Do yourself a favour: check out this Countdown 50th anniversary top 10

November marks the 50th anniversary of the debut of the ABC’s legendary Australian music show Countdown. The show wrapped up in 1987, yet this classic Countdown Top 10 marks the vibrant legacy that still echoes down the corridors of the local music scene.

10) Skyhooks – Ego Is Not a Dirty Word

Countdown was Sunday night appointment viewing for a nation. Debuting on November 8, 1974, the ABC music show was initially commissioned for just six half-hour episodes but swiftly became a weekly hour comprising studio performances, music clips and the national top 10 singles chart, all presented by the idiosyncratic music journalist and record producer Ian “Molly” Meldrum. By the time the show concluded in July 1987, Meldrum was a distinctly Australian icon and Countdown had become a crucial platform for popular music in this country.

9) Cold Chisel – Choir Girl

Created by Michael Shrimpton, Robbie Weekes and Meldrum, Countdown’s arrival was central to Australia’s cultural coming of age. “It was the Whitlam years, Skyhooks’ Living in the ’70s came out, the ABC’s 2JJ started broadcasting. There was a lot going on, but Countdown was at the forefront of this golden age for Australian music,” says music journalist Jeff Jenkins, who co-wrote Meldrum’s two autobiographies, 2014’s The Never, Um, Ever Ending Story and 2016’s Ah Well, Nobody’s Perfect. “It was on the ABC, so truly national – bands were taken into lounge rooms across the nation.”

8) Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Filmed at the ABC’s Ripponlea studios in Melbourne, Countdown was a studio party where some of the biggest music acts in the world hung out in the nondescript canteen and interacted with the studio audience before lip-syncing their latest hit. Superfan Linda Freedman was just 10 years old when she attended her first Countdown in 1981, and with her older sister Karen she went back most weeks afterwards. “Security got to know us and let us in without tickets,” Freedman remembers. “We got to see the biggest acts and icons of the era performing on Countdown, either at their peak or as they were just starting off. It was a very exciting place to be.”

7) Split Enz – My Mistake

Often nervous, always unpredictable, “Molly” Meldrum was the perfect if unlikely choice to be Countdown’s public face. “Molly was a great TV presenter because he was not a great TV presenter. He stumbled and he mumbled, but he was real. TV presenters now are so slick they could be AI-generated, but Molly was unique,” Jenkins says. “Artists loved him. Beneath him being an awkward TV person, he was a great music person. He had great ears. He could pick a hit, and more importantly he could make it happen.”

6) AC/DC – Baby, Please Don’t Go

Few shows hold a bigger legacy for the ABC than Countdown, but that wasn’t always appreciated. The master videotapes of many episodes from 1974 to 1978 were disastrously wiped and re-used for other shows as part of a management savings drive. At present, on ABC iview, you can watch Countdown Classics, compilation packages with an episode a year running from 1975 to 1987. To mark the show’s 50th birthday, on Saturday, November 16, at 7.30pm, the ABC will relive the show’s glory days with the special Countdown 50 Years On, co-hosted by Myf Warhurst and Tony Armstrong.

5) The Cure – Primary

Want more Countdown? YouTube is the place to search. Start with ABC Library Sales, a wide-ranging resource that has Countdown clips among its historic music content and – handily – an entire section titled Countdown – Bloopers. This is where you can find some of Meldrum’s most famous encounters, whether out-takes from his nervous, protocol-busting interview with then Prince Charles in 1977 or the chaotic 1979 encounter with a shirtless Iggy Pop that begins with the godfather of punk declaring, “Hiya, Dogface!” After that, have fun with the search bar.

4) Kim Wilde – You Keep Me Hangin’ On

Countdown was by no means perfect. The show’s ongoing success conferred a measure of monocultural power on both the show and Meldrum that some chafed at. Rock bands felt that the show favoured pop music, and some – such as Midnight Oil – refused to appear because the designated format was to lip-sync to your studio recordings as opposed to performing the song live. “Artists started to sneer at Countdown. It was too big, too commercial,” Jenkins says. “But once it disappeared, they were the first to say we need another one.”

3) Elton John – Dear John

Mostly taped in an hour on a Friday evening, the average episode of Countdown had a huge number of moving parts. “There were times when they had to do multiple takes, but by the time we were going in the 1980s, it was a pretty well-oiled machine. There were also the intentional ‘mishaps’ – like Elton John throwing his birthday cake over Molly,” Linda Freedman says. “Molly could be very spontaneous, and you never knew what you were going to get – he could be unscripted and unpredictable, calling up studio audience members, having a laugh with some of the artists who were also his good friends.”

2) The Cockroaches – Some Kind of Girl

Something that’s not appreciated now is the technical skill that underpinned the show. The ABC’s in-house crew, from camera operators to set designers, were first-rate. “The training back then at the ABC was remarkable. The Countdown crew kept Molly on track as much as they could, but they went with it because they knew it was great television,” Jenkins says. “They also made incredible video clips. The famous AC/DC clip for It’s a Long Way to the Top was made by Countdown. Same with Horror Movie by Skyhooks.

1) Models – Out of Mind, Out of Sight

Lightning doesn’t strike twice. The ABC’s 1989 revival, Countdown Revolutions, without Meldrum, lasted 18 months. Since then, the circumstances that made Countdown a success have irrevocably altered. “There will never be another Countdown. There will never be another Molly,” Jenkins says. Adds Linda Freedman: “There’s nothing like Countdown on TV now, which is a shame as it put music – and new Australian music and artists – on prime-time TV and launched careers.”

Countdown 50 Years On screens on the ABC, Saturday, November 16, 7.30pm.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.