The greatest year in Australian music? No question, it was 2008

Let me take you back to another time.

Barack Obama has just become the first black US president. The world is grappling with the worst financial crisis in a century. The year’s most acclaimed film is a superhero flick, The Dark Knight.

Closer to home, John Howard is no longer the prime minister after 11 years in the top job. Chris Lilley is considered the funniest man on television. And a teenage pop wunderkind by the name of Gabriella Cilmi is dominating the airwaves with her breakout single, Sweet About Me.

Gabriella Cilmi, forgotten favourite, at the 2008 ARIAs.Credit:

The soulful, jazzy bop blows up, carried by Cilmi’s sultry vocal. She sweeps the ARIAs and is hailed as the next Amy Winehouse. Then, seemingly overnight, she disappears. Consigned to the annals of music history, an obscure answer at trivia nights.

The year is 2008 and Gabriella Cilmi is its headliner and perfect avatar – because 2008 is the greatest forgotten year in Australian music.

It was transformative. This was the year in which Australian music shed its skin and emerged beautiful and new – a hard pivot away from pub anthems and alt-rock, and towards a future of indie-pop, hip-hop and electronica. It was bright and bubbly. It was fun.

This was the start of the golden age of Australian dance music. The flash point might have been the release of My People by the Presets the year prior, but 2008 is when the embers caught wind and blazed into an unstoppable wildfire of homegrown electronica.

The Presets led the way, following up with gargantuan singles Talk Like That and This Boy’s in Love. Pnau got us bouncing with the dreamy, vibrant Embrace. There was Cut Copy’s propulsive disco banger Lights & Music, while Pendulum captured the experience of a dirty warehouse rave with Propane Nightmares. And Art vs Science arrived with the fun-as-heck Flippers.

Aussie hip-hop stepped out of Hilltop Hoods’ imposing shadow and found its place in the mainstream. Bliss n Eso’s Flying Colours album was a huge success. The Herd trained their righteous fury on the legacy of departing PM Howard with The King Is Dead. Drapht took over Triple J with his offbeat storytelling and energetic delivery on Jimmy Recard, while Pez and 360 teamed up for The Festival Song.

In 2008 came the debut of Tame Impala, whose psychedelic Half Full Glass of Wine was the start of Kevin Parker’s journey towards becoming one of the world’s most respected pop wizards. Kate Miller-Heidke mixed eccentric new wave with a gorgeous, operatically trained voice on her album Curiouser, while Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu’s deeply affecting debut Gurrumul was acclaimed as one of the greatest Australian albums of all time.

And, of course, the song with the most enduring legacy from 2008 is Walking on a Dream by Empire of the Sun, which remains a mainstay on radio and TV to this day. Their eclectic poptronica and theatrical flair created an unassailable modern Australian classic.

If 2008 holds up next to any year in Aussie music history, perhaps the reason it’s been forgotten is because so many of its biggest stars fell quickly by the wayside. It wasn’t just Gabriella Cilmi. Australian radio in 2008 was a smorgasbord of brilliant pop music by artists whose star bizarrely faded as quickly as it shot into the stratosphere.

Remember Black and Gold by Sam Sparro? The synth-laced groover delivered pseudo-philosophical musings in a funky neo-soul package. Sparro was Sam Smith before Sam Smith, yet he never released another top 10 song (weirdly, his 2012 track Happiness went to number one in Belgium).

Sam Sparro was Sam Smith before there was Sam Smith.Credit:

The Temper Trap exploded with their soaring anthem Sweet Disposition and looked like they would become the next great Australian pop-rock band, taking the torch from an ageing Powderfinger. But they were never able to match their lightning-in-a-bottle debut single.

Neither were Brisbane indie band Yves Klein Blue, who had an unlikely hit with the jangly Polka. These much-loved, short-lived artists form a crucial part of the year’s indelible legacy, even if 2008 opened a floodgate to a wave of new and inventive music so powerful it swept some of them to the side.

Looking for a musical refresh? I’d suggest popping on a 2008 Australian music playlist, listening to some Sam Sparro and enjoying a year that changed everything.

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