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  2. Four seasons

Four seasons

By evolvingthoughts on February 9, 2008.

Since I'm feeling low, I thought I'd wallow in it for a bit.

A while back, Australian musicians were asked what they thought was the perfect song by an Australasian and they proposed "Into Temptation" by the adopted Australian Tim Neil Finn (he's a Kiwi) of Split Enz and Crowded House. It's a good song, but I think, instead, this is one of the most perfect songs of all time, and it resonates for a Melburnian (and, I gather, Kiwis, Irishfolk, and anyone who lives where the weather is fickle). Video clip below the fold...

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"Into Temptation" is by the other, rather more Kiwi-sounding Finn.

By Brachychiton (not verified) on 10 Feb 2008 #permalink

Do you have any idea how clichéd that song is for Australians? And I even went to school with two of the members of that band...

And I even went to school with two of the members of that band...

If two of the members of the band went to school with you how come you are a world famous philosopher of biology and all they managed to become is pop stars?

Well, "Down Under" by Men at Work can be considered "Australian music for foreigners"... The song came out while I was an exchange student in the USA and I never understood more than a few isolated sentences until now, that I checked the lyrics on the Web. Vegemite sandwiches sound yummy.

Nobody has mentioned Olivia Newton-John...

Nobody has mentioned Olivia Newton-John

And nobody who wants to retain commenting privileges on this blog is going to...

Nobody has mentioned Olivia Newton-John

And nobody who wants to retain commenting privileges on this blog is going to...

Posted by: John S. Wilkins

What's wrong with Olivia Neutron-Bomb? The 1970s No. 1, Australian, teenage wank fantasy; Let's Get Physical! Yes indeed Olivia, yes indeed. She is one of Australia's contributions to the culture of the northern hemisphere along with Rolf Harris, Foster's and Kylie. Australia has given the world so much.

Taste, mate, taste. It's a matter of having at least some taste.

As a cultured North European I always thought that the definition of Australian was "completely devoid of taste"! But then again maybe I'm wrong!

I've met less-than-cultured Germans and other North Europeans, and some very cultured Australians, but this is not about culture, it's about taste. ONJ was the height of bad taste in the 70s and 80s and no amount of retro is going to salvage her from that.

In order to spare Mr Wilkins further attacks of indignation I think it is time to reveal that the icon of bad taste Olivia Newton-John is in fact not an Australian at all but, and I admit this through gritted teeth, a North European, born in Cambridge England of an English father and a German mother. By one of those quirks of nature that provide the questions for television quiz shows (this one was the â¬500 000 question in a special celebrity edition of the German version of Who wants to be a Millionaire?) she is the granddaughter of German Nobel Laureate for physics Max Born.

If the excruciatingly tasteless ONJ is excluded from consideration then one can assume that the Bee Gees (also unfortunately English) are excluded for the same reason.

How about The Chunda Song from Bazza McKensie as the perfect song by an Australian?

Oh, come on, John! You just have to watch Xanadu to love her... It's so bad, it's good!

As a melbournite (see below), she might be an old crush of John's, which might have led to his despise for her...

From Wikipedia:

Olivia Newton-John AO OBE (born 26 September 1948) is a Grammy Award-winning and Golden Globe-nominated English-born Australian pop singer, songwriter and actress.

Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England. Her parents were Brinley Newton-John and Irene Born (b. 25 May 1914). Irene was the eldest child of Max Born, a Lutheran German Nobel prize-winning physicist, who had fled from Germany with his wife in the 1930s in order to avoid persecution due to his and his wife's part Jewish heritage. Olivia's father, the Cardiff-born son of a publican, was an MI5 officer attached to the Enigma machine project at Bletchley Park, and the officer who took Rudolf Hess into custody when he parachuted into Scotland in May 1941. After World War II, he became a professor of German at the UNSW annex at Tighes Hill in Newcastle, Australia.

In 1954, aged five, Newton-John, her parents Brin and Irene, and her older siblings Hugh and Rona, emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, where her father had taken a job at Melbourne University as the Master of Ormond College.