Released on 20 October 1986, John Farnham's Whispering Jack remains the highest-selling album by an Australian artist and the third biggest of all time in this country. Its story of near-collapse, a mortgaged house, a suburban garage and one unstoppable song still resonates four decades later.

Released in the UK on 20 October 1986, Get Close delivered the Pretenders' two biggest Mainstream Rock hits and marked a turbulent turning point that left Chrissie Hynde as the sole remaining original member.

Released on 20 October 1986, Paul Young's third solo album shifted the balance toward original material and delivered three singles while earning platinum status in the UK.

Forty years after its release, the second and final Frankie Goes To Hollywood album still divides opinion and remains the record that effectively ended the band.

Four decades on from its October 1986 release, Billy Idol's third studio album remains a sharp snapshot of mid-80s rock ambition, commercial muscle and the guitar-driven sound that defined his peak years.

Two decades after its release, the last album in the Bat Out of Hell trilogy still carries the scars of a bitter legal fight, a fractured partnership and a deliberate shift toward heavier rock.

Australian Crawl returned to the stage for the first time in 40 years and Men At Work for the first time in 25 years when the Red Hot Summer Tour opened in Toowoomba on 17 October 2026, with James Reyne, David Reyne and John Watson carrying the Crawl name and Colin Hay leading Men At Work.

All 26 shows on Powderfinger's 2027 Australian reunion tour have sold out after the general public onsale, with more than 300,000 tickets gone in six days. Extra shows are being locked in for fans who missed out.

Kings of Leon will return to Australia in February and March 2027 for outdoor shows in four cities, bringing special guests Ocean Alley and supporting their tenth studio album O My Beloved.

Adelaide rockers Swapmeet top the 2026 SA Music Awards with six nominations as more than 100 acts, managers and industry figures are recognised ahead of the 10 November ceremony at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.

NZ-Persian artist CHAII drops VIP today via BMG, led by the self-directed video for So What, a track about falling, failing and getting back up that draws direct inspiration from D12's Purple Pills.

SUPAGLOO is a new Melbourne live music initiative from Frontier Touring and Melbourne Park designed to remove barriers for younger audiences, give Australian artists access to arena-level production and create new connections between emerging talent and the wider music industry.

Ian Shaw's play about the strained making of Jaws, co-written with Joseph Nixon, is now running in Melbourne with a strong local cast capturing the friction between Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider.

Steve Miller reworked his own catalogue and classic blues into a two-night jazz conversation at Jazz at Lincoln Center, with Joseph Wooten and a full horn and rhythm section sharing the Rose Theater stage.

Bette Midler received the 2026 Woody Guthrie Prize at Cain's Ballroom, delivering a surprise performance of a Guthrie protest song and speaking on art, activism and resistance.