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55 albums · 1960–2023

Music of Australia, from pub rock and AC/DC to the Go-Betweens, Tame Impala and today

· 2 min read · by 1001 Albums

Nick Cave held up by the crowd's hands in front of the stage at Coachella in 2013
Angus Young of AC/DC, shirtless and soaked, playing his Gibson SG on stage in 1982Gurrumul seated on stage with an acoustic guitar, a keyboard player behind him
Nick Cave with the Bad Seeds at Coachella, 2013. Photo: Ian T. McFarland, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Angus Young of AC/DC at the Manchester Apollo, 1982. Photo: Harry (Howard) Potts, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Gurrumul on stage at Byron Bay, 2011. Photo: Steve Mc, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Australia's popular music grew up in its pubs and has a sound the world knows at once, AC/DC's Highway to Hell and Back in Black; around it Slim Dusty's country and the Easybeats' beat, the pub rock of Cold Chisel and Midnight Oil, the punk of the Saints, Nick Cave from the Birthday Party to the Bad Seeds, the Go-Betweens and the Church, INXS, Crowded House and Kylie Minogue for the world, Yothu Yindi, Archie Roach and Gurrumul, Silverchair in the nineties, the electronics of the Avalanches, Cut Copy and Flume, Tame Impala from Perth, Courtney Barnett and Amyl and the Sniffers from Melbourne, and the Kid Laroi today. The list has 55 records from 1960 to 2023, one or two by each of the names above and only a small part of what they made; the Necks' jazz and Joan Sutherland stand for whole traditions that would each need a list of their own, as would country beyond Slim Dusty and Kasey Chambers and the old songlines beyond a few records. About 46 hours of music, 5 days of a few records each.

By genre

Rock 28%Pop 10%Electronic 8%Other 54%
  • Rock 28%
  • Pop 10%
  • Electronic 8%
  • Other 54%

The genres named most: australian, rock, pop, electronic, dance, hard rock.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 1 country: Australia 55. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Countries first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.