As The Horses turns 30, here’s 30 secrets behind Daryl Braithwaite’s classic hit
That’s the way it’s gonna be: Daryl Braithwaite’s The Horses turns 30 this month – enough reason for us to dig up 30 secrets behind the iconic anthem.
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Daryl Braithwaite’s The Horses turns 30 this month, with the singer saying the hit is more popular now than when it reached No. 1 in 1991.
A cover of an album track by US singer Rickie Lee Jones, The Horses took five months to top the ARIA chart and has now been streamed over 40 million times.
It continues to stream so well it was the No. 20 selling song by an Australian artist on ARIA’s 2020 end of year chart.
Braithwaite, who turned 72 this week, is astounded the song is still discovered by people who weren’t born when it was released.
“It is amazing, I can look at it from an outsider’s perspective,” Braithwaite said.
“People tell me how it affects them. And it’s significant. It does a lot of good. It’s associated with weddings and funerals. Sometimes people who are down on their luck listen to that song to raise their spirits. It’s unusual to have one song played at both those occasions. I’ve had a few offers to sing The Horses at weddings and funerals, I’ve had to decline, I just couldn’t do that.
“I never thought it’d be a hit in 1991, you never know that kind of thing. And I never thought it’d have this kind of longevity. Not many artists have a song like this. I really don’t think it was as popular in 1991 when it was No. 1 as it is 30 years later.”
His record label Sony will mark the song’s initial release, on January 28, with a ‘Daryl BraithDay’ – there is new merchandise available to mark the milestone including mugs, tea towels, teaspoons, tote bags, sweaters, bucket hats and T-shirts including one with scenes from the iconic video clip for The Horses.
“I just want to pay recognition to the fact people have supported that song for so long,” Braithwaite said.
The singer, who hit the Top 40 again last year with Love Songs, is looking forward to returning to touring once border restrictions are lifted.
“I still really enjoy the song, it’s still fantastic to play. That’s the reward, as well as monetary, when you get to that part of the show just before you play The Horses. I’m dreading the day we start playing The Horses and there’s no reaction.”
THAT’S THE WAY IT’S GONNA BE: 30 FACTS ABOUT THE HORSES
1. The vocals you hear were Braithwaite’s first take. ”It was easy to sing,” Braithwaite says. The song was first released by US singer Ricki Lee Jones, who broke through with the 1979 hit Chuck E’s in Love. “I liked Rickie Lee’s version. I really enjoyed singing the chorus, it was motivational for me.” The song’s producer Simon Hussey remembers being impressed. “I’m pretty picky with making things correct but I remember saying after that first take “There’s not much we have to do to this’.”
2. The song was recorded as Braithwaite was finishing his Rise album and needed an extra song. He went home and listened to Ricki Lee Jones’ 1989 album Flying Colours. The Horses is track one, written with Walter Becker of Steely Dan (who passed away in 2017). It’s about her daughter Charlotte Rose, who’d been born the year before. It would later be featured in 1996’s Jerry Maguire and appear on the film’s soundtrack.
3. However when Braithwaite played Jones’ version to his producer and record label they didn’t exactly share his enthusiasm for the song, which is almost five minutes long on the album and a slower tempo. “I remember telling Simon Hussey ‘I’m not sure about that song’,” Peter Karpin, from Braithwaite’s label Sony recalled. “Her version is very different from what he did with it.”
4. No one involved thought The Horses would be a single, let alone a hit. “The Horses was at No. 8 on the tracklisting of the Rise album,” Hussey says. “Clearly there was no expectation it would do anything.”
5. Braithwaite was initially concerned the song’s lyrics could be drug related. “Growing up at Coogee I remember ‘horse’ was slang for heroin,” Braithwaite says. “I remember contacting the song’s publisher, who must have laughed, and asked ‘I’m thinking of recording this song, can you tell me what it’s about?’ I didn’t specifically ask if there were drug references in it, but they said ‘No, it’s about Rickie’s daughter’. Rickie had a battle with heroin, maybe that’s why people get confused.”
6. Many people still believe he wrote The Horses. “I have never claimed I wrote it. People still say ‘Oh I thought it was your song’. I can’t be bothered answering them. It’s usually on Facebook. Just before Edge came out I was speaking to the artist John Olsen about how I wanted to write an album. And he said ‘Maybe Daryl you’re just a really good interpreter of songs, some other people can’t do that’. I’ve always remembered that. I still hear songs and gravitate towards them and maybe cover them. I want my band to cover this song by The 1975, If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know). I love that tune.”
7. After trading emails years before, Daryl performed The Horses with Rickie Lee Jones in Melbourne in 2017. “It was great to meet her,” Braithwaite said. “We talked about The Horses, she confirmed it was written about her daughter specifically, we talked about the success in Australia, which she knew about. I told her it’d been in a Nissan ad. I don’t know if she was joking because she seemed surprised about that but I told her to check her royalties when she got home.”
8. Braithwaite’s version of The Horses was indeed in a Nissan ad in 2012. In 2015 Bingle asked to use the song in an ad – Braithwaite refused. They instead used a soundalike and recreated the ad. “It obviously wasn’t as good!,” Braithwaite laughed. As he didn’t write the song, Braithwaite has no say over anything other than the use of his version of the track. “I’m very selective when it comes to where the song is used and I’m sure Ricki Lee is too. It’s had a very good run, pardon the pun.”
9. The original version is longer and slower than Braithwaite’s interpretation. “At the time I thought Daryl could be an Australian Peter Gabriel,” Simon Hussey said. “The Horses needed some editing, I just cut it into verse/chorus/verse, made it more succinct.”
10. That meant when Braithwaite sang it with Jones he had to defer to the original. “When we did it live together it was daunting because our versions aren’t chalk and cheese but they’re different,” Braithwaite said. “She did her jazzy influenced version, she sang it how she wrote it, I sang it how I interpreted it. It was great to sing it to her audience. It worked out alright.”
11. The song’s guest vocalist Margaret Urlich recorded her vocals in Melbourne while Daryl was in China on holiday. She’d been suggested for the song as her debut album had just been a major success in Australia and her native New Zealand. “I pretty much made it up as I went along,” Urlich said. “I didn’t really think much of it after all that, except Daryl did an incredible vocal and it was a cool song.” “I was listening down the phone, I called the studio,” Braithwaite said. “It sounded great.”
12. When released in January 1991, the song eventually entered the ARIA chart at No. 99 on February 10, 1991. It would take until May to reach No.1. “We really worked and worked that song,” Braithwaite recalled. “I remember calling the record label, “Oh it’s at No. 40? Great.” And then I’d call back the next week to see if it had gone any higher. It took a long time.”
13. The video for The Horses was shot near Fosters, north of Newcastle, on Sandbar, near Bluey’s Beach. The budget was $45,000. The shoot commenced at 4.30am and Daryl had a gig that night at St George Leagues Club in Sydney. A helicopter was hired to get a sunburnt Daryl back to Sydney in time for the show.
14. Director Grant Matthews also used a helicopter to shoot the sweeping shots over the beach. “We had this poor guy sweeping the beach manually until 2am, with a broom, it took six hours,” Matthews said. “Then after he finished this huge storm came in that swept the beach completely clean anyway. When you’re doing overhead shots you don’t want car tracks on the beach.”
15. The director said Braithwaite’s iconic shirt and chinos combination was deliberate. “The record label wanted to change his image a little bit, move it from how he was in Sherbet to something a little more sophisticated. He’s a good-looking bloke. That was part of it, even the wardrobe, everything was designed to make him a little more fashionable and a little less rock and roll. It’s such an emotional song, I didn’t want to the visuals to distract from the music. With the soaring bits of the song I wanted the camera to sweep down on the beach. The visuals were based a lot on the arrangement.”
16. Famously Urlich, who was coming off the back of a triple platinum debut album, wasn’t in the video for The Horses. “When it came time to do the video I was in London recording my second album,” Urlich said. “I was so into that headspace. I could have come back to do the video but I was doing my own thing by that stage. If I hadn’t already had a successful album and I was still up and coming I would have probably rushed home to be in the video. I was so focused on my own album. In retrospect it was probably a little bit silly because the song was so huge. But at the time I was young and a bit stupid, I did what I thought was right. But it was absolutely no disrespect to Daryl. He sang on my album after that, he reciprocated the favour.” Braithwaite holds no grudge. “Listening to her sing it now, it’s still perfect.”
17. Braithwaite has still never sung The Horses with Urlich in person. “On one or two occasions I’ve tried to grab her to come and sing it with me, most recently at the Fire Fight Australia concert last year, her husband was doing the mixing of it for TV, but she wasn’t well. One time we were in Newcastle and she was living nearby and she came to soundcheck and I saw her, she had her kids with her, but she went home and that didn’t happen. I guess she’d find it hard to get up and sing it, that’s a shame, it really is, I’d love to sing it with her.”
18. The video features Australian model Gillian Bailey (nee Mather) who mimes to Urlich’s vocals. “I got the lyrics the night before the shoot and I had to learn them quickly. Miming was the really scary part. I was nicknamed Gilli Vanilli for a while!”
19. There’s not many horse racing events Daryl hasn’t sung The Horses at in Australia, with organisers loving the literal connection. “We do get a lot of people saying ‘We want Daryl, but just for one song!’ Just before New Year’s Eve we did the soccer, we did the Cox Plate again last year. There’s a few sports we still haven’t done though – golf, ten pin bowling …”
20. Daryl at one point had stretched the live version of The Horses to 17 minutes. “James Reyne called me shameless. He gave me an egg timer he got from Molly Meldrum and put it on the side of the stage. That hit home, so I have cut it down. It’s just one chorus for me to sing, then one chorus for the audience to sing. So it probably only runs for about five or six minutes now, thanks to James Reyne.”
21. Some people still refer to the song as Horses not The Horses. “I have pulled one or two people up,” Braithwaite said. “Oh you mean The Horses? Australians do like to abbreviate everything. You gonna play Horses?”
22. Harry Styles is one of the many famous fans of The Horses, covering it on his last Australian tour. “I met Harry at the ARIAs, where I sang the Horses with Guy Sebastian and Vera Blue, I think that’s where he saw the song,” Braithwaite said. “He did a good version of it and his audience seemed to like it, that song just keeps finding new audiences.”
23. The Horses had a slow trajectory to the top. It entered the Australian Top 50 on March 1, 1991 at No. 38, then the Top 10 on April 5 at No.8. It spent two weeks at No. 8, a week at No. 5, two weeks at No. 3, one week at No. 2 then hit No. 1 on May 24, 1991, where it stayed for two weeks. It would up being the fourth-highest selling song of 1991 in Australia.
24. The Horses has now been streamed over 40 million times on Spotify and the video has over 12 million You Tube views (10 million of those coming in the last 10 years alone).
Musicians who hate their own hits
25. Those streaming figures means the song continues to chart. Braithwaite’s version has re-entered the ARIA chart several times over the last 30 years, including after being covered on reality TV by Taylor Henderson and most recently by Chris Sebastian on The Voice. Indeed the song was the 20th highest-selling Australian single in 2020 according to ARIA — even outselling Braithwaite’s 2020 original Love Songs.
26. The Horses was never released in the UK or the US. Braithwaite’s American label went with Higher Than Hope instead, which reached No. 47 on the US chart. “The only regret I have is they never released The Horses in America,” Braithwaite says.
27. Many of Braithwaite’s contemporaries have expressed their wishes to have a song that introduces them to new generations like The Horses. “Joe Camilleri has said to me ‘God, I’d love one of those,” Braithwaite said. “Now after Love Songs was a hit I’ve had John Paul Young and Marcia Hines both say to me ‘Oh can you send through any more of those songs?’ I just found it by luck!”
28. There’s been several points over the years where Braithwaite and The Horses have found new and younger audiences – through Hamish and Andy, 3AW and Triple J. Client Liaison got him to sing The Horses at Beyond the Valley festival on New Year’s Eve in 2015 and Braithwaite played The Falls in 2017. “I thought I’d walk out there and no one would know who I was or I might get booed,” Braithwaite said. Footage of the crowd, most in their early 20s, singing The Horses went viral.
29. The Horses has also hit the dancefloor, as well as several bootlegs of Braithwaite’s version (try the Gin and Sonic remix) there’s a club remix by Teddy Cream x Szabo with a female vocal and Australian DJ Nick Skitz released a version with vocalist Meg Ripps.
30. Daryl has been listening to the original version of The Horses in lockdown to take his 2021 version back to 1991. “I want to sing it exactly like I recorded it. After listening to the original recently I realised I’ve been embellishing it a bit. I’ve told the guys in the band who sing Margaret’s parts to take it back to her original parts too. There’s a reason people are drawn to it.”
Originally published as As The Horses turns 30, here’s 30 secrets behind Daryl Braithwaite’s classic hit
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