In 2024, Not A Single Australian Song Topped The Charts

And we thought 2023 was bad; 2024 was worse.

For the second year in a row, an Australian single failed to top the ARIA charts.

Indeed, just one homegrown hit reached the Top 10 – Dom Dolla’s Saving Up spent a solitary week at number 10 in February.

And again, one woman outperformed an entire nation.

The Aussie singles’ scorecard for 2024 makes for miserable reading: Just one Top 10 hit (down from three in 2023 and five in 2022) and 11 Top 40 hits (13 in 2023, 20 in 2022).

Five of the 11 Top 40 entries came from just two artists (The Kid LAROI had three, and Troye Sivan had two).

Taylor Swift again trumped Aussie acts. The American superstar enjoyed 13 Top 10 singles in 2024 – including two chart-toppers – and 42 Top 40 hits.

Overall, Swift’s singles spent 39 weeks in the Top 10, compared to a total of one week for Australian artists.

The year’s longest-running number-one single was Sabrina Carpenter’s Taste, which spent eight weeks on top.

But the year’s biggest single, according to ARIA, was Benson Boone’s Beautiful Things.

ARIA’s Top 100 for 2024 features five Australian singles, led by Vance Joy’s Riptide at number 24. It spent an impressive 39 weeks in the Top 40. The only problem is … it was released in 2013.

The Aussie tally was up from 2023 when just three homegrown hits made the annual Top 100, but down from 2022, when 11 local singles made the cut.

In 2024, the weekly Top 40 never contained more than four Australian singles.

The last Australian song to hit number one was Joji’s Glimpse Of Us in June 2022. Though he was born in Osaka and grew up in Japan, ARIA classified Joji as an Australian artist because his dad is an Aussie.

At the halfway mark of the 2020s, just four Australian singles have topped the charts this decade (Tones And I’s Dance Monkey, The Kid LAROI’s Without You, The Kid LAROI & Justin Bieber’s Stay, and Joji’s Glimpse Of Us).

The chart-topping story was slightly better on ARIA’s Albums Chart in 2024, but the trend was also bad.

It took until August 2024 for a local album to top the charts – Lime Cordiale’s Enough Of The Sweet Talk. It led to a rush of local chart-toppers: Tones And I, Amy Shark, Cold Chisel, Missy Higgins and Kylie Minogue.

It was the first time since 2020 that a debut album by an Australian artist failed to top the charts.

Overall, six Aussie albums hit number one, compared to nine in 2023, 13 in 2022 and 14 in 2021.

Alarmingly, few Aussie albums stuck around for long. Of the six local chart-toppers, only Chisel’s 50 Years best-of spent more than two weeks in the Top 40.

The Chisel best-of spent three weeks in the Top 10. Just one other local title – Sheppard’s Zora – spent two weeks in the Top 10.

Overall, Australian acts spent six weeks on top of ARIA’s Albums Chart in 2024; Taylor Swift spent 18 weeks at the summit.

Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department was the year’s longest-running number-one album, spending eight weeks on top, and it topped ARIA’s Top 100 for 2024.

Nine Swift albums appear in the Top 100 before the first Aussie entry – Cold Chisel’s 50 Years – The Best Of, which lands at number 44.

Overall, the Top 100 features 11 Swift albums and three Aussie entries – Chisel followed by The Kid LAROI’s The First Time (#67) and INXS’s The Very Best (#81), which was released in 2011.

Thirty-eight local albums reached the Top 10 in 2024, compared to 46 in 2023, 56 in 2022, and 64 in 2021.

Seventy-three Australian albums cracked the Top 40 – compared to 90 in 2023, 97 in 2022, and 127 in 2021.

In 10 separate 2024 charts – including the entire month of January – the Top 40 failed to feature a single Australian album. The nadir for Aussie acts was the April 29 chart when there was not one local single or album in the Top 40.

Some critics believe the charts are meaningless, but a number one can boost an artist’s profile. When Amyl And The Sniffers’ third album, Cartoon Darkness, arrived at number two, just beaten to the top spot by Tyler, The Creator’s Chromakopia, their manager Simone Ubaldi told The Age:

“From a global marketing perspective, it’s deeply annoying to have missed out. But that’s all it amounts to: a marketing strategy. It’s very high-stakes silliness.”

The year ended with six Taylor Swift albums in the Top 40 and just one Aussie entry – Chisel’s 50th anniversary compilation.

When Missy Higgins was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2024, she spoke about “the unfortunate truth”.

“When I was starting out, being Australian was helpful,” she said. “I felt supported by the industry here because I was local. And we can see tonight there’s no shortage of amazing Aussie musicians, and people around the world are waking up to that.

“But we are seeing less and less of our own songs on our own charts.

“These days, international content dominates the platforms and algorithms here in Australia. So, the young singer-songwriter just starting out won’t be as fortunate as me, and that is the unfortunate truth.

“We have to keep demanding local content be prioritised here. We cannot lose Australian stories. We lose that, and we lose who we are.”

The 2024 story is simple. A stack of Australian acts released great music. But if you looked at the ARIA charts, you’d have no idea.

The Aussie albums that topped the charts in 2024

Lime Cordiale – Enough Of The Sweet Talk

Tones And I – Beautifully Ordinary

Amy Shark – Sunday Sadness

Cold Chisel – 50 Years – The Best Of

Missy Higgins – The Second Act

Kylie Minogue – Tension II 

The Aussie singles that made the Top 10 in 2024

Dom Dolla – Saving Up (#10)

The Aussie singles in ARIA’s Top 100 for 2024

Vance Joy – Riptide (#24)

Cyril – Stumblin’ In (29)

Dom Dolla – Saving Up (50)

The Kid LAROI – Nights Like This (84)

The Kid LAROI & Justin Bieber – Stay (96)

The Aussie albums in ARIA’s Top 100 for 2024

Cold Chisel – 50 Years – The Best Of (#44)

The Kid LAROI – The First Time (67)

INXS – The Very Best (81)