Reader polls are as compelling a waste of time as you're likely to find.
This one in The Australian Magazine asked readers to nominate the best Australian song of the past twenty years. Crowded House took six positions in the top twenty. Maybe not so astounding, given their uncanny ability not just to write the kinds of songs that make you remember where you were when you first heard them, but to write a lot of them. Distant Sun takes me back to a ghostgum-lined country road, driving somewhere south of Heathcote in central Victoria late on a golden Sunday afternoon. A long time ago, but it comes back with the sound of a song.
Otherwise, Ed Kuepper's Black Ticket Day, something by the Go-Betweens and any number of Paul Kelly's songs could have gotten mentions. And for me, just about anything from silverchair's Diorama, on which Daniel Johns collaborated with Van Dyke Parks, beats last year's Straight Lines. But then I didn't contribute to the poll.
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Oh, food. I'm forgetting my core constituency. Things get in the way. Food will return soon.
This one in The Australian Magazine asked readers to nominate the best Australian song of the past twenty years. Crowded House took six positions in the top twenty. Maybe not so astounding, given their uncanny ability not just to write the kinds of songs that make you remember where you were when you first heard them, but to write a lot of them. Distant Sun takes me back to a ghostgum-lined country road, driving somewhere south of Heathcote in central Victoria late on a golden Sunday afternoon. A long time ago, but it comes back with the sound of a song.
Otherwise, Ed Kuepper's Black Ticket Day, something by the Go-Betweens and any number of Paul Kelly's songs could have gotten mentions. And for me, just about anything from silverchair's Diorama, on which Daniel Johns collaborated with Van Dyke Parks, beats last year's Straight Lines. But then I didn't contribute to the poll.
*
Oh, food. I'm forgetting my core constituency. Things get in the way. Food will return soon.
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