- Creator Backlash: Drummer Rob Hirst hates their 1996 album Breathe, mostly for having little involvement in the songwriting. It was poorly received by the fans, too. It at least boasts a strong single in "Surf's Up Tonight", but even that was too poppy for some purists.
- Black Sheep Hit: Technically "Surf's Up Tonight" with its "summer lovin'" theme and mellower sound, but it didn't matter because it wasn't an introduction to the band for anyone in Australia, and did little business overseas besides some airplay on US alternative radio stations.
- "The Real Thing" is a better example. The band had a dozen or so people write a list of a hundred songs for them to potentially cover. They selected "The Real Thing" because it was the only song that appeared on every list. It had already become a black sheep hit for Russell Morris and even had it not aged badly in the more than 30 years since its original release, its semi-intentional goofiness was a poor fit for Midnight Oil. It only sounded weirder for their attempt to make it sound like a song they could have written. They hadn't played it live in 20 years by the time of their last tour in 2022 note .
- Hitless Hit Album:
- Red Sails in the Sunset hit #1 on the Australian album charts but netted no Top 100 singles there.
- The compilation Flat Chat is almost this by design. Only 7 of its 18 tracks were singles, and of those only "Dreamworld" and "Redneck Wonderland" charted (at #40 and #54 respectively) despite the former being one of their best known and most often performed songs.
- One-Hit Wonder: While in their native Australia the band is a household name, many countries had them charting only with "Beds Are Burning" and\or "Blue Sky Mine" (for instance, in the US the former is their only Top 40 hit with its parent album going platinum there, but the latter topped the Mainstream and Alternative Rock charts, with its parent album going gold. The band's songs got plenty of airplay on alternative radio and MTV before their American breakthrough).
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