‘The Horses’ is overrated and needs to die

Osher Gunsberg called it a “new national anthem”, and thousands will sing along to it at the NRL Grand Final this Sunday. But ‘The Horses’ does not deserve its status as a classic, argues David Mills.

This may come as a surprise to some readers, but things that are popular are not always good.

Take football, for example. The world’s most played, followed and talked-about sport is also the most overrated.

Or take the movie Avatar. Only recently dethroned as the highest-grossing movie of all time, it never appears on anybody’s list of great films.

Or take the Eurovision Song Contest. Every year, millions of people seem to lose their minds over this event. But it’s just not nearly as fun or interesting as its acolytes would have you believe.

Something similar could be said of Daryl Braithwaite’s 1991 hit version of the song The Horses, which a big slab of the Australian population seem to take an inordinate amount of pride in loving, despite the fact it’s an insipid, soporific piece of tripe.

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Not that I’ve got anything against Daryl Braithwaite. His band Sherbet’s place in the pantheon of Australian rock is well-deserved; 1976’s Howzat is a bona fide classic, and his 1988 single One Summer is pretty good too.

Daryl Braithwaite giving The Horses his all at The Cox Plate race meet. Picture: Lawrence Pinder

But the success of the The Horses has always been completely befuddling. Released as a single in 1991, it quickly hoofed it to the top of the charts, and according to ARIA has now gone platinum six times over.

Since then the song has only grown in stature, embraced as a karaoke favourite and instantly proclaimed a classic whenever its name is mentioned.

Osher Gunsberg even went so far as to describe it as Australia’s “new national anthem” when it was performed on The Masked Singer on Monday night. And you can bet a stadium full of people will be singing along to the chorus when Braithwaite belts it out it during the half-time show at the NRL Grand Final this Sunday.

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But the audience will be singing along with a touch of irony. My pet theory is that people don’t actually love The Horses; they just love how they feel when they’re singing it, as if they too are in on the joke.

Braithwaite may have a fine, distinctively dry singing voice, but there’s nothing particularly interesting about the song, lyrically or musically. It’s easy listening, middle-of-the-road radio fodder.

Osher Gunsberg proclaimed The Horses as our new national anthem on The Masked Singer this week. But irony has its limits.

Part of what mystifies about the enduring appeal of the track is that it came just after the golden era of Australian rock. When you think about the incredible, raw, memorable songs pumped out by Australian artists in the late 1980s — by INXS, Divinyls, Midnight Oil, Models, John Farnham, Jimmy Barnes, Hoodoo Gurus and Mental As Anything, among many others — the fact that the plodding, plinky-plonky wash of The Horses is revered today seems hard to understand.

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Another confounding aspect of this is that occasionally popular taste gets it right. Despite tanking on the charts when it was released as a single in 1984, the Hunters and Collectors song Throw Your Arms Around Me rightfully attained classic status over the years, aided by cover versions by other artists.

Hunters and Collectors. They will come for you at night-time …

Today, The Horses and Throw Your Arms Around Me both enjoy a similar sort of status among Aussies (although it should be noted that The Horses was written and first recorded by American performer Rickie Lee Jones).

But while we sing Throw Your Arms Around Me earnestly, with depth and conviction, we approach The Horses with tongue firmly in cheek.

It’s weird. Can a song sustain classic status simply out of irony?

I doubt it. And for this reason I say it’s time for the joke to be put to rest.

The Horses is overrated, and needs to die. It’s time to change the record.

David Mills is a journalist with News Corp.

@DavidMills1972

Originally published as ‘The Horses’ is overrated and needs to die