ARIA Awards nominees Rufus Du Sol, Flume: Australian music stars the world can’t get enough of

Some of our biggest bands and solo musicians are making it huge overseas but are little known here, ahead of the ARIA awards that’s all set to change.

Here’s the question to stump your pub trivia competition.

Which Australian band has won a Grammy, just scored two more nominations for the 2023 Grammys, are up for seven ARIA Awards and have sold more than 650,000 concert tickets around the world in 2022?

The answer is Rufus Du Sol.

They should be a household name in Australia, this humble trio from Sydney’s southern beaches who have quietly become one of the biggest crowd pullers and most respected bands in the world.

And they’re not the only Australian artists killing it overseas this year. From Tame Impala and Flume to Tash Sultana and Vance Joy, from the pop comebacks of Tones and I and Dean Lewis to buzz bands Amyl and the Sniffers, The Chats and Confidence Man, Australian music has never been bigger internationally.

Rufus Du Sol in front of their enormous stadium crowd in Washington last month. Picture: Michael Drummond

As the Rufus lads return home from their Los Angeles base for the ARIAs this week and the kick off of their Surrender tour, one of the highest selling headline tours in 2022, Tyrone Lindqvist, James Hunt and Jon George describe their watershed year as “wild”.

“It has felt pretty wild this year, just the scale of the show, it’s huge. I was watching an Alanis Morissette documentary and seeing the crowds she was playing in front of back then and I thought ‘We’re doing that too!’ Just to feel that energy of it is overwhelming,” Lindqvist said.

Ask any Australian artist about Rufus Du Sol and they are universally in awe of their achievements, from winning the Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Recording to selling out not one but three stadium concerts in LA.

Honestly we're still flying from the energy on Sunday night at the Hollywood Bowl. Appreciate every one of you. See you tonight Salt Lake. pic.twitter.com/5M6sLtPMEa

— RÃœFÃœS DU SOL (@RufusDuSol) October 13, 2022

The Rufus lads capture the all-for-one, one-for-all attitude among the Australian artist community when it comes to celebrating each other’s successes.

“We are so proud seeing other Australian acts doing well, to see Tame killing it, Flume and others, there’s that sense of pride. I feel like that’s a shared thing in the Australian music scene at large,” Hunt said.

Flume, who is up for six awards as his Palaces tour plays to tens of thousands of fans around the country, said Australian artists are exerting a dominant influence over the global pop sound right now.

Live from New York pic.twitter.com/4W2Q8KWOvu

— Flume (@flumemusic) October 1, 2022

“The Americans and Europeans have, on multiple occasions, brought up the whole Australians punching above their weight thing,” Flume said.

“The Tame Impala sound is everywhere now, I hear it ripped off left, right and centre. And Rufus – the music that’s come out of this country in the last ten years has been crazy influential. And I don’t know why.

“Maybe there’s something in being removed from it all. I grew up on the northern beaches and there was nowhere to go out and listen to good music, so I would live online and be inspired that way. Maybe we’re just having a moment.”

Dean Lewis is having a moment courtesy of How Do I Say Goodbye, the song inspired by his father’s battle with cancer and is making the whole world cry.

Lewis admits he had given up on ever having another global hit to match his billion stream sensation Be Alright, which swept the global pop charts in 2018 and 2019.

But How Do I Say Goodbye is doing the business courtesy of tens of thousands of TikTok viral videos which have catapulted the song to one million streams a day.

The song started exploding during his recent tour in North America and Europe with Lewis gobsmacked as thousands of fan sang back every word to him only days after its release in September.

“I’ve been waiting three years for another moment. It’s been interesting watching the waves of how it happens; when you’re hot everyone wants you, and then you’re not so hot, your songs aren’t really working and no one’s answering my calls anymore. And you wonder if you have to start looking at maybe doing something else,” he said.

“Then, all of a sudden How To Say Goodbye starts bringing people back. But I know that it doesn’t last forever. You can have this big song and in six months the next thing might not work.”

Tash Sultana loves coming home to play but overseas fans called big time this year. Picture: NCA.

Multi-instrumentalist and award-winning blues and roots artist Tash Sultana has also returned to Australia recently from six months of touring overseas, playing to massive crowds, more than 40,000 people at some North American shows.

Sultana said they chose to go overseas as the Australian tour market became overcrowded as live music returned and it became intensely competitive to secure venues and sell tickets.

“I like my own lane and right now it’s showing itself to me in other parts of the world and has been for quite some time – I can go all over the world and play arenas. I love playing here, I love living here but the kind of tour you can do in Australia, you do in one week in America,” she said.

Sultana said there should be greater recognition and celebration of the Australian music success story when weighed against the obstacles artists to face to break in America and Europe.

“I’m really grateful for the fact that I have an international career because it’s really hard for any Australian musician to break out of Australia, on this continent far, far removed from the rest of the world,” they said.

“It took Rufus years to be doing big things overseas and I think that’s another band who are not really recognised in Australia for just how f … ing big they are. They are huge.”

* The 2022 ARIA Awards are on November 24 and air from 7.30pm on Nine.

For Dean Lewis tickets, https://www.deanlewismusic.com/#tour

Tash Sultana tickets, https://www.tashsultana.com/#schedule

Flume tickets, https://flumemusic.com/

Rufus Du Sol tickets, https://www.rufusdusol.com/tour

Originally published as ARIA Awards nominees Rufus Du Sol, Flume: Australian music stars the world can’t get enough of