Midnight Oil

Certain Songs #1138: Midnight Oil – “One Country”

February 23, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Blue Sky Mining
Year: 1990

After having their biggest world-wide album ever with Diesel and Dust, the Oils took a couple of years off and followed it up with 1990’s Blue Sky Mining, which was nearly as good, spawning a couple of major radio songs in “Blue Sky Mine” and “Forgotten Years.”

As good as those songs were, my favorite song on the album was the slow-burning “One Country,” which I guess is the closest Midnight Oil ever got to doing a U2-style anthem.

Certain Songs #1137: Midnight Oil – “The Dead Heart”

February 22, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Diesel and Dust
Year: 1987

Midnight Oil followed 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 with 1984’s Red Sails in The Sunset, a record that I found almost unlistenable, though I know that it got good reviews at the time, and at least one of you might lecture me about how great “When The Generals Talk” or “Best of Both Worlds” are.

And of course, I pretty much assumed that was going to be it with Midnight Oil: plenty of bands make records that I liked well enough and that was pretty much it: so in no way, shape or form was I prepared for how much I liked 1988’s Diesel & Dust, which stripped out much of the artiness that made their song structures so crazy, leaving pure delicious hooks upon which Peter Garrett could hang his radical leftist politics.

Certain Songs #1136: Midnight Oil – “Read About It”

February 21, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1
Year: 1982

After three practice albums that built up a huge fanbase in their native Australia, but didn’t do jack shit here, Midnight Oil had a minor breakthrough on MTV and a major breakthrough on college radio with their fourth album 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1, which combined lead singer Peter Garrett’s walked-it-like-he-talked-it politics with his band’s unique brand of beat-heavy post-punk.

And for me, no song resonated more on that record than the nuclear paranoia of “Read About It.”