Joe Dolce’s catchy ‘80s hit “Shaddap You Face” and Missy Higgins’s 2004 breakthrough “Scar” are among the four songs added to Australia’s vault, the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA).
All told, nine works are added to the Sounds of Australia 2026 collection, a capsule that is said to span “the intimate, the everyday and the unforgettable.”
“Shaddap You Face” was an unexpected global smash following its release in 1980. Dolce performs the song in character, using exaggerated accent and stereotype, but that didn’t stop it from spreading like warm butter. The single logged three weeks at No. 1 in the U.K., and eight in Australia, where became the best-selling 7-inch of all time.
“More than four decades on, it remains a clear example of how performance-led comedy can travel far beyond its origins,” reads a statement from the NFSA.
Also entering the archive is Missy Higgins’ “Scar,” lifted from the Aussie singer and songwriter’s chart-topping, ARIA Award-winning debut album The Sound of White.
“Over time,” reads a statement from the NFSA, “it has come to represent a broader early-2000s shift toward piano-led, confessional pop in Australia.”
Today, Higgins is one of Australia’s most beloved, and awarded, artists. In 2024, she was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame.
Another member of the ARIA Hall of Fame, Marcia Hines, who was inducted in 2007, has a song preserved for generations to hear: the disco era “You.”
Released in 1977 and written by U.S. songwriter Tom Snow, “You” arrived at a time “when Australian pop was still defining its mainstream identity,” reads a statement from the NFSA, on its addition to the archive.
The joyful song “confirmed Hines as a major national artist and showed how vocal interpretation could shape the sound — and visibility — of Australian music.”
The Archive also ingests the title track from the ARIA Award-nominated 1990 album Tabaran, a recording by David Bridie’s Australian indie-rock band Not Drowning, Waving with musicians from Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, led by singer George Telek.
“Tabaran” remains “a key example of regional collaboration in Australian recording history, capturing language, musical practice and partnership across the Asia–Pacific,” a statement explains.
The Sounds of Australia collection takes in the “Slip! Slop! Slap!” TV advertisement published in 1981; the “Misogyny Speech” delivered by former prime minister Julia Gillard in 2012; and the impromptu “Democracy Manifest / Succulent Chinese Meal” speech given by the late Jack Karlson as he was arrested by police in 1991, a moment that has become one of Australia’s finest memes.
The sounds are selected by a panel of industry and NFSA experts, who consider public nominations of recordings that are more than 10 years old. After this year’s additions, the collection boasts over 200 pieces.
“We select sound recordings that have particular cultural, historic, or aesthetic significance — things that we think are particularly relevant to life in Australia,” explains NFSA assistant curator Hannah de Feyter. “One thing that we’re getting from the additions in this year’s capsule is the incredible variety of recorded sound that we have in our history.
See the full 2026 Sounds of Australia list here.
