Welcome back to 4TR for 2020, thanks to everyone who responded to our Xmas Edition, there was some spirited debate about our favourite Yuletide songs, and we are looking forward to another year of sharing Ausmusic with you all.
As Australia Day approaches it is timely for us to look back at the top ten Australian Singles of the decade as determined by ARIA and announced recently. There are several surprises, and notably several Australian songs written and recorded in this country that were also big hits globally, dominating charts in the USA, UK, and Europe .While international artists featured prominently in the local charts in the decade, with Ed Sheeran claiming three spots in the top ten – Shape of You (#1), Thinking Out Loud (#6) and Perfect (#8), Gotye’s (see above) song Somebody That I Used To Know claimed #2 spot overall against hot competition from Mark Ronson, Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams, Adele and others.
ARIA’s Top Ten Australian Songs for The Decade, those that were written, recorded and performed by local artists only, are an eclectic collection of local talent and creativity, and 4TR will review all of these ten songs in the coming months, commencing with the top four this week, the full list is as follows:
1 |
 |
Somebody That I Used To Know
Gotye Feat. Kimb
|
Platinum x 11
2011 |
2 |
 |
Riptide
Vance Joy
|
Platinum x 9
2013 |
3 |
 |
Battle Scars
Guy Sebastian Feat. Lupe Fiasco
Platinum x 11
2012
|
4 |
 |
Youngblood
5 Seconds Of Summer
Platinum x 10
2018
|
5 |
 |
Chandelier
Sia
Platinum x 5
2014
|
6 |
 |
Never Be Like You
Flume Feat. Kai
Platimum x 7
2015
|
7 |
 |
Be Alright
Dean Lewis
Platinum x 8
2018
|
8 |
 |
Brother
Matt Corby
Platinum x 6
2013
|
9 |
 |
Geronimo
Sheppard
Platinum x 7
2014
|
10 |
 |
Dance Monkey
Tones and I
Platinum x 7
2019
|
The way in which “sales”are measured for a song has become a more complicated process since the days when records were sold in formats like vinyl, cassette, and CDs, as the world of streaming has seen the emergence of such digital online sites as Spotify and Apple Music, and this means that songs recorded early in the decade gained huge chart traction from the purchase of a CD single, than from downloads, via complex chart formulas.
Now sales are mostly calculated via streaming platforms, which are numerous and include not only Apple Music and Spotify but Qobuz, Amazon Music, Beezer, YouTube and more, since 2017 the ARIA singles chart has included streaming, but it takes 175 streams of a song to count as one “sale”, so a massive amount of streams are needed to match a hit that scored huge sales as a CD single. ARIA sales classifications also reflect this formula, so that Gold (35,000 sales) and Platimum (70,000 sales) status is conferred on records accordingly, which explains why songs ranked early in the decade sometimes have a lower number of platinum awards than others ranked below them that were released later in the decade eg Tones and I Dance Monkey (2019) rated 10th overall with a 7 times platinum rating below Sia’s Chandelier which was awarded a 5 times platinum rating released in 2014.
We will also look at selected album tracks from the ARIA’S Top Ten Australian Albums of the Decade, in the coming months, and these were:
1 |
 |
The Very Best
|
2 |
 |
The Best Of Cold Chisel: All For You
Cold Chisel
|
3 |
 |
Making Mirrors
Gotye
|
4 |
 |
Down The Way
Angus & Julia Stone
|
5 |
 |
Flume
Flume
|
6 |
 |
The Very Very Best Of
Crowded House
|
7 |
 |
Armageddon
Guy Sebastian
|
8 |
 |
The Story So Far
Keith Urban
|
9 |
 |
Walking Under Stars
Hilltop Hoods
|
|
10 |
 |
Drinking From The Sun
Hilltop Hoods
|
4The Record 