‘I didn’t even know what a shoey was’: Inside The Wiggles’ biggest year yet

Blue Wiggle Anthony Field didn’t know what Triple J’s Hottest 100 was until a year or so before he won it.

“During COVID, [my daughter Lucia] was in the pool, having her own pool party, listening to the top 100. And I thought ‘What is this thing!’,” he says, as Lucia – now aged 18 – watches on, sitting alongside her father, visibly embarrassed.

“But then, out of the blue, we were being invited to do Like A Version, which led to us winning. It was quite surreal.”

A world away from previous winners like Billie Eilish, Ocean Alley, Kendrick Lamar and Flume, the iconic Australian children’s group won the 2022 countdown for its widely celebrated interpretation of Tame Impala’s Elephant.

It was the first time a cover had won the national youth broadcaster’s annual music poll – and The Wiggles were certainly the first winning act to feature a middle-aged man playing bass in an elephant costume.

“I’ve never worked so hard on a song,” Field says. “We practised six hours a day.”

But that was only the start of what turned out to be an incredibly surreal year for the group.

In 2022, The Wiggles went on to cover songs by The Chats, Fatboy Slim, The White Stripes, AC/DC and Lime Cordiale; and local artists including Spacey Jane, DZ Deathrays and Luca Brasi covered their songs right back. The ambitious double album that resulted from these collaborations, ReWiggled, gave the group, which has performed in various incarnations since 1991, its first #1 ARIA album.

The OG Wiggles – Field, Greg Page, Murray Cook and Jeff Fatt – also embarked on a national adults-only reunion tour, performing their most iconic tracks for sold-out crowds of drunk millennials and older Gen Z. In April, they were publicly chased by US rapper Lil Nas X who said he was trying to get them to co-headline his tour. And in June, The Kid Laroi delivered.

“This next guest is the f—ing Wiggles!” the 19-year-old Grammy Award-nominee screamed, before encouraging the crowd at his Melbourne show to mosh to Fruit Salad.

“The Kid Laroi asked us to support him because he grew up with us,” Field says, smiling. “We get a lot of feedback like that from younger artists. A lot of people say to Murray, ‘you’re the first guitarist I ever heard!’ It’s incredible.

“There’s this photo The Kid Laroi showed me of him at 11 years old where I’m doing the Wiggle fingers, and he’s doing rude fingers. We had a good laugh.”

Anthony Field from The Wiggles and a young The Kid Laroi.Credit: Pinterest

All of this has been particular exciting for Lucia Field, who officially joined the group as a second Blue Wiggle this year.

“Nostalgia is a very big thing with my generation – I mean, with all generations, but I think especially now because of social media,” she says.

“Having young Australian acts collaborating with such an iconic Australian group … It’s not something that people would ever put together, but it works so well.

“I feel like I freak out more than [my dad] does because he has no idea who these people are,” she says, laughing.

Lucia and Anthony Field, the Blue Wiggles, in the Big Red Car.

“I’m 60 years old; I’m really out of the loop,” Anthony admits. But he has discovered a lot of new music along the way too.

“I met Genesis... [Lucia lets her dad know the Canberra rapper’s surname is Owusu, but he maintains ‘I just know him as Genesis’] and then I saw him perform at Falls, and now I’m a big fan. I would never have known him unless we were doing this stuff!”

Importantly, The Wiggles were also playing at Falls Festival – a throwback set that our reviewer noted sent the crowd “ballistic”.

“It was just joyful,” Anthony says. “It was thousands of people doing Rock-A-Bye Your Bear, and the next act on was Amyl and the Sniffers!”

Wiggles fans at day one of the Falls Festival at Sidney Myer Music Bowl.Credit: Joe Armao

These OG shows – which also include the current, younger Wiggles as backup dancers – have been “a bit of a culture shift”, he says.

“I didn’t even know what a shoey was!” Anthony says, recalling a punter trying to get him to scull a drink from his shoe in Darwin. “They brought up vodka for Dorothy [the Dinosaur] instead of roses!”

“We don’t get out of character though,” he adds. “I think if we did go out of character, people would feel let down. We are the same as always – except now we’ve got grey hair and expanding waistlines.”

“Our tour was sponsored by a company that puts out defibrillators so... that says something about how old we are!”

Anthony Field

WigglesCredit: Joe Amaro

Anthony, who still performs in the current Wiggles lineup, is hopeful these OG shows for older audiences can keep running – he’d especially love to go to America – but he’s not making any promises.

“Greg’s got his own life. And Murray’s got another band. And Jeff… Jeff fishes a lot. It’s also a question of our health as we get older. You know, three of the four guys have had heart surgery. The tour was kind of a celebration that Greg was better [after his heart attack in January 2020].

“He’s been doing so much work getting AED defibrillators everywhere. The tour was sponsored by a company that puts out defibrillators so... that says something about how old we are!”

For older fans, there’s plenty of nostalgia still to come. Amazon Prime is releasing a documentary about the group, Hot Potato, later this year (a work Anthony admits he’s “partly scared to see [as] none of us have seen anyone else’s interviews”).

But both Anthony and Lucia are understandably more excited about their younger followers.

“It’s been an amazing year, but the best thing for me is the evolution of The Wiggles,” Anthony says. “I love that we’re more representative than we were.”

The group now features four men and four women – including Tsehay, who is Ethiopian; and Evie, the first Indigenous Wiggle.

“When I was little I loved Dorothy because she was a girl,” Lucia says. “She did ballet, and I did ballet as well. That’s who I looked up to.”

“Then the next generation had Emma [who performed from 2013-2021]. And now we have another generation. We have so many little girls and boys who say ‘Tsehay has hair like me’ ... It’s so heartwarming.”

In a couple more decades, it could be this new crew doing shoeys at our biggest musical festivals.

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