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List of contents
Introduction
1. The Backstory: From Johnny to John
The Australian music industry in the 80s
The changes in radio
The task ahead
2. Whispering Jack, the Album
Good songs, good beats, and the energy of rock
The ‘whiz-bang album’
The Voice
So, let’s play the album
Timeless
3. ‘You’re The Voice’
The unofficial national anthem
Australian popular music and cultural nationalism
4. And then….
The ‘ordinary’ rock star
The Farnham audience
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Graeme Turner is Professor Emeritus at the University of Queensland, Australia. He is one of the founding figures of media and cultural studies in Australia, and a leading figure internationally. He was one of the earliest to undertake academic research on popular music in Australia, producing articles, chapters, and a co-edited book over the 1980s and 1990s, before turning his attention to television and new media in the 2000s. He has published over 25 books including Understanding Celebrity (2013) and National Fictions: Literature, Film and the Construction of Australian Narrative (2020).
Summary
The album examined in this book transformed the singer John Farnham from a faded teen pop star into the most popular solo rock performer in Australia, in a career that has lasted for more than 30 years. Whispering Jack remains the top-selling album by an Australian artist in Australia, and constitutes the turning point in Farnham’s bid to achieve credibility as an adult contemporary musician. The first single from the album, ‘You’re the Voice,’ has achieved such iconic status that it is routinely referred to as Australia’s unofficial national anthem. The book examines the album, its context and that history in order to recover a crucial conjuncture in the development of Australian rock and popular music, one that has previously been ignored in Australian popular music studies.
Foreword
An exploration of the history and cultural significance of Australia's top-selling album by an Australian in Australia, often referred to as Australia's unofficial national anthem.
