The Wiggles’ 101st album—yes, you read that correctly—is a country music bonanza featuring some of the genre’s most popular artists, such as Dolly Parton, Lainey Wilson, Dasha and Orville Peck. “It’s such a nice genre of music; I think it’s a really great way of connecting with families,” Lachy Gillespie, aka the purple Wiggle, tells Apple Music. “The messaging, the playfulness of it; there are simple, beautiful themes you can write about that connect you with your little home or the land or animals.” A key moment in the record’s gestation came when The Wiggles were invited to Lainey Wilson’s gig in Sydney in March 2024. “One of the things I really noticed multiple times during that show were the little kids up on their parents’ shoulders and it was so beautiful,” says Gillespie. “I went away from that really inspired.” The 32 tracks on Wiggle Up, Giddy Up! honour country music’s grand tradition, while maintaining the band’s commitment to entertaining and educating children—witness “Counting 1 to 5”, a numbers-inspired take on Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5”, New songs such as the Lainey Wilson collab “Let’s Ride!” and Dolly-penned “Friends!” sit alongside reworkings of Wiggles favourites like “Big Red Car” (renamed “Big Red Ute”) and “Rock-a-Bye Your Bear” (featuring MacKenzie Porter). The group’s 2000 collaboration with Australian country legend Slim Dusty, “I Love to Have a Dance with Dorothy”, also gets an update with the addition of yellow Wiggle Tsehay Hawkins on vocals. “We’ve never spent so much time on an album,” smiles Gillespie. “The whole project felt really special.” Here, the purple Wiggle dons his cowboy hat and gives Apple Music a horseback ride through some of the album’s key tracks. “Wiggle Up, Giddy Up!” (with Dasha) “We knew we wanted to create a line dancing, boot-scooting song for the album but weren’t sure how we were going to go about it. We listened to ‘Austin (Boots Stop Workin’)’ by Dasha just to get in that vibe, and we had that ‘Wiggle up, giddy up’ line in our heads. It all came together quite quickly. When Dasha came in she added her great bits—‘one step, two step, turn around’—she was just riffing. She was great.” “Counting 1 to 5” “We were doing lots of counting songs at the time and the idea came, ‘Why don’t we do “9 to 5” but change it to “1 to 5”?’ And then Simon [Pryce, red Wiggle] wrote the lyrics about what it’s like in the house getting ready, and we sent it to Dolly’s people and they loved it and gave us permission to do it.” “Friends!” (with Dolly Parton) “Dolly sent three very different but amazing songs all around the friendship theme. ‘Friends’ came with a backing track that she’d put together but she said, ‘Please do the music again’. That’s one of [blue Wiggle Anthony Field’s] strengths, coming up with his own way of doing the music. Dolly had sung the entire song through but was totally happy for us to put in other vocal parts too, to make it more of a duet. Her vocal is spectacular. She is clearly still so passionate about what she does.” “Friends of Dorothy” (feat. Orville Peck) “We reached out to Orville. We were particularly nervous having that Zoom call because a few of us are really big fans! But he was so awesome. He’s so across [The Wiggles] because he watches it with his nephew. We said, ‘We’re thinking about this “Friends of Dorothy” idea’ and he had this massive smile on his face. We sent him the song; he loved it and sent a vocal over. Everything about his voice is awesome.” “Let’s Ride!” (with Lainey Wilson) “When we went to see Lainey’s show in March [her team] said, ‘We’re happy for you to put together an idea and send it across’, which I did. It’s a straight-up country song, and Lainey put her powerhouse vocals on it. The ‘fruit salad’ bit came quite late—we thought that was a nice tie-in where Lainey would come into The Wiggles’ world in that bridge. It’s a lovely song that children can hopefully relate to, getting together with friends and going on an adventure.” “Rock-a-Bye Your Bear” (with MacKenzie Porter) “‘Rock-a-Bye’ is such a forever song, but quite country-ish. MacKenzie Porter came up, we knew she had a little baby, so we thought, that’s a perfect fit. So we started reworking that. It’s such a fan favourite and a really nice way to re-hear the song.” “Standing in Line” (with Troy Cassar-Daley) “We have quite a few international artists and wanted to involve our awesome Australian artists as well, and Troy’s been a friend of The Wiggles for a long time. We sent him the track and he was more than happy to put the verse on. He’s such a legend. That’s an old Cockroaches song that we redid the words for.” “Say the Dance, Boots ’N All” (with Kaylee Bell) “We met Kaylee quite early on and loved her ‘Boots ’N All’ song. [The Wiggles track] ‘Say the Dance, Do the Dance’ very much lends itself to country so we thought, why don’t we take the ‘boots ’n all’ part of Kaylee’s song, try to mesh the worlds, and put that as one of the dance steps. Kaylee did her vocal here at Wiggles HQ. I love that track.” “Dorothy Doll” (with The Wolfe Brothers) “We had the song ready and The Wolfe Brothers came in to record their bit. Tom and Nick did great harmonies, and then Nick played the guitar. One of Anthony’s big things is there’s got to be a catch at the start for kids to latch on to, so that one was reworked to get that great chorus in there early. Then it goes into the lovely story—the idea of being on a road trip and taking something you really cherish with you.” “Toot Toot, Chugga Chugga, Big Red Ute” (with Morgan Evans) “I think it was early January 2024. Anthony and Jeff [Fatt, former purple Wiggle] were the only guys in the office and Morgan Evans was around, so that was the time to record. And they said, ‘Let’s just do the big red ute. You’ve got the big red car, let’s just do a country song.’ He put some lyric ideas down while he was in there, that was really cool. I love his voice.” “Lachy Sings, Lucky Swings” (with Lucky Oceans) “Lucky Oceans brought his pedal steel [to the studio], and they were some of the coolest musical hours I’ve had in this building. He’s regarded as one of the best. He played on quite a few of the tracks and you just get that country sound straight away.” “It’s Tough Being Three Years Old” (with Jackson Dean) “It was an idea thrown around the office—what if your child is out of cereal and the Wi-Fi’s down? I just love that idea that for them in these little moments it’s such a big deal. We presented a few songs to Jackson Dean and he picked this one. Then the idea came very late to put Simon’s little boy’s voice in it, just to take it back to the child, because it was not as powerful to have us singing ‘it’s tough being three years old’. It sat perfectly.” “I Love to Have a Dance with Dorothy” (with Slim Dusty) “No update [on the 2000 recording with Slim Dusty] apart from getting Tsehay to sing on it, just because it was perfect how it was. You don’t want to touch it. Young kids now will get to hear this song. Anthony talks so highly of Slim. Slim was so proud he got to work with The Wiggles back when he did. His voice is so beautiful.” “A Country Singer” (with Travis Collins) “This is a very old Gilbert & Sullivan tune. And then Nick [Webb, The Wiggles songwriter] put the beautiful words together. Travis Collins came into the studio, he was a really lovely guy. We wanted that authenticity of that country voice in there. It was really fun to put together.” “We Will Always Be Friends” (with Dolly Parton) “It makes you smile straight away. It’s so nice and again, a really lovely message. Another awesome vocal from Dolly. Just another cracker of a song and another special moment in the album.”