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In the lead-up to a sold-out tribute concert in celebration of the British-born Australian singer’s music, which is being broadcast at Hoyts cinemas around Australia, we rank the songs that sing to Farnsey’s fans in Australia and around the world.
20. Two Strong Hearts
Bouncy and bright, this 1988 love song reached No 6 on the Aria charts, fuelled by an effortless lead vocal that takes off in the built-for-singalongs chorus. In the 2010s, John Farnham and his longtime pal Olivia Newton-John named their hit tour and subsequent live album after the song – their version reimagines the track as a playful duet between good friends.
19. Man of the Hour
This standout song from Farnham’s underrated 2000 album, 33 ⅓, sees the singer hit his soulful sweet spot. When performing it live, Farnham made a point of sharing the spotlight with his backing singer, Lindsay Field. Farnham’s generous relationships with longstanding members of the Farnham band always made his live shows feel like a family affair.
18. Sadie (The Cleaning Lady)
Farnham has a love-hate relationship with his 1967 debut. The biggest-selling single by any Australian artist in Australia in the 1960s, Sadie tells the tale of a blue-collar worker struggling with a life of mundane labour. Lyrically? Deeply depressing (“her red detergent hands have for years not held a man’s!”). Musically? A bop.
17. Reasons
The first, but by no means last, song on this list from Whispering Jack (still the highest-selling album by an Australian artist) pairs a sincere pledge to take life into one’s own hands with a synth beat that points like an arrow towards action. The best part is the vocal performance: when Farnham sings that he’ll “climb more than a mountain” and “swim more than an ocean”, you believe him wholeheartedly.
16. Looking Through a Tear
This sentimental ballad originally recorded by Aretha Franklin is the title track of Farnham’s third studio album, released in 1970. Not every singer could sell “it’s funny how nothing seems clear when you’re looking through a tear”, but Farnham’s sincerity and golden high tenor make this an irresistible early gem.
15. Have a Little Faith (In Us)
Pop music tends to be the domain of young love and heartbreak but this surprisingly uplifting 1996 hit about a mid-relationship slump was perfectly suited to a 46-year-old Farnham. The chorus ends optimistically: “For all we know, the best is yet to come.”
14. Pressure Down
In his memoir, The Voice Inside, Farnham affectionately calls 1986’s Pressure Down a “quirky little song”, especially for its iconic bassline and radio-friendly production. This effervescent track with delightfully off-kilter lyrics about someone turning the pressure up (!) is still one of his most-played songs on Australian radio, ready-made for long drives and summer afternoons.
13. Love to Shine
You could make a case for most of the non-single tracks from Whispering Jack to make it on this list but Love to Shine is particularly special. Written by the British musician Harry Bogdanovs and the English pop singer Kiki Dee, Love to Shine has an effortless synth-led groove – and a great, unexpected bridge that turns the chorus’s melody on its head.
12. When Something is Wrong With My Baby
Barnesy and Farnesy, together at last. When Jimmy Barnes released his fifth album, Soul Deep, it was a smash hit – and John Farnham was a key ingredient. The grit-and-gravel rock legend and the pure, clean-cut pop star both fell in love with soul, rock and blues growing up, and they give the 1967 Sam & Dave ballad everything they’ve got: heart, soul and guts, too.
11. Age of Reason
A ticking clock. An urgent beat. That gorgeous piano. In his memoir, Farnham reflected that he played it too safe on the track, regretting his strained falsetto. But that audible effort, that messy realness in a song begging us to do the work to build a kinder future, feels like exactly the point.
10. Comic Conversation
A minor hit single released in 1970 but a firm fan favourite, Comic Conversation sees Farnham in storytelling mode, crooning about an unrequited love. It has a fantastic opening line: “I’m going to ask your friends your number, and I’ll call you when your man is out of town.” Colour us intrigued.
9. Please Don’t Ask Me
Written and produced by Farnham’s future Little River Band bandmate Graeham Goble, 1980’s Please Don’t Ask Me is the most finely crafted sap. Sure, it’s a tad cloying, but it’s also raw and vulnerable, with a luscious string arrangement that points to the successful live collaborations Farnham would have in future years with Australian orchestras.
8. A Touch of Paradise
A Touch of Paradise was the third single from Whispering Jack, and the only true ballad on the album. Originally recorded by the Australian rock band Mondo Rock several years earlier, the song’s pared-back synths and drum machines plant it firmly and satisfyingly in the 1980s. As with many of Farnham’s best, it builds to a thrilling vocal climax.
7. Don’t You Know it’s Magic
Farnham struggled to find chart success for much of the 1970s but this mid-tempo rock song from the curiously named Hits Magic & Rock ’N Roll album performed pretty well, peaking at No 12 on the Australian national charts and staying there for 15 weeks. Written by the Australian rock statesman Brian Cadd, it really stands up.
6. Every Time You Cry
A retro pastiche filled with wacky aphorisms (“the light at the end of the tunnel doesn’t shine at the end of the day”) and the obligatory new single on a greatest-hits album? Every Time You Cry has no right being so good. Farnham’s rich and confident vocals were resurrected from sessions for Romeo’s Heart and paired with Human Nature’s lovely four-part harmonies and together they soar. An instant, timeless classic.
5. That’s Freedom
A song that belongs on every road-trip playlist, That’s Freedom is the sort of tune that propels the listener forward – all the way “from the mountain, to the valley, from the ocean, to the alley, from the highway, to the river”. It just makes you feel good.
4. Burn for You
Co-writer and frequent Farnham collaborator Phil Buckle’s delicate and beautiful guitar line on Burn for You helped define Farnham’s evolving sound as he moved away from the Fairlight synths of Whispering Jack and Age of Reason to more stripped-back and roots-inspired sounds. It also features one of Farnham’s most affectingly intimate vocals. It feels as though we’re eavesdropping from the next room while he’s on the phone, begging a lover to not hang up on him again. Like many of the best love songs (and this is one of them) the lyric is straightforward and honest, leaving a singer nowhere to hide. Farnham more than rises to the occasion: he burns.
3. Playing to Win
Farnham may not have particularly enjoyed his four years fronting Little River Band – he clashed with other members of the band, claiming they had his microphone cable duct-taped to the stage so he couldn’t move around and steal the spotlight – but it inspired him to write one of his best songs, this fiery declaration of tenacity, and the only one from his time in LRB that stayed on his setlist. In many ways, Playing to Win stated Farnham’s intent, setting the stage for one of the most audacious comebacks Australian music has ever seen.
2. Help!
There aren’t many covers that seem to erase all memory of the original, but for the four and a half minutes it takes Farnham to sing Help!, the Beatles feel somehow irrelevant. This slowed-down, beefed-up version was originally performed for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip at the royal charity concert at Sydney Opera House in 1980. Farnham’s live performances in the decades since are operatic in scale, showcasing everything that made him Australia’s finest pop singer. The final verse is properly staggering. It might be a cover but his is the only voice in the world that could do this.
1. You’re the Voice
On paper, it’s bonkers that a song by four Brits with a bagpipe solo and slamming car-door drums would ever be a hit, let alone an Australian national treasure. Forty years on, it’s easy to take its genius for granted. So close your eyes. Listen again. It’s alchemical, every element contributing to its unstoppable force, but none more so than Farnham himself. The song made him and is made better by him; his power and conviction transforms admittedly vague lyrics about unity and change into something undeniable. It’s a spiritual national anthem, one that imagines us into the Australia we wish we were: equitable and kind, with a fair go for all. Where no one sits in silence, so no one lives with fear.
