Since their humble beginnings all the way back in 1991 (some 33 years ago, in case you needed to feel even more ancient today), The Wiggles have soared to become much more than just a children’s music brand – they’re a brand and pop-culture phenomenon entirely unto themselves. Over three storied decades as the world’s biggest name in kids’ entertainment, they’ve had plenty of chances to reshape the zeitgeist with whimsical blasts of creative innovation – and they’ve seized every one of those chances with meteoric aplomb.
Today (April 19), The Wiggles proved yet again that their genius really is unlimited, shocking fans with the surprise release of their first full-blown EDM album, Rave Of Innocence (after it was “leaked” online yesterday). It marks the debut of The Wiggles Sound System, described as “an electrifying fusion of nostalgia and party-starting techno beats”, and “a pulsating musical journey that’s part wild dancefloor party, part toddler tantrum tamer”.
The album sees 14 of The Wiggles generation-spanning hits reinvented as club-ready bangers by Lenny Pearce (of Justice Crew fame – and the twin brother of the current purple Wiggle, John) and DJ Dorothy (yes, that Dorothy), and comes after the latter made waves for crashing a nightclub in Melbourne with a surprise performance. So they say themselves, Rave Of Innocence was “created for music lovers who grew up dancing along to The Wiggles”, to serve as “the ultimate soundtrack for reliving cherished memories and creating new ones”.
To celebrate Rave Of Innocence (which you can listen to in its entirety below), we’re winding back the clock to look at five other moments in The Wiggles’ history that saw them wildly shake up the status quo.
1. Their record-breaking Like A Version
2. Their cinematic masterpiece
The Wiggles have always been impressively DIY at heart, producing all of their music, videos, TV shows, props and tour materials entirely in-house. For much of their first decade on the scene, this meant making the most of their creative chops to stretch shoestring budgets into world-class productions. By the mid-1990s, The Wiggles were busting out their sick-as dance moves on homemade sets that you’d swear came straight from Hollywood… So of course, the next logical step was to have The Wiggles star in their own major motion picture.
The Wiggles Movie wasn’t exactly a “blockbuster” by today’s standards – it had a budget of $1.7 million, The Wiggles themselves weren’t paid to star in it, and they spent just 23 days filming it (with most of the outsets sets being strung up in the back lot of a public hospital) – but it proved to be smash-hit nonetheless, marking the highest-grossing film produced in Australia for 1998, both theatrically and on video. Critics loved it, too, and even today it remains a fan-favourite for Wiggles die-hards.
The success inspired many of The Wiggles contemporaries to try their own hands at a feature film – but just as you’d expect, none came anywhere close to capturing the magic of The Wiggles Movie.
3. Their relaunch as an octet
4. Their 18+ reunion shows
By the mid-2010s, most of The Wiggles’ OG fans were in their 20s and 30s, and looked back fondly on their formative memories effectively being raised by the band. For many of us, our very first exposure to live music came courtesy of Anthony (Field, blue), Greg (Page, yellow), Murray (Cook, red) and Jeff (Fatt, purple), doing the Hot Potato and rock-a-bye-ing our bears alongside Dorothy The Dinosaur, Wags The Dog, Captain Feathersword and the Big Red Car.
Older fans had long joked about the concept of seeing the original Wiggles lineup play an 18+ gig at a pub, but none of us actually expected them to embrace the idea themselves – until December of 2015, when they announced they’d be doing just that. February 2016 saw the original quartet reunite for a charity concert at the Dee Why RSL in Sydney, tickets for which sold out in a heartbeat. And the show itself was every bit as wholesome, unhinged and hilarious as you could imagine, with both The Wiggles themselves and their grown-up fans all fully committing to the bit, partying like it was (literally) 1999 again as they laughed through the absurdity of it all.
The one-off show was so successful that it wasn’t long before it wasn’t a one-off show – the OG Wiggles reunited once more for another set of lowkey charity shows at the start of 2020 (raising money for the Black Summer bushfires – and giving Page a heart attack in the process), and then in 2022, they took the adults-only show to arenas for a full national tour. They even performed at that year’s Falls Festival, with their sets sandwiched between decidedly non-kid-friendly performances from Rico Nasty and Genesis Owusu.
