"Lights on the Hill" is an Australian country music hit song written by Joy McKean and made famous by her husband, Slim Dusty. It won the first Golden Guitar in January 1973 at the Country Music Awards of Australia, held in Tamworth. It has been covered by Keith Urban and Mental as Anything.
The song describes a truckie driving at night with a heavy load being blinded by lights on the hill, hitting a pole, falling off the edge of a road and realising his impending death.
The song won for Joy McKean the first ever Golden Guitar Award for "Song of the Year" at the first Tamworth Country Music Festival in January 1973, [1] and Slim Dusty's rendition won the award for Best EP or Single. [2] [3]
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
---|---|---|
Australia (ARIA) [4] | Platinum | 70,000‡ |
‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. |
A memorial which bears the name of the song was erected in Gatton, Queensland, in remembrance of truck and coach drivers and other members of the transport industry who have lost their lives in accidents or in other ways. It is located at Lake Apex Park on the outskirts of the town. Before Slim Dusty died, he and his wife Joy McKean agreed to the use of the name, Lights on the Hill, and to be patrons of the memorial.
Slim Dusty, AO MBE was an Australian country music singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer. He was an Australian cultural icon, referred to universally as Australia's King of Country Music and one of the country's most awarded stars, with a career spanning nearly seven decades and producing numerous recordings. He was known to record songs in the legacy of Australia genre, particularly of bush life, including works by renowned Australian bush poets Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, who represented the lifestyle. The music genre was coined the "bush ballad", a style first made popular by Buddy Williams. Dusty was also known for his many trucking songs.
The discography of Slim Dusty (1927-2003), an Australian country music singer, consists of 122 records, 61 studio albums.
The Tamworth Country Music Festival is an annual Australian music festival held for 10 days from Friday to Sunday in mid to late January each year, sometimes including Australia Day, in Tamworth, New South Wales. The festival is the second biggest country music festival in the world, after the CMA Music Festival in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
Keith Lionel Urban is an Australian and American country singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Recognised with four Grammy Awards, he also received 15 Academy of Country Music Awards, including the Jim Reeves International Award, 13 CMA Awards, and six ARIA Music Awards. Urban wrote and performed the song "For You" from the film Act of Valor, which earned him nominations at both the 70th Golden Globe Awards and at the 18th Critics' Choice Awards in the respective Best Original Song categories.
Australian country music is a part of the music of Australia. There is a broad range of styles, from bluegrass, to yodeling to folk to the more popular. The genre has been influenced by Celtic and English folk music, the Australian bush ballad tradition, as well as by popular American country music. Themes include: outback life, the lives of stockmen, truckers and outlaws, songs of romance and of political protest; and songs about the "beauty and the terror" of the Australian bush.
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The bush ballad, bush song, or bush poem is a style of poetry and folk music that depicts the life, character and scenery of the Australian bush. The typical bush ballad employs a straightforward rhyme structure to narrate a story, often one of action and adventure, and uses language that is colourful, colloquial, and idiomatically Australian. Bush ballads range in tone from humorous to melancholic, and many explore themes of Australian folklore, including bushranging, droving, droughts, floods, life on the frontier, and relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
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Mildred Geraldine Joy Kirkpatrick, known professionally as Joy McKean, was an Australian country music singer-songwriter and wife and manager of Slim Dusty. Her daughter is country singer and musician Anne Kirkpatrick.
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