Forever Five: Simon Day (Ratcat)
- Waxx Lyrical
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Ever wondered what albums sit atop your favourite artists’ turntables? Forever Five is a Waxx Lyrical series spotlighting the five records that shaped the artists we love most. No rankings, no essays — just the albums that live closest to their hearts. Come for the choices, stay for the typically remarkable playlist that follows — woven from their picks and their own catalogue — culminating in a fascinating little mini music lesson every time.
Explore more in the Media Centre and on Instagram via #waxxlyricalforeverfive.
FOREVER FIVE: SIMON DAY (RATCAT)
🎸 Fuzz-smeared hook dealer with a pop brain
⚡ Garage romantic chasing melody at full tilt
🌊 Alt trailblazer who cracked Australia wide open
You should never speak with your heroes, they say… yet here we are, sending a message into the ether asking Simon Day for the five albums he can’t live without.
He did not disappoint.
The architect of fuzz, hooks, and a very particular kind of Australian cool that felt like it had been smuggled in from somewhere bigger, faster, and just a little more dangerous than what we were used to.
For a certain generation, Ratcat were/are. A. Very. Big. Deal. They were more than a band — they were a jolt. A flash of colour. A permission slip.
Ratcat were on top of the world — and the charts — at the turn of the ‘90s. With that irresistible soft/loud alchemy of garage rock grit and sugar-rush melody, the Sydney trio didn’t just arrive, they detonated. The Tingles EP hit number one in 1990, powered by ‘That Ain’t Bad’, a song that felt like it had always existed — all jangle, fuzz, and teenage electricity — somehow both scrappy and undeniable.
And then came Blind Love in June 1991.
A record so big it didn’t just top the charts — it held them hostage. Simultaneous #1 album and single. Outselling releases from Michael Jackson, INXS, Crowded House, Lenny Kravitz, Bette Midler… the lot of them. Additionally, the Tingles EP from the year before ended 1991 at #2 on the singles chart, second only to Bryan Adams' '(Everything I Do) I Do It For You. Let that sink in. This wasn’t just a moment, it was a takeover.
More than that, Ratcat cracked something open. Before grunge became a global monsoon, before flannel became a uniform, Ratcat were already sneaking alternative sounds into the mainstream bloodstream here in Australia. Richard Kingsmill himself has pointed to them as a key spark — arguably more so than Nirvana — in shifting what Australian radio sounded like in the early ‘90s.
Not bad for a band that looked like they’d just walked out of a skate shop and into history.
And Simon Day? The songwriter at the centre of it all. Equal parts melody obsessive and distortion romantic. The kind of artist who understands that a great pop song doesn’t need to choose between heart and volume — it can have both, turned all the way up.
So when someone like that hands over their Forever Five… you pay attention.
Because this is where the map reveals itself. The fingerprints. The quiet influences behind the loud moments.
No rankings. No essays.
Just five records that helped shape one of Australia’s most important alternative voices — and a playlist that draws a line from those records straight through to Ratcat’s own catalogue.
Come for the choices.
Stay for the musical breadcrumb trail. And as a small, almost poetic full-circle moment: Simon’s influence doesn’t just live in the past. In more recent years, he co-wrote with Isabella Manfredi for The Preatures — a band that carried that same sharp, melodic instinct into a new era. And in this very column? Ben Lee once named Tingles as one he couldn’t live without.
The line runs both ways.
Influence in. Influence out.
This is Simon Day of Ratcat's Forever Five.
LISTEN — SIMON DAY'S FOREVER FIVE
A trio of tracks from each of Simon's choices, plus an essential five tracks of his own.
The resulting playlist flows like a mini-music history lesson.
SEX PISTOLS – The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle (1979)
Chaos with a smirk. Not the clean, canonical Pistols statement — this is the messy scrapbook, the cut-and-paste myth machine. Covers, curveballs, and a band already halfway to legend while still in the room. For Simon, you can hear the permission slip in this one: rules are optional, attitude is everything, and pop hooks don’t need to behave to hit hard.
Needle-drop: ‘No One Is Innocent’ (the sound of the Pistols turning the whole thing into a mirror and smashing it anyway)
THE BEATLES – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
The moment pop music realised it could be anything. Colour exploding out of the speakers, studio as playground, melody as a kind of gentle hypnosis. You don’t get Ratcat’s sugar-rush choruses without this blueprint somewhere in the bloodstream. It’s maximalist, meticulous, and still somehow feels effortless — like a dream you can hum.
Needle-drop: ‘A Day In The Life’
THE BOYS NEXT DOOR – Door, Door (1979)
Before the myth, before the suit — Nick Cave and Mick Harvey, alongside the incendiary Rowland S. Howard, future Saint Tracy Pew and drummer Phil Calvert were The Boys Next Door — just raw, twitchy urgency. The sound of a band discovering its own edges in real time. There’s something beautifully unpolished here, all sharp corners and nervous energy. You can trace a direct line from this to Ratcat’s early bite — that sense that the song might fall apart at any second, and that’s exactly why it works.
Needle-drop: ‘Shivers’
LOU REED – Transformer (1972)
Street poetry dressed in velvet and eyeliner. Reed makes the strange feel intimate, the broken feel beautiful. It’s cool without trying, dangerous without raising its voice. Simon Day’s knack for pairing grit with melody sits comfortably in this lineage — songs that swagger a little, ache a little, and never over-explain themselves.
Needle-drop: ‘Perfect Day’
SPIRITUALIZED – Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (1997)
The comedown that feels like a revelation. Gospel, noise, space, and heartbreak all dissolving into each other. It’s vast but deeply human — a record that doesn’t just play, it envelops. You can hear the emotional ambition here, the idea that a song can be both intimate and cosmic. A fitting final piece of the puzzle.
Needle-drop: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space’
Forever Five is a continuing Waxx Lyrical series exploring the records that shape the artists who shape us.
Explore more in the Media Centre and on Instagram via #waxxlyricalforeverfive.
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