“Homecoming Queen” by Thelma Plum

"Homecoming Queen" was the fourth and final single from Better in Blak, Thelma Plum's debut album, and it reached radio on 12 July 2019. The Australian singer-songwriter told Triple J it comes out of growing up as an Aboriginal girl in rural Australia, flicking through magazines and watching TV without ever seeing anyone who looked like her, and having to teach herself that she was beautiful and enough. The song also nods to the 1967 referendum that asked Australians whether Indigenous Australians should be counted in the official population figures.

It polled at 67 in Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2019, and it was up for Song of the Year at the 2020 National Indigenous Music Awards. It kept evolving after that: an Alice Ivy remix on the album's 2020 anniversary edition, a performance on The Sound that November, and a strings version in October 2021.

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