubiquity on our European travels almost a year later, through the summer of 2012. We didn't discover any new European music on this three-month trip through Greece, Italy, France and Spain, because everywhere we went, Gotye and Kimbra's bitter yearning belted out at us. I'll never forget the very tan, elder gentleman in a sparkly g-string dancing all alone to a club remix of "Somebody That I Used to Know" in the middle of the day, on a Mykonos beach. He was living his best life and we were living ours, witnessing his bliss.
It felt even more special due to the fact that Gotye mastermind Wally De Backer was from my hometown of Melbourne, and before he blew up massively, he was playing the same venues with his bands as I was with my bands. We knew the same people. He was "one of us." He was living proof that it could happen for anyone.
In 2012, reclusive singer Sia was a featured artist on American rapper Flo Rida's 6-week number one, "Wild Ones." And almost 10 years after becoming Australian Idol's first ever winner, Guy Sebastian held the top spot for 6 weeks with American artist Lupe Fiasco on their single "Battle Scars".
With the addition of X Factor and Australia's Got Talent to the TV landscape, reality TV artists continued their domination of the charts. The latter show spawned one of the longest-ever running number one hits by an Australian artist. Season 4 winners Justice Crew debuted at number one in 2014 with "Que Sera," and remained there for 9 consecutive weeks. By the way, do you remember what the longest-running Australian number one and biggest selling single of the '60s was? Yep – "Que Sera Sera" by Normie Rowe – number one for 8 weeks. Justice Crew's "Que Sera" is a completely different song, but shares a cheerfully fatalist "what will be, will be," sentiment, and outlasted the Rowe's 60s chart topper by a week.
In 2018, YouTube stars 5 Seconds of Summer fell one week shy of Justice Crew, holding the top spot for 8 weeks with their hook-laden, shouty-but-tender pop single "Youngblood," which, in addition to winning the ARIA Song of the Year, has been honored in APRA AMCOS' The 1,000,000,000 List, for having been streamed over a billion times.
But still, no Australian artist has beaten "Eagle Rock's" record of 10 weeks atop the Australian chart. But that's about to change.
Cold Heart and Stay 39:22
In 2021 and into '22, a pair of collaborations between Australian and overseas artists held the number one position for an impressive 27 weeks between them. Both mentioned on previous episodes of this podcast, these record-breaking songs deserve a little more exploration.
One was not technically performed by an Australian artist, but Sydney dance trio Pnau were credited as the remixers for the global smash "Cold Heart" by Elton John and Dua Lipa. Several years earlier, Elton John actually signed Pnau to his management company after seeing them live at the encouragement of Toni Colette. Yes, I'll repeat that to give it a chance to sink in. Academy Award-nominated actor Toni Collette, known for Muriel's Wedding, The Sixth Sense and Little Miss Sunshine, gave her mate, British pop royalty Elton John, the same guy who was decades earlier inspired by Daddy Cool's "Eagle Rock," the hot tip to go to a Pnau show while he was on tour in Australia. He did, he loved them, and he took the group under his wing. Fairytales are real, people!
In 2012, Elton John and Pnau put out a remix album, "Good Morning to the Night" which, similar to "Cold Heart," repurposed snippets from John's earlier work to create fresh new tunes. The album debuted at number one on the UK charts but only made it to number 40 in Australia, and didn't spawn any hit singles. Pnau's next album, 2017's "Changa," produced two Australian top ten singles, "Chameleon" and "Go Bang," both featuring New York singer of Guyanese descent, Kira Divine. But neither of them were the global phenomenon that 2021's "Cold Heart" was – hitting number one in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and number seven in the US. The song clocked up 10 weeks in the number one position on the ARIA charts across four stints between November 2021 and February 2022, trading places with Taylor Swift's "All Too Well (Taylor's Version)," Adele's "Easy On Me," Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You," and… the second long-lived number one collab featuring an Aussie that I want to explore further...
The Kid Laroi is another Sydney-sider, born Charlton Howard, to a music producer and sound engineer father, and a talent manager, record label founder and music executive mother, who introduced him to rap and hip hop at an early age. He started posting rap videos to YouTube at age 13, and derives his stage name, The Kid Laroi, from his Aboriginal heritage. He is a Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi) man whose great-great grandfather was a member of the Stolen Generations. Gamilaraay shortens to "Laroi."
The Kid Laroi's young life was chaotic, with his parents' separation, his mother's drug use and dealing, the death of his father-figure uncle, and periods of homelessness. Through all this, he focused on his music and cultivated a hustler mentality to make connections with other artists and producers, including American rappers Swae Lee and Juice WRLD, and Australian Grammy-nominated producer Khaled Rohaim, who immediately recognized Laroi's talent and went on to produce much of the then-16-year-old rapper's debut album, "F*ck Love." The 2020 album, or mixtape as it's referred to, reached number one in Australia, Canada, the United States and Norway and top ten in another 6 countries.
Emo-acoustic single "Without You" from the deluxe version of "F*ck Love" took off on TikTok and a remix featuring Miley Cyrus pushed it to top the Australian charts in 2021 and become The Kid Laroi's first US top-ten hit. But it was another collab with a former child star – Canada's Justin Bieber – that rocketed The Kid into the stratosphere. The song was written by Laroi, Bieber and a bunch of producers and songwriters. Too many cooks are said to spoil the broth, but in this case they seem to have boiled it to perfection. "Stay" reached number one on the US Billboard chart, becoming The Kid Laroi's first number one there and Bieber's eighth. It reached number one in 22 other countries, including Australia, where it held the position for 14 weeks straight in 2021. And then found its way back to the top in 2022 for three weeks, sandwiched between two of "Cold Heart's" stints. "Stay" was the fastest song to reach two billion streams on the Spotify platform, and earned The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber the ARIA awards for Best Pop Release and Best Artist, beating out veterans Keith Urban, Kylie Minogue, and Vance Joy.
And so, with 17 weeks atop the ARIA charts, longer than international chart-toppers "Shape of You," "Gangsta's Paradise," "Despacito" and "Old Town Road," is The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber's "Stay," the longest-running number one song by an Australian artist? Not quite.
Dance Monkey 47:25
I have to confess, I've been holding out on you with these last couple of stories. I skipped something. You might have already worked it out, since the song in question has been absolutely ubiquitous since its 2019 release. This song held the number one position on the Australian charts for an unheard-of 21 weeks, before being knocked off by Mariah Carey at Christmas time, and then resuming the spot again for another 3 weeks, bringing the total to 24. That is just two weeks shy of half a year, that the same song was sitting at number one on the Australian charts. Longer than any other song by an Australian artist. Longer than any other song, period. So… what is it? Let me take you back to 2019…
A young singer, Toni Watson, originally from Mount Martha on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, had honed her craft as a busker in Byron Bay, a tourist haven on the northern New South Wales coast. During a six-month stint she'd played tirelessly to crowds possessing various levels of appreciation, and written a little song about how her busking experience made her feel like a performing monkey.
Under the name Tones and I, Watson released her first single, "Johnny Run Away," which got a bit of indie airplay, and crossed over to mainstream radio, emphatically checking off one of Watson's two goals – to get played on Triple J once and to sell out a 200-person venue. She had no idea how far she was going to exceed those ambitions by, until her second single dropped.
The catchy ditty "Dance Monkey," was written by Watson in 30 minutes and produced by German-Australian producer Konstantin Kersting, known for his work with the Jungle Giants and Mallrat. Its quirky vocal contains echoes of Sia and Julia Stone, while managing to feel completely fresh, and the relatively sparse production allows Tones' voice to shine. With melodic hooks aplenty it is an undeniable bop, and the world wanted to shimmy to it.
In the ensuing months, "Dance Monkey" reached number one in a staggering 30 countries. It reached number 4 on the US singles chart in February 2020, making it the first top-five US hit written solely by a woman in more than eight years. It broke the record for the most week spent at the top of the UK Singles Chart by a female artist, beating Whitney Houston and Rihanna's joint 10-week record, and broke the record for the most weeks at number one on the Australian singles chart, making it, finally, the longest-running Australian number one of all time. Yes – we got here! "Dance Monkey" is the song we've been working towards this entire episode!
But the accolades didn't stop there. "Dance Monkey" won Best Pop Release at the 2019 ARIA Music Awards, Song of the Year at the APRA Music Awards of 2020 and was the Grand Prize winner of the 2019 International Songwriting Competition.
In December 2020, "Dance Monkey" became the third most-streamed song on Spotify, with over 2.5 billion streams, a record that Tones and I still holds today. It sits behind Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" and The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights." I think Tones' busking days are behind her, but it remains to be seen if she can recapture the phenomenal success of her worldwide smash single, "Dance Monkey." I hope so.
Recap 52:48
So! That was a fun journey through Aussie chart history! Let's recap the top 5 longest-running Australian number ones by Aussie artists:
In equal fifth place, holding the top spot for 8 weeks, we had…
"Que Sera Sera / Shakin' All Over" by Normie Rowe and the Playboys,
"Shaddap You Face" by Joe Dolce Music Theatre,
"Australiana" by Austen Tayshus,
"Truly Madly Deeply" by Savage Garden,
"Somebody That I Used to Know" by Gotye , featuring Kimbra, and
"Youngblood" by 5 Seconds of Summer.
In fourth place, with 9 weeks at number one, we had…
"You're the One That I Want" by John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John, and
"Que Sera" by Justice Crew.
In equal third position, with 10 weeks atop the ARIA charts we had…
"Eagle Rock" by Daddy Cool, and
"Cold Heart (PNAU Remix)" by Elton John & Dua Lipa.
In second place, with a whopping 17 weeks at number one, we had…
"Stay " by The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber.
And in first place, with an unprecedented 24 weeks at number one, we had…
"Dance Monkey" by Tones and I.
Outro 56:40
I hope you've enjoyed this exploration of the longest-running Australian number ones by Australians as much as I have.
If you want to hear the songs we played again, check out the Cara Diaria page on Spotify – you'll find a playlist featuring all the tunes, plus playlists from previous My Kind of Scene episodes.
What topic would you like us to explore next? I'd love to hear your episode ideas. Send me an email at My Kind of Scene Pod [at] gmail.com.
Thanks for listening to My Kind Of Scene. This episode was written, recorded and produced by Cara Diaria. Theme music by Cara Diaria. Source links are in the episode description. If you enjoyed it, please rate and review us, and tell your friends.