The online musical heroes of 2020 — and a few villains
During an unprecedented year, some musicians really stepped up to help people out. But then there were the deniers making all the wrong noise.
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Australian musicians were hit hard by live music’s shutdown, but many found a way to keep us entertained through lockdown. Here’s some of our local iso saviours of 2020.
VIKA AND LINDA
The sisters, best known for their work with Paul Kelly and the Black Sorrows, started singing gospel songs during lockdown from their Melbourne home.
“We thought maybe Mum and Dad will see it, maybe some family in Tonga, they love Facebook,” Vika says. “Then people seemed to be watching so we thought we’d do it the next Sunday. Then it became a weekly thing. It actually saved us.”
It even spawned an album, Sunday (The Gospel According to Iso) which reached No. 2, following on from their first ARIA No. 1 with the compilation Akilota this year).
“We wanted it to be uplifting,” Linda says. “That’s the thing we’re most proud of.”
JIMMY AND JANE BARNES
Australian rock’s first couple invited us into their home for regular feel-great singalong covers. There was an open-door policy for guests too. The Living End’s Chris Cheney dropped by Barnes HQ while driving back from Brisbane.
“The guitars didn’t come out until maybe 1am which was not the right time to be bringing out either guitars or mobile phones,” Cheney says. “We started playing some Hank Williams tunes and the next minute it was uploaded. But it’s been incredible what Jimmy has done this year.”
Fans are hoping the online sessions may turn into an album.
KATE CEBERANO
Ceberano only half-joked she was in “premature retirement” this year.
Always seeking the positive, she turned her Melbourne home into a TV studio for a variety show online for nine weeks. It raised a five figure sum for music industry charity Support Act and paid all the performers for their work.
As well as recording a new album Sweet Inspiration (out in February) in just two days between Melbourne lockdowns, Ceberano also played an impromptu free show at a retirement home, with patients watching safely from their windows.
“I want to create a program to present live music at aged care centres, deliver some beauty and comfort to them,” she says.
DELTA GOODREM
This year Delta Goodrem’s iPhone turned her lounge into a concert venue.
Her Bunkerdown Sessions saw her take requests, chat live with fans and play hits and rarities for months on end.
“I had to teach myself to live stream and fumbled through the technology and found a way to have a new conversation directly through my phone – and get direct feedback,” Goodrem says.
“I got to play songs I’ve never sung live before – and I worked equally hard on them as the songs that became hits. It’s been a unique year but a creative one.”
Goodrem was the first Australian artist to take a leap of faith and announce an arena tour for 2021. “The tour was there as a marker of positivity and hope, another thing for us all to look forward to.”
POWDERFINGER
It took a pandemic to get the band back together, separately, for May’s One Night Lonely YouTube concert.
At 40 minutes it was a brief stroll down memory lane but is nudging a million YouTube views with donations and merchandise raising over half a million dollars for Support Act.
In 2020 ’Finger fans got an Odyssey No. 5 reissue, One Night Lonely as a live record and even an album of unreleased songs. While they’re still saying a firm no to a full reunion, who would have thought this would happen a year ago?
MICHAEL GUDINSKI
With his touring company grounded, Gudinski pulled off a TV festival for Anzac Day, Music From the Home Front, in nine days rather than the usual nine months.
And his online show, The State Of Music, gave musicians a much needed payday. He’d always wanted a TV show that showcased Australian music from all demographics, which led to ABC’s The Sound.
Over two series they filmed 120 performances, from Brisbane to Botswana, that looked like hi-tech video clips but were turned around in days.
“It’s about time there was Australian music back on Australian TV again,” musician Missy Higgins said.
For Gudinski, he wanted The Sound to give back. “I hope we can help expose Australian artists. Commercial radio can be slow to get behind local songs, Spotify is very internationally-influenced but there’s so much great talent in Australia we want to take to the next level. It’s not about promoting my artists, it’s about promoting Australian music.”
ALSO …
SOMETHING FOR KATE: Served a string of lockdown songs, including some choice covers.
KYLIE MINOGUE: The queen of iso-promotion; her streamed concert Infinite Disco was an instant hit of joy – it’s back for New Year’s Eve.
ISOL-AID: Emily Ulman’s Instagram festival, now aligned with TikTok, just clocked up 39 straight weekends of live music. Respect.
ANDY VAN/JOHN COURSE: The Melbourne DJs held literal house parties each Saturday.
TINA ARENA: QuaranTina reinvented herself as an Instagram talk show host. See also Dannii Minogue, who’s Dannii Chats offered interesting interviews with a range of guests.
And then there’s the musicians who were less than helpful during the pandemic – throwing out conspiracy theories that got attention because of their profiles.
ZIGGY ALBERTS
He’s from Byron Bay, where the anti-vaxxers (or are they pro-disease?) run wild. But in July Ziggy Alberts took to Instagram for a string of clumsy posts.
He began by saying the Victorian Government’s decision to mandate masks “strips Australians of their basic rights in what is supposed to be a free society.”
He added “there is (sic) so many ways to protect a minority of immune compromised citizen (sic) without mandating face masks or lockdowns.” He did not state other options.
Alberts also mentioned that his mother escaped communism in Hungary to come to Australia, and that his great-grandfather was killed for hiding a Jewish family and an American pilot during World War II.
The post led to suggestions Alberts was comparing Melburnians being made to wear a mask to Nazism.
Alberts clapped back, saying: “I didn’t draw a comparison between face masks and Nazi Germany, nor did I say COVID comes from 5G. I didn’t suggest you do not wear a face mask, I didn’t suggest you to not isolate yourself if you are sick. I just told you my family history and that I don’t believe in lockdowns or face masks being mandated and people being fined if they don’t comply.”
RIGHT SAID FRED
2020 hey? We last heard from Right Said Fred after Taylor Swift used a bit of their 90s hit I’m Too Sexy in Look What You Made Me Do, but they made headlines this year after attending a controversial anti-lockdown protest in London.
Brothers Richard and Fred Fairbrass said they had been “grossly misunderstood” after being called out as COVID deniers. They told Sky, “We either live like hermits and we kill the country we love or we face up to the fact that some of us are going to die.”
However their Twitter feed is still full of retweeting people like Candice Owens, supporting gyms defying orders to close during current London lockdowns (“noncompliance is still the way forward” they wrote) and posting hashtags like #lockdownsdontwork
IAN BROWN
The frontman for UK band the Stone Roses, Ian Brown has gone full Karen during lockdown, tweeting how the pandemic was “planned and designed to make us digital slaves”.
One tweet shouted “NO LOCKDOWN NO TESTS NO TRACKS NO MASKS NO VAX.”
In Boomer Bingo, he also slammed Bill Gates and 5G and said coronavirus is “the common cold.”
Brown has also done the classic Karen move of deleting his Twitter feed on occasion, forgetting that people know how to take screen shots.
NOEL GALLAGHER
The Oasis songwriter said in September he refuses to wear a mask in public, noting “if I get the virus it’s on me” and that “There’s too many f — ing liberties being taken away from us now.”
His daughter Anais revealed she wears a mask around London while his brother and nemesis Liam Gallagher said he doesn’t mind wearing mask, especially as it helps make him anonymous. This confirms there is literally nothing the Gallagher brothers agree on.
VAN MORRISON/ERIC CLAPTON
The boomer rockers are claiming the UK government are stripping people of their personal freedoms to stop COVID-19 and they’ve just released an anti-lockdown song.
Stand and Deliver features the lyrics “You let them put the fear on you but not a word you heard was true, but if there’s nothing you can say, there may be nothing you can do, do you want to be a free man or do you want to be a slave?”
Morrison has already released three other such songs, to raise money for musicians who can’t perform while venues are closed, including Born to Be Free and No More Lockdown.
When the Clapton collaboration surfaced earlier this month social media users dug up highly racist quotes from Clapton’s past. However many comments on Stand and Delivers’ You Tube page agree with their stance, including “Eat this, all you System puppets!”, “A society so scared of death that they prefer to stop living” and “stand up to the phantom virus!”
Maybe Van, Eric, Noel, Ziggy, Ian and Right Said Fred need to start up their own music festival?
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