Note: This series originally appeared on Facebook in a slightly different form, Aug-Sept 16.
Over the years I’ve tended to enjoy the music I’ve heard that’s come from Australia. Throughout my high school years, Little River Band singles were usually among my favorites. I like Rick Springfield more than some, though he hardly has an Aussie sound. Men At Work were huge my freshman year of college. Later in the 80s, there was INXS, Midnight Oil, The Church, and Icehouse, among plenty of others. If you allow New Zealand in the mix, then you can toss in Split Enz and Crowded House (“Don’t Dream It’s Over” is in my personal Hall of Fame for singles). Perhaps my favorite album of all time is 16 Lovers Lane by the Go-Betweens.
This Australian band never got much traction in the US. I imagine I first heard this song on MTV in Fall 1984 and pretty quickly rushed out to buy the single. I loved, loved, loved this, and I guess I still do. The interwebs tell me it reached #2 in Australia but only #65 in the US. I think it should have been a big hit here, but this wasn’t the first or last time the public’s tastes didn’t conform to mine.
For the record, the full title of the song is “Heaven (Must Be There)”.
The Music of My Life 
I was also quite fond of the Angels — not the “My Boyfriend’s Back” ones, but the ones marketed in the US as Angel City so as not to be confused with either the girl group or the glam band Angel.
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