Bluey composer Joff Bush: 'We want to help tell the story as much as possible with the music'

“He’s lovely,” says the passerby upon learning the name of my dachshund. “Is he friendly?” asks another, sometime later. Even the vet, during a serious consultation, assumes Bow, a black-and-tan miniature sausage, is a boy. A friend has called her ‘Mr Bow’ for over a decade, despite ongoing correction. I hadn’t thought the name was particularly masculine when I selected it 14 years ago.

It didn’t seem feminine either, just a nice, solid dog name that you could yell with confidence when they went running after a squirrel. Bow has a selection of jumpers – essential when one’s belly is so close to the ground – some striped, some block colour. The only time she is ever given the correct gender is when she wears an extremely pretty pastel-pink knit, handmade by her granny.

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Bow is not the only dog to experience this. ‘Is Bluey a boy or a girl?’ is one of the most ubiquitous online searches relating to the popular cartoon. There is often an assumption that the eponymous star of the show – an Australian cattle dog known as a heeler – is a boy, something that has been cleverly set up by the creators to address our unconscious bias.

Gender essentialism continues to focus on ‘pink for girls, blue for boys’ – the relentless code of reveal parties, clothes and toys. Bluey and her younger sibling Bingo are sisters, born to Chilli and Bandit Heeler. While Bingo shares the same red colouring as her mother, as the name suggests, Bluey is blue, like her father.

This preamble is to establish that Brisbane-based Bluey is not your run-of-the-mill pre-schooler screen rot. It’s thoughtful, with interesting, rounded – even flawed – characters, including parent figures who rival Mummy and Daddy Pig in Peppa Pig for their believable traits (“I just need 20 minutes alone,” begs Chilli). It features real-life locations in Queensland, Aussie slang (‘bush wee’, ‘dunny’), and, despite its enormous international popularity – Walt Disney is due to release a Bluey feature film in 2027 – is still produced independently in Australia.

A major contributing factor to this success is the soundtrack, composed by Joff Bush, which has just been recorded in new orchestral arrangements by Queensland Symphony Orchestra (QSO) and Camerata conducted by Joseph Twist, and titled Bluey: Up Here.

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“[Bluey creator] Joe [Brumm] loves music: we’ll be talking about the Brandenburg concertos and AC/DC in the same sentence,” says Bush, who has scored all 154 episodes. What is important when writing music for young children? “We avoid sudden changes,” Bush explains, “and focus on clarity; we want to help tell the story as much as possible. It’s also about making the child feel safe and comfortable.”

But the real skill in Bush’s scores – and the reason we’re speaking over time zones today – is his clever incorporation of canonic classical music, something that has a long tradition in children’s TV. Lang Lang has spoken about his first experiences of the piano – not at a concert hall, but through watching Tom and Jerry, where, as a toddler, the concert pianist first heard Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No 2. Bush also uses verbatim melodies: Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca is used in Bluey’s very first episode, ‘Magic Xylophone’, and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy features in‘Bike’. It’s rather more sophisticated than Teletubbies say “Eh-oh!”

“There’s something magical about bringing in the history of music,” says Bush, “I hope that through the album kids are able to find their own way to connect with it and maybe it might spark a little journey to explore all sorts of different pieces.”

To that end, for those interested in taking the next step on from ‘Sticky Gecko’ et al, there’s an Apple Music Classical playlist curated by Bush that includes Spring from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Waltz of the Flowers by Tchaikovsky, the Can-Can from Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld and lots of engaging, accessible pieces.

And for those ready to try playing music themselves, Bush – erstwhile piano teacher and recent father (his baby conducted the Queensland Symphony Orchestra during the album recording) – has just published Bluey: First Ever Piano Book (Faber, £8.99), which uses games and stories from the Bluey universe – and begins our heroine’s most exciting adventure yet: playing classical music.

Bluey: Up Here is out now via Demon Music Group 

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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