Merril Bainbridge - Under The Water (1995)

What this video is

Released in July 1995 as the second single from Merril Bainbridge's debut album The Garden (Gotham Records/BMG Australia), 'Under the Water' arrived on the crest of her breakthrough success with 'Mouth', which had spent six consecutive weeks at number one in Australia. The song, written by Owen Bolwell and Stanley Paulzen in 1990, thematically centres on the drowning of a lover. It reached number four on the ARIA…

Why it matters

Represents the commercially successful strand of mid-90s Australian adult contemporary pop: acoustic-guitar-driven, melodically direct, and production-minimal. Bainbridge's success as a female singer-songwriter on her own label (Gotham/BMG) prefigured the international wave of artists such as…