60 Most Influential People list: Kylie Minogue, AC/DC, Nick Cave
Narrowing six decades of Australian music down to just three acts is a tall order, but our selections each resonate across the decades by touching millions of listeners here and abroad.
For Kylie Minogue – who started as an actor on the small screen before becoming a chart-topping star as a pop singer-songwriter, with 16 albums and counting – being named in our list of The 60 Most Influential People of the Past Six Decades is “an incredible honour”.
Asked when she first realised she was having an impact on Australian culture, Melbourne-born Minogue’s mind was cast back to 1986.
“That would have to be when Neighbours became a runaway success and entered the greater public consciousness,” she said. “Working on the show didn’t allow me much opportunity to zoom out and see the bigger picture, but I can now appreciate its impact. And in turn, my impact, which I still hear about today. It wasn’t just the impact then, it’s the fact that the memories from that time are still so present for so many people. It is truly moving.”
As for her most significant achievement as an artist? “Overall I would have to say it’s the connection with people,” said Minogue, 56.
“It may be fleeting, someone might catch themselves singing along to a song. It may be a lifelong fandom. It could be anything really but I think it is so cosmic that through music and performance, we connect in ways we will most likely never know about. But it is happening!”
This weekend it’ll be happening again, as Minogue performs in London’s Hyde Park for a one-off headline concert before tens of thousands of fans.
Another influential Australian musical act to have touched millions of listeners through its sonic creativity and heart-soaring musicality is hard rock band AC/DC, which first plugged in its power tools in Sydney in 1973.
Scottish-born guitarist Angus Young and his colleagues are now in their fifth decade of instructing the world that rock ’n’ roll ain’t noise pollution, as Brian Johnson sang in 1980. The group is presently touring Europe; if we’re lucky, perhaps AC/DC will bring the cannon fire of its live show back to the land where it all began.
Last but not least, Nick Cave spent his early years in the 1970s Melbourne post-punk scene engaged in pained vocal gymnastics, self-abuse and hand-to-hand combat with the gritty audiences who flocked to The Birthday Party and, later, his powerful rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, which formed in 1983.
But in one of the most remarkable long-term transformations in Australian music, the baritone-voiced singer-songwriter, now 66, has found a home both behind a piano at solo gigs and continuing to stalk the stage with his long-running band, which is soon to issue its 18th album and undertake an arena-sized world tour, while reaching a huge audience through his writing outlets, including a must-read email newsletter named The Red Hand Files.
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