PM’s favourite song list is positively unAustralian

SCOTT Morrison’s Spotify playlist shows how out of touch he is with one of Australia’s most important industries, writes Kathy McCabe. Even Barack Obama knows more about new Aussie music.

THE Australian music industry lost its collective mind when President Barack Obama issued his summer playlist in 2016 featuring the Courtney Barnett song Elevator Operator.

I would bet her gold record plaque, Grammy nomination, four ARIA Awards and eight nominations for this year’s gongs that Prime Minister Scott Morrison couldn’t name a Courtney Barnett track.

Alongside Tame Impala, Vance Joy, Sheppard, Dean Lewis, Flume, 5 Seconds Of Summer and of course, the indomitable Sia, Barnett has been one of the most successful and acclaimed Australian musical exports of the past five years.

Yet when the Prime Minister chose to share his 80s musical tastes with the world via a Spotify playlist of a whopping 147 songs, there was just one Australian track — Stimulation by the fabulous Wa Wa Nee.

There’s nothing offensive about a Prime Minister’s musical tastes being stuck in the 80s, although Wa Wa Nee’s guitarist Steve Williams tweeted he was embarrassed by the band’s inclusion on the playlist.

I’m the guitarist in Wawanee. What an embarrassment to have any association with this disgraceful government 🙈

— Steve Williams (@SteveZoolman) November 5, 2018

But surely a prime minister whose musical tastes were formed in the 80s would have been aware that decade was a golden era for Australian music on the world stage.

INXS exploded in the US with Kick which featured several hit singles including the title track, The Devil Inside, What You Need and the enduring power ballad Never Tear Us Apart.

It was the decade when Midnight Oil’s protest rock smashed into the US charts with Beds Are Burning and their Diesel and Dust album went platinum in America, selling more than one million copies.

Their success followed the records-smashing Men At Work with the unofficial national anthem Down Under hit No. 1 in the US and propelled their Business as Usual record to sales of more than six million copies in America.

Every music fan in the 1980s was well aware of Australia’s performance on the global charts courtesy of Molly Meldrum’s weekly updates on Countdown.

Nobody expects Scott Morrison’s musical tastes to include cutting edge new indie bands, but out of 147 songs, surely he could have included more than one Aussie tune? Picture: Dan Peled/AAP

Fast forward three decades and the punching-above-our-weight progress of our Australian artists on the world stage is regularly documented and celebrated by the print, digital, television and radio media.

But there was nothing from the Prime Minister’s office noting that 5 Seconds Of Summer and Tkay Maidza won awards at this week’s MTV EMAs in Spain.

A PwC study for the Australian Copyright Council found in 2016 that the Australian music industry contributed $10.554 billion to the Australian economy and employed 92,370 people.

Export dollars for members of the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) have increased 28 per cent over the past two years to almost $20 million

Morrison’s disconnect with contemporary music and its contribution not only to the Australian economy both as an employer and exporter is particularly tone deaf as the Parliamentary Inquiry into the Australian Music Industry kicked off its public hearings in Sydney last week.

The Federal and State governments have significantly eroded their support of this vital industry with its grants programs and like an indigenous voice, climate change and other issues the voting public keep telling them they want addressed, seem determined to shove support for the arts into the too-hard basket.

Despite their opposing politics, Morrison included Peter Garrett and Midnight Oil on his Aussie song list, but they weren’t good enough for his main picks. Picture: Lachie Millard

Despite the examples of Canada, UK and Sweden who have invested in growing their music export markets, the Federal Government stealthily stripped our export body Sounds Australia of its funding in 2016 and only reversed the decision after a massive outcry from the music community.

Sounds Australia employs four people to take our artists to the world at influential, career-making conferences such as SXSW in America and The Great Escape in the UK. Their peer organisations in Sweden and Canada employ dozens of people to do the same job.

As the Parliamentary inquiry sifts through 107 submissions related to everything from local content quotas for radio and streaming, grants support for artists and songwriters and better protocols for live music venues, perhaps the PM could get one of his staffers to make him a playlist that celebrates the fact that November is Aus Music Month.

He responded to the Shadow Arts Minister Tony Burke’s call-out of his 80s playlist by tweeting “If you’re after my Oz playlist, this is the one that has joined me on Syd-Canberra-Syd drives for years. (With a few Kiwis thrown in.)”

While his support of INXS, Midnight Oil (yep, even the Oils get a look in despite their political affiliations), Icehouse and Noiseworks is admirable, it is his ONLY all-Australian playlist of the 40 he has on Spotify, with the exception of Tina Arena and Keith Urban collections.

Better still, why doesn’t he ask Urban, the host of the upcoming ARIA Awards and the oracle of all new music, to make an AusMusicMonth playlist for him.

Then he might realise that ARIA nominees Gang Of Youths are our latest rock export and not a crime wave.

Kathy McCabe is a News Corp music writer.

@McCabeRadar