| Who Are The Wiggles?
The Wiggles receiving a gold record award on the Midday show, from the show's host Kerri-Anne Kennerly Welcome to the bright and happy world of The Wiggles. The Wiggles are a unique and dynamic musical group who entertain children, enchanting them with the pure joy of their own music and dance. Instantly recognised in their distinctive skivvies, the friendly foursome have been said to be the major force in moving children's entertainment away from the traditional and into the contemporary area, in a strong positive fashion. Well crafted songs, interesting lyrics, humour that's spot on for the audience's age group, characters that are intelligently constructed and a dialogue with their audience that's easy to follow and never patronising. All of this and a healthy dose of fun too! With their abilities to entertain their young audience and create such excellent and popular material, it's really of no surprise to learn that three of The Wiggles are qualified pre-school teachers. Anthony Field, Murray Cook and Greg Page came together musically to create a number of musical projects whilst studying Early Childhood Education at Sydney's Macquarie University. Anthony Field and Jeff Fatt have had the added advantage of previously being members of a popular rock band who had success both touring and on the charts. It was from this initial collaboration of Anthony, Greg, Murray and Jeff that The Wiggles were born - along with their friends Dorothy the Dinosaur, Captain Feathersword the friendly pirate, Henry the Octopus and Wags the Dog. Although The Wiggles began as a fun and creative way to work with children through music and song, they hadn't collectively thought about where it would take them as a group. It didn't take long however, until the the material was getting from both children and their parents alike, indicated that this was something very special. As he has often been quoted, Anthony Field feels a lot of their success comes from The Wiggles background and their knowledge of child development. "A lot of what we do comes from a child's perspective", says Anthony. "It's got a lot to do with what the songs are about and the language we use, and I think we know how to write pretty catchy tunes. Right from the start we gave a lot of thought to what was appropriate for children's music, and that is very important".Right from the start, The Wiggles were proven to be on the right track by the most discerning audience of them all - the children themselves. Their list of awards for albums, singles and videos coupled with their extraordinary sales figures would be the envy of any contemporary artist, the devotion of their enormous, young fan-base sees tickets to theirlive shows snapped up within minutes. Huge crowds of children and their parents turn up at any live appearance, often in matching skivvies! The Wiggles self-titled first album was released in 1991 and immediately garnered a Gold record for "Here Comes a Song". The albums "The Wiggles",followed by "Yummy Yummy", "Big Red Car", "Wiggly Wiggly Christmas" and "Wake Up Jeff" have all gone platinum - The latest release is The Wiggles Movie Soundtrack. The Wiggles have released videos under the ABC video label, distributed by Entertainment. All have achieved the prestigious multi platinum award. In addition, Yummy Yummy and Big Red Car were awarded 'Highest Selling Children's sales through videos' 1995 and 1996, at the AVSDA Awards. As songwriters and recording artists, The Wiggles have also been recognised by their peers, winning three prestigious APRA song writing for best Children's Song of 1994, 1995 and 1996. "Big Red Car" and "Wake Up Jeff" have also received two ARIA Awards in 1995 and 1996 respectively for Best Children's release. When it comes to live performances, it is nearly impossible to find a live anywhere in Australia, regardless of what age group of musical genre, that comes close to matching their figures. (It's even been estimated that one in two toddlers in Australia either sing-a-long to The Wiggles on video or CD at home or have been to a Wiggles concert - so add that to the many hundreds of thousands of adults who have been "exposed" to The Wiggles phenomena and the numbers become outstanding!). While The Wiggles regularly tour throughout Australia, The Wiggles have also appeared twice in New Zealand - where in the first instance they featured at the Mega-Days Children's Expo in Auckland - and twice in Hong Kong where they also found time to call in and perform at a Hong Kong orphanage. "We didn't really know what to expect, because of the language differences we didn't know what kind of response we'd get but we went along anyway because we thought it would be fun for the kids", explained Jeff Fatt. "We needn't have worried - the language barrier wasn't a problem at all, they were dancing and clapping along, it would have to be one of our most memorable shows yet". The Wiggles astonishing popularity with children in Australia is the result of the hard work by a group of infant educators' desire to do something fun and wothwhile with youngsters without lecturing or speaking down to them. Since releasing their first album in 1991, The Wiggles have had unprecedented success in Australia with a Gold Record award for "Here comes a song" and Platinum Album awards for "The Wiggles", "Yummy Yummy" and "Big Red Car". They have had the three biggest selling children's longform videos for the last three years, even outselling Bananas in Pyjamas without a TV show of their own. "Wiggle Time", "Yummy Yummy" and "The Big Red Car" videos have all achieved Double platinum status which is extraordinary in Australian children's entertainment. |
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