(Credits: Far Out / MikaV)
Sun 15 March 2026 5:30, UK
Despite only having a population a quarter of the size of the UK and a mere fraction of the population of the US, Australia has a remarkable track record of keeping up with these two cultural powerhouses when it comes to dictating trends in contemporary music.
Go back to the early years of pop music in the 1960s, and you’ve got acts like The Seekers, hailing from Melbourne and exported to the UK, where they found the most success with their folk-tinged brand of radio-friendly pop. They may not be everyone’s idea of the greatest Australian act of all time, but they’re a significant starting point for evaluating the stark differences between their greatest exports.
Move on a decade, and no longer are their most prominent products operating in the pop sphere. This has now evolved into AC/DC, a band that dominated the global market with their furious brand of hard rock and managed to successfully sell out stadiums around the world while becoming one of the best-selling bands of all time. The difference between this and The Seekers is frankly staggering, but only goes to highlight just how varied Australia’s music scene has always been.
To further illustrate this, the ‘80s brought along the likes of INXS and Kylie Minogue, and the modern era has everyone from Tame Impala to Amyl and the Sniffers, some of whom tap into former glories and the influence of their predecessors, and some of whom add their own imprint on contemporary music.
To put it simply, Australia has never stood still or settled for being a nation with a homogenised sound, as many other smaller-populated countries sometimes struggle with, and they’re innovators in this regard as well, often setting the wheels in motion for a certain scene or style to take off.
One individual who has straddled many of these different styles is Nick Cave, a controversial yet influential trailblazer who has been both a punk disruptor and a writer of tender ballads throughout an illustrious career.
While he and many of the aforementioned acts could lay claim to being Australia’s greatest act, Cave believes that a much more underappreciated act ought to be given this nomenclature. Despite having been influenced by them a great deal, he believes that The Saints, a punk group from Brisbane that had been active from 1973 until the passing of frontman Chris Bailey in 2022, get nowhere near enough credit given just how important they are to Australian musical history.
Upon Bailey’s passing, Cave expressed his deepest condolences for the demise of the band. “Too many great singers have died recently and, once again, I don’t have the words that will in any way adequately measure the extent of our collective loss,” he claimed. “I can only simply repeat, for the record, that, in my opinion, the Saints were Australia’s greatest band, and that Chris Bailey was my favourite singer.”
Australia is home to many greats, but while several have come and gone, the Saints were omnipresent for almost 50 years until Bailey’s death, and a hugely important act without whom the landscape of the country’s music scene would have been very different. Having been inspired by them, risen alongside them, and then subsequently passed and outlasted them, Cave has to concede that their impact on him is invaluable.