Member-only story
The A-Z of Awesome Aussie 80s Songs
One song, one band, all 80s, all Australian
I sure do love 80s music! It’s the only music created in my living memory and there’s something about the songs you hear on the radio as a little kid. They burn into your very being and become even more than an earworm. I can identify some 80s tunes from the very first note.
This writing prompt comes from music writer extraordinaire, Pierce McIntyre: “Pick an artist, a decade, a genre, whatever you want (within reason), and then do the ‘A-Z thing’ with it.”
I decided to stick with Pierce’s idea of 80s songs, but I made them all from my home country, Australia.
Australia made some great music during the 80s. There was some great new wave at the start of the decade, excellent pub rock throughout and some fun pop music towards the end.
I thought of some of these songs right away and had to do a little research to find others. Unlike other lists of Australian music, I didn’t include artists from New Zealand although I was tempted to list Split Enz.
