Never Tear Us Apart by INXS has been named the best Australian song of all time in Triple J’s poll of the country’s favourite homegrown hits.
The 1987 song topped the Hottest 100 of Australian Songs, a spin-off of Triple J’s annual poll of the year’s most popular tracks. The poll, which aired on Saturday, was open to Australian releases from any time in history.
Never Tear Us Apart was a global hit for INXS, charting in the US, UK and Europe as well as at home in Australia. The ballad, written by the band’s frontman, Michael Hutchence, for his then-girlfriend, reigns in a crowded discography as the group’s most unforgettable anthem, made wondrous by Hutchence’s desperate, stirring vocals. INXS also had their track Need You Tonight feature in Saturday’s poll, at No 59.
The Hilltop Hoods came second in the poll with their 2013 single The Nosebleed Section. The hip-hop track was a 10 times platinum-selling hit in Australia and is still one of the highest-selling homegrown singles of all time.
The top five was rounded out by the Veronicas’ Untouched in third, Missy Higgins’s breakthrough hit Scar in fourth and Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over in fifth. The latter was one of three appearances in the poll from the band, which formed in Melbourne but whose frontman, Neil Finn, was born and raised in New Zealand, a heritage that has sparked a decades-long debate about which country gets to claim the rock group.
While the top 10 spanned tracks from the 1970s, 80s and 90s, the 2000s had more songs overall in the poll than any other decade. The top 10 also included two tracks from Cold Chisel – Flame Trees and Khe Sanh – as well as Powderfinger’s My Happiness, Paul Kelly’s Christmas classic, How To Make Gravy, and Gotye and Kimbra’s chart-topping collaboration Somebody That I Used to Know.
Double J announced The Hottest 100 of Australian songs in the wake of January’s Hottest 100, which featured just 29 songs from Australian acts. That’s a poor showing compared with previous years, when homegrown acts have typically made up more than 50% of the songs in the countdown – and an uncomfortable result for a station that is government-mandated to support Australian music.
Lachlan Macara, the head of Triple J, promised at the time that the station had “some big things cooking on how we can remind people about the unique cultural worth of Australian music”. He attributed the 2025 poll’s lack of local acts in part to a changing music industry, in which social media and streaming platforms are increasingly important for music discovery, but can be tough to crack.
“What I hear from Australian artists is that it can be a real challenge to cut through the algorithm,” he said. “But we’ll keep playing our part in supporting Australian artists and try to give them a chance to reach the wide audiences they deserve … I think there’s a chance to have a wider conversation about how we can all support Australian music.”
The Hottest 100 of Australian Songs has proven a big success for the station. Triple J counted more than 2.65 million votes for the poll, more than any of the last four years of the annual song poll received. According to Triple J, it is the fourth-biggest Hottest 100 they have run. While it was a social media hit with millennial and Gen X Australians – with many posting their votes on Instagram – Double J revealed that 18 to 29-year-olds were still the most popular voters.
One Australian artist not placated by the special edition poll was Ben Lee, who posted on Instagram that every year of the Hottest 100 should be local-only.
“I can’t help but feel that this initiative – the Hottest 100 of Australian songs – is a bit of a band-aid for a deeper conversation we need to be having about what role Triple J need to be playing in Australian music culture, and fostering new Australian talent,” he said in a video post.
“I reckon in the Hottest 100 every year, it should only be eligible to vote for Australian songs. There’s enough platforms around the world for international music.”
Lee’s 1999 track Cigarettes Will Kill You placed at No 83 in Saturday’s poll.
One of the many Australians to publicly reveal their votes was the country’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, whose list included Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning, a 1986 protest track about Aboriginal land rights, and songs from Spiderbait, You Am I and The Go-Betweens.
Albanese should be pleased to hear that Beds Are Burning landed at No 18. How To Make Gravy was also among his picks, while another of his favourite tracks, The Angels’ Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again, placed at No 12.
