Modern Rock Tracks No. 1s - Midnight Oil and "Blue Sky Mine"

Midnight Oil's follow-up to their internationally successful "Diesel and Dust" album pushed them to the top of the Modern Rock Charts, but spelled the beginning of the end of their mainstream moment

Midnight Oil - “Blue Sky Mine”

Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 1 (April 7, 1990)

Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:

• Taylor Dayne - “Love Will Lead You Back”

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I completely dislike harmonicas in my modern/alternative rock mix. I’d be a complete hypocrite if I told you I hated harmonicas and then tried to hide my wall of ‘90s CDs featuring the likes of Blues Traveler, Dave Matthews Band, and future MRT #1s artist Alanis Morissette, among others. If anything, I’d argue my preference in alternative rock revolves around bands who make use of unconventional instruments to add flavor to the standard guitar/bass/drums mix, which is why I tend toward bands with horn inflections (ska-adjacent bands like Less Than Jake or Reel Big Fish) or piano/keyboard accompaniments (think Ben Folds Five or They Might Be Giants).

So I’m not sure why I turned on Midnight Oil’s “Blue Sky Mine” for the first time earlier this week and thought to myself, “Why is there so much harmonica here? And why does it grate on me so much?”

It’s possible my expectations were colored by the song that I think most everyone knows from Midnight Oil: their #17 Hot 100 hit “Beds Are Burning,” which scorched the charts for 22 weeks in the spring and summer of 1988, hitting its peak during the middle of that summer. For better or worse, Spotify’s streaming numbers seem to underscore my point: “Beds” has nearly 260 million streams as of August 2023, with “Blue Sky Mine” coming in a distant second at 36 million. That said, it’s an impressive number of streams for an early MRT #1 track.

So “Blue Sky Mine” is quite popular among fans of Midnight Oil. I suspect that might have more to do with their fanbase in native Australia than it does its underground followers in the United States. While most in the U.S. were digging deeper into the band in the late ‘80s, in Australia the band had already reached superstar levels of success. “Blue Sky Mine” was the lead single off of the album “Blue Sky Mining,” which upon its release was the third straight Midnight Oil album to reach #1 in Australia. In fact, every album Midnight Oil has released since their 1981 effort “Place Without A Postcard” has charted in the top 10 on the Australian charts. Even their 2022 release “Resist” hit #1 in Australia, where they have five albums that reached the top of the charts as of this writing.

So what it is about “Blue Sky Mine” that pushed it to the top of the U.S. charts? It wasn’t mainstream crossover success, as the song peaked at a respectable but still relatively low #47 on the U.S. Hot 100, and would also mark the last time Midnight Oil charted on the flagship U.S. chart. It’s certainly not because of the harmonica, because I don’t think U.S. audiences were ready for 40% of a mainstream hit to be fully centered around that particular instrument.

As near as I can figure, two things gave this track alt-rock cred going into the early 1990s: the effect of being the first single to follow a major one-hit wonder crossover moment, and one highlighting the plight of the environment during a time when the world was more singularly fixated on fixing the planet than ever.

To the planet-saving part of the discussion, I offer that this song may have resonated given its subject matter about the plight of miner and mill workers at the Wittenoom Gorge in Australia. According to the Asbestos Diseases Society Of Australia, from 1943 through 1966, the Colonial Sugar Refinery mined blue asbestos at Wittenoom Gorge in western Australia, with approximately 7,000 men and women working as part of the mining and milling operations. As of this writing, ADSA notes that more than 2,000 of the workers and residents of Wittenoom have died from asbestos-related diseases.

Given the cultural consciousness of environmental catastrophes and health-related issues in the early 1990s in the U.S., it’s not terribly surprising to imagine this song finding its place in the zeitgeist.

More likely, though, is the effect of the song being the next big single to follow “Beds Are Burning.” I discussed this phenomenon in my review of “Sowing The Seeds Of Love,” when Tears For Fears waited several years to release their follow-up to one of the biggest set of hits in their catalog, and that pent-up excitement for something new led to big sales but, ultimately, became a song that was less loved and remembered less fondly than their earlier hits.

I have to mention that “Blue Sky Mine” is hardly unloved, and I’m sure is fondly remembered. Again, Midnight Oil is an Australian treasure, an inductee in the Australian Recording Industry Association Hall of Fame, and has a fan base so passionate that they’re still putting out #1 albums in Australia to the present day. But there are lots of bands who are far better known in their native lands than they are in the U.S., and in Midnight Oil’s case, I think this marked the beginning of the end of their successes with U.S. audiences.

For me, it begins and ends with the harmonica. It was so off-putting for me that I could barely listen to it more than a couple of times. But if I can get over that one particular element, the synth-intro is actually quite catchy, and there’s a definite flow to the music that builds with the addition of each new instrument. If the harmonica wasn’t drowning it out, I’d argue it’d be very enjoyable.

And the chorus is catchy, especially the “blue sky mine” portion with the “food on the table tonight” sung in harmony. The content of the story being told is very compelling, highlighting a unique tragedy in Australian history. Once the song hits the bridge, it becomes a full-on rocker with strong guitar riffs (until, again, the harmonica). It’s got its strong moments, but as a whole, the song doesn’t really stand on its own as a bona fide hit.

We’ll chat about Midnight Oil one more time in this space, much sooner than you might think. Thankfully, that particular track has far less grating harmonica and a far richer musical pastiche that will likely earn it higher praise than I’m bestowing upon “Blue Sky Mine.” But with this track, I have to place it in the pantheon of hits like TFF’s “Sowing The Seeds Of Love,” which is to say one that has a very good chart history but, overall, is not one that resonates well with U.S. audiences.

Rating: 2/10

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Chart Check: A look at other notable MRT chart songs from this time period

A belated debut and chart peak for a future MRT #1 artist, a look into the future of electronic pop and … bikini girls with machine guns? Never a dull moment deep in the bowels of the Modern Rock Tracks chart.

“Head Like A Hole” by Nine Inch Nails: Future five-time MRT #1 artist Nine Inch Nails makes a brief early career appearance on the MRT chart with a track I would have expected to chart a lot longer and a lot higher up. I missed this last time due to my review of all the covers of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” but the second single off NIN’s “Pretty Hate Machine” managed to debut and peak at #28 on the MRT chart the week before Midnight Oil topped the chart.

“Hello” by The Beloved: I get some serious Savage Garden “I Want You” vibes from this song and video. I’m not sure why, but that’s just where my brain went. Maybe this is more of a proto “Unbelievable” by EMF? Whatever it is, it feels like it’s a little ahead of its time. Like Marty McFly said, “I guess you guys aren't ready for that, yet. But your kids are gonna love it.” It peaked at #5 on the MRT behind “Blue Sky Mine.”

“Bikini Girls With Machine Guns” by The Cramps: I’ve been waiting for this song to peak so I could put it in this space. It’s the kind of ridiculous title I look for on the chart listing, but I’m not going to lie: it’s catchy. There’s a nice surf-rock vibe on this track that gives it an older aesthetic that I really enjoy in alternative music. It peaked at #10 behind Midnight Oil, and I’m kind of impressed it got that far.