New dad’s even more in tune with the brilliance of Bluey
Bluey’s cartoon storytelling centres on play and the relationships between young children and their parents – and having recently become a first-time father, composer Joff Bush will now be drawing from real life.
For most of the six years since the ABC TV cartoon Bluey began captivating audiences worldwide, composer Joff Bush had been digging into his own childhood memories while creating its award-winning score.
In seven-minute bursts, Bluey’s storytelling centres on play and the relationships between young children and their parents – and having recently become a first-time father, Bush will now be drawing from real life for future musical compositions as he watches his four-month-old daughter grow.
“Some things make a lot more sense, like in (50th episode) Baby Race, the line ‘You’re doing great!’ is the only thing parents of newborns need to hear,” said Bush, 39 with a laugh. “I know more emotionally now, and less intellectually, why that line was so powerful in the show; there’s definitely a few things like that where I go, ‘Ah, I get it now’.”
Of fatherhood, Bush said: “It definitely might change how I see the show. I don’t know if it’s for better or worse; I might be too invested that I can’t start doing my job of analysing storylines.
“I get really involved in making music that is structurally ‘right’, in a way, where all these lines interlock,” he said. “I get carried away with that, and then I had to really learn to go, ‘OK, let’s keep stripping it back to something really simple that people can feel’ – or I can feel first, and then hope everyone else shares that experience.”
His meticulousness has paid off so far. Last week saw the release of Rug Island, the third entry in the Bluey soundtrack series, which began in 2021 with chart-topping debut Bluey The Album and earned an ARIA Award for best children’s album.
With his catalogue of clever, catchy songs now amassing 1.6 million monthly plays on Spotify alone, the 16 new tracks on Rug Island – which Bush finished working on the day before his daughter was born – are sure to be another hit with young listeners, including a new vocal version of Bluey’s opening title theme.
“Particularly with the theme, it feels like it’s getting more and more disembodied for me,” said Bush. “It’s just out there, and it’s getting harder and harder to connect with the person who wrote it. It’s almost like a sound grab now. I imagine it’d be the same for things like The Simpsons theme; that’s a fairly unique experience.”
His second Bluey soundtrack – Dance Mode, released last year – earned Bush another nomination for best children’s album, and he’ll find out on November 20 in Sydney whether he can add another pointy silver ARIA Award to his bulging mantelpiece.
At the Screen Music Awards on Tuesday night in Melbourne, meanwhile, Bush’s work on the 28-minute Bluey episode The Sign was awarded best music for children’s programming.
The feature-length special centred on the heartache of the cartoon Heeler family moving house, and the award was shared with his co-composers on that episode, Jazz D’Arcy, Daniel O’Brien and Joe Twist.
“We read the script and we knew it was going to be something beautiful,” said Bush. “How often in your career do you get to work on something like that? We said, ‘Let’s make something that we can be proud of; let’s put heart and soul into it.’ The whole team really stepped up there and did an amazing job.”
Also among winners on Tuesday, at an event hosted by music rights organisation APRA AMCOS, was Jed Kurzel, who took out feature film score of the year for Monkey Man.
Work on drama series High Country by composers Cezary Skubiszewski and Jan Skubiszewski was named best music for a television drama, while a new award for emerging screen composer of the year was presented to Alex Olijnyk.
