“Dreamworld” by Midnight Oil

"Dreamworld" was the fourth and last single pulled from Diesel and Dust, Midnight Oil's sixth album, in 1987, and it's a furious wake for the old buildings of Queensland, bulldozed under Joh Bjelke-Petersen's state government. Among the casualties was the Cloudland Dance Hall, a room the band had played many times. The title comes from the Dreamworld theme park, which flashes past in the video alongside footage of the demolitions.

Peter Garrett, Rob Hirst and Jim Moginie wrote it, and the band produced it with Warne Livesey. Hirst's drums gallop, Peter Gifford's bass drives hard, and the guitars of Moginie and Martin Rotsey chop and ring, with cello, trombone and French horn lurking underneath. American rock radio took to it too: it climbed to 16 on the Modern Rock chart, while the Mainstream Rock tally had it at 37.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.