‘Aus Radio Didn’t Want To Play Us’: How The Local Industry Blocked Indecent Obsession

They had hits all over the world, but there was one thing late ’80s/early ’90s synthpop band Indecent Obsession couldn’t manage – and that was to get played on Australian radio. 

In the new episode of podcast A Journey Through Aussie Pop, David Dixon, the former singer of the group that Molly Meldrum snapped up for Melodian Records, talks about the struggle Indecent Obsession had getting acceptance at home. 

Although initially successful on the ARIA chart thanks to music video play and teen mag coverage, with Say Goodbye and Tell Me Something both going top 20, the band had trouble finding the radio support they desperately needed for follow-up releases.

“Radio didn’t want to play us because we weren’t adult orientated rock. We were pop. And the only time we seemed to get any airplay was in the top 40 at night,” he said. “It wasn’t easy all around back then to have a successful Australian pop band. There were a lot of hurdles along the way.”

The lack of encouragement from their home country was especially evident on second album Indio, released 30 years ago. Dixon revealed that when they were promoting the record in Australia, supportive DJs would tell the band they were “just not allowed” to play their songs.

“It was really frustrating and really quite strange,” he recalled. “If you were an international pop act, you’d get played on the radio, but if you were an Australian pop act, you wouldn’t. And I could never figure it out. In the rest of the world, we were just received as another band. We didn’t really have any battle to get played on the radio in other countries.”

Dixon also explained why he left Indecent Obsession at the height of their international success, which saw them topping the chart in South Africa and having hits everywhere from the US to France to Indonesia.  

“We had triple platinum sales, we did stadium shows, but I went, ‘Actually, this isn’t what I want,’” he explained. “This is not what I thought it was going to be and I just decided that I’d had enough.

Listen to A Journey Through Aussie Pop on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and all major podcast platforms or at chartbeats.com.au/aussie

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