It’s hard to have a night out at the pub without hearing Daryl Braithwaite’s iconic cover of The Horses.
The song is ingrained in Australian culture and has become one of the few tunes loved by generation after generation.
But it almost didn’t make the cut, he tells 9honey Celebrity.
Watch the video above.
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On the red carpet at the 2024 ARIA Awards, Braithwaite tells 9honey Celebrity that when he first posed the idea of a cover to his team, they thought he’d gone mad.
“It came right at the end of the recording of the Rise album, we had one track to go and I went home and picked out Ricki Lee Jones’ album,” he shared. “I played that [The Horses] and thought, ‘Oh that song… that could be good.'”
But when he pitched the idea the next day, it didn’t go down the way he’d thought it would.
“[They] rolled their eyes and went, ‘Oh, Daryl’s lost his mind’.”
Braithwaite says that he explained it would be similar to his track As The Days Go By and his team agreed to the cover The Horses being the final track on the album.
“We recorded it, Simon put his magic on it, and then I think about three or four months later it was the single, and then it went to No.1. And we still play it today.”
Over the years, Braithwaite has taken home several ARIA Awards, with even more nominations under his belt.
In 2017, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
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More recently though, he gave Harry Styles fans the shock of a lifetime when he took to the stage in Sydney alongside the former One Direction star to perform a duet of the beloved anthem.
In the weeks following, Braithwaite couldn’t speak highly enough of Styles and the whole experience, often referring to it as “a thrill”.
Now he has his sights set on a collab with someone new: alt-pop band The 1975, led by British rocker Matty Healy.
“I’ve been obsessed with The 1975 because I went and saw them about a year and a half ago and I thought, ‘My god, how good’.
“Their music, their performance, the whole thing … The 1975 are just insane.”
Braithwaite rose to fame back in the ’70s as a member of iconic Aussie band Sherbet when Countdown ruled the Aussie music scene.
This year, Countdown turns 50.
Braithwaite has before referred to the show as “The Bible,” but despite his fondness for it, he thinks if it were to make a comeback, there would have to be a few changes.
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“I thought about that and I heard comments during the week,” he said when asked if he thinks Countdown should make its grand return in 2025.
“It’s a good idea but I don’t think it would work on TV, I think it would have to be streamed or something like that.
“But it’s a great outlet for young bands just to get on and get exposure. It could work.”
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