The 10 inaugural iconic songs chosen for the National Songbook

It would be a mammoth task to tell the story of Australia in 10 iconic* songs.

All Aussies would likely agree Waltzing Matilda, recorded a century ago, was a worthy selection for the National Songbook, an ambitious new project launched by the National Film and Sound Archive and songwriting body APRA.

The other nine works – selected as the first ever musical works to be enshrined* in the National Songbook – have reflected the Australian spirit and character, even if you aren’t able to sing along to all of them.

The National Songbook, launched in November 2026, is a yearly selection of songs by Australian songwriters and composers who have shaped Australia’s cultural identity and collective memory over time. Each year a panel of experts will add more songs to the tune treasury.

After Waltzing Matilda, written by Banjo Paterson and Christina Macpherson, the next oldest track to be inducted in the inaugural* list was The Easybeats’ Friday On My Mind, written by the legendary Harry Vanda and George Young in 1966.

Helen Reddy’s trailblazing anthem I Am Woman, which swept the global charts in 1971, was another no-brainer for our shiny new songbook.

Fast forward to 1987 and two songs that continue to get the crowds singing along 40 years later have made the grade – Neil Murray’s My Island Home, made famous by Christine Anu in 1995, and Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning.

Anu said she remembered hearing My Island Home as a teen dance student before meeting Murray, who invited her to join his band and record her debut* album Stylin’ Up.

She believes its lasting resonance* with Australians wasn’t “simply geography.”

“It’s people, it’s family … it’s where your story begins,” she said. “It’s the place that shapes you. And it’s a deep knowing, no matter who listens to it, of connection, of where you belong, and basically, who you belong to.”

For Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett, the inclusion of Beds Are Burning was “incredibly special” in the wake of the loss of drummer Rob Hirst, who was the genesis* of the beloved rock anthem.

Garrett said it was difficult to forecast what the song could mean to future generations but at its heart, it captured “something which is primal* and core to the human spirit, and in Australia, to who we are as a people: our identity as a nation which has made peace with the First Australians.”

“That’s what this song is about,” Garrett said. “And until that happens, the song’s probably got currency*, because it’s asking that question – how can we do the things that we would normally do and have the fun that we’d like to have, until we’ve actually done that serious work?”

The ’90s decade was heavily represented in the first selection of National Songbook inductees.

Ruby Hunter’s deeply profound* Down City Streets, released in 1990, captured the displacement* – physical and spiritual – of the Stolen Generations.

The following year, Treaty by Yothu Yindi, co-written by the band with Paul Kelly and Peter Garrett, rocketed up the pop charts worldwide as it advocated for reconciliation with First Nations peoples.

Two instrumental pieces from the same era also made the cut. The “expert panel” behind the selections included The Necks’ darkly intense and unsettling score from the 1998 film The Boys and Peter Sculthorpe’s orchestral work Earth Cry.

The most recent song to join the club was The Presets’ 2007 thumping electronic rock hit My People, written by Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes, a song written about asylum seekers* being imprisoned in Australian detention centres.

“We could have written like just another song about girls or another song about partying, you know, and it would have worked,” Hamilton said.

“I was often trying to find ways to just put something a little bit subversive* in there or a bit unexpected, or just push the form of a pop song a bit further than what you were to expect.”

POLL

GLOSSARY

• iconic: symbolic of a culture, era or nation
• enshrined: to have something preserved in a sacred way
• inaugural: beginning of a new venture or series
• debut: first
• resonance: having a deep, personal connection
• genesis: coming into being
• primal: basic and instinctive
• currency: relevant in the current day
• profound: very deep, wise or insightful
• displacement: when people are forced to leave their homes or communities
• asylum seekers: people who have fled their home country for another in search of safety and protection and have applied for refugee status but are awaiting an official decision from the new country
• subversive: something that quietly challenges the established way of doing or looking at things

EXTRA READING
Boy’s bird song wins hearts
Bridge sings out ‘Solid Rock’
Aussie star beats Taylor Swift to Spotify crown

QUICK QUIZ
1. Who wrote Waltzing Matilda?
2. Which song was the second oldest to be added to the list?
3. What is the purpose of the National Songbook?
4. How many songs from the '90s made it onto the list?
5. What is the most recently recorded song on the list about?

LISTEN TO THIS STORY

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Write the rules!
Write a list of rules that you think would help the judges choose the next 10 songs for the National Songbook.

Time: Spend at least 20 minutes on this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Music

2. Extension
“It’s the place that shapes you.” Write a story that ends with this sentence.

Time: Spend at least 30 minutes on this activity
Curriculum Links: English

VCOP ACTIVITY
To sum it up
After reading the article, use your comprehension skills to summarise in a maximum of three sentences what the article is about.

Think about:

• What is the main topic or idea?
• What is an important or interesting fact?
• Who was involved (people or places)?

Use your VCOP skills to re-read your summary to make sure it is clear, specific and well punctuated.