The Alternative Number Ones: Midnight Oil’s “Blue Sky Mine”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

The late '80s were a time of peak monoculture, an era when a handful of huge, massively recognized stars lorded over the pop charts. But a few weird things did slip through the matrix and onto the radio. One of those weird things was a big, bald, severe-looking motherfucker bellowing a blooz-rawk anthem about Australian indigenous land rights. Did American radio listeners know what the fuck Midnight Oil leader Peter Garrett was singing about on "Beds Are Burning"? I can't speak for all of us, but no, probably not.

I was a kid when Midnight Oil broke though to the mainstream, and I didn't even get the bit about "the Western Desert lives and breathes at 45 degrees." I was like: "That's the desert? That sounds cold." Nobody had told me about the metric system yet. Nevertheless, I could tell that Peter Garrett meant what he was singing. In both voice and physical presence, Garrett vibrated with passion. And the song's video -- the band riding through the Australian desert, banging on drums in the back of the truck, looked cool as hell. MTV might've been an unlikely forum for Midnight Oil, but in that context, they stood out.