The Wiggles top of the ARIA charts
The iconic children’s group has achieved another first that left Blue Wiggle Anthony Field in disbelief.
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It’s been a long way to the top for The Wiggles, who have finally toot tooted their way to a No. 1 album in Australia.
The iconic children’s group achieved their first ARIA chart-topper in a 30-year career this week with the Rewiggled double album.
One side of the hit record featured the band “wigglyfying” Bohemian Rhapsody, Thunderstruck and their Hottest 100-winning version of Tame Impala’s Elephant.
Their No. 1 debut was ably assisted by adult artists including pop star Dami Im, alternative rockers Spacey Jane and punk heroes The Chats putting their unique spins on Wiggles classics on the album’s flip-side.
The historic chart result comes as The Wiggles enjoy a watershed year which included being voted to No. 1 on Triple J’s Hottest 100 poll, performing at the Sydney Mardi Gras and playing sold-out shows to 10,000 adult fans at their OG Wiggles Reunion concerts.
“If you’d said to me at the beginning of the year that The Wiggles would have a #1 ARIA album, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Wiggles co-founder Anthony Field said.
“It’s such an incredible feeling, and I want to thank everyone who have supported us on our 30-year journey.
“2022 just keeps getting better; we’re back touring again, just last weekend we were singing with 10,000 adults fans at the Rod Laver Arena … and now this!”
Original Red Wiggle Murray Cook who’s rocking out with The OGs on their Australian tour, said it was exciting to see the children’s entertainment institution now broadening its big kids’ fan base.
“When we started The Wiggles more than 30 years ago, we simply wanted to make music that children would love. And it still remains at the core of what The Wiggles do today,” he said.
“I never in a million years thought that we’d have the honour of topping the ARIA album charts (and) it’s been so magical to see such joy in the audience on our OG arena tour as young adults relive their childhood and rock out to Big Red Car.”
‘THE WIGGLES ARE SICK!: DREAM COME TRUE FOR NEWEST MEMBER
Few people would have put The Wiggles down to be the coolest band in the land on their 2022 bingo cards.
Their Big Rad Year kicked off with the jaw-dropping, historic Hottest 100 win in January, after a passionate fan campaign to get the iconic cover of Tame Impala’s Elephant to No.1.
It was a victory for their original 1990s fans who grew up with the global children’s phenomenon.
As Omicron surged through Australia into the new year, the Triple J audience craved the nostalgic good vibes conferred by crowning The Wiggles their new hipster gods.
Tsehay Hawkins, the 16-year-old Yellow Wiggle who joined the troupe in August last year to replace the adored Emma Watkins and now gets to perform Elephant at their gigs, captures the prevailing excitement about the win as “just so sick!”
“When I joined, my (teenage) friends were all like ‘that’s so cool, The Wiggles are sick!’” she says.
“And they were all having Hottest 100 parties, sending me videos of them dancing around to it and (screaming) ‘We love The Wiggles, they rock!’”
But the Hottest 100 hysteria isn’t the only measure of The Wiggles resurgence in Australia’s cultural zeitgeist.
The group were greeted with a huge roar when they took the field at the Sydney Cricket Ground for the 2022 Mardi Gras.
This 30-year entertainment enterprise now has something for everyone – toddlers, teens, 20s and beyond – with three distinct “bands” under the Wiggles brand.
There’s The OG Wiggles, founding members Anthony Field, Murray Cook, Jeff Fatt and Greg Page.
The “current line-up” features Field, Lachy Gillespie, Simon Pryce and new recruit Hawkins.
And then there’s the Fruit Salad TV Wiggles, an expanded troupe starring in a YouTube series and concerts to promote diversity and inclusivity.
Its new members are Taribelang woman and talented ballerina Evie Ferris, former Justice Crew member John Pearce and Chinese/Australian dancer Kelly Hamilton.
All three versions come together for The Wiggles current Australia tour and their new Rewiggled double album out this week, a covers collection which epitomises how hot their cool factor is right now.
One side features a dizzyingly eclectic line-up of artists from indie punks The Chats to Eurovision queen Dami Im, First Nations singer songwriter Emily Wurramara to 90s alt rockers Custard paying tribute to Wiggles classics with their unique covers.
While The Wiggles may be humbled by the fact Australia’s indie scene jumped at the chance to cover their songs, most of the artists themselves grew up with the band and regard the opportunity as a career highlight.
Im, who is expecting her first child with husband Noah Kim in May, puts a jazzy r&b spin on Big Red Car. Not the Toot Toot Chugga Chugga song but the other Big Red Car – there’s two! – about jumping in the car, buckling up and going for a drive.
As she immigrated from South Korea when she was nine, Im was oblivious to The Wiggles’ three-decade reign as Australia’s biggest children’s group but like Tsehay Hawkins, her friends’ reactions to news she was working with them set her straight.
“It’s a nice, weird coincidence that I have done this and now (I’m having a baby) but I don’t think my version is kid friendly, I think kids might skip to the next track,” she says, laughing.
“But it’s cool because every time I have done something with The Wiggles, my friends are like ‘Oh my God, you’ve made it!’ With Eurovision, they were like ‘Yeah, whatever.’”
The other side of Rewiggled has The Wiggles “wigglifying” 14 songs including Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, AC/DC’s Thunderstruck, Rihanna’s Umbrella and Lime Cordiale and Idris Elba’s recent single Apple Crumble.
Their quest for covers glory off the back of Elephant’s huge success did require some adjustments to be made to problematic lyrics.
Pryce had to be inventive with his vocals on Bohemian Rhapsody.
“We had to leave out ‘Mama, I just killed a man’, I’m humming my way through it,” Pryce says.
“Some (lyrics) went through the keeper, and we will stretch it a little bit but we have to stay within our Wiggly world.”
Field was shocked to be informed he had taken lyrical licence with punk rock anthem Pub Feed by The Chats, swapping in “healthy” for “greasy”. He hadn’t realised there’d been a word switch, and like the rest of us, is more likely to order a schnitty than a salad at the pub.
He nominates the wildly successful OG Wiggles reunion shows in 2020 for bushfire relief as the moment he felt the love for the revered entertainment institution ramp up across the demographics.
“When we changed over 10 years ago with Emma, Lachy and Simon, I made a conscious decision to bury the OGs for a while so everyone would focus on the new Wiggles, and we had backlash about that,” Field said.
“When we got the OGs back together for the bushfire appeals, I realised how much people absolutely loved them. The current line-up was established by then so I thought we should make Wiggles for everyone.
“And we had that real mortality check when Greg (Page) had his heart attack at the bushfire appeal show and that made me think we should get out and do gigs because there are adults who want to come to a show and relive their childhood.”
Crossing over into the adult market will prove to be a lucrative income stream for the Wiggles brand.
They have sold more than 10,000 tickets for the OGs, at $45 a pop, for their show on Saturday night at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena, with all the other concerts by the founding members coming up in the next couple of months almost sold out.
The Wiggles store offers adult Rewiggled T-shirts, with its psychedelic swirl design, for $44.95 or a 30 Years top for $34.95.
Field estimates they have sold more than 100,000 tickets for the current tour which often sees them performing anywhere between two and four kids’ shows during the day and then an OGs gig at night.
“We lost 70 per cent of our business when Covid hit; we had to lay people off who had been around forever with us,” Field says.
“It’s just been terrible for the arts, it’s great it’s coming back because everyone’s just hanging to play. We did four sold out shows in Penrith the other day and I felt there was more energy in the audience than ever because people were so happy to be out and with their community.”
Wiggles Rewiggled out now.For tickets to Fruit Salad TV Big Show Tour & OG Wiggles 15+ Tour, go to www.thewiggles.com/
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Originally published as The Wiggles top of the ARIA charts
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