Loud microphone warning. Anyway, this was just a fun thing I thought to do in tandem with this blog. It's all very rough and I don't spend the entire time talking about the music, but if you need a fix of more content while also getting to find out how many times I miss a jump and fall down, then enjoy. Thanks to everyone who came along to hang out, and everyone who's wished me a happy birthday this week, it's all very appreciated even if I don't always work myself up properly to respond.
#960. Odd Mob - Is It A Banger? (#70, 2014)
96th of 2014
I went into this list thinking that I would on occasion dig into certain relevant pieces of media in order to better fill out some entries. I still intend to do that, but it's more important that I actually show some sign of ever finishing this list. With that in mind, I did not watch all 126 episodes of Parks and Recreation for this, but I did jump straight to the middle of Season 6 just to watch the episode that is sampled in this song. I quite like the show when I have seen it, but that's a heck of a lot of work for "Is It A Banger?"
If you need the context for this, all of the spoken word in this song is from Aziz Ansari's character Tom Haverford, in a brief aside where he elaborates on his scientific method for finding the best songs to listen to. This is all for the purpose of DJing a high school prom which blows up in his face when he realises that he's out of touch with the kids who would prefer to listen to alternative rock instead of trap & southern hip-hop. It ends with a quick acceptance of the fact that adults have better things to do than keep in touch with youth culture. I'm older than Aziz was when this episode came out and the irony isn't lost on me.
There are quite a lot of musical references in the episode that make me feel like the writers know what they're talking about. While he's delivering this monologue, you can see a chart of various songs being graded as potential bangers and it's an interesting time capsule. A certain Atlanta trio who had just barely cracked the mainstream thus far gets the nod of approval, several years before they'd make it onto this list, and there's the interesting distinction that Rocko's "U.O.E.N.O." is not a banger, but the remix with Rick Ross's infamous lyric is. The main dig though is at Mumford & Sons' "I Will Wait", that of course fails the test due to its acoustic instruments. I admire that he's out there giving it a try even though it's clearly out of his wheelhouse.
It does start to get a little bit off when we get to the prom though, as the buzz kill song he's playing is "We Own It" by Wiz Khalifa and another rapper who will eventually appear in this list. Admittedly it wasn't nearly as big a hit in America as it was in Australia, but it's strange to hear kids who will eventually jam out to "Song 2" by Blur complaining that this song from 6 months ago is too old. It feels like an underdeveloped way to signal being out of touch, although if the show was secretly set 10 years in the future, it's perfect.
Now that's out of the way, I'll dispense the important facts: Odd Mob was originally a duo but since 2017 is just one person, and there is a question mark in the title but not on the artwork. Though this was his one viral turn, he's remained active and this track is only his 25th most popular song right now according to last.fm. It's a cute novelty but doesn't really hold up to return listens. Then again, a few years ago I intentionally downloaded a Lumineers song so you might want to discard my opinion on this sort of thing.
#959. Thelma Plum - These Days (#92, 2020)
97th of 2020
I don't approach this list with the purpose of dumping all over beloved classic songs outside of the aforementioned time window. Fate sometimes forces my hand though. I liked "These Days" by Powderfinger a lot more when I was a teenager. I think it had some fun note charts that were within my range on SingStar. I don't have any real emotional connection to it though, so it can't help but feel a little bit turgid to me.
There is a modicum of enjoyment and excitement to be had from it though, which is more than I can say for this cover version. This time it's not actually a Like A Version, but the song choice and vibe are all still there. The best I can say about it is that it's considerably shorter, and doesn't adhere to all the same musical choices of the original. Thelma Plum has accumulated quite a handful of entries over the years now, and it's probably not a surprise at this point that the cover is the one I'm least fond of.
#958. Doja Cat (feat The Weeknd) - You Right (#83, 2021)
96th of 2021
There's an alternate universe where Doja Cat briefly holds the record for most Hottest 100 entries in a single year. She ended up with an impressive 5 entries in 2021, but the reality is that it's all she was practically allowed. She had nothing else on the voting list to choose from. If triple j were feeling generous, they could've allowed votes for "Ain't Shit" which could have possibly gotten over the line. It could also have siphoned votes from this and left her at a different set of 5 but we'll never really know.
Despite her very in-your-face attitude, Doja Cat also frequently deals in some of the more restrained songs to have made the pop charts in recent years. A lot of them really depend on my mood as to how I'll respond, because they can just hit the spot right. This one I don't think ever really gets there. It doesn't even have to be the last time I say this, but Dr. Luke just does not do well producing trap music. The drums sound flat and a little too high in the mix. She mined a similar sounding hit in "Agora Hills" from her next album and I think that one finds the balance a bit better.
In general it's just not an especially interesting song. Most notable for the headline grabbing feature, which means I can finally talk about The Weeknd. Except he's a pretty perfunctory presence on this song so I won't bother getting into much detail. He's got way more to show on his own. If not for several of the songs in close proximity to it in 2021's list, I'd say this would be guaranteed to flatten the BBQ listening party vibes, whatever they sound like.
#957. DOPE LEMON - Hey You (#84, 2019)
95th of 2019
I might keep saying this but it's always been very important to me that I treat every entry separately. A lot of people will pigeon-hole artists into a single box and only occasionally deviate. The kinds of folk who might say 'They only have one good song'. Ignoring the fact that there's probably no artist with a big enough catalogue that I'd willingly listen to all of with such a poor hit rate, it's just not a very interesting criticism. I'm not saying this applies to DOPE LEMON anyway. He's got two more songs to come after this one that could potentially be filed under 'Good' if such a line exists, and that's just within the Hottest 100 canon anyway.
The reason I say all of this is because not only is it hard to say much about this song, but it is one I'm guilty of filing away in a lazy manner. This song doesn't really sound like "Marinade", but it gives off a fairly similar, sluggish vibe that doesn't offer a whole lot. It's low enough in the 2019 list that you're still probably thinking to yourself about how 'We got stuck with this while something great probably just missed out'. It's not all that bad but hardly something to deliberately seek out.
#956. Steve Lacy - Static (#72, 2022)
98th of 2022
I've been listening to The Internet since 2015. That's not a flex, they just had a triple j Feature Album in that year and I liked what I was hearing. That album is "Ego Death" and it's their first release since Steve Lacy joined the group. He'd also only just turned 17. In saying that I didn't really know who Steve Lacy was for a little while yet. He'd start popping up elsewhere, and of course on The Internet's 2018 song "Come Over", Syd kindly says 'Steve' before his guitar solo. Eventually, Steve Lacy would find belated success with his song "Dark Red", just in time for him to release a new single that would soar him to bizarre heights...but that's a story for another blurb.
Steve Lacy made sure to certainly not be a Hottest 100 one hit wonder though because he had enough good will to also collect this second entry. Unfortunately it's not really one I can get behind. It doesn't really feel like a finished track. I know that it's a common complaint to say TikTok songs are undercooked, but I think two and a half minutes is plenty of time to get everything done. This just doesn't get there. I can only ruin it further by saying that it's probably the only Hottest 100 entry to ever include the lyric 'uWuWuWuWu'.
ALSO: As previously mentioned, tonight (at around 12pm UK time), I'll be playing through Banjo-Kazooie on my Twitch channel. To 100% the game you need to collect 100 jigsaw pieces, and so every time I do, I'll move through triple j's 2023 Hottest 100 from #100 to #1, talking about those songs with rough thoughts that don't give me the above leisure I have to look things up. There'll be a display on screen to keep up with what I'm talking about to. Should it go alright, I'll post a VOD on here later.
#965. Vance Joy - Clarity (#29, 2022)
99th of 2022
It's a positive endorsement for 2022 that I'm putting this in 99th place. It's not really offensive in any way, but something's gotta go there. This entry marks a solid decade of Vance Joy dominance, and with no real sign of waning. A lot of artists who find commercial success can start to feel a bit passé, or at least less in-step with the younger generation of Hottest 100 voters coming in. This being a relatively minor hit by Vance Joy's standards but still landing in the top 30 here is an impressive showing.
I recall being extremely negative on this song when I first heard it. Like usually I can try and find something that makes me want to come back but this song just doesn't have it. The most memorable thing here is the extremely repetitive chorus. It makes me think of Ali Gatie's song "It's You", a song with over a billion streams on Spotify that I nonetheless cannot take seriously. Vance Joy says an approximation of the line so many times it loses all meaning. There'll still be plenty more Vance Joy to come here, and this isn't even the last "Clarity".
#964. Illy (feat Scarlett Stevens) - Tightrope (#17, 2014)
97th of 2014
This track is not on iTunes or Spotify. There are some unofficial uploads on YouTube that rack up 4 digit view counts, but otherwise it's been strangely wiped. It would be interesting to see how the battle stacks up between this and the original album version but it's not a level playing field anymore.
It probably doesn't matter on the whole. This version of the song did make it an ARIA top 50 hit, but months later when it had a substantial tenure on the chart, all the momentum was on the original version. This is interesting to me because the most substantial difference isn't the guest vocals. Scarlett just sounds like she's mimicking Kristina Miltiadou's original version and I don't think most people would pass a blind Coke/Pepsi test on the two. For whatever reason, everyone was seemingly tricked into getting the version of the song that has a lengthy string outro. I'd presume most radio stations were playing a hybrid version that just omitted the outro.
triple j seemingly only ever plays this version though. It's understandable given that Scarlett's pedigree in her other band (who will eventually appear many times in this list) ticks more boxes for triple j listeners than otherwise. It also serves as convenient for the Hottest 100. Illy's album "Cinematic" was released in November 2013 and had no time to drum up support for that year's Hottest 100. This was the only version of "Tightrope" that was eligible in 2014, and it served to bump up Illy's Hottest 100 streak to 6 years. If I was cynical, I'd say that's why Illy did this, but then he fumbled that bag a little later on, so he's not completely shameless.
I've never particularly liked this song. It felt a bit weird to hear on triple j at the time as just leaning super hard into pop-rap in a way that they tended not to go along with. I don't think Illy does a bad performance here, but rather M-Phazes' production turns it mucky. It's the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from Flo Rida or Maroon 5 circa this era. A recipe for success where the appeal is lost on me.
#963. Spacey Jane - Here Comes The Sun - Like A Version (#30, 2021)
97th of 2021
It's not an especially hard-and-fast rule but on the whole I just don't care a lot for cover versions. There's so much music out there to ever want to be stuck hearing something that was already done right the first time. It doesn't help that Like A Version policy restricts it to extremely trendy or well-known songs, the kinds that are already overexposed as is.
At some point in time, "Here Comes The Sun" became The Beatles' most popular song. When they released their catalogue on iTunes for the first time in 2010, "Here Comes The Sun" was the song that charted. On Spotify it has an enormous lead over the rest of their catalogue in streams. Perhaps it just best encapsulates the combination of not sounding so old-timey like much of their early catalogue, and not sounding so experimental like much of their later catalogue. Alternatively it's funnier to imagine that this paradigm shift happened because the song is in "Bee Movie", a cultural landmark to be sure.
This is the first of many entries for Spacey Jane, one of the few Australian bands to have found a significant following in the 2020s. In an era when most Australian albums spend a grand total of 1 week on the album chart, Spacey Jane managed to crack the streaming code and chart for months on end. I'll have many opportunities to talk about all the singles that made this possible.
For now, this is their trophy room Like A Version. The timing is a little off as this was a year between albums for them but they still managed two top 20 finishers in 2021 so it looks the part in isolation. As far as these go, it's probably the most redundant one to me. There are no thrills to be had, it's just Spacey Jane playing "Here Comes The Sun". Entirely pleasant, but offering very little to seek out.
#962. Birds of Tokyo - Anchor (#72, 2015)
98th of 2015
If I can say nothing else in service of this song, it's that it really got me thinking a lot about the frivolity of genre labels. Like it's a means to market an image without admitting you're marketing an image, because no one wants to say they like an artist because of what they look like. So often though, that image is what decides the genre. Katy Perry can have loud electric guitar in her song and get labelled pop, while Birds of Tokyo will have this over-indulgence in synths be the most played song on Triple M for weeks on end.
Actually there's another comparison I've made so many times that I worry I'm overdoing it to the people often in earshot. The year before this song came out, Ian Kenny's other band (who will eventually appear in this list) covered a certain UK trio (who will also eventually appear in this list). That band tend to get interesting genre tags, in part due to their label origins, but they don't get the same branding as this single does. It just feels wrong to me when this sounds like an attempt to re-create that group's biggest hit.
I'm not opposed on principle to this sort of experimentation. The whole EP is very synth heavy but I think the second track, "Puzzle", does a good job of it. There's a sticky chorus that's accentuated by the synths behind it. I'm also contractually obligated to mention track 3 on the album, "Weight Of The World" which descends into hilarity. It was all produced in-house, but it's the sound of a band well out of their depth. At the same time if you take out that template, I can see parts of it fitting onto their next album, which I'll get to discuss here eventually.
An important thing to disclose here is that Birds of Tokyo were one of the first bands I ever got obsessively into as a teenager. I fully cheered them on as they went from scrappy side-project to chart-topping stars. From this point on, the allegiance got a little sketchy. I can only imagine how Fremantle Dockers fans feel. Birds of Tokyo played at their losing Grand Final, and then about a year later, release a song about anchors. At least they've not done anything to upset West Coast Eagles supporters.
#961. Sticky Fingers - Australia Street (#70, 2013)
97th of 2013
I feel like everyone got it right the first time. This was the band's second ever Hottest 100 entry, and a little bit of a comedown from their first, landing 9 positions lower. When triple j did a Hottest 100 of the 2010s, the fanfare came roaring in, and this was their highest ranking track. Admittedly it feels like a technicality. When it came to that countdown, there was a lot of re-ordering the canon that matches closely with Spotify play counts. That's a chicken & egg situation if there ever was one, but it does make it seem pretty clear that "How To Fly" was their real meal ticket, but with a voting list largely based on previous vote results, it never had a chance.
The thing I do find interesting about this track is that it's in the surprisingly common lineage of the early 2010s with major label stars being accused of ripping off Australian bands in their music videos. Probably the most notable one was with One Direction having a similar visual effect to Clubfeet's J Award winning video for "Everything You Wanted". It got thoroughly dislike-bombed by One Direction fans and never recovered. Ariana Grande also caught heat for the video to "One Last Time", in regard to a Canberra band who will eventually appear in this list, and for this one, we go to Coldplay. They're all probably coincidences really, but in any case, Coldplay filmed the video to "A Sky Full Of Stars" in Sydney, specifically in Newtown, with a growing flash mob behind them. It's very similar to "Australia Street"'s video which uses the very same street, but they walk in the opposite direction. This one probably raised the least fuss of the three, in part because Sticky Fingers said outright that they didn't care, and because Coldplay fans aren't going out there rallying each other to take down the underdogs.
I don't have any deep, calculated reasons for ranking this the lowest of Sticky Fingers' original songs on this list, it's just a bit of a mood kill to get through. There are definitely songs that I like for elongating the words on their hook but this one just doesn't land for me. I was pretty on board with the first two songs of theirs I'd heard at the time (when I ranked the first 2000 Hottest 100 entries at the time, "Caress Your Soul" landed at #737), but this made me feel like their main appeal was a little lost on me.
ALSO: While I'm here I'm going to properly announce that on Monday night I'm going to continue my annual tradition of streaming Banjo-Kazooie on my Twitch channel on my Birthday while simultaneously going through with rough thoughts, hot takes, opinions on every song from the 2023 Hottest 100. More info on my Bluesky when I have it, and I'll probably mention it on Monday's post too.
#970. Chet Faker - (Lover) You Don't Treat Me No Good - Like A Version (#21, 2014)
98th of 2014
With triple j's Like A Version program getting to a bigger audience over time, it formed a symbiotic relationship with the artists who record them. It's in triple j's best interest to get the biggest artists they can wrangle in for it, and if those artists are on the rise, it can be in their best interest to check off that rite of passage. Looking back, it becomes a time capsule of who could be considered a big enough deal to warrant it.
This particular entry is a good point to bring up what I consider the trophy room Like A Version. We've seen it happen several times where an artist is having a particularly good year, they get a lot of hype for their Like a Version and it polls incredibly well. It seems to manifest in a similar way each time, where the artist will get loads of entries in the upper parts of the list, with the Like A Version trojan horsed in to represent their sheer cultural grip in that moment. It's the ultimate insult to anyone dreading their success because if that's not bad enough, even the half-hearted cover they did in the studio is annihilating all your favourites in the poll.
It makes for a good reminder that Like A Version audience reach is not created equally. Even if it's initially mostly inadvertently shared on the radio by similar numbers of listeners, you're inevitably going to skew that the moment that fanbases come into play. Thanks to algorithms, it doesn't even need to be about people reposting (although they might do that too), just the sheer engagement level sustains itself, making sure that everyone knows about it. I'm not about to suggest that people are disingenuously voting for Like A Versions they don't like, but the sheer nature of it means that most people will only really vote for a band they like covering a song they like, but might not even hear it if the band isn't high profile enough. Probably why triple j have been so much stricter on what songs can be covered.
So let's talk about Sonia Dada first. I find "You Don't Treat Me No Good" to be an interesting hit song for a few reasons that may or may not be known to you. Firstly, this song was massive when it came out. I can't ever recall not knowing this song, and this tracks because it's a little bit older than me, so it really has always been around. In addition to being a chart topping single, Sonia Dada even had a second big hit at the same time. At one point this group were sitting at #1 and #3 on the charts. This might be because the popular remix of "You Don't Treat Me No Good" was on the single for "You Ain't Thinking (About Me)", a common tactic at the time. I might just be wrong, but it does strike me as bizarrely successful for a song that I instantly forget after I finish hearing it.
Another interesting thing about this song is that despite all I just said, it's basically a non-entity outside of the Antipodes. I always get fascinated by these things because it means that there exists a sleeper agent in a bunch of people around the world (all they had to do was live in Australia at the right time) who have some variety of visceral reaction to hearing these chords, and everyone else has no idea what's going on. Or at least it was the case for a while, Americans might have a little more familiarity with it now since Jerrod Neimann got a pretty big country hit in 2010 covering it. Back when there were only a small handful of non-crossover country hits that could make the Billboard Year End list, this was one of them.
Lastly I'm always finding excuses to bring up the fact that this song was written by Daniel Pritzker, of the same named entrepreneurial family. The man behind this campfire acoustic guitar sing-along might just be the richest person to ever write a #1 hit in Australia. He's not the singer on this song but I believe he's the guitarist. The singer is a man with the now amusing name of Michael Scott.
While I've known "You Don't Treat Me No Good" all my life, I honestly couldn't confidently tell you what I've thought about it over that time. It's one of those songs that are such a staple that they almost transcend the notion of being reviewed for me. I only have a specific memory from high school (possibly Year 12) when the song inexplicably became a choice for spontaneous sing-along for various classmates of mine. In that brief period it grated on me a lot but now I just don't really encounter it a lot.
Chet Faker is a little bit older than me so it's very unlikely that he was in earshot of my teen experiences with this song, but maybe he had his own version of it. It's safe to say that he's tapping into that millennial nostalgia window of 'Wow, I remember this song, I haven't thought of it in ages!', and considering that you're basically never going to see it get cross-referenced in US or UK media, it's an excellent specimen for this sort of thing.
I'm not going to talk about Chet Faker really here, I've far surpassed a rational number of words just talking about Sonia Dada, when at the end of the day, there are way more opportunities to talk about Chet Faker. For now this is just his trophy room entry. A cover that doesn't really re-invent the wheel, just getting by on the sheer novelty of it.
#969. Lime Cordiale - I Touch Myself - Like A Version (#17, 2019)
98th of 2019
Here's another one. While this epitomises the trophy room Like A Version for me, I have to apply some caution with that label. When triple j did a Hottest 100 countdown in 2023 for Like A Versions, this came in at #4. #4 of all time! There's no doubt it's popular, but it's one of the hardest ones to wrap my head around. It's probably not helped by the fact that the first time I found out about it, my immediate reaction was akin to absolutely not having any interest in hearing it. It's hard to shake off that perception when the cover itself doesn't do anything to make me want to opt into it.
Probably though the most central issue is that I struggle to think of a circumstance where I'd want this song to be covered. It's not a song I completely adore, but it's one that's pretty clearly accomplished its mission statement. It's a song that's puerile in the most immediately obvious way, but managed to be so catchy that it couldn't help but become an international hit, played all over on the radio.
My Divinyls history isn't especially clear, mainly because I have trouble slotting things into an accurate timeline. I'd definitely heard their music when I was very young, as I recall my parents playing a lot of music very loudly from the other side of the house. This being the CD era, there's no way to avoid constant repetition. One of those songs was "Boys In Town". That song terrified me. Something about that invasive guitar riff and the repeated lyric of 'get me out of here' was all very confronting to my late '90s pop listening ears. It just sounds like a powder keg waiting to go off. Nowadays I think it's fantastic for all the same reasons.
I can't say for sure when I knew "I Touch Myself", and it would certainly be a much longer time to connect those two songs to being the same artist. The obvious elephant in the room is that it is indeed used heavily in a memorable scene in the first Austin Powers film. I can't undersell how weirdly invasive that film series has been on my budding taste in music, I just can't say for sure it was my first exposure.
That needle drop borders on the act of gender flipping the song just through context. This cover just does it straight up. I'm not someone who gets worked up about that sort of thing in cover versions. I think if it's done with enough care, then it's perfectly valid. I think with all things considered that Lime Cordiale didn't come to this cover version with the intent of making a mockery of it, nor do I think they did it. The biggest crime is just that it's not a particularly interesting cover.
#968. Glass Animals (feat Denzel Curry) - Tokyo Drifting (#34, 2019)
97th of 2019
This is the sort of song that is particularly tough to rank in a list like this. Most songs set their general vibe pretty quickly and your mood will rest in a consistent way. Even when you get to songs with big, belting choruses but otherwise space-filling verses, knowing that release is en route can quell the boredom. This is a song that challenges this notion by absolutely never resting on being too boring.
This is Glass Animals making an AJR song. Not literally but the general hallmarks are there. It's spitting on the face of regular expectations because 'why shouldn't we put this in the song?' I don't even particularly hate AJR. I feel like they're just not a big enough deal to justify the massive anti-jerk they've cultivated online. Like yeah, I probably wouldn't enjoy "The Click" either, but I've got enough foresight to realise this and not listen to it out of morbid curiosity and then get angry about the fact that it exists. I started collecting Hottest 100 entries before I'd even heard of Glass Animals though, so I wasn't able to get away from "Tokyo Drifting".
On a pure sonic level, this might actually be my least favourite Hottest 100 entry, for the most part. I'm just equally fascinated and baffled by the decisions made here. The goofy sounding horns, the haphazard drum programming, Dave just completely slurring all of his delivery in a weird register that totally clashes against the instrumental. It just sounds so bad. It's definitely doing nothing to convince me that Wavey Davey's on fire, no matter how many times he says it.
If it's not exceedingly obvious at this point, Denzel Curry is the only thing that saves this. A lot of rappers doing guest verses can end up sinking right in with whatever song they're on, but Denzel manages to salvage it with his agonisingly brief verse. He brings a level of energy and intensity that perks me up for a solid 23 seconds before we're back where we started. It's also fortunate that this wasn't just a one-off fluke appearance by association, and I'll get several opportunities to talk about Denzel Curry while not being surrounded by all of this. I guess you could say that this is simultaneously the most and least I've enjoyed a song so far on this list.
#967. Adrian Eagle - A.O.K. (#95, 2019)
96th of 2019
As far as artists on this list go, Adrian Eagle has one of the smallest discographies around. This song comes from an EP he put out in the same year. He did a Like A Version then as well, plus one other single he put out in 2016, and another he put out a month ago, that's it. Well, it is for him as a lead artist, because he's put out just as many songs as a guest performer. It's obviously how I first heard of him because this isn't his only appearance on this list.
I'm not super enthusiastic about this song. I think the chorus just doesn't quite land right. Partly because I'm not sure who it's supposed to be targeted at. The use of the word 'them' implies some sort of antagonistic influence that isn't really expanded upon. Or otherwise I guess 'A-OK' as an expression just feels too passive to be properly empowering. I was having a discussion online not long ago, where a lot of words with a meaning of 'moderate' tend to slowly gain negative connotations through the way they're used over time. It's partly because we're only usually interested in things that are good, so while mediocre just means middle of the road, it may as well mean bad at this point, because who would ever spend a significant amount of time trying to sort through things they think are either bad or mediocre?!
It's a shame because I do think that in general, Adrian Eagle's positivity is pretty infectious. There's a cute moment in this song where he talks about how important his mother is to him, helping him getting into music and now getting to hear him on the radio. Actually another song on his EP, "Housing Trust" has him recalling the days before the heights of the ARIA Awards. He won an ARIA Award for his forthcoming entry on this list, but this song was also nominated. From what's been documented on Genius, the only other time someone has mentioned them in a song was a comedy skit by Aunty Donna that has Hamish Blake calling in and citing his Best Comedy ARIA Awards as credentials.
On the whole, his EP is pretty pleasant stuff. It's mostly produced by Jerome Farah. He's never had a big breakout as an artist (I'm a big fan of the song "Tuesday" he guested on with KYE), but as a producer, it's not the last you'll see of him on this list. One alliterative artist in particular he's worked with many times, so he's racked up quite a few.
#966. Ruel - Younger (#87, 2018)
93rd of 2018
Ruel was born in 2002. He's been in the spotlight for so long at this point and yet at the time I'm writing this, he's still only 21 years old. It was basically his gimmick to an extent. Much like Usher with regards to a certain prodigious Canadian (who will appear in this list eventually), Ruel has been M-Phazes' golden ticket for quite some time. Back in 2015 Ruel's father sent him a demo and he just went all in on him. The partnership remains too, Ruel released his first full-length album in 2023 and M-Phazes produced every song on it. One of those songs will appear in this list too, as well as quite a handful of songs he released in-between.
The question I've had to tackle for many years in this regard though, is whether or not Ruel has always been ready for the big stage. Young artists are great for marketing, as well as having so many years ahead of them, but they're also not yet in their prime. When you're a teenager, you're still trying to figure out who you are. You're still doing that afterwards, but you're generally going with the flow. You're definitely not usually putting out pieces of work to be immortalised in lists that some people like me take too seriously. I've got so many snapshots of what teenage Ruel was thinking about on my computer.
That's generally what's held him back at times for me. I just can't quite connect his dramatic soul singing with what essentially amounts to a bit of teenage angst. The best I can say with this song is that it's either jokingly or cruelly making you feel really old. This is a song about Ruel having a falling out with a childhood friend. This song came out when Ruel was 15. I was 25 when this song came out. The chorus of this song has him reminiscing on back when they were younger! It all just feels so low stakes for all the dramatics. Well there's that and I just also find it to be his least catchy song, very stiff in melody when all the lines are separated the way they are. We'll see how he goes up from here though.
#975. Macklemore (feat Skylar Grey) - Glorious (#52, 2017)
99th of 2017
I mentally pair this song with another that it polled right next to. Since I have less opportunities to talk about Macklemore, I'll save that for when I get there.
You're probably aware of Macklemore's runaway success in the early 2010s. He gets clowned on a lot for it, often for silly reasons (putting stake in the GRAMMY Awards is really not worth the effort, and I thought this *before* all the information about how crooked the nomination & voting process was). Honestly though, I totally get the big success. At a time when popular music was figuring out where it wanted to go next, here was this guy who stood out, not just for his odd voice that doesn't sound ready for the big leagues, but the way he and an as-of-yet non-appearing frequent collaborator carved out a variety of fresh pop rap. You couldn't easily get bored of it because the next single would sound totally different.
The main thing I just wanted to point out here is the extent of just how popular Macklemore was in Australia particularly. While "Thrift Shop" may have debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 a little while earlier, it rocketed up here so fast that by the time it did top the US Charts, it had already finished its 7 week reign here. That 7 week reign only coming to an end because it was replaced by "Same Love". "Thrift Shop" is a very rare Hottest 100 winner to not manage to climb up the charts on the week following its win, just because it was already being bested by another song that performed well on the countdown. Macklemore and that guy I can't name yet had another #1 with "Can't Hold Us", which would have been Australia's 1,000th #1 hit if Baauer's "Harlem Shake" didn't troll itself to the top a couple weeks earlier. Then, despite interest waning around the world, in 2015 they had another #1 hit, and we'll get to it on this list eventually. That's the end of the Macklemore chart topping saga here, but once again while America had sailed off that ship, he kept going here, and scored another two #2 hits here: One being a 2018 collaboration that is not on this list, but the lead artist will be, and this song here.
On the topic of Macklemore dethroning himself, it's actually somehow applicable again when this song came out...but this one's not even involved. Although the official result didn't come through until weeks later, there was enough of an assured response from Australia's 2017 same-sex marriage survey that "Same Love" returned from the ashes and topped the iTunes chart by a landslide. It was enough for it to re-enter at #4 on the ARIA Chart despite not even landing in the top 50 on Spotify. By sheer coincidence, this happened to dethrone Macklemore's song with Kesha, "Good Old Days" that was topping the iTunes chart at the time. This song didn't really see much of an adjacent up-tick, but it did end up being Macklemore's highest charting song on the ARIA Chart that week, and it was in fact the one week it spent at #2, trapped behind a monster hit that will eventually appear on this list.
To get away from Macklemore though, I'll also note that this is the only Hottest 100 appearance for Skylar Grey. It's very surprising that she even has one. Aside from having a first name that is spelt differently to how Walter White's wife (yo) does, and a second name that is spelt differently to how Conan Gray does, making all three of them difficult to remember, she's a protégé of Eminem, who has not appeared in a Hottest 100 since 2002. She and Eminem both traded duties in gifting each other hits, between Eminem's charisma & name power, and her skills at writing a hit. All of this was a world away from triple j, but Macklemore managed to bridge the gap. We'll see so many more cases of unlikely Hottest 100 entrants this way.
Anyway all of this background that I find interesting is just to distract myself from having to talk about this song, because I really struggle to get anything going there. While I can praise Macklemore's early run of hits for sounding distinct, this just feels like a hollow shadow of "Can't Hold Us", but without that usual collaborator's production flair, and without Ray Dalton's strong hook game. Skylar Grey just can't really connect in the same way there, so any momentum I might find myself catching onto just careens into the wall when the chorus comes through. It's democratic and all but this just feels like a weird inclusion in general.
#974. RÜFÜS DU SOL - Treat You Better (#23, 2018)
95th of 2018
Another group with no shortage of opportunities to go over, and another group whose entire Hottest 100 history is within this time frame. Well, they did make #192 with "Paris Collides" back in 2011 to be fair. It really shows how much the group has changed over time as it sounds like it would fit snugly onto their 2013 debut album "Atlas", but not much further than that. Tyrone Lindqvist's vocals are also not quite as expressive as they'd grow to be, he stays largely in a lower register, never really threatening to overpower the instrumental.
For now though, we're going completely arbitrary on the timeline and jumping to their 3rd album "Solace". They've maintained pretty consistent commercial success since 2013 but it's notably their first album that didn't go to #1 in Australia. On the surface, they didn't pick a bad week. A lot of competition but they had the best showing in the debuts, in a top 10 week with debuts from Disturbed, Troy Cassar-Daley, Khalid, Greta Van Fleet, the "Bohemian Rhapsody" soundtrack, and a Like A Version CD, RÜFÜS DU SOL came out on top of all of them. It's just unfortunate for them that it was also the week "A Star Is Born" was fully out in theatres in Australia, so that jumped to #1 in its 3rd week on the chart. The big hit "Shallow" has two co-writers who will eventually appear on this list.
When "Solace" came out, "Treat You Better" looked to become the biggest hit on the album. On Spotify it stormed past the three previously released singles (two of which will appear on this list) right away. It only narrowly missed out on being their highest ranked song in the Hottest 100 that year. I was fully expecting to find out that it's the most streamed song on the album now, but it's in 3rd place, just narrowly behind 2nd.
I'm not going to say that the title of this song is a bad omen. I don't hold any remotely positive feelings about the Shawn Mendes song of the same name that came out 2 years earlier, but there's little else in common between the two. Or at least the lyrics in this are vague enough that it's a stretch to also think that we're looking to score on the rebound here. Actually there aren't many lyrics in this song that aren't just 'I just wanna treat you better'. That's part of the problem really. While my initial feelings on RÜFÜS DU SOL weren't especially positive, time and familiarity helped me pick out something more in it. This song has just never really rewarded me with anything, just a general buzzkill all around.
#973. Bliss N Eso (feat Gavin James) - Moments (#53, 2017)
98th of 2017
Remember way back when I was talking about Macklemore and I said that there was another song I mentally paired with his? I've got some exciting news because we're finally talking about it.
"Moments" is to date Bliss N Eso's last Hottest 100 entry. They put out their most recent album in 2021 and it charted reasonably well despite a lack of crossover hits. It only missed the top spot because they put it out on the same week as a now disgraced hip-hop star that I'll have to figure out how to talk about many times in this list eventually. Make no mistake of their commercial prowess too. The album that "Moments" is on, "The Grid", managed to be the first album to unseat Ed Sheeran's juggernaut "÷" in 2017, a feat that many notable artists tried and failed to do both before and after Bliss N Eso. This includes that year's Hottest 100 winner. However this tenure might be over. Their latest single "Feeling Fly" debuted at #15 on the ARIA Australian Hip-Hop/R&B Chart two weeks ago and dropped straight out of the top 20. That's a chart that's been so stripped by recurrency rules that it houses multiple album deep cuts on any given week.
This came through at a fairly turbulent time for the group. Earlier that year during the production of the video for the previous single "Friend Like You", stunt man Johann Ofner was accidentally shot and killed on the set. Years later we learnt at the inquest that it was the result of negligence on the part of the firearms supplier, whose shotgun had illegally produced shells that were effectively not much different than real ones. The man in question also succumbed to cancer later that year. In response to the tragedy, Bliss N Eso played a tribute show for Ofner and raised $40,000 for his family. The music video for the song now is also a tribute to him, but generally it wasn't a single that got much of a promotional push, and won't appear in this list. I do like the song; I think it's got a fresh sound for them.
I'm a touch less enthusiastic about this song. It's not especially unpleasant, but it just feels like playing a little bit too safe. I'm not especially keen on Gavin James in this song either. He sounds a little like a discount version of a certain Australian Idol winner, who both also has two first names, and bizarrely will appear on this list. Only a problem for me though, the song did very well for them. Thanks to some very lucrative playlisting on Spotify, you might be surprised to know that this is their biggest hit to date. There was more love for "Addicted" in the Hottest 100 of the Decade countdown, but all the numbers lean in the favour of "Moments".
In any case, my main beef with regard to this and "Glorious" was really just a coincidence of placement. There's another song that will eventually appear in this list that also landed closely alongside these two songs. When it placed in the Hottest 100, I saw so much disproportionate outrage towards something that is ultimately harmless, and completely in keeping with the Hottest 100's history and general vibe. More on that when we get to it, but I just couldn't help but feel like these two songs were getting by on the fact that there's so little to really engage with that no one's going to raise an alarm. It's a general issue with this discourse. People are so quick to be predictable and get mad at anything that's even slightly provocative. A lot of triple j listeners think of themselves as being into music that's a bit more challenging, until popular music decides to be abrasive and shameless, and then it doesn't count. I'm almost always going to prefer the obnoxious choice over something that I feel nothing from.
#972. Ocean Alley - Knees (#10, 2018)
94th of 2018
I hope you're as thrilled as I am to get through 14 different Ocean Alley entries. They're about as consistent as Lime Cordiale, getting into the list every year from 2017 to 2022. They only finally ended their streak in 2023 by not releasing anything.
There's a common lazy criticism I've noticed of triple j going back to at least 2010, if not earlier. Simply put, if you want to sound smart and above it all, all you have to say is that everything they play on triple j sounds like [insert most recent Hottest 100 winning artist]. Usually when people say that, there isn't actually much substance in the way of examples. The only times the station tends to sound much like it is usually when they're actually playing said artist. We've had two generations of this with stomp & holler folk artists blowing up. As I write it up, the charts are supposedly littered with them when there's only really 3 of them. It'll call back to the time of Mumford & Sons, The Lumineers, Of Monsters and Men (all of these artists conveniently last appeared in the 2012 Hottest 100), and supposedly dozens more that are vividly remembered for existing, just not for having names or songs apparently.
Anyway it's not necessarily just 'most recent' Hottest 100 winning artist anymore, because Ocean Alley's tenure is one that's left its mark. 5 or 6 years later, everything on triple j sounds like these guys. I'm not really sure what's being referred to there though, but that's also partly because I'm not even sure it's fully understood what Ocean Alley sound like. Credit where it's due, they've switched up their sound quite a bit, so hopefully I'll have newer ways to look at their later entries.
For now we get to "Knees". When I was listening to triple j more regularly (usually my alarm played it for an hour a day in the morning, "Knees" is one of the songs that I couldn't help but keep hearing). Ocean Alley were still fairly new to me so I didn't have much of an impression on them, but this was yet another early sour choice. Unlike some other songs that might feel like they never end, this one is at least above average in length to justify it. I just don't really like the chorus at all. I also feel like the build-up in the bridge isn't quite as effective as it needs to be. It feels like that part alone got it into the top 10 though, maybe it's better live. Mind you I come at this having warmed up to the song a little bit. At the time it might have been my least favourite on 2018's list, so never give up hope. I'll also just use this opportunity to shout out the fact that this song was omitted from the ARIA Chart in February 2019, a careless error that leaves them with only 2 charting songs on the ARIA Chart. We'll get to them both, and so much more eventually.
#971. Meg Mac - Bridges - Like A Version (#91, 2014)
99th of 2014
I always found it remarkably strange and interesting that Scissor Sisters managed to poll two completely unrelated covers in the same list. Their big commercial breakthrough was their disco-more-than-just-tinged cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" (we'll also get a very different cover of that Pink Floyd cover on this list), and then they caught the real luck of the draw when they later covered Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out", in a year when everyone couldn't help but vote for any sighting of the words "Take Me Out".
Meg Mac also achieved this feat. It's not likely you're going to see an artist directly do multiple Like A Versions in one year, so we've just got the one. This was Meg Mac's big breakout year but only 1 of her entries in 2014 was actually a song she wrote, which must feel weird. At least for her sake it was the highest one.
Compared to the Sticky Fingers cover of "Delete", this is a slightly different beast that occasionally finds some luck in the Hottest 100. This falls under the category of 'Covering that song that you wish you voted for last year but didn't know at the time, so it didn't make it'. The original version of "Bridges", by an NZ duo who will eventually appear in this list, polled at #131, a little bit behind Frightened Rabbit and Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros; what an odd list. If that's not bad enough, not long after that countdown aired, it reached the ignominious peak of #51 on the ARIA Chart. Not their last bout of misfortune on the charts, but that's a story for another time if I can remember writing this. I'm also not certain of the production cycle on Like A Version, but it's an interesting coincidence that "Bridges" attained that #51 peak about a week before Meg Mac did this cover. It peaked on iTunes exactly 8 days before this. I can't actually recall what made the song reach its peak. They did a support slot for a British pop star who will surprisingly appear as a featured artist on this list eventually, but that was about a week before the surge. Maybe it was just an iTunes front page plug.
Anyway the problem with the whole situation is that I'm just not really a big fan of "Bridges" in the first place. It gets as far as having a memorable hook but doesn't do much around it. The drop might have a bit of potential but it sounds a bit flat and stiff a decade on. When we go to this cover, it's even more low key and I can't really engage with it either. The most enjoyment I think I've gotten out of it is that when it was finally released as a single years later, it came accompanied by artwork that makes it look like she's holding up a fake moustache over her face and is proud of it. Many more chances to come on this list anyway for Ms. Cam Gem.
#980. Lime Cordiale - Dirt Cheap (#86, 2018)
97th of 2018
This is a great segue from the previous entry because there's a relatively similar phenomenon with regard to the Hottest 100. It's what I like to call the preview hit. A song from a relative newcomer debuts them to the poll, perhaps surpassing contextual expectations. A year later they're unstoppable. I like to imagine that at least part of this is because when people make their votes, depending on the kind of voter they are, it's possible that they might exclude certain artists from their vote, since they have no chance of getting in. We don't have the liberty of ranking all the hundreds of choices like when voting for the Senate. To be added to the hypothetical list of artists who can realistically poll can be a great boon. Failing that, there's also the general added exposure that getting in for the first time does. A lot of artists will peak in performance in either their first or second year on the Hottest 100, either because the material isn't resonating quite as much, or there's not as much drive to see them just replicate the success they've already managed.
Lime Cordiale fit this model almost perfectly. After this song snuck into the list for 2018, they had a monster year in 2019 with 3 entries in the top 20. They have continued to poll every single year since with very good but also diminishing returns. But then I could also say something similar about another artist up until they re-wrote the record books in 2023, so maybe Lime Cordiale still have a big outing to come.
As fascinating as I find the whole arc, I wish I was able to get more out of this song in general which has me feeling a bit out of the loop. For the most part it's just a simple love song but it's filled with all these strange lyrical choices. It certainly makes the song more memorable, but how many times do you need or want to hear the phrase 'picture us nude'? The answer is three times apparently, so it's a three-pronged attack that L.T. Smash would be proud of. Aside from that, the song's mixing just doesn't feel finished. It sounds like the triplejunearthed version of a song that would eventually get a bit more kick to it. There's a charm to that in general but this one leaves me fairly underwhelmed.
#979. DOPE LEMON - Marinade (#62, 2016)
98th of 2016
I'm really surprised to even be talking about DOPE LEMON. If any context is needed, it's just Angus Stone. He'll appear later on in the list with his sister (who will also appear on her own), but it's under this moniker that this time window gives him the majority of his entries.
The main reason I'm surprised is because we've been down this road multiple times and yielded nothing. Angus Stone released his first solo album back in 2009, under the name Lady of the Sunshine, and it barely cracked the ARIA top 50. 3 years later in 2012 he'd release another solo album, this time under his real name. Credit where it's due, that album was very successful, debuting at #2 and getting a gold certification. It didn't crack the Hottest 100 though, I suppose back then it was a lot harder to make a residency on the list. I don't think it's for lack of quality either. There were two main singles from that album, "Broken Brights", a lovely sparse folk tune that shows off his vocal talents quite well, and "Bird On The Buffalo", which I don't think would be out of place in the DOPE LEMON catalogue. Adding to this, Lady of the Sunshine had a certain song called "Big Jet Plane" on that first album, and it's barely different to the version of the song that would go on to top the 2010 poll. I can't decide if it counts when it comes to the adage that any song destined to be a hit eventually will be.
Maybe this is the wrong angle to take when it comes to Hottest 100 voting habits, but it was hard to avoid the glaring issue around DOPE LEMON when I first heard about it. It's a stupid name. It sounds stupid to say, and I feel like I'm dignifying something that I shouldn't be when I type it out. This one hit it off though and he's kept the name around for 4 whole albums now, the first three all yielding Hottest 100 entries.
I guess then I just got off on the wrong foot here because this is from the first album and I've never really been able to wrap my head around it. Maybe catch me in the right mood and I'll find the main guitar riff somewhat catchy, but otherwise it's a remarkably meandering 4 minute song. I could draw a comparison to Dave Graney's "Night of the Wolverine" which polled even higher back in 1993 (#48), but that song actually pokes its head out on occasion to remind you that it's there. All I can do here is marinade on it for a while.
#978. Flume (feat Vic Mensa) - Lose It (#95, 2016)
97th of 2016
Flume is quite fortunate to have managed multiple imperial phases. His debut album "Flume" was a huge success locally, and then he managed to find some international fanfare which helped steer him to massive success here again with second album "Skin". His albums since then haven't had quite the same success, but his Hottest 100 voters have never gone astray. If you include a handful of entries that he's remixed, he has the most entries in this list all up. 2016 is a big contributor to that, where he had the classic year of taking the top spot but also littering the list with other entries that had their own varying levels of fanfare.
I'm not sure if it's by accident or design that "Skin" took off internationally as much as it did (you could admittedly make the argument that it was in the right place at the right time with what was going on with Spotify's in sound), but in any case, the album was readymade for it. "Flume" is largely driven by its instrumentals, with just a handful of guest vocalists to provide a slightly more conventional sound. This division still exists on "Skin" but it's definitely been skewed in the other direction as it's loaded with guests and more conventional song structures. Some bigger names too, as this album has Raekwon & Beck on the same project! We'll see some more in future entries on this list, but for this one we've got Vic Mensa.
This is the only time Vic Mensa appears in the list. I feel like he had a reasonable amount of hype in the mid 2010s but never got fully off the ground. I mostly know him for his debut single "Down On My Luck", an immensely catchy hip-house track that's just loaded with hooks. It managed a week in the UK top 40 at #37, a month after streaming data started counting to the charts there. That shift tended to make it harder for more songs to reach the charts, so it's entirely possible that a couple months later it wouldn't have been able to get in. In 2018, Vic Mensa got involved in separate controversies with 6ix9ine and XXXTENTACION (posthumously). My main recollection from these events was a radio interview where 6ix9ine asked people to even name a single Vic Mensa song, where he was met with silence. Obviously this wouldn't have happened if I was in the room. It might not help Vic Mensa's case when he's ended up on the same Flume album as another rapper whose name is similar enough to warrant confusion remembering which is which, and with the Hottest 100 and on this list he's come up short both times.
This is one of the songs that surprised me a little making this ranking. I never really remember having any strong feelings either way about this until I started comparing it to everything else here. That's when the cracks start to show and I had to ask myself if I even enjoy anything about this song. I don't think it's just a dud by default, I'm fairly receptive to Flume's approach in instrumentals. I'm nothing if not a person who will gladly tell you which dial-up sounds are my favourite. Not these ones I suppose. It feels like the bag of tricks runs dry pretty quickly, and the oscillating siren-like motif we do get here isn't one of the greatest. Vic Mensa isn't a terrible presence on here either, but it doesn't feel like he's on his A-game with this one. The elephant in the room here is the hook. It...doesn't give much to work with. Vic ends up just sounding a bit silly on it. Can't win them all I guess Flume.
#977. Ziggy Alberts - together (#43, 2020)
98th of 2020
Depending on what perspective you take, 2020 was either the longest year ever, or it's the shortest year alongside all the other pandemic years that collect up in a mushy pile. What can be odd with the Hottest 100 is that so much can happen in the space of the year, and yet the vote comes around and those January hits are waiting to be compared to things that just came out.
Ziggy Alberts really illustrates that situation with this entry, to date his last Hottest 100 entry (he's got another coming up eventually on this list though). It was released back in January 2020 to help raise money to help with the bushfire crisis in Australia at the time. That's admirable. He could have vacationed in Hawaii instead after all.
In June 2020, Ziggy Alberts released another single called "don't get caught up". It got him a lot of negative attention from people who tended to just ignore his existence otherwise with lyrics about vaccination and 5G conspiracies. triple j never played this song and if not for "letting go" getting plenty of airplay into 2021, you could make the argument that he was blacklisted because of it. Except it wouldn't be a very good argument, since he still got played 5 times in July 2020. Always good to look these things up before you form a narrative out of nothing.
This song is well meaning but it's saddled by the timing a bit for me. Frankly it was just so weird after what had happened in 2020 to hear this land in the countdown as if everything was all normal. It even managed to land at the same rough position that all of his songs do. But then everything was normal when the song came out, and it's remarkable in an odd way that the Hottest 100 reflects this. I didn't really hear it much when it came out though so I only really associate it with the post-COVID-19 perspective. It ends up rubbing me the wrong way in the end, or at the very least, makes lines like 'we will fight for this country I adore' read a little bit differently. I think he tackled the environmentalist angle in a more compelling & catchy way on that later entry in this list anyway.
#976. Vance Joy - Saturday Sun (#54, 2018)
96th of 2018
I find it interesting to see which folk-adjacent artists and songs manage to get popular. For the most part, it's dealing in relatively sound-alike ground and so you have to get something going for you that'll make it stand out from the hundreds of other possible choices. It's why I remind myself to be relatively optimistic when I see a new artist instantly break out, marketing can only go so far.
Vance Joy is plenty established at this point (you can read that as either the date I'm posting this or the date this song came out), so he has a bit of a head start there. On the other hand, I feel like he plays to a relatively fickle radio audience who would quickly turn on him if he didn't provide that 'it' factor in his new singles.
"Saturday Sun" is the 4th single from his second album, one of three that will appear in this list (the other two are possibly forming a nation as we speak). I get it as an obvious single. It's so obvious that it's actually by far the most streamed song on the album, even though the other two big hits polled higher. He's digging deep into his bread and butter here but unfortunately it doesn't quite land for me. The dynamics are surprisingly all over the place, with the chorus sounding extremely overproduced after more gentle verses. If that's not enough it builds to probably his weakest hook, as he vocalises the 'baba' of the horns over the top of them, and does it several times. "Baba Is You" came out a year later but this was an unprecedented amount of baba at the time.
This song also employs the classic pop jump scare intro. It takes exactly 1 second to immediately make itself known. Almost purpose built for when Heardle decided to have a particular fondness for picking Vance Joy songs. It's not something I'd dock the song for, just something I find amusing as a stark contrast to "Fire and the Flood", which I recently got all the way to the chorus (50 seconds if you were wondering) thinking it was a different Vance Joy song. You'll never make that mistake here.
#990. Bliss N Eso - Act Your Age (#67, 2013)
100th of 2013
When I last made a list like this, I don't think I gave Bliss N Eso a particularly fair chance. There's some incongruence between the songs I like and the ones that made the cut, but a handful of their earlier Hottest 100 entries are better than I gave them credit for ("Down By The River", "Woodstock 2008", "Eye Of The Storm" for sure). That last one is of course relevant here because it's probably the first time I heard a song on triple j that was sampling another song I heard on triple j. For that matter, one that was only a year or so old at that point, and one by an artist that will eventually appear on this list. There's a lot to be said about the merits of sampling, and many chances later on to do it. You could even say that we've got a new artist who has built their entire career on re-selling old hits and we'll get to them a couple of times later on.
I guess it was the success of this song that caught me off guard. Every now and then you'll see either the charts or triple j go rogue (depending on your own preference) and get out of sync. Like I remember when following the success of "Heavy Cross", triple j was playing "Pop Goes The World" while the Gossip's label was clearly more invested in "Love Long Distance". Perhaps if triple j were playing that one more it would've charted higher. Similarly, triple j actually put 8 of their songs on the voting list but not that one, so they didn't manage a second Hottest 100 entry that year either.
If triple j were going rogue with this one, it's easier to explain. It probably just doesn't make for great radio if you're going to put a song into rotation that so heavily utilises a song that was just in high rotation. Or I would say this except Australia was a country where "Sexual" by NEIKED and "What Lovers Do" by Maroon 5 & SZA were both massive radio hits just 12 months apart (albeit the latter was a little slow to catch on by Maroon 5 standards). So this song somehow just caught on and became one of Bliss N Eso's biggest hits. The Hit Network were even happy to play it. I guess it's just a bit hard to work out how it all happened when I feel like the initial shock value was the sampling of a song that it so quickly became a bigger hit than. "Act Yr Age" by a band that will eventually appear in this list has a slight lead in YouTube views but "Act Your Age" has a comfortable Spotify lead. Bliss N Eso are definitely more famous but it's just an odd hit I haven't been able to fully reconcile. Incidentally it's not even the only time it happened on this album cycle, because they had another hit right at the end of the year with "My Life", that triple j also wasn't playing (until several months later, oddly). That bad timing meant that it never made the Hottest 100, meanwhile this, which snuck onto the voting list, utilised its external popularity to sneak onto the Hottest 100, Lumineers style.
I just really wish it hadn't. It's not particularly amateurish, but I've never really been fond of just being fed back the same hit but worse. Like, they had the song right the first time, this version takes away some of the shifting dynamics from the original and homogenizes it. I guess credit where it's due, Bliss N Eso predicted the fad of just slightly speeding up songs for zoomers. Also the original band does actually appear in the music video, and everyone's having a good time there. I just don't need Eso making a literal reference to taking a shit in the pool, and then a double entendre about it 6 lines later. I'm not letting Bliss get off easy either, I also don't think there's any earned appreciation of deliberately misinterpreting one of the biggest hip-hop hits of the last 6 months, by yet another artist who will eventually never stop appearing in this list.
#989. Sticky Fingers - Delete - Like A Version (#84, 2015)
100th of 2015
I think at the time, very few Hottest 100 entries bothered me as much as this one. It felt increasingly clear that in recent years, there was a certain formula to Like A Version success, where you could multiply the popularity of the artist with the popularity of the song, and it'll give you the popularity of the cover. It makes sense really, you need something to draw people in to listen to it in the first place, and a lesser known artist doing a competent and likeable cover isn't exactly going to generate buzz. But much like Best Seller lists in all mediums, once you actually lay it all out on the table, it just looks a bit bland and unrewarding to any consumer who craves variety. When they land at the lower part of the list, there's a feeling of regret, like it's something that just lazily crossed over the line.
Lazy is a good word for it here though. As you might know, Paddy from Sticky Fingers already played bass on the original song, so there's good reason to feel like this cover isn't breaking much ground. It's not the only Like A Version to include original personage on it of course, there's a pretty notable one to get to in the future. When this came through though it just felt like people were voting the same song in back to back years, kind of like a certain Bag Raiders song. It also came after 2014 made it clear that Sticky Fingers had a fairly irregular voter reach, with enough clout to vault multiple album tracks into the Hottest 200 and actually polling one in the 100. They did something similar in 2016 so in addition to being a song that was already in last year's list, it was a habitual vote for the band who had nothing else out that year.
There are two elephants in this room. One is Sticky Fingers themselves, and the other is the placement of this slightly above the original. The former I can probably touch on later as they have many entries to come, but for the latter, it's not really something I've long held. It was only when I was making this list that I came to the realisation that this version feels more finished. The addition of keys fills out the weird emptiness of the original. The transitions when the track builds up feel more natural, and Dylan sounds a bit better doing both vocal roles. Still not something I really want to go back to, but I've made some amount of peace with it.
#988. Vance Joy - Fire and the Flood (#16, 2015)
99th of 2015
For quite a while now I've been listening to new music very immediately on Spotify. Often before the playlist's titular Friday because of time zones. The main effect of this is that I've often forged relatively unbiased opinions on new songs. The discourse just hasn't started, and what's more, there's no telling what's actually going to be important in the long run. That's mainly because so little of the new releases of the week do end up taking off, so it's mostly a lot of non-starters. Saying 'this won't be a hit' is such a safe bet because of the odds in play, but it regularly blows up in my face, whether it's a colossal hit from 2021 that will eventually appear in this list, or a big hit from 2015 that's appearing in this list right now.
Vance Joy is one of the biggest names whose Hottest 100 career is enclosed in this list. He started in 2013, and has only missed 3 countdowns all the way to 2022. He has never failed to stay relevant. This song came out about a year after his debut album, that already netted 3 entries which will eventually appear in this list. It was released as one of the two new songs for the deluxe edition of the album, in a time before that meant 'hey we're trying to buff the streaming numbers to get it stuck in the chart'. Bonus tracks always come with a bit of skepticism for me. It's easy to get the impression that they're largely songs that were written for the album, weren't good enough to make the cut, but now that you're selling to people who are already on board with what that album sounded like, you can make an enticing offer with leftovers from those sessions. When I first heard "Fire and the Flood" I thought it sounded exactly like that.
"Fire and the Flood" is not exactly like that. Actually Vance Joy wrote it in 2015. Notably also he wrote it with a certain protégé of Dr. Luke who had never had a Hottest 100 entry at this point. He would eventually produce several others including one where he has a lead artist credit. I'm not sure how much he actually contributed to this though. There's a little more bombast but otherwise it sounds very on brand for Vance Joy.
The writing on this song was always my biggest problem with it. It might just be a case of bad timing, but I feel like it was not long before this that I had my attention drawn to what are two of the most prevailing clichés in songwriting: metaphors about water, and metaphors about fire. For Vance Joy it's a particularly egregious case because his first two Hottest 100 entries use one of these each, and then in a stroke of non-inspiration he puts them both together on this. Not only that though, but he uses it for what feels like a first draft of a rhyme. Flood/blood lands like a clunker as is, but it's all those empty words leading up to it that just take me completely out of the song. It all just feels so workmanlike, and hardly becoming of what could still be argued as his biggest out-the-gate hit song. He has bested its Hottest 100 position four times though.
#987. DMA'S - Believe - Like A Version (#6, 2016)
99th of 2016
It's hard to imagine there's a more controversial take on this list than this placement right here. I'm writing this not too far removed from when this cover version topped the all-time Hottest 100 poll for Like A Versions. A win which feels like one of the most obvious wins in all of Hottest 100 history. The moment I heard about the poll, the first thought that came to mind (even before speculating fruitlessly on a certain artist possibly polling) was that this cover would win the whole thing. Admittedly I was somewhat pre-empted, because /r/triplej had already done a similar poll not long before. This ended up winning that whole thing, and that's on a subreddit that I would think leans a bias towards a certain other contender. If memory serves it's also comfortably the highest certified Like A Version on the ARIA Chart despite never actually making the chart. Lots of people love this cover to bits.
I'm always going to be left out in the cold on this one. Cover versions always carry a lot of baggage, particularly when they take on a life of their own. It's usually a win-win for both artists since they'll inevitably drive up discourse that makes people engage with both versions. Doesn't even matter why you're doing it, a hate-listen is still a listen. I don't think the original version of "Dancing On My Own" (by an artist who will eventually appear in this list) would have so many streams if it hadn't become such a touchy subject after getting covered.
I do not need to come to the defence of Cher. Her many decades of success and relevance speak for themselves. Actually in 2023 I saw her act in the movie "Moonstruck" and thought she was great there too. "Believe" is one of the biggest hit songs of the 1990s and does the rare double of being a pioneering single that overcomes the messy first attempt status to still hold up well. If this were a battle anyone outside of Australia was aware of, Cher is going to win it every single time.
With where this cover stands in the Like A Version history books though, it's hard to not want to scrutinise it. Like we're talking a roughly two decade undertaking, closing in on 1,000 recordings and this is supposedly as good as it gets. It's an impossible task to not be underwhelmed. Not least of which because we've seen this set up so many times before. Literally any time someone takes a guitar and plays a song that is not known to be a guy with guitar song, it's suddenly profound. It's suddenly tapping something that couldn't be felt under its original guise. I think times have changed to an extent with this. Certainly it's been a long time since I saw someone do this with a hip-hop song. That's one that I think most folk have seen the shortcomings of. On the other hand, the rock band playing a stripped back version of a pop song is one that we're gonna keep around for a long time. I don't want to say that anyone's wrong for liking this, and I'm willing to give DMA'S the benefit of the doubt on all the optics, but when you get swathes of people who say that this version made the original into a good song, the implication that anything has been added here, that'll always bug me. I guess good on them for successfully riding this wave, but it's just unfortunate that I'm so at odds with DMA'S' biggest successes. It's also unfortunate that there's no good place to put the apostrophe in that last sentence.
#986. Dean Lewis - Be Alright (#6, 2018)
98th of 2018
Dean Lewis being on triple j is an odd one to look back on. Inevitably I want to draw comparisons to Pete Murray, who shares the same scruffy image, also had his career take off while being around 30 years old, and most importantly, has two first names. Actually Dean Lewis has four first names apparently. The other way it tracks is that Pete Murray also had his big come up on triple j. A couple of songs from his first album made the Hottest 100 in 2003. By the time I started listening to triple j, I was very familiar with Pete Murray's music, but the notion of it being played on triple j was alien to me. Not saying he was bad, just that he clearly found his place with a different audience. This somewhat tracks with Dean Lewis too. He's had 3 Hottest 100 entries, all from his first album, and as I write this, he hasn't been played on triple j since August 2022 (update: he got a play in 2024), and nothing on his second album has been played at all. For that matter, he had a dubious honour with one of the highest annually ranking songs to go persona non grata for the 2010s Hottest 100 of the Decade, so it's not like he has an army of fans demanding he be put back on the playlist. He's still doing well though, "How Do I Say Goodbye" is pretty much his 3rd biggest hit now.
The slight oddity about this whole situation is that triple j didn't *really* boost him from the ground up. They were quick to play his debut single "Waves" when it came out, but didn't give it the exposure it needed during Hottest 100 eligibility. They didn't really start pushing his music until 2017, right before the song hit the advertisement sync up lottery (or rather Universal Music Australia decided to take a chance on it). I remember reading discussions at the time on triple j boards about how out of place he was on the station. Maybe with that in mind it makes more sense that he got taken out of rotation pretty quickly, but it's still strange that he got to this point in the first place. In any case, while he still was in vogue, he got "Be Alright" into the top 10.
"Be Alright" is one of the songs I vividly recall hearing when it first came out. In that regard I have to give credit for writing a memorable song that stands out (also somehow cracking the US market without remotely catering to it). Granted much of that was just the uncanny resemblance to The Streets' "Dry Your Eyes". Bizarrely it's not the only song in the 2018 Hottest 100 I can say that about. It's certainly something he likes to put on, given that in 2023 he released a song called "Trust Me Mate". I'm not a massive fan of that Streets song as it drags on a bit with too much melodrama. Dean Lewis cuts it down to a slightly brisker length, but just can't engage me with his performance the same way Mike Skinner does. In any case, he kept up this momentum to land a couple more Hottest 100 entries, so we'll see him again.
#985. Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over the Country Club (#63, 2021)
99th of 2021
It's been interesting over the past decade or so to see how much the popular music landscape has shifted, and the way that Lana Del Rey fits into it. An out the gate success, but with a perhaps botched campaign that saw her in the reserves permanently. She'd score many #1 albums and briefly pop into the single charts but always felt like she was in her own world, juxtaposed to whatever was trendier at the time. This is all still true effectively, but the numbers have definitely shifted in her favour recently. She doesn't just have a dedicated following, she's got a Spotify listenership that pulls similar numbers to Lady Gaga and Harry Styles (she was ahead of them both when I wrote this). Maybe the most startling shift is the fact that "Summertime Sadness" has recently been popping back into the ARIA Chart, but now it's largely through people listening to the original version, not the remix. Whatever possible stardom that was suggested at the start of the 2010s has finally been realised.
Everyone has their own thoughts on Lana Del Rey, though I have trouble collecting mine. What always takes centre stage for me is the undeniable fact that in 2011 I was absolutely floored by "Video Games". One of the very few times in my life (admittedly many of them were in my late teens) when my obsession with a song consumed me, and it did so from just hearing it twice on the radio, with no indication that this was a future hit song and well beyond just cult classic. Like a lot of people, my interest gradually waned as it started to seem she had run her course. That's not a fair assessment on its own though, as I'll probably get to later on in this list. She definitely is still capable of surprising in a good way.
If we go back to the topic of Lana Del Rey fatigue though, there is a certain degree of overexposure that comes into play. It's not entirely her fault. A lot of it comes down to her tendency to say things in interviews that then get reprinted bereft of any context. The more it happens, the less I feel like I actually know anything about her. She's the kind of artist who could get simultaneous praise from both sides of the political spectrum for appearing to be on their side. Probably without even saying anything about it, just residing on those vibes.
The title of this song (and album) always felt to me like reaching over the fence to court that sort of socio-political engagement without plausible deniability. It puts me off a bit just for going so deep into conspiracy nonsense that is mostly always better off not getting any exposure or credibility. I'm not saying that she actually believes it but I do believe I'd rather not waste my time thinking about it.
That's not why the song is this low on the list though. That mostly just goes down to my primary metric in this list where I just don't really get any enjoyment out of listening to it. It was pretty much a touch of death for this album for me because it was just hard to conjure up the idea of anything exciting when this was the big song from it. When I listen to it, I occasionally hear some sparks of intrigue, or warmth in the production, but it's all largely to serve a soul-draining melody with no real payoff. I don't think the album is particularly bad either, but it's the kind of underwhelming project that made her have to work extra hard to win me over again in the future.
#984. DMA'S - Criminals (#32, 2020)
99th of 2020
Back in 2015, a certain Perth band released an EP, the title track for which will be eventually in this list. One particular track stood out to me, where the band incorporated electronic elements in a sort of scattershot way that felt like they didn't know what they were doing. Listening to it now, it feels like a prototype of the music they've been releasing more recently. A lot of this vibe harks back to 2012, when Muse wanted to get in on that whole dubstep scene and recruited Nero on their 6th album, which would also house their last Hottest 100 entry to date, "Madness".
I guess this is the DMA'S take on things. Except where Muse signal beamed their creative choices, this song almost feels like a trojan horse. The first 40 seconds of this song sound like pretty standard affair. It's got a pleasant melody, lyrics second guessing the end of a relationship. But then the criminals arrive. I'm not completely opposed to this sort of experimentation but it just does not work in this instance. I think maybe there's just not enough variety and creative arrangement to the chopped up vocals, so you end up just staring vacantly in puzzlement at what's on display. The second time it comes around actually ends up even worse because the extra instrumentation just makes for an uglier mix.
It's also just unfortunate because the way things panned out, all this list does is make it look like I really dislike DMA'S, as they just happen to fare the worst in terms of filling up the bottom end of the list. In reality it's just one of those unlucky circumstances regarding the list of songs. My favourite DMA'S song "Life Is A Game Of Changing" narrowly missed this same list and that'd be considerably higher up the table. They've still got another 9 songs to come here though so we'll see how long they can keep away.
#983. Lime Cordiale & Idris Elba - Apple Crumble (#14, 2021)
98th of 2021
It's easy to associate COVID-19 with 2020 and subsequently bring about those associations to things that were popular then. I mean, 2020 was when "Supalonely" and "If The World Was Ending" became hit songs, it doesn't matter if they were released before then, it just feels right. There are a small handful of songs in the 2020 Hottest 100 that are specifically tied to the pandemic, a certain high ranking novelty song certainly wouldn't exist without it. On the whole though, with how long it generally takes between music being written and it coming out, it's not practical for COVID-19 to dominate that year's music.
2021 if anything is the year that is theoretically living in that shadow. Mostly not in ways that we can actually see since it so drastically affected the creative process and the financial viability of it. It's impossible to tell how much music never got released as a result, or how much it affected the rise of TikTok and its increasing impact on what does & doesn't get popular. For more blatant implications in the countdown, there's a Hottest 100 topping artist who mentions the pandemic in an entry. You've also got this collaboration which probably wouldn't have happened otherwise. Lime Cordiale & Idris Elba met up because filming of a Thor movie was moved to Sydney. I'm currently in the process of watching every Marvel Cinematic Universe film but haven't gotten to that one yet, I assume it is okay. It started with a surprise guest appearance at a live show, and then we got word of a full EP collaboration, where this was the first taste of it. It's because of that EP that there are several Cordi Elba tracks in this list.
There is no shortage of opportunity to talk about Lime Cordiale. They're tied for having the most lead artist entries in this 10 year time frame (despite having no entries for the first 5 years and only 1 in 2018). They are ridiculously successful in the Hottest 100. While many artists will pray to sneak their biggest song into the list, Lime Cordiale tend to make the top half, and very regularly the top quarter of the Hottest 100 with basically every single they release. It's the sort of reliable vote-getting that's really shaped the recent polls.
It can make it more frustrating with entries like this because if you're not on board, it can feel like it's just success by default. If an artist is on a hot streak, they have to try pretty hard to kill that momentum. I'm a little surprised that this isn't a song to do it because it's just so...goofy. It has a melody that sounds like a nursery rhyme, paired with bizarrely off-putting lyrics. There's a bit where Idris sneaks in a line about having a foot fetish which gets an in-song reaction of 'wait, what?'. I was gonna say that this is the closest explanation for why he mentions Barney Rubble multiple times, but actually it's rhyming slang for 'trouble', which is a word that they rhyme it with anyway. That feels like it's against a rule. In general I just can't ever figure out how seriously I'm supposed to take this.
#982. Vampire Weekend - Diane Young (#31, 2013)
99th of 2013
There are two things to fear when making a list like this in this manner. The first is that by starting out on a negative tilt, you risk alienating anyone who disagrees with you from the outset, making it feel warranted that they put you in your place once your weakness at the top has been exposed. It's part of why I don't get much satisfaction with writing or talking about the experience of not liking music, and perhaps why so many of these posts so far have gone varying levels of off-topic to avoid the subject.
The second fear is the less obvious one. It's that by unveiling these sequential takes, I'm merely quantifying a predictable result. Many of these entries so far are songs that I've either made my opinion known about them, or that they're just such easy targets that anyone could have assumed my feelings without confirmation. They're the kinds of takes that are so forecast as to be boring. It's admittedly an unwinnable scenario, but I suppose it could be interesting to consider the reverse. After all, there sure are a lot of obvious targets that I haven't yet gotten to. Maybe in that perspective I'm not so predictable but we'll see.
This is one of those songs that I've made my opinion clear on in the past. In fairness, there are many songs I've made my opinion clear on, only for that to shift with time, but this isn't one of them. I don't dislike Vampire Weekend but they are an easy band to dislike. A bunch of NYC college kids riding the tidal wave of twee into super stardom. Their first album in particular is so lightweight as to be insufferable if you're not in the mood for it.
As far as the Hottest 100 story goes, the Vampire Weekend story caps abruptly with their 3rd album "Modern Vampires of the City". In that 6 year period, they had a similar rate of fire to Lime Cordiale, with 11 entries between those 3 albums. It's then another 6 years until they release a 4th album (sans Rostam) and they're not quite able to even crack the list. It's not unreasonable to suggest they'll probably never get in again, but from 2008-2013, they were riding high.
One thing each of those 3 first albums has in common is that the promotional campaign tended to start off with two songs, one a slower, more contained affair, and the other a raucous bid for attention. For the self-titled, that's "Mansard Roof" and "A-Punk" (actually "Mansard Roof" does get energetic but it's that slow start that always sticks with me). For "Contra" that's "Horchata" and "Cousins", and for "Modern Vampires of the City", that's a song we'll get to later and "Diane Young".
I remember reading reviews from German speakers who would do drive-bys on the Australian singles charts, offering their devoid-of-context views on anything we were listening to. One that always stuck with me is a review of "Rapunzel" by Drapht, where their closing impression was finding the repeated 'baby' lyrics to be annoying. In case you were wondering, Drapht does say 'baby' about 10 times on the bridge, give or take where you cut that off. The lead singer of Vampire Weekend (who will eventually appear in this list sans band) manages to say 'baby' 59 times in this song that's less than 3 minutes long. It's all done in an inflection that seems designed to irritate me, and distract me from any fun spontaneity they do have going on here. Apparently I'm not the only person who thought that the opening lyric was 'You tossed a salad like a pile of leaves". It's actually 'torched a Saab' but it's interesting how both lines work with the simile. That's definitely my new favourite thing about this song.
#981. Illy (feat Ahren Stringer) - Youngbloods (#77, 2013)
98th of 2013
My one prevailing observation about this song is a chart related one. Every now and then, an artist who's been around for at least a little while will do the unexpected and score a brief chart hit. It's unexpected both for being a surprise breakthrough, and in these such cases, being something that just feels out of place on the charts. What it tells me in the end is that the artist actually has a lot of good will behind them and if they more blatantly play the game, they're in store for a huge crossover hit. So this was Illy's first top 40 hit, a year after "Heard It All" was a similarly out of place top 50 hit. He'd spend the rest of the 2010s scoring more substantial hits, all of which end up on this list. You could even say that Ahren's band (who will eventually appear many times on this list) have the first half of this equation too, scoring multiple top 50 hits whilst absolutely never chasing the top 40 crossover. In that regard I find this song very interesting.
What's also interesting to note is that the original version of "Youngbloods" is arguably more popular than this. It's winning quite comfortably on Spotify and YouTube at least. I don't recall if I heard the original before this, but it was around the time I first got acquainted with Ahren's band since there was a running joke on triple j to ask how many anchors they have before playing "Anchors", from the album "Youngbloods".
I'll say to be honest if there's a surprise on this list for me personally, it's just how much this song hasn't aged well for me. I was drawn in by the novel appeal of it at the time, and I was generally positive on Illy's output at the time too, not just because he helped give a lot of exposure to a favourite singer of mine. The boring answer to all of this is that the song just doesn't sound good. Illy often has peculiar production on his hits that can have a charm to it even when it feels a bit dated, but this one is just not getting there. The drums could have a real kick to them but they're buried behind a dinky synth. The first other rap-rock hybrid song that comes to mind is Eminem's "Berzerk" from the same year, which has its own issues but does manage to let the percussion breathe a little more. Funnily enough, M-Phazes has a production credit on that Eminem album. He's also produced many more entries on this list, mostly by Illy and three other generally moodier Australian singers.
The other problem is something that's become more prevalent after an additional decade of exposure. There's also no shortage of other times to mention this, but I'm not often a big fan of Ahren's singing. It can be simultaneously cheesy and grating. Generally it works better for me when he's got Joel to back him up (or vice versa), but having Ahren on his own is like taking out the unwanted ingredient of a sandwich and just eating that for some reason.
