Has there been a time on the Australian charts when the original of a song was replaced by a cover at top spot?
Yes, in 1970. In The Summertime by UK band Mungo Jerry was perched at #1 at the end of August for a week. It was replaced by the cover by Australian band The Mixtures which held on for six weeks.
The word “addicted” was used in a song title seven different times between 1993 and 2009.
The first Australian-made hit to top the national charts was Daddy Cool’s Eagle Rock which stayed at premium post for seven weeks.
Q: Which Aussie band got a US girl band to provide vocals for a track at a time when they were massive in America?
A: It was the Hoodoo Gurus, the track was Good Times, and the Americans were The Bangles whose Walk Like An Egyptian was #1 in 1987.
ABBA-mania was so intensive in Australia that in 1976, they were at #1 at the start of the year with ABBA, at #1 mid-year with The Best Of ABBA and at #1 at the end of the year with Arrival.
The Best Of ABBA became the first album ever to sell one million copies in Australia.
These stats come from The Kent Music Report, the official chart from May 1974 to June 1988..
“Charts began as a hobby, at the age of 14,” founder David Kent tells The Music. “School work eventually gave way to chart compiling.”
The most exciting element has remained consistent through the years for him: “Assessing each chart for accuracy.”
But the Kent Music Report – rebranded to Australian Music Report (AMR) in July 1987 – was not just effective to chart stat junkies for those 14 years.
Kent continued to troll old lists to recreate charts from 1940 to 1973. He added to the narrative with deep dives into Australian tracks that didn’t make the Top 20 but should have.
This way, music fans discovered Sydney band vSpy vSpy, whose anger and social justice came from living in a leaking unheated squat, and Sallie-Ann about Sallie-Ann Huckstepp who spoke out against NSW police corruption and was murdered in 1986 before she was to give evidence to a royal commission.
Hoodoo Gurus’ Good Times, featuring The Bangles, stopped at #36. Mondo Rock’s thundering Boom Baby Boom came from the album of the same name which reached at #27.
Kent also released a series of chart books (six currently available) that are sold on his website.
Artists and titles are listed alphabetically and cross-referenced. He painstakingly lists date of chart entry, title of song or record, highest position reached, number of weeks or months charted, and the original label and catalogue number.
All the #1 hits are listed chronologically, while the Top 25 of each calendar year.
The Australian Top 20 Book 1940-2006 (published in 2007) includes Top 20 charts of 27 selected artists and songwriters, nine “special category” charts, monthly Top 20 charts from 1940-1948 and weekly top 20 singles charts from January 1949 to June 2007.
Importance
Right from when the first Australian chart came into being – on March 2, 1958 by Sydney radio station 2UE – the whole idea was to focus on which tracks were causing a buzz.
That approach was to create an excitement to generate more sales.
Through the years, Australian fans consumed music through different technology, from 45s (singles) and LPs, to cassettes and CDs, to downloads and streaming to TikTok.
Yet almost 70 years later, the role of the chart is still to highlight the latest and grooviest. “Sales were the main component,” Kent agrees.
Last year, ARIA introduced the policy of having only singles released in the last two years to keep them young. More recently, it had to contend with another technology advance, AI.
The Replay Charts stocks classics by legacy acts and allows executives and fans to decipher why some albums like Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours keep talking to new and original fans.
Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms has the official title of longest stay at #1, with 34 weeks.
The longest stayer in the charts is The Very Best Of Slim Dusty, which hit 1,000 weeks in July 2018.
That week, his son and fellow musician David Kirkpatrick told this writer, “It has everything to do with hard touring, and how his songs so wonderfully reflected their lives.
“Most people would be happy to make a career out of a thousand weeks in the charts, much less one album!”
INXS drummer Jon Fariss was not surprised that his band’s The Very Best outlasted 631 weeks as their classic cuts were being discovered. “Sometimes it takes certain timing for a song to finally strike a chord with you.”
Chris Austin of The Official Chart Company, which tabulates the UK charts each week, has definite ideas on their diverse importance.
He told Music Week, “A No.1 will always be the ultimate prize, but a first chart entry, a new personal best, a Top 10 album or the return of a classic record can each tell a compelling story about an artist and their audience.”
Austin paid tribute to Oasis’ 1995 album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? (which in July 2026, was acclaimed by OCC as the biggest studio album of all-time in UK chart history, behind two greatest hits sets.
With 6.2 million chart units from sales and streams, it overtook The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as biggest selling British album, and spent ten non-consecutive weeks at #1. Globally it sold 22 million.
Austin commented, “Three decades after its release, the album continues to unite generations, fill stadiums and soundtrack major moments in people’s lives.”
The songs have “become part of the fabric of British culture, but the record still carries the excitement, confidence and emotion that made it connect so powerfully in 1995”.
To look back at The Kent Music Report is to capture the moods of generations and a snapshot of how Australian listening habits changed in what they expected from domestic (and global) acts.
Radio
When 2UE’s first Top 40 chart came out in 1958, Australia was in the midst of rock and roll via Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny O’Keefe, and Buddy Holly.
It was an exciting time, with new classics seemingly coming out each week.
In America, Billboard magazine, which started publishing in 1894, had in the ‘40s began its charts. They were to tell music executives, jukebox operators, and radio jocks what the public was listening to.
One of those Billboard writers compiling the charts was Seymour Stein. He later set up his own record company and signed the likes of Madonna, the Ramones, Talking Heads, The Veronicas, Radio Birdman, The Pretenders, Ice-T, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, and The Cure.
The 2UE listings were a daily feature on the station. A weekly printed version was given away in record stores. The first #1 was Pat Boone’s April Love.
Within a year, stations in all capital cities had their own lists too. They were derived from sales in music stores although some music directors also included their “opinions”.
Those with their own charts were:
Sydney: 2UE, 2UW, 2SM
Melbourne: 3XY, 3DB, 3UZ, 3AK
Brisbane: 4BC, 4IP, 4BK
Adelaide: 5AD, 5DN, 5KA
Perth: 6PR, 6PM, 6KY
Hobart: 7HO, 7HT
David Kent, born in the Perth suburb of Mount Lawley, was in his teens when Bill Haley & The Comets’ Rock Around The Clock officially launched the rock and roll era in 1955.
He started to collect state-wide charts from around the country as a hobby.
At the time there were no national figures for singles and albums. That would come when national teen magazine Go-Set launched in Melbourne in 1966 by three college students.
Its charts were compiled by journalist Ed Nimmervoll. He also used record stores and radio stations as sources, and added chart trivia. When he became its editor, whole features would be written around the latest chart stats.
Meanwhile, Kent spent 18 months researching the right model for accuracy, using a point ranking system. A challenge, he admits, was “waiting for postage of the interstate charts.”
The Kent Music Report launched in May 1974, with the two-fold mission to give the local industry up to date credible information, and to trace changes in music taste. It became available to the public through subscription.
When Go-Set folded in August 1974, The Kent Music Report became the industry’s official national chart tally.
Initially, Kent had not enough finances to ring around the country, or send out surveys to be filled. But as subscriptions grew, Kent could expand operations and hire staff to help.
In 1976, it took a major step by incorporating actual sales figures from record stores to radio’s airplay totals. By 1982, store data was the primary source.
Subscribers included record retailers, radio stations, record labels, promoters, publishers, individual chart enthusiasts, magazines, TV networks, and overseas music and chart publications.
From mid-1983, the Industry Association (ARIA), newly formed as the peak association for major record companies, struck a licensing arrangement with Kent to use the KMR/AMR Top 50 under the ARIA banner.
It fulfilled two of Kent’s aims: one was for the industry to pay for the information, and the other was to create a register of historical data to be used by generations of music fans.
The ARIA alliance lasted until June 1988 when the association decided to produce its own charts in-house. For a time ARIA held awards ceremonies before the industry and media to honour those who topped any of its charts.
Meantime, semi-retired David Kent spends his days in Sydney on “family affairs, some gardening, some cooking, and continuing to assess each chart for its accuracy. The same hobby continues, at the age of 85.”
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
