(Credits: Far Out / Album Cover)
Sat 21 February 2026 12:00, UK
For the subsequent 70-odd years since rock and pop’s first plugged-in lightning strike, many an Australian act has sought to crack America.
Just like the rest of the world, breaking that coveted Hot 100 has always been the sign that you’ve truly made it. It’s also a fairly reliable fanbase from then. Unlike the UK press’ cynical penchant for tearing a big name down once they’ve tasted success, the US will always love you, set on grabbing your records and nabbing tickets when you’re in town from then on.
Australia’s a funny country regarding its musical exports. There are some heavyweights, AC/DC, Kylie Minogue, and INXS, all managing to smash global rock and pop charts, but for every Sia or Bee Gees there’s a Kids in the Kitchen or Real Life, touted as the next big thing in their home country, winning some major label support but then just bombing once their hit contender travelled across the Pacific. Even successes like Midnight Oil or Cold Chisel sit inescapably as an unwavering Aussie symbol along with the koala and kangaroo, their national origin inseparable from their popular impression in the pop canon.
Despite the pop cultural boom that briefly saw an Australophilian craze sweep the 1980s, one of the decade’s biggest hits flumped on the Hot 100 despite such seeming pop promise.
So, what Australian chart topper flopped in the States?
By 1986, pop-rock singer John Farnham needed some serious good luck. He’d found minor fame as early as 1967, enjoying some teen idol success off the back of his cover of old novelty hit ‘Sadie (The Cleaning Lady)’, followed by a fairly steady chart presence throughout the 1970s and some time fronting the AOR outfit Little River Band in the early 1980s.
Yet, financial woes and a crippling debt issue that demanded his house and car, Farnham needed a hit. It curiously arrived in the guise of an activist anthem, co-penned by Manfred Mann guitarist Chris Thompson after missing 1985’s massive anti-nuclear demonstration in London’s Hyde Park due to sleeping through it.
Born from guilt was ‘You’re the Voice’, a sweeping stir of soft rock bellow bolstered by a hooky singalong chorus and a bagpipe solo. Aussies loved it. Released in September the following year, ‘You’re the Voice’ would shoot to the top of the Kent Music Report charts, staying put for a gobsmacking seven weeks, pushing its Whispering Jack to the country’s third biggest selling album of all time, and resuscitating Farnham’s career.
While scoring high in the UK and much of Europe, no such luck was had in the States. Despite seemingly being packed with all the power ballad soft rock gusto so popular in the day’s American charts, ‘You’re the Voice’ only managed to peak at a paltry 82 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Farnham may well have missed his chance at US pop fame even earlier, allegedly passing on Bernie Taupin’s ‘We Built This City’ gifted instead to Starship and scoring both an American chart topper and one of the most dreadful singles of the decade.