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First we taught the world how to MAFS, then we perfected the reality cooking show format, and now Australia is officially a pop dance utopia, according to the Grammys.
On Saturday, the Recording Academy announced its 2024 Grammy nominations, to be awarded at the next ceremony in February. Leading the Australian charge are Kylie Minogue and Troye Sivan. Both singers, pop icons from different generations, are facing off in the Best Pop Dance Recording category – Minogue for her globe-dominating Padam Padam, and Sivan for his effervescently thirsty Rush, co-produced by Melbourne artist Styalz Fuego.
Kylie Minogue could be grabbing her second Grammy, thanks to Padam Padam.
Both Australian singles became breakout viral sensations this year. At Wednesday’s ARIA Awards, they’ll also face off for honours in the publicly voted Song of the Year and for Best Pop Release.
Minogue’s Padam Padam, the jittery lead single off her 16th album Tension, first gained traction via TikTok memes playing with its onomatopoeic title, before charting across the US, UK, Europe and Australia. Locally, it became Minogue’s first top 20 hit since 2010’s All the Lovers.
Alongside his eye-opening role on the controversial TV show The Idol this year, Sivan’s Rush – a hi-energy dance track inspired by nights spent at Melbourne’s gay clubs – thrust the singer into a massive new spotlight, to the point he was parodied by actor Timothee Chalamet on Saturday Night Live this week. He followed the song’s success with the UK 2-step inspired Got Me Started, which sampled Sydney duo Bag Raiders’ 2009 favourite Shooting Stars.
In online tipping markets, Minogue edges Sivan slightly as favourite to claim the Grammy but both face strong competition from the prince of Euro-dance, David Guetta. The French producer, already a dual Grammy winner, has two nominations in the category: One In a Million, a rehash of his 2009 smash When Love Takes Over, featuring Bebe Rexha, and Baby Don’t Hurt Me, with Anne-Marie, Coi Leray and a heavy Haddaway sample. Rounding out the category is Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding’s trance throwback, Miracle.
Could Troye Sivan feel the rush at next year’s Grammys? He’ll have to get through Kylie first.
2024 marks the first time the Best Pop Dance Recording category has been presented, allowing Kylie or Troye to become a legitimate groundbreaker. It’s a new complement to the Best Dance/Electronic Recording category, which has been awarded since 1998, but faced ongoing criticism for its pop-over-dance leanings; it’s previously gone to such inspired choices as Madonna’s Ray of Light, Cher’s Believe, Britney’s Toxic, Janet Jackson’s All For You, and, um, Baha Men’s Who Let The Dogs Out?.
Coincidentally, Kylie’s sole Grammy win came in this category in 2004 for Come Into My World, while Sydney trio Rufus Du Sol also won the category in 2022 with Alive. It’s what we do, win awards for best dance-pop-electronic recordings.
The Grammys’ appetite for odd genre categorisations aside, Dr Liz Giuffre, a senior lecturer in music at the University of Technology in Sydney, notes that Australian artists have long held their own in the Grammys’ “pop dance” space.
“Maybe back in the day when the Bee Gees won for disco, that was dance? And when Gotye won for Somebody That I Used to Know, that was dance? And when Sia won, was that dance? The whole idea of what pop is and what dance is changes over time… Does it really matter what we call it?”
So what’s the special sauce that makes us so good at it?
“I think it’s because we’re just really good at collaborating,” says Giuffre. “These are genres where – unlike rock, where you work in your own core group – there’s lots of cross-collaboration and international collaborations and producer collaborations that happen.
“Hopefully, it’s just that we’re nice to work with. But we’ve got all those things that make collaboration essential, where we’re sort of isolated but also interconnected because we’re a small-market that’s geographically spread out… Either way, it’s acknowledgment of what’s happening in our industry and of people doing really interesting things.”
Solidifying our dance music credentials is Dom Dolla, who received a Grammy nomination for Best Remixed Recording. The DJ, real name Dominic Matheson, has become a global star since his breakout singles Take It in 2018 and San Frandisco in 2019, performing at Coachella last year and becoming a resident fixture of Las Vegas’ high-profile dance clubs. He’s nominated in the category for his remix of Gorillaz’s New Gold.
Australian hiphop producers FnZ (Michael “Finatik” Mule and Isaac “Zac” De Boni) – regular collaborators with the likes of Kanye West, Drake and Sydney’s The Kid Laroi – are nominated for Best Rap Song, for their work on Drake and 21 Savage’s Rich Flex.
And in a surprise nod in another of the Grammys’ newest categories, the video game Stray Gods: the Roleplaying Musical by Melbourne company Summerfall Studios is nominated for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media, with Australian artists Jess Cerro (Montaigne) and comedy-trio Tripod up for a prize alongside their US composer Austin Wintory.
Pop dance music, a Drake song, a Gorillaz remix, and a soundtrack to a musical theatre-inspired video game: now that’s how you do the Grammys. Well done, Australia.
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