Australian music fans obsessed over Taylor Swift in 2024, they swooned over Benson Boone and Sabrina Carpenter, but largely ignored homegrown music.
Those are some of the takeaways from the newly-published ARIA year-end charts.
Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department tops the leaderboard on the ARIA Top 100 Albums for 2024, which, like the singles chart is dominated by U.S. acts, according for nine of the top 10. The exception is Canadian R&B star The Weeknd, whose hits collection The Highlights is at No. 4.
Just three domestic creations impact the top 100, or 3%, The Music Network reports. The highest-ranked Australian LP is Cold Chisel’s career retrospective, 50 Years – The Best Of, which sits at No. 44. The Kid Laroi’s debut full-length album The First Time is at No. 67, and another greatest hits effort, INXS’ evergreen, diamond-certified The Very Best is at No. 81.
TayTay lands more titles in the top 10 (four) than the entire music community of Australia manages for the top 100. Across the full list, Swift locks-up 11 spots.
The US pop superstar swept all before her in 2024, a year that saw The Eras Tour stop by Australia for seven stadium dates across Melbourne and Sydney. On the national charts, she was on record breaking form. Last April, she stacked the entire singles chart top 10 — a never-before seen achievement. And on multiple occasions, she completed a Swift Sweep of the top 5 on the albums tally.
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Boone’s breakthrough “Beautiful Things” tops out on the ARIA Top 100 Singles for 2024, and is one of nine America-originated songs in the top ten; Irishman Hozier prevents a clean sweep, with “Too Sweet” appearing at No. 8.
Just five recordings from the land Down Under appear on that particular list. That’s 5% of the total, when, a decade ago, the Australian contingent would regularly rack up 10-15% of the top 100.
Leading the way is Vance Joy’s 16-times platinum certified hit from 2013, “Riptide,” coming in at No. 24. Cyril’s reimagining of Chris Norman and Suzi Quatro’s “Stumblin’ In” appears at No. 29, superstar DJ and producer Dom Dolla’s “Saving Up” drops in at No. 50, and the Kid Laroi bags a brace with “Nights Like This” at No. 84 and his 17-times platinum collaboration with Justin Bieber, “Stay,” originally released in 2021, at No. 96.
The so-called discoverability problem plaguing the Australian music community isn’t an easy fix, though no shortage of solutions have been presented by the industry. Among them, Music Australia’s funding initiative the Music Australia Record Label Development Scheme, which is designed to support homegrown labels that are “actively discovering, developing, and promoting local talent”; the AAM’s Michael’s Rule, a policy that would ensure at least one local artist would be among the support acts on every tour; and the ongoing (and contentious) discussion on content quotas.
