Bluey Music Team Release Third Album ‘Rug Island’
By: Justin Rouillon
Award winning composer Joff Bush, and the Bluey music team have released their third album, Bluey: Rug Island, featuring 16 original tracks from the global hit animated series.
The show’s first album made history as the first children’s album to reach the #1 spot on the Australian ARIA chart. Together, Bluey: The Album and Bluey: Dance Mode!, have racked up more than half a billion combined streams and both debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Kid Albums chart in the U.S.
Bluey has also been nominated for a 2024 ARIA Award in Australia for Dance Mode in the Best Children’s Album category to be held this November.
Rug Island, which was all recorded and produced in Brisbane, is a playful journey through the imaginations of sisters Bluey and Bingo. Featuring tracks from all three series, the album takes inspiration from the episode ‘Rug Island’ – a place where children play, and adults embrace their inner child.
That episode, from season two of Bluey, showcases a world where connector pens are everything, and a place where grown-ups aren’t allowed (but if you become a kid again that’s OK).
Joff Bush said that “creativity and imagination play an important role in the process of creating the music for Bluey. Like ‘Rug Island’, it’s about entering your own world and having fun while musically bringing Bluey’s story to life.”
Daniel O’Brien, who is one of the composers that make up the Bluey music team, told the Bluey’s Brisbane podcast that the entire album was built on the themes of the Rug Island episode.
“This album is all themed around friendship, play, imagination and adventure, and Rug Island really encompasses all of that. It’s such a strong episode and that’s why Rug Island is both the album’s theme and title track.”
More highlights on the album include Octopus, featuring the surf rock combo King Stingray, Onesies and a new vocal version of the Bluey Theme Tune (Vocal Version) released earlier this month. Standout tracks include an ‘80s-inspired synth rock Fairytale, a sea shanty titled Explorers, the driving rock of Muffin Drive, and a simple sweet track in Turtleboy.
“‘Onesies’ is one of the tracks I’m most excited about,” continues Daniel. “We used a brass trio which we’re never used before in this way; we’ve used trumpets and saxophones before, but we were really going for a brass feature in the chorus.”
“That chorus is essentially new material that’s been written for the album; that chorus wasn’t used in the episode and we felt we needed to add a chorus to give it more of a song structure.”
The collection is available to stream and download now, and has also been released on CD, sunset orange vinyl and 7,000 copies of a limited-edition vinyl picture disc.
Article supplied with thanks to 96five.
Feature image: Album art wallpaper
