#795-#791

#795. PNAU - Go Bang (#7, 2017)

83rd of 2017

Since early on in 2017, Australian songs have had a hard time reaching the ARIA top 10. The last one to do so just squeaked over the line at #10 for a single week before quickly falling back in line. That's been a common pattern too. Occasionally you'll have outliers like "Be Alright" (#986) but even they've become so few and far between that on most weeks, the best-selling Australian single is "Riptide" (#885) once again. There are just so few opportunities now for local artists to amass the staggering concurrent audience size needed to reach that level. triple j's Hottest 100 is one of the very few things we've got, and it's why "Go Bang" reached the ARIA top 10 for a single week. Not counting a guest feature on a ZAYN single by an artist who will eventually appear on this list a couple of times, the last Australian song in the top 10 was "Chameleon" (#851) almost a year prior. PNAU were doing some seriously heavy lifting for the rest of the team.

The title of 'Highest polling PNAU song' has changed hands 4 times. It was a real shock when "Embrace" was finally unseated by "Chameleon", but then perhaps a bigger one when this song went just that little bit higher, netting them their only ever top 10 finish. It's weird because this is the follow-up hit which lives to be in the shadows, but maybe "Chameleon" achieving further success beyond the polling cut off re-installed the drive to vote for PNAU in these things. Or maybe like me, people just like this one more. You can protest and point to the Hottest 100 of the 2010s, where "Chameleon" polled at #149 and "Go Bang" didn't make an appearance, but I'd argue that given the nostalgic lean of those poll results, it wasn't a fair fight to begin with.

This song feels to me like they found a successful formula with Kira Divine, and now figure they can build off of that into something new. "Chameleon" is a song that largely settles into its own groove and lets Kira take it from there. This takes the sometimes stale piano house trend and gives it a real kick into action. So much of it is the same chord played over and over again but it really elevates things. I did end up rating all of the PNAU entries pretty close to each other, it's really a matter of finding those slight variations on the formula and weighing them up. On a positive note that I didn't get around to mentioning before, Kira Divine actually is credited on all the relevant songs on most of the relevant platforms (YouTube remains unchanged). Better late than never.

#794. FISHER (feat MERYLL) - Yeah The Girls (#68, 2022)

81st of 2022

Speaking of formulae, FISHER mixed it up this time. No, the music still sounds like what you'd expect, but in 2022 he managed to poll two songs at the same time. This means I can look at their respective positions as an examination of their individual merits, rather than just an annual check-in with how FISHER stock is trending. I like this one less, ergo the polling position makes sense to me.

It did have me wondering about the titular phrase. Usually when you get these sorts of things immortalised in song titles, they're somewhat fresh and current, but it was pretty antiquated by the time this song came out. From what I can see, people have been using the phrase 'yeah the boys' for a very long time, but it was specifically around late 2016, with the proliferation of a Facebook group of the same name that the phrase really took hold in Australia. It really captures a certain set of low effort lad culture memes that I feel the internet has collectively moved away from. In any case, the gender flipped term here showed up shortly after with slightly less negative connotations.

I'm uncertain if MERYLL, the Dutch singer on this song, was familiar with the phrase before recording it. It appears that she didn't actually meet FISHER in person until 2023, and she wrote the song as a topline with the UK producer Bad Milk, and then it just ended up in FISHER's hands (or maybe someone else's? Let's save that story for a FISHER blurb I'm having trouble filling out) afterwards. MERYLL is typically a hardstyle vocalist and said in advance of the release that this was her branching out into something totally different. She's not so much singing on this song as she is regaling us with a mundane story. There's probably a shout out to "Can't Feel My Face" (#839). That song only peaked at #12 in Spain where the song takes place, so maybe it's just slightly more novel to hear it in that setting. The Weeknd's only #1 hit in Spain is "La Fama", his 2021 collaboration with Rosalía. The last actual line of the song is 'Girls on the game'. That's a phrase I can't see having been picked up outside of video games, but I wonder if FISHER extrapolated the title from it, giving the song a more viral launching point.

It's a solid groove but it doesn't move me much. Eventually I'll be able to pinpoint the little parts of FISHER songs that really click with me, but we're doing the bare minimum at the moment.

#793. Halsey - Hold Me Down (#42, 2015)

76th of 2015

Halsey was always destined for big things. Anyone who's managed to lock down a considerable audience before playing the radio game just has a huge head start. This song comes from Halsey's debut album which entered the ARIA Albums Chart at #2, this was months before Halsey ever had a top 50 single as a guest, and years before they had one as a lead artist. That's a big pulsating sign that's telling the record label 'Hey, this is a good investment you've got here'.

triple j had hopped onto the Halsey train a few months before that, so they may have played a part in that strong opening. It's where the station's idiosyncrasies come into play here. This song was Halsey's highest entry that year. It's because it's one of just two songs that got played substantially at the time. Whatever you think about "New Americana" or "Gasoline", they didn't really get a shot here. It makes this feel like a temporary stop gap. Halsey's on weighted training clothes until they go on to bigger things. For whatever reason, that didn't especially happen. A couple more of their songs in later years would end up in a similar position to this, but only one Halsey song landed substantially higher, in the top 20. So the dust has settled and this is still one of their biggest entries. Odd, that.

It's not a song that's felt like it's a star maker. If you're already into Halsey, then sure, but there's very little in the way of mind-blowing charisma or intrigue to it. It all feels very cold, slow and mechanical. I'll admit I had prerequisite disadvantage here. About a year before this song came out, there was a minor Australian hit song by KYA & LDN Noise, called "What I Live For". That song has the exact same hook at the end of its chorus as this, and with it being rather pulsating, just adds to this song feeling sluggish and tired by comparison. This gets a fairly standard passing grade.

#792. Olivia Rodrigo - traitor (#67, 2021)

82nd of 2021

2021 has always felt like a big turning point year for the Hottest 100. It's the year where TikTok solidified itself as the breaker of every hit song going forward, and it spilled through to triple j. A lot of the usual old suspects are shoved down the pecking order, and what we got to replace them were 5 Doja Cat songs and 5 Olivia Rodrigo songs. That alone is enough to leave a sour impression on some old heads hoping to have the pop hit machine filtered away from their periphery. Olivia Rodrigo especially might just be the breaking point. You can throw in past justifications for other artists where they made their name on triple j, but you really can't with Olivia. She's a former Disney star who had her first proper single (which I'll get to eventually) debut at #1 before she turned 18. There are no hard yards to be seen here.

Olivia tends to get a pass because most people seem to like at least some of her music. She's something of a genre hopping machine which in some cases has brought some very unexpected sounds to the top end of the charts. I've generally liked her music but I always find the albums a bit patchy. I do respect that she doesn't just bloat them for streaming stats. Thanks to this, you could make the argument that "SOUR" deserves commendation as the most streamed album of all time, because its least streamed song has over 350 million streams, more than any other album I think.

This was clearly demonstrated when the album was released, and Olivia's very small discography was vastly outweighed by the demand for her music, so people just kept listening to it over and over again. There are only a small handful of albums that have managed to land their entire track list in the ARIA top 50. Every song on "SOUR" charted for at least 4 weeks.

A lot of people don't like when whole albums dominate the singles chart. I think it's great. With so much general movement controlled by radio playlists, streaming playlists, algorithms, or in the past, the measurable visibility of a track on the iTunes front page, it's refreshing to see those mechanics interrupted by the true voice of the people. Most of those songs aren't part of that assembly line so you get to see something close to organic movement. Something it also does is gives you a chance to watch the relative popularity of different tracks in real time. It might start off being influenced by what's at the top of the track list, but before long, it's a question of how many people saved and replayed certain favourites, and the real picture shows itself.

It's why I found myself rooting for "traitor" at the time. Just like "Too Good" (#929), it was an album track that launched itself very high on the charts. In its second week, it climbed up to #5, overtaking one of Olivia's actual singles, and it stuck around in the top 10 for a good while after that too. Ironically it wasn't until it became a single that it started slipping out of the charts, and it makes sense. I've had times when I've owned an album, and a single release has shined a light on a deeper cut that I wasn't paying attention to at the time ("Teenagers" by My Chemical Romance comes to mind), but you just can't do it with this album. Everyone had already heard it all, the era of 'hey, here's the new single, start listening to that' has never felt more dead and buried.

Did I actually like "traitor" though? I think I did at the time. As was the case with most of her songs, it showed a new side that sounded fresh. It's all very silly and melodramatic. Taking a friend to task because they patiently waited until after Olivia broke it off to start dating her ex that there were clearly feelings for beforehand. It's the emotional maturity of Tony Soprano yelling to his therapist because his nephew started getting intimate with the woman he decided not to sleep with. Ain't it funny? I prefer to keep this one as a deep cut. The rest of her entries here have a bit more going for them.

#791. Kingswood - ICFTYDLM (#56, 2014)

77th of 2014

If you've never heard this song before and don't plan on changing that, I'll get it out of the way: It stands for 'I can feel that you don't love me'. Maybe you could figure that out anyway. Some conversational acronyms have a way of solving themselves, like we all have predictive text simmering inside of us. Actually I find it's much harder to decipher words when they're spelled out to you in quick fashion, it's too much to process when they spell out 'S-E-N-T-I mentality' in the first verse. But that's got nothing on "Party Started" by The Cat Empire, major props if you could keep up with the bridge on that song. I finally gave up this year and looked it up.

The Kingswood story is that of an occasionally raucous band who seemed to mostly only poll while at their most mellow. They've since taken that a step further and landed on a more country-twinged sound. The fandom hasn't quite followed with them, but they did manage to rack up 5 entries here along the way, so they've got a healthy showing.

As a fan of that raucous energy, this one puzzled me a bit. The most interesting thing about it is the title, while you're generally being robbed of any payoff to anything exciting here. Time has been a little kind to it. It reminds me a little of a 2013 song by a band that'll eventually appear here, operating on a similar scope of ideas. Not sure I'd ever want to try out the inferior product, but I suppose a little variety can be nice.

#800-#796

#800. Rudimental (feat Anne-Marie & Will Heard) - Rumour Mill (#96, 2015)

78th of 2015

The vibes were off for this one from the beginning. Rudimental scored their biggest hit with "Free" (#858) and I felt like it was a worrying sign for their future output. The real sign was when they started rolling out their second album with the song "Never Let You Go". It's faithful drum & bass in typical Rudimental style but just lacks the pulse and excitement of "Feel The Love" or "Not Giving In". It's efficient that they got Foy Vance to fill in the role of both Alex Clare and the other guy who will eventually appear on this list, but he can't rise much above perfunctory even when he's giving it his all. It pretty much tanked their album campaign which was only salvaged by the easy saving throw of having an Ed Sheeran collaboration on deck. For someone who's never made the Hottest 100 before as an artist, I sure find a lot of reasons to mention him here.

The saving throw for the triple j crowd seemed to be this song. A touch too low key to really become a proper chart hit, but it did well enough and voters found room for it in the end. I'm not entirely sure what the draw card is. Anne-Marie hadn't really started her solo career yet, and while I was pretty enthusiastic for Will Heard's contribution to songs like "Sonnentanz (Sun Don't Shine)" by Klangkarussell and "Tear It Down" by The Aston Shuffle, they didn't exactly turn him into a household name either. I guess people just liked the vibe of the thing, it's a little different to what you'd expect from Rudimental.

Actually if we're talking about Hottest 100 performance, Anne-Marie is an odd one. She'll appear once more as a featured artist on this list, but she never made it in on her own. That might not sound so strange given that she very quickly moved away from the triple j radar, but if we're isolating that brief period in 2016 when she was in their good books, it feels like a serious underperformance. Australia was the first country to really give her stripes, with "Do It Right" and "Alarm" performing far better than on her local UK charts. She even came in for Like A Version to cover a reasonably niche Australian song that will eventually appear on this list. For all that she got as high as #195 and never got playlisted again. I always have to share the fact that she's a black belt in karate. As a music nerd who also moonlights as a world record holding speedrunner (or vice versa), I support those who find their calling in multiple fields. This song largely exists because Anne-Marie had already been working as a live vocalist for Rudimental for a couple of years at this point. It certainly won't be the last time we see that sort of relationship in this list.

With my Rudimental inclinations laid fully on the table (and the notable remaining entry for them prodding in a similar direction), I was largely unamused by this at the time. It just seemed to meander with no real sense of purpose. The repeated vocal hook that shows up in the second half of the song starts sounding very silly if you pay attention to it as well. I suppose though when I take the song for what it is, it's perfectly adequate. As I'm listening to it and writing this, I'm catching myself nodding along to it, which implies they were doing something right.

#799. Mashd N Kutcher (feat Dan Andrews) - Get on the Beers (#12, 2020)

75th of 2020

I don't know how many international readers I get here. For any of you out there, bravo for sticking through what is me talking about niche Australian music half of the time. Once again this is true but it's a little bit different this time. This novelty song featuring numerous soundbites from the then-premier of Victoria is a joke that you might have an easier time being in on than I do. It's been years and I'm still thoroughly not in on this joke.

Taking things back to 2020, we had the COVID-19 pandemic. Australia being its own continent and not being very densely populated gave us a decent chance to stay vigilant about it and keep it contained. As is often the case, any successful curbing will spawn skepticism that it's even a big deal, which then leads to it spiralling out of control.

I've been living in Western Australia for nearly 15 years now. We're so far away from most of the country that we're largely not thought about at all. London is considerably closer to Moscow than Perth is to Melbourne. Our COVID-19 response was short and sweet. The border was effectively closed down, and we scarcely had any outbreaks. Mask mandates were fairly brief, but in general the pandemic barely affected my way of life.

A key point of interest here is the rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne. They're by far the two biggest cities in Australia, and fairly close to each other. It's hard to know how seriously people take it from where I'm standing, but there's a lot of back-and-forth about which city is better. For many years, a sticking point that Melbourne always had against Sydney was their lockout laws, effectively a curfew on the city. The city's nightlife can't help but be dragged down with it. This law lasted from early 2014 to early 2020.

A couple of months after that, Melbourne and the state of Victoria were met with constant lockdowns to try and quell the pandemic. At no point should I ever have been able to name the premier of a state I don't live in, but seeing Dan Andrews give press conferences over and over again updating the situation is something even I couldn't completely avoid. Given what Victoria had prided itself upon in the preceding years, I can imagine people weren't too happy having to put up with the constant containment measures. On the other hand, the Gen-Z (or thereabouts) response to this sort of thing often falls under the banner of nihilistic dadaism. Shitposting, in other words.

Mashd N Kutcher are an unexpected name to show up in the Hottest 100 history books. They're an electronic duo who largely specialise in mash ups, or usually just taking a familiar song and slapping a beat behind it. I was not particularly fond of what they were doing, but I suppose in hindsight I have to give them some credit for their source material. No where else would you find people digging through with samples of Art vs. Science's "Parlez Vous Francais?", or Powderfinger's "(Baby I've Got You) On My Mind". Still, they were a novelty act that never got played on triple j and were largely off my mind when they were off the charts.

It took me by surprise when they did show up like this. On the other hand, triple j as a radio station largely operates in two studios, one in Sydney and one in Melbourne. It's only natural that they're going to feed into this sort of discourse. They're the national youth broadcaster after all.

So what is this exactly? Well it's a novelty record that's taking snippets from a speech that Dan Andrews gave in March 2020, one where he declared it inappropriate to 'get on the beers' with all your mates around. This re-arrangement of words is all done in comedic effect to make him effectively say the opposite. It's done with the silly irreverence that makes it almost apolitical. It's a very Australian joke. I'm sure I, and many other people I know can quote Homer Simpson's 'sweet can' monologue verbatim after all. US President Donald Trump also has his voice appear on this track to get us to boo him for never having had a beer in his life. I say president, but when this actually polled in the Hottest 100, he wasn't president anymore, and I'm writing this now as he's president-elect, but posting near the start of the next administration. It's been a long 5 years.

To get back to the point, I'm someone who can honestly say I've never had a beer in my life, and I live in one of the few parts of the world that weren't drastically affected by the pandemic. On no level is this joke built for me. I can appreciate the comedic value of it, and it amuses me greatly that it both polled in the Hottest 100 and made the ARIA top 50, but there's only so far I can go with it.

#798. Meg Mac - Roll Up Your Sleeves (#24, 2014)

78th of 2014

When I think of this song, my mind draws back to 2023 during the AFL Brownlow Medal broadcast when they just randomly brought her on stage to sing this song (she also sung another one of her songs that'll be on this list, but I missed the start so I'm only just learning this). This might have started a new tradition because they did it again in 2024 with another artist who'll eventually appear on this list. I always see people saying they want more Australian artists to appear on the big stage and get proper exposure that's so often reserved for international stars and I agree, but then as soon as it happens you're just met with endless complaints about why some obscure singer is hogging up time. I kind of wish those two factions would dish it out together. I wish I could remember the timeline a little better because it's very possible that I had either just ranked this song on my list, or was just about to, so the timing of having it thrusted upon me would be amusing.

This isn't Meg Mac's highest placing Hottest 100 entry, or highest charting, but it's probably endured as her biggest hit at this point. It makes sense really. It's got all those hallmarks of esteem and grandeur. All those little chorus hooks for everyone to fight over what their favourite one is. At this stage I just wasn't fully convinced. I feel like there's too much focus on that piano melody and it stops everything else in its tracks while it's happening. The momentum does arrive towards the end of the song but I'm just never engaged on the way there. Also it's very funny that the song has the lyric 'he is not fancy, he just wears black', as if that isn't 80% of all Meg Mac photo shoots.

#797. RÜFÜS DU SOL - Like An Animal (#28, 2015)

77th of 2015

With the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to say that RÜFÜS DU SOL's music has developed quite a bit over the course of a decade or so. Mostly it just sounds bigger, befitting of the bigger venues they're playing. It's not a straight line of course. I'm still avoiding mentioning of a certain song from this album that didn't poll under normal circumstances. On the other hand, we are looking at a time capsule of a moment when this was the slightly more idealised version of their sound. I just can't imagine them making something like "Like An Animal" again.

I can't think of another song of theirs that signposts itself for being as lightweight as this one. The high pitched cooing and breezy synths set a pace that never really changes. After that, I feel like it suffers a bit from a lack of personality. So much focus is put on the title lyric, but it never says anything of substance. Maybe they could have picked an actual animal? There's almost nothing in the lyrics to play into the theme, apart from maybe being 'on a hunt' and you can 'hear me calling'. I'm not saying that their lyrics are of utmost importance, and I can't pretend that there's much brilliant insight in the rest of their entries. But an empty simile just feels so much more draining than run of the mill lyrics.

#796. Drake (feat Wizkid & Kyla) - One Dance (#31, 2016)

82nd of 2016

Every now and then, the sheer mechanical nature of music's pecking order gets itself exposed to a wider number of individuals than usual, and the results are rarely flattering. It's largely a streaming era phenomenon but the principles of it have been in place for a long time. Relevant in this case is that popular artists have a certain expected reach when they promote a new song. If that artist reaches a high enough threshold, they'll start topping the chart with regularity. The result of every individual music fan listening to whatever they will, and the one who covers the most ground will win out. Possibly, they'll do it over, and over again because they've become a bigger part of their success than the songs themselves.

"One Dance" was the song that truly signalled that we were living in Drake's world. As a lead artist, it was his first #1 hit in the US, UK and Australia, after his previous single was unlucky to miss out everywhere, we will get to that one someday. Even so, that song would've just been a small blip by comparison, because "One Dance" just ruled the roost for months on end. In the UK, it was #1 for 15 consecutive weeks and fell just shy of breaking the all-time record. This is all while being met with confused puzzlement at the whole thing. "One Dance" is not a song that aims for spectacle, it aims for likeable, enough so that it might not be obsessed over in the greater scheme of things, but when the charts are added up, it's once again the song on the most people's playlists. It's arguably Drake's biggest hit to date, and in case you were wondering, no number of events transpiring alongside a certain other rapper in 2024 have clipped its wings. It still goes along in its merry way, getting streamed a million times a day on Spotify. Until we ship things off to a new platform, it's been decided that "One Dance" is a natural part of life, and even if we do move elsewhere, it'll probably find its way back in anyway.

I generally avoid talking about this song because it's a discourse I'm not very interested in adding to. Once you've seen a song's success blamed as a catalyst for Brexit (the vote happened in in the middle of its chart reign), it's hard to want to chime in and offer any views that line up with that mindset. If you're willing to meet Drake at his level, it's a fairly standard dancehall song. There are some nice hooks here and there. Wizkid & Kyla both feel like they're part of the tapestry rather than vital voices, which is unfortunate, but at least Wizkid has had a lot of success on his own afterwards. Kyla really is part of the tapestry though as it's just a sample of a very minor hit of hers from 2008. That's the kind of crate digging that a chart nerd can get behind.

I was never super convinced by the whole thing, but I never really got bothered by the success. I chose to look at it optimistically as a sign of the changing tides, where Drake had previously put out a lot of good music that never charted especially well here (Drake has 83 top 50 hits in Australia, "One Dance" is his 7th chronologically). So there was a new avenue to have some potentially great stuff dominating the charts. What we actually got 9 years on...well at least there's some enthusiasm to be found, and an appreciation for how well the Hottest 100 filters it down.

#805-#801

#805. Bring Me The Horizon - True Friends (#99, 2015)

79th of 2015

For most artists, getting a #1 album represents the peak of their popularity, or alternatively, the capitalisation that comes after the spiritual peak. Bring Me The Horizon are a strange case in Australia where it's probably more accurate to say that they got successively more popular with each album and only really peaked in 2015 when they already had three #1 albums. It's accurate but a bit of a misnomer at the same time. They first hit #1 in 2010 with their album that has a very long title. They broke the record for the lowest ever sales managed by a #1 album, but they outsold everyone else and that's all they needed to do. Commiserations to The Script who were #2 that week which is the only time they've ever been that high on the ARIA Chart. Bring Me The Horizon scored another #1 album in 2013, which was a little less surprising by then, and it houses two songs I'll eventually write about. That album, "Sempiternal" had some surprising longevity though, and set them up in 2015 for "That's The Spirit" to go to #1, and uncharacteristically achieve Platinum status. As an aside, at this point they still hadn't even gone to #1 in their native UK. In contrast to a certain Abingdon band I'll eventually write about, they just got everything right in regard to timing in Australia.

Let's ignore "maybe" (#826) as it's not really their song, but if you told me that we'd go close to a decade on at the time and I wouldn't find another new Bring Me The Horizon song to put below this, I'd be a little surprised. They have a certain haphazard approach where you never really know what you're going to get. This one isn't even that crazy, all things considered. It's just a song I cannot lend out my full interest and consideration into. It's that title lyric with its twist on the idiom that's too plain to make you take it seriously. I hear 'true friends stab you in the front', and aside from losing the slight double entendre (unless people refer to their chest/stomach region as their 'front'?), it just makes me think of face stabs in "Team Fortress 2". Bring Me The Horizon strike me as the kind of people who might be aware of that reference, so maybe that's where they got it from. They've probably had dumber lyrics than that, but it's given such focus that I can't help but be taken out of it.

#804. FISHER - Freaks (#80, 2020)

76th of 2020

I'm pretty confident in saying that FISHER's Hottest 100 fortunes peaked immediately, and they seemed to be declining in the years that followed. This entry in 2020 has all the hallmarks of being his last entry except he continued to poll year after year, 7 in a row. With a couple of exceptions, it often feels like the FISHER fervour goes completely under my nose. There must be a lot of people just politely enjoying his music and voting for it without making a big deal about it. That seems like the demographic he's trying to hit.

I won't pretend to not be susceptible to the formula but this song does put me in a bit of a bind to talk about. The drops in here aren't extremely different to each other and lyrically it tops out at three instances of the same 7 words. It's probably a song about partying but it is admittedly funny to consider it a song about foot fetishes. 'Shoes come off, and freaks come out', that's the whole thing, make up your own mind. I don't know if these are the same freaks that come out for the mighty trumpet. Hard to see it as anything other than the most redundant FISHER entry.

#803. Vance Joy - First Time (#50, 2014)

79th of 2014

This is the 5th Vance Joy song I'm ranking in the 800s. The side effect to this is that no matter how varied my opinions may be across his discography, we're getting a whole big helping of 'well I'd say it's pretty good but I do have this slight problem'. Jumping backwards and forwards through his discography just so I can keep saying the same thing over and over again.

Well it's mainly this song that elicits the reaction. Actually there's two of those problems here and they're not very interesting. Firstly it's the very undercooked bridge. It all just feels like he left a gap for it but never got around to putting anything there. The other thing is that the cracking in his voice reaches a critical mass here and the end result is a lot of goat noises. In the large pantheon of Vance Joy songs about getting laid, it's definitely one of the catchier ones. He doesn't waste any time kicking into gear which at the very least makes it harder to dread.

#802. PNAU (feat Kira Divine & Marques Toliver) - Solid Gold (#36, 2019)

75th of 2019

This entry finally allows me to divulge the fact that Kira Divine is singing on all of PNAU's entries. It's one of those things that feel like a holdover from a previous era (that PNAU are very much from). It just seems so crazy that the woman who sung on their two biggest hits (by a mile) and is all over the music videos got no credit for it. Of course this song wasn't nearly as big so it's a bit like when someone links the original source of their hit tweet in the replies, no one's seeing it.

This song is probably better than I think to give it credit. Whenever it starts and we're greeted by Marques Toliver's verses, my Chainsmokers alarm goes blaring. It's as if they invented a very specific recipe for having hit songs in the last few years and now more artists are trying to see if it works for them. Just the whole song sitting in cruise control so we get through this unexciting guy's story about someone he knows. I also have to once again append to a post on the day to note that Kira Divine just released a new EP today and Marques Toliver is on three of the songs.

Kira definitely fits the assignment much better and is a ray of light when she gets to take over. Not the best of hooks, it feels like the title is being sung multiple times but it's actually a couple of phrases that sound like it, not sure if the whole thing is fully thought out. It's at its best when she's singing in time with the pulsing of the beat. They know they're onto something when you get surprised by a double chorus at the end, it's very satisfying.

#801. BENEE - Beach Boy (#81, 2022)

82nd of 2022

This is the first of a handful of times that BENEE is going to appear on the list. Her most famous song will not be doing that, sometimes things don't just work out the way they feel like they're supposed to. It works out for me though, as not being tremendously into "Supalonely" while being quite content with what we did end up getting.

We've got to start somewhere and we're going straight to the end of the line. "Beach Boy" is a weird one for me. For most of her career up to this point, she pretty much worked with one producer, Josh Fountain from the NZ band Leisure. It was fairly lucrative and I can't argue with the results. "Beach Boy" is her first Hottest 100 entry that wasn't produced by him. Instead she went to Greg Kurstin, which is certainly a high profile upgrade (he's had a hand in at least 4 more entries I'll be talking about, as well as plenty more in the years prior), but I'm less convinced it works. It feels like a half-hearted recreation of what her music used to sound like. The chill vibe is there, but there's less flavour to go along with it.

I'm not fully convinced by what BENEE's bringing to the table either. The whole song seems to be built on the fact that 'beach' sounds like 'bitch' and she uses the two words interchangeably, like she's trying to hide some sort of plausible deniability on some pretty tame profanity. It's mildly amusing that if I look up BENEE in my music library, I'm always going to see "Ebeneezer Goode" by The Shamen, a song with similar aspirations.

#810-#806

#810. John Butler Trio - Only One (#87, 2013)

86th of 2013

If you go from 2001 to 2010, you've got 15 helpings of the John Butler Trio. They had a level of success that seemed unstoppable, with a fair amount of crossover power as well, consistently churning out moderately sized hits and monster album sales. I guess things moved on after that. triple j brought in a whole lot of new listeners in the 2010s and they were interested in finding their own new generation of stars. This is the only John Butler Trio entry after 2010 and it only snuck in at the bottom of the list. Somehow I wrote this entire paragraph without even thinking to make an "Only One" pun until just now.

I don't know if anyone else had this experience, but I remember growing accustomed to the JBT line up from when I started listening to triple j and it felt a bit sad when it changed up on the next album. I eventually found out that this is a very typical turn of affairs, the average John Butler Trio member who is not John Butler lasts for about one album cycle and sometimes not even that. I guess I just felt slightly betrayed when I no longer recognised the other guys in the music videos, but then maybe even more when they released "April Uprising", an album with a lion on the front cover and the Brisbane Lions went on to miss finals for 9 years in a row starting after that.

I can't say for sure how much of the sonic shift that happens across their discography goes down to the shifting band or rather just John Butler's shifting creative spark. We're a long way from "Better Than", and an even longer way from "Betterman". I cannot in good conscience say that this sounds like standard John Butler Trio business, because the only thing I hear in this song is the steel drums, they just completely dominate anything else that's pushing to be noticed. It makes for a perfectly serviceable track, just one that's hard to get excited about.

#809. Billie Eilish - when the party's over (#8, 2018)

83rd of 2018

Billie Eilish has gotten so popular over the years that it's very difficult to decide which singles need the most significance ascribed to them. She's the kind of artist with a following that insists on digging deep. She's got nothing short of 9 digit play counts across all three of her albums and plenty of cuts that have long surpassed the average shelf life of contemporary hits. I look at "when the party's over" and feel like I have to treat it as sacred to some degree, because in many places it launched her career to a new level, but I look back on it now as just another step on her inevitable conquering.

I'm probably being influenced by other parts of the world on this. In both the US and the UK, this song was her first top 40 hit. In Australia, it wasn't even her highest charting song in 2018, as another song she polled (and thus I will write about) charted higher about 6 months before this one. That particular song has also long since outlasted "when the party's over" on a global scale and is her most streamed song ever now (though I would not count out "BIRDS OF A FEATHER" one day catching up with the pace it's at). Maybe "when the party's over" was just cashing in the cheque on that previous single and lapping up its kudos. Sometimes timing is everything and it's why I'm always a little skeptical to just take chart positions to heart.

But maybe the real reason why I tackle these questions with regard to "when the party's over" is because I've never really seen the spectacle with this one. Habitually I find myself pitting my own perspective against the average person, where the different things I've encountered lead me to arriving at a different opinion on the confluence. I don't think that's quite the case on this one though. On some level I actually do get it. The song sets a mood, it's sparse, it paints a very clear picture in its lyrics. I suppose I just don't find myself feeling the resolution, if there even is one. I think the repetition on the hook tips too far into a sort of nauseating novelty that stops it from hitting right. I don't feel like the additional verses after the first one do anything to give it more gravitas. It's just a relatively pleasant song I don't find myself ever wanting to put on.

#808. Luude (feat Colin Hay) - Down Under (#65, 2021)

84th of 2021

I'm surprised I haven't spoken much about sampling yet, if there's any place to do it, it's the bottom end of the list when we need to dish out all the uninspired ones. It's one of those frustrating things when you've been in too deep with knowing music past and present, a whole lot of songs that might have sounded fresh and exciting when you were younger, all of a sudden sound trite and obvious. If I heard something like "Hip Hop Is Dead" by Nas nowadays, would I dig the sound of it or would I scoff at the basic Iron Butterfly sample?

I guess that deep down, you want musicians to impress you with their crate-digging. It implies passion, knowledge, and a desire to deliver the best to their audience. Something that's often taken for granted is the fact that musicians pretty much always do have all of these traits. They're in the business because they love music. On the other hand, it is a business, and they've got bills to pay, so it's generally a lot easier to go for mass appeal, sometimes in the most shameless way.

I don't think that Luude is a hack musician. He's been at it for quite a long time now, and the most disparaging thing I can say is that 2017's "Paradise" sounds suspiciously akin to popular trends of its time. He did however have some runaway success with this single, and it started a pattern of seemingly trying to re-capture the magic to diminishing returns. He seems to have stopped doing that now though. There are only so many times you can be intrigued by the prospect of 'What if that song you've known forever had a drop?'.

Irrespective of what he specifically did with it, this release bothered me initially. I have a lot of admiration for Men At Work. They did a lot in paving the way for other Australian artists to hit it big overseas in the early '80s, and they had quite a handful of hits to boot. I don't know whether it's our own doing or if we're being influenced by America, but you wouldn't know any of this by cultural observation. It just feels like their entire legacy is frequently simplified to just "Down Under", a song that feels more like a novelty than anything else at this point. As something of an Australian myself, I just get sick of seeing this song come up over and over again. Behind the funny Vegemite sandwich song is a really tight collection of hits. "Overkill" is one of my favourite songs of all time, at least it has that one episode of "Scrubs". Still, I hear the chorus of "Dr. Heckyll & Mr. Jive" and think that it could easily pass as a song by XTC, another outrageously underrated band. Colin Hay has a similar low register to Andy Partridge.

It's pretty cool too that Colin Hay actually re-recorded his vocals for this version. It makes it feel more like a mutual honour than a joke. Amazingly this won't be the only time he shows up on this list, and the next time is probably with even more reverence. Nothing but the best for the king I suppose. As far as this goes though, it's hard to get too much excitement out of a relatively faithful (if over-the-top) remake of a very overplayed song. I think Luude has enough ideas of his own to justify it, and given the option I'd probably choose to listen to this over the original most days, I'm just always disappointed to see our reference pools shrunk down time and time again.

#807. Tame Impala - A Girl Like You - Like A Version (#66, 2021)

83rd of 2021

I wonder if Scottish folk feel the same way I do about Men At Work with Edwyn Collins. For him it's less about erasing history as it is him never fully getting his dues in the first place. Still, he had more than a small handful of charting songs in the UK, but then brings along with him one of the harshest ratios between his 1st & 2nd most streamed songs on Spotify you can find ("A Girl Like You" beats "The Magic Piper (Of Love)" by a factor of over 100). He does have a cheat code to get out of this if you include his work with Orange Juice, but on his own he's a very prolific musician mostly known for just one song. I'll give a personal shout out to "Keep On Burning" and "Do It Again", two later career singles of his that are nearly just as catchy as the big one.

Some years ago in 2016, the Norwegian band Sløtface put out a song called "Empire Records". I love it, it's full of their typical brand of fun energy. It made me realise though that I'd never seen the movie of the same name and I felt like I was missing the context on it. I'm not really though, and they're referencing "High Fidelity" just as much (that movie I watched for the first time last year and enjoyed a lot), but it was an interesting experience. I'd previously just known the movie as being the source of how "A Girl Like You" became a big hit. If you also thought this, I'm here to tell you that it's a lie, the song was a hit first, and then they used it in the movie. I guess you could just get away with a retro sound like this in the mid '90s.

Anyhow this is just the standard Tame Impala take on the song. Generally what you get here is the sound of the original song's guitar solo but spread out so the whole thing sounds like that. It sounds fresh enough to not be a complete waste, but it does remove some of the more interesting sounds and ideas from it. I respect the choice of cover though. It's the kind of song that's just a bit too old without finding a new generation that you seem to find less and less of on Like A Version. On the other hand, it's a solid exception to my rule of not being impressed by remakes of the same song in quick succession. A couple of years after this Like A Version, Dove Cameron put out her own spin on it in a song called "Girl Like Me". It fascinates me so much because she did not have to go so hard on it. Her sampling of the main guitar riff packs more of a punch than the original, and makes this cover feel a bit lightweight by comparison.

#806. Ruel - Painkiller (#22, 2019)

76th of 2019

Unless you pay extremely close attention to this stuff, it's hard to make sense of ARIA's Single Of The Year category, a publicly voted one. Rather than the industry nominated and selected categories, this one is fairly objective as it uses ARIA's Charts from the previous 12 months (say, around October to September), and it just gets the biggest hits. To be eligible, the song has to be at most a few years old, not previously nominated for an award (although they seem to break this rule sometimes), and they can't double up on artists. That last rule can be brutal given how many eggs usually go into a single artist's basket for distributing the local hits of a given year, and they have to fill out 10 nominations somehow. The big killer too is the sales window. Any song that gets to live out the full 12 month is going to have an unassailable lead for any late bloomers, and it can result in some funny things getting nominated.

Take "Painkiller" for instance. It's Ruel's biggest hit, both now and at the time. It managed a steady run in the ARIA top 50 starting in June 2019, and lasting until the end of August. This wasn't enough to make the nominations for 2019, but come the 2020 ceremony, this song which had been absent from the top 50 for the last 15 months was nominated as objectively one of the biggest hits of the following year. It's not even the earliest nominee that year because Hilltop Hoods also had a very early bloomer, but their excuse is that it was overshadowed by the previous single in 2019. In reality, not a single one of that year's nominees were released in 2020, it was a strange year I suppose.

Whenever I think about "Painkiller", that drawn out fact is the main thing I think about. The song itself doesn't evoke very strong reactions out of me. I like what he's doing with his voice on the chorus, it gives the song some character and it's an effective hook. I'm torn on the guitar which sounds either fun or wonky at any given point. The verses are very comfortably on the rails, just passing time really. Is this enough words? I've still got 4 more Ruel songs to go.

#815-#811

#815. Vance Joy - We're Going Home (#53, 2018)

84th of 2018

This might have been my favourite Vance Joy song when I first heard it. There was nothing remarkable about it and it signposted its momentum like you're staring at a rollercoaster, but I admired the craft all the same. I think more than anything, there's a layer of warmth in it you don't get much elsewhere. Listen to the way the drums kick in on the chorus and it's just lovely.

If it was just the first minute I think I'd still rate it very highly. After that, you get all manner of attempts to spice it up and they don't land as strongly as the first one. The brittle bridge is cute, but then the song gets taken over by this need to be big and exciting again. Over time I just fell a little out of interest and had other songs of his overtake it.

#814. Ocean Alley - The Comedown (#48, 2017)

84th of 2017

Nothing says preview hit quite like this. A single entry one year, hitting the top spot the year after. That specific sequence hadn't happened since the '90s. Ocean Alley follow a similar path getting there to Lime Cordiale as well, given that they both put out an album that was largely ignored by triple j but gained a huge following that had them primed to receive votes as soon as the opportunity arose, and then even more once everyone else was on board. There must be an initial word-of-mouth spread that only eventually kneecaps a band once no one feels obligated to tell anyone about them anymore.

I can see why someone might hear this and want to spread the word. You might associate Ocean Alley with laid back reggae rock, but I don't really get that from "The Comedown". This song feels like pure "The Dark Side Of The Moon" worship (a looming Like A Version is being foreshadowed here). That combination of moody darkness surrounded by unexpected guitar riffs that take you by surprise if you have no idea what a Pink Floyd is supposed to sound like. I'd like to imagine that there's no shortage of younger music fans who have ignored the band either incidentally or intentionally but have stumbled upon music that sounds like it and loved it, with no idea that they're worshipping a new iteration of dad rock.

In theory I should be all over this but it took some time to make the connection and get anything out of it. When I first heard this, all I heard was a sluggish, empty song that never seemed interested in taking off. That and its idea of a hook was saying 'I'm so faded' and 'I'm so wasted', giving the vibe of listening to an inebriated person's ramblings, something I'm never in the interest of doing. I did come around to it a bit more over the years though. I don't agree with all the instrumental choices (I think the keys get a bit tiresome across the run time), but the bass is exceptional. It's not always easy to notice in a lot of songs but it's the glue that keeps it all together here.

#813. Thundamentals (feat Solo) - Got Love (#90, 2014)

80th of 2014

I've probably been on record as saying that the range of songs that fall under the banner of 'yeah, that's pretty decent' is some of the hardest stuff to write about. I might change my tune about that as I get further, but I will say that damning myself to writing about the same artist over and over again in quick succession is the real challenge. Every week it's another Thundamentals song I don't feel very strongly about.

This one is a bit more to my speed though. I'll refrain from starting every post with 'This is the best song I've written about so far' but you get the point. It's borderline cruise control here, just a feel good song with a nice and catchy chorus. Maybe not their strongest hook ever so it could wear out your welcome when they start the song with it and place it straight after 3 more verses, but it does what needs to be done.

It's also an early preview for Solo who gets a verse here. He's an MC for two different Australian hip-hop groups who'll make an appearance on this list. Not someone I think about very often but he does have a fairly recognisable flow that takes me back to several of his earlier songs when I hear him rapping on this. He actually gets the second verse here which is some prestige to offer to the guest artist I suppose.

#812. The Kid LAROI - THOUSAND MILES (#33, 2022)

83rd of 2022

The 2020s have not been kind to the Australian music industry. It's really boring and obvious to point at algorithms and TikTok as being responsible for muscling Australians out of our own local scene, but I've also been watching it happen for years in real time. The moment you give increased traction to those with bigger followings, it's just inevitable statistics, and before you know it, you'll have an entire generation who've grown up almost exclusively on American culture. The only Australian artists who seem able to hit it big now are the ones that get big outside of Australia.

This has treated The Kid LAROI just fine for the most part. He has one of the biggest hits of all time, eventually I might refer to the song by name. On the other hand, the international market giveth and taketh. The Kid LAROI still does reasonably well on the charts, but it almost feels like he's shackled by his international performance, so if America decides they're done with him, he won't fare much better here either.

I bring this up for "THOUSAND MILES" because it feels like the end of an era. This was a pretty big hit at the time, debuting at #4 on the ARIA Chart and sticking around for months. On the other hand, it might just be the last convincing Australian smash hit. Or at least it is on the metric that the song was released about 3 years ago and it's arguably still the most recent Australian song to spend more than 1 week in the top 10. Most since then are lucky brief gasps that suggest there's a ceiling our artists just can't reach anymore. Technically my statement isn't true, as there's another artist that ARIA consider to be Australian who had a #1 hit shortly after this (and it'll be on this list), and some may want to also claim BLACKPINK's Rosé as Australian, but both feel like technicalities that don't really represent them properly. The Kid LAROI named himself after his Indigenous Kamilaroi heritage and got his start on triple j Unearthed. Fair enough if you think his music sounds very Americanised but he's wearing his heritage for everyone to see and I think that's cool.

The song itself here goes pretty alright as well. I feel like it progresses itself in a way that lets him show off his vocal range a bit more than he usually does. I love the sorrow in his voice as it builds up to the big hook, or I'd say that except there isn't much of a hook. I guess it's a fun trick to say 'a thousand miles away' (oh and there's that Americanisation I guess) with an empty echo while the music strips back, but it just feels like cutting things off in an unsatisfying way. Like if I just ended this blurb here.

#811. Kanye West - Follow God (#87, 2019)

77th of 2019

In case you need reminding, in 2019 Kanye West made a gospel rap album. He's been known to make outlandish promises regarding his musical output and not deliver on it, but he really did do exactly what was on the docket for this one. It's provided an avenue for him to swallow up Billboard's Christian music charts and be named as the biggest Christian rap artist of the year time and time again. It all sounds like a joke, but I do think it's serious, even if filtered through Kanye's strange way of approaching most things and explaining himself.

Truth be told, this isn't an extremely radical shift for him. He's been rapping about God from the very beginning, whether on the vitally poignant "Jesus Walks", or from the same album on "Never Let Me Down" where J. Ivy inexplicably delivers a poem that feels like a sermon but is also one of the hardest verses on the whole album. He dabbles in it from time to time and often finds great inspiration in it. This won't be the last time we encounter Kanye in this mode on the list. There's reason to be optimistic with the project going in.

I'm pretty well versed in Kanye's discography up until anything after "DONDA" which I've tended to avoid. From this still fairly large subset, I'm safe in saying that "JESUS IS KING" is my least favourite of his albums. It's not a total dud but it instead feels very workmanlike. It's as if he's working on a deadline and cares more about that than quality control. Or rather, getting the bare bones done on a song and moving on without much care for what's left. You've got a lot of very short songs with few ideas to pass around. It's not all a dud mind you, songs like "Selah" and "God Is", while they don't make it to any playlists I'm in charge of, manage to jump out as fragments of what could have been a greater album. It can't go unmentioned that he even got the Clipse to re-unite and guest on a song alongside Kenny G, the maddest of Mad Libs right there. For the most part though, there's just a low ceiling of enjoyment and it doesn't marvel or intrigue me like most of his other albums. What's truly bizarre is that Kanye has had 5 #1 albums in Australia and this is the only one that spent more than one week at #1. The most enduring thing about the album for me is the Chick-fil-A lyric in "Closed On Sunday", it's not a great endorsement.

Then we've got "Follow God", the hit of the album that seems to have survived beyond the album cycle. It makes a modicum of sense that it ended up this way. In the TikTok perspective, you can play a short clip of this song and almost completely divorce it from the context of the album, just enjoy Kanye sounding relatively engaged as he raps at a consistent tempo. There's a chopped up soul sample too, I love the old Kanye. Conceptually I enjoy it but it doesn't offer a whole lot else, and it's over in less than 2 minutes. It has you thinking 'Is that it?", and Kanye's seeing the streaming number go up and figures what I'm trying to say is 'Aww yeah, that's it'.

#820-#816

#820. Thundamentals - I Miss You (#25, 2018)

85th of 2018

2018 was a fairly significant shifting point in the way that I discovered and listened to music. I'd graduated from university at this point and no longer needed to wake myself up with a triple j alarm every week. I kept up with triple j in every capacity except actually listening to it. I'd go down my own rabbit holes by that point and get flabbergasted when I missed the bigger picture. I mention this on a Thundamentals blurb as a prime example. I'd found my own comfort in their song "All I See Is Music", a song I still highly endorse as being extremely cozy. Hottest 100 comes around and two songs I'd barely noticed that year are the ones that get in for them, funny that.

I'll give it this though, I'm a fairly optimistic person about uncovering missed hits. My best reading of the sorts of people who get up in arms about the slowed down nature of the charts is something similar: You want there to be gems that you can dig out and enjoy. The very process of them getting this far is through the collective approval of thousands, so there's gotta be something in it.

"I Miss You" is my less preferred one of the two, but I can certainly see the appeal in it. It's very bouncy and quirky, with a chorus that more than passes the mark of having a hook every 6 seconds. I don't know if it was seen as an overly pop pivot but everything I've heard from this Thundamentals album strikes me with the desire to test the limits of their sound. It's not always going to work, I could give that acronym rhyming verse a miss, but it's a pass mark on the whole I think.

#819. Florence + The Machine - Ship To Wreck (#40, 2015)

81st of 2015

Between varying levels of success in different countries, and also the way that streaming has re-constructed the pecking order, it's hard to say what the most popular Florence + The Machine songs are across each album. The only thing I can say for sure is that I'm probably at odds with it in most cases. Not extremely so, otherwise we'd be breaking this suit sooner, but you tend to get more frustrated from artists you expect higher highs from.

Florence feels like a side character in this list. The vastly more revered parts of her catalogue are largely on the first two albums that come before, and we're left with the occasional remnants on the three albums that came after. Maybe this album shouldn't be seen that way, it was definitely a huge success at the time, but it doesn't seem to have gone the same distance over time. I don't think it's a bad album, and I have nothing but reverence for "Queen Of Peace" which regrettably does not appear on this list. I just can't imagine hearing "Ship To Wreck" and getting very excited about it.

The previous album "Ceremonials" set the stage for how it was going to play out. The first song out didn't really play as a single and was more for promotion, the second song was the clear single. Ironically, "What The Water Gave Me" actually slightly out-peaked "Shake It Out" although it's been vastly outsold since then. It felt like something similar was going on with this album. The first song (which will eventually be on this list) felt like a teaser and then the obvious single came out after. Once again, that first single charted higher.

"Ship To Wreck" feels almost too obvious. You're hit immediately with the glockenspiel hook and it's almost frustratingly cutesy. It drags the song back quite a few years with the sounds that it's emulating. It's balanced out by the usual excess you'd expect in a Florence + The Machine record but it's in support of something that never fully gelled with me. The chorus isn't super inspired either, with enough turns around to make you first think that 'Towreck' is a word, and then have it no longer sound like one.

#818. Ruel - GROWING UP IS _____ (#47, 2022)

84th of 2022

By remarkable coincidence I just watched "Sorry To Bother You" last night and the underscores have found a new way to amuse me. Maybe there needs to be a version of this song where he bleeps it out every time. The most fun I had with this song is when it was released and getting into debate about how many underscores are officially in the title and whether or not Ruel even consistently applied it. Five underscores seems to be the trick. In the song itself, the word that follows is either 'weird' or 'strange', until he gets to the end and doesn't finish it, so it could be any synonym you want. Bizarre, uncanny, abnormal, outlandish, madcap, the underscore's your oyster.

I've already mentioned Tame Impala not long ago and I wish I could get off of that, and this time I think I can. We're falling under the further subspecies where you'd categorise songs as sounding more akin to Post Malone's "Circles" (#883). Given my feelings on that song, it's not ideal, and it ruins everything in proximity of it. It's a surefire recipe to allow me to get sick of a song before I've even finished listening to it once. For what's supposed to be one of the Ruel songs that are acceptable to like, it really just isn't the recipe for me.

But it's not a failure by any stretch. If we look at the template it's running through, there's a good job done that I can get behind. The consistent drum pattern gets some strong focus, and goes well with the bass as well. It's a warm and cozy song like that. If I'm gonna compare it to Post Malone as well, Ruel is clearly a better singer, and I'm far more engaged with his version of angst. It's served him well too. A lot of teen heartthrobs don't last because they don't have the material after they're the flavour of the month, and their audiences are often far more discerning than given credit. It makes you think there might be many more years for come for him.

#817. L D R U (feat Paige IV) - Keeping Score (#22, 2015)

80th of 2015

We've had L D R U in these parts before. He was one half of Carmada who had their big hit "Maybe" (#855) just a year before this song came out. A lot of solo ventures have artists coasting on their established fandoms and getting scraps in comparison, but this one song here turned out way bigger than anything Carmada ever did. Every now and then you'll get a song that's building up at the right time to get a serious stimulus package from appearing in the Hottest 100 and this is one of them.

I haven't gotten to talk about Paige IV yet. She's probably the most peculiar piece of the puzzle because you wouldn't assume hiding behind this serviceable feature credit on a dance song is one of this country's most prolific hitmakers of the century, but here we are. This is the first and last time we'll see the name Paige IV, so I'll go by calling her Sarah Aarons from this point on. She'll be singing on another two songs that appear on this list, one as a mononym and the other uncredited, which all feels like it's playing into her true calling for writing top lines.

For those who don't pay as much attention to this stuff, top lines are kind of like the first draft of a vocal for an unreleased song. Writers and performers will share them around in the hopes of selling them to more popular artists and producers, who will then generally touch them up and likely replace the vocals with someone else. There's a whole heap of notable hit songs that were originally written and sung by Sarah. The one that I always think of is "The Middle", a song credited to Zedd, Maren Morris & Grey, but you can find early versions she made before any of those people had heard it and it doesn't sound too dissimilar to the finished product. It's netted her some serious industry buzz and she's kept doing it for a decade at this point. There are at least 10 songs on this list that she has a writing credit for, including one that landed at #1 on the Hottest 100. Also she only has one leg.

These humble beginnings are the first of any of those songs to appear though. It wasn't a song that had an easy time for me getting into it. It's a song that sounds very of its time, both in structure and the sonic template it uses. As seems to happen once every month or so on Bandle, it's a mid-2010s song that so convincingly just sounds like it's "Turn Down For What". It even follows through with the drop that feels like it's chucking out everything it can think of to make the runtime. It'd be too obvious and mean to say that this sounds unfinished, but L D R U had one more entry after this that I think succeeds in the formula better, so I feel like a better version of this song could exist. In fact it does, but that's for another blurb.

#816. Dominic Fike - Chicken Tenders (#84, 2020)

77th of 2020

I'm writing this before the 2024 Hottest 100 has happened so I could be treading on ice saying this (Edit: It is March 17th, 2025 and I can confirm the ice broke), but Dominic Fike's abject inability to make the Hottest 100 with anything other than this song is something to behold. He has a critical issue with having his songs be popular within their Hottest 100 eligibility window, but then even when they are, he still manages to miss out. His most famous song "3 Nights" landed at #145 on the Hottest 100, and then 3 months later was sitting at #3 on the ARIA Chart. Just a completely wasted opportunity.

This would be where I say that this is such an unassuming song to make it over the line but that'd be a lie from what I know from his discography. When I listened to his EP, I thought that outside of "3 Nights", there wasn't much to see in the track listing, a lot of rough and seemingly unfinished songs. One of those songs is "Babydoll" which has over 600 million streams despite feeling like a fragment of a song. He still regularly deals in songs that struggle to hit the 2 minute mark though so it clearly wasn't just a phase.

With that in comparison, "Chicken Tenders" is a fairly polished song. There's a glossy sheen to it that sticks out next to his typical bedroom pop/rock style production. It's not a full slam dunk though, he puts on a fairly strained inflection with his voice at times that's distracting, and the song is unavoidably called "Chicken Tenders" which just completes the unserious vibe.

#825-#821

#825. Illy - Swear Jar (#39, 2015)

82nd of 2015

Whether it's artists themselves or labels in search of something to buzz about, there's definitely a constant search of records to be made. When you think there can't possibly be new records to break, chartdata always finds a way. Illy is popping up over and over again on this list because he has a near unrivalled streak of appearing in 8 consecutive Hottest 100 lists. The Living End managed 10 years, but I guess Illy has the consecutive years record for a rapper, a solo artist, or anyone who has a law degree (Note: Billie Eilish has since tied this, I probably could have come to that conclusion before the 2024 countdown aired but I shouldn't jinx her. She doesn't have a law degree though I'm pretty sure).

I've saved mentioning it for this song because it feels like the most transparent application of forcing the bit. After a quiet year between album cycles, Illy chucked out this song in the middle of November just in time to get the novelty buzz, and not lingering too long for everyone to get sick of it come voting time. This was also around the time when I started to feel like every new Drake song, for better or worse, sounded like it was made in a couple of weeks. It's difficult for this song to escape the allegations.

I don't think that's a death sentence for any song though, it just inhabits a different space to something that has a more professional sheen to it. For a song like this, it's probably better off this way. It's a borderline novelty song where Illy swears a lot, let's not put too much thought into it.

Something I always wonder about with these things is the reality that anyone who is part of the music industry inevitably knows more about it, as well as the other people involved more than I ever could. The song makes me want to know more about the juicy gossip that it could entail. All I can really gather is that the lyric about getting brushed off by an idol in the first verse is probably about Illy's awkward encounter with Snoop Dogg. There's a video where Illy explains it, basically he was supporting him on a tour (probably in 2007, before he was a solo artist). When he finally got to meet him, he froze up and Snoop brushed him aside. The psychic damage is immeasurable.

In case you were wondering but couldn't be bothered looking it up yourself, the actual origin of the chorus lyrics ('f**k you, and you...') is the 1999 film "Half Baked". Britney Spears also referenced this in the music video for "I Wanna Go" in 2011, making the inspiration clear as the 'you're cool' recipient is dressed up like the people in the movie scene. My own personal dumb anecdote related to this song is that because I speedrun the video game "Furi", made by a French game studio, I've come to know quite a few French gamers and watched them livestream in their native language. I don't speak French but I picked up a few things here and there (Manjula is some kind of spaceship). One time I very innocently had to ask what a certain word is that I seemed to just keep hearing over and over again, that being the word that Illy quietly mutters after saying 'Pardon my French'. We all had a good laugh about it. It's also very funny that this is the last song Illy put out before releasing his biggest hit to date, "Papercuts" (#857).

#824. Trophy Eyes - You Can Count On Me (#93, 2018)

86th of 2018

I'm fairly local, but I haven't been around. These words come from someone who doesn't get out much and doesn't really know anyone. By sheer coincidence this joke is ruined though because I'm hitting publish while I'm on the opposite side of the country. As far as I can recall, there are only two artists on this list that I've ever briefly interacted with. One will eventually show up, the other is the bassist for the coincidentally similarly named Trophy Eyes. It's nothing substantial, but back when I was posting Hottest 100 vote count updates on the regular, he DM'd me about it, in what turned out to be another fruitless year for the band's Hottest 100 prospects. I messaged him back a year later when this finally got his band into the countdown. He still follows me on Twitter, and if you love coincidences, the only other artist that follows me is another band who share a specific misfortune with Trophy Eyes of landing at #101 at least once.

That #101 finishing song, "Chlorine" from 2016, is one I'd have liked to see get over the line. I don't just say this because several of the songs that narrowly beat it have already showed up on this list, but because I think it does a solid job of bridging hardcore with pop punk. It's a good song and there isn't much in the Hottest 100 canon that sounds like it. The one time we did get Trophy Eyes in, it was with this song that I can't share the same enthusiasm over.

This song isn't that far removed from "Chlorine" but it does bring some baggage with it, mainly in the way it puts me in a constant battle to put up with its incredibly overblown hook. I can't help but wince at it, and the fact that it so badly wants to be quotable. Clearly it's here so it worked and I can't discredit it, but it's not generally my vibe. There's more to the song though fortunately. Instrumentally it's tight as hell. When the drums break through the mix, it's really engaging, and there's even a solid guitar solo on the bridge. Just wish the rest of the pieces came together in a different way.

#823. Lana Del Rey - Doin' Time (#85, 2019)

78th of 2019

Yesterday (in December when I wrote this), I was having a conversation about how the experiences of our pasts shape our perception of things in the present. A lot of things become cultural touchstones to the wide majority that experienced it, and eventually assumed knowledge. Internet memes are sometimes the most elucidating form of this, almost by nature. Surely you've seen this gif, and surely you know the context behind it, that sort of thing.

I often think about this with regards to my own upbringing, because peppered in with all the fairly common things I was exposed to, is a cavalcade of sheer obscurity, or at the very least, the sorts of things I'll never see spoken of outside of my own inner circle. In a time before the internet, there was very little means to clarify these bounds. I can't say for sure whether or not this happens more or less, but I suspect that anything that does garner enthusiasm is more likely spread around, just because it can be now.

As was often the case, I related these specific thoughts to video games, because so many of my experiences there flew in the face of the average turn of the millennium nostalgia post. How many other people could possibly have the exact memories of playing all those weird Australian edutainment CD-ROMs that I did? Maybe you knew "Kewala TypeQuick", maybe you knew "Convict Fleet to Dragon Boat", but were you down with "ArtRageous" and "StageStruck"? I highly doubt it. My brother and I can still recite half a script from a nonsensical play we wrote in the latter more than 20 years ago, it's such a huge imprint made by a tremendously obscure game.

The Lana Del Rey part of this story isn't quite on that level but it's still pertinent for me. I also grew up with the slightly less obscure PS2 game "Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX", which is just a game that's Tony Hawk on bikes and worse for it. It did have a pretty good soundtrack though. One that only had about 10 songs on it though, so any reasonable session on it will make sure you hear all of them over and over again. A lot of it is slightly deep cuts from well-known artists but I do think it shaped my music taste eventually. Early '90s cuts from Rage Against The Machine, A Tribe Called Quest & Gang Starr definitely warmed me up to better enjoying their respective discographies in the future (members of Rage & Tribe will eventually appear on this list). Is "Makes No Difference" anyone else's favourite Sum 41 song?

"Doin' Time" by Sublime is on that soundtrack. It's probably the quintessential inclusion on it. Nothing quite matches that feeling of being in an empty park doing bike tricks quite like this chill ska reggae hybrid. Bradley Nowell comes across pretty lame on it, but his slow and often changing delivery is remarkably memorable. "Doin' Time" is not an especially obscure song. Just a minor US hit in its time but one that has moved some ways up the ranks in the streaming era. I don't think it applies as much in 2019 though, because I felt like hardly anyone seemed to know Lana Del Rey's source material. Or even if they did, they couldn't possibly have had it seared into them to the degree it had been for me.

I had an almost immediate reaction to the opening seconds of this cover. It's played completely straight so I'm perked up by the first few notes, but it's the 'summertime' on cue that seals it. People in general seemed to like this cover. Its reputation is helped by being on one of Lana Del Rey's most beloved albums, but it's clearly doing the legwork on its own. This is actually the only song on "Norman F**king Rockwell!" that I get to talk about. I'd have a much easier time covering "Venice B*tch" or "The greatest", but this is where we're at.

For years I've found this cover just impossible to assess on any level. I know hitting nostalgic touchstones is usually a good thing, but this was one that was so specific to me that it's almost invasive. I can't possibly contribute to the discourse on this because my entry into this is so far removed from most people that it can't be reconciled. At the time I tweeted something to the effect of imagining someone just releasing a cover of No Doubt's "Just A Girl" as a single, but then imagine that everyone else is not acknowledging that elephant in the room, it'd be so weird.

The end result is that it can only do negative favours to how I see this cover. There's an argument to be made that it might actually be better than Sublime's version, and I wouldn't even necessarily be able to dispute it, but it just feels like I'm being robbed of a shared cultural experience. All the thrills contained within the song, whether it's the chords, the lyrics or the melodies are all something I already used up 15 years before. I love listening to new music and finding new favourites every week because they're always fresh. It's part of why I come down hard on a lot of cover versions. But when it's all tied to what is also one of the most acclaimed albums of 2019, it's hard not to feel like a freak exclusion from the common consensus. I probably like this but I can't hang out with it, I've wrung it out too, too, too many times.

#822. Yung Gravy - Betty (Get Money) (#97, 2022)

85th of 2022

Here's a solid counterpart to the previous entry because do you know what I did probably have the perfect upbringing for? Rickrolling of course. All going back to those heady high school days when the internet wasn't tremendously new, but it was getting more widespread, and the advent of YouTube was a launching point for so much content that had no prior comparison. It all created this strange ecosystem where I felt subservient to distant strangers and what they collectively decided was the funniest thing in the world, whether that be Chuck Norris jokes, that massive AOL search log leak, or getting trolled by a random '80s song.

The main reason I'd say I was the right age for this is because I wasn't alive for the song's original time in the sun, I didn't know it at all. I imagine for anyone who did, it's not nearly as interesting, but for me it's the perfect storm of it being a hit song (somewhat) lost to time, the immediate SAW production stabs, Rick Astley's voice, and the little bonus fact that it was basically the biggest song of the year, ruling across 1986 & 1987. If ever there was a song that could be utilised in such a way, it was this one. It's all in service of one stupid joke that probably went way past its necessary reach, but it serves as a solid touchstone of the sorts of stupid things people did on the internet when there was nothing better to do. I'll never call out zoomer or gen alpha trends for being a heightened strand of brain rot because I'm too familiar with my own generations attempts at subversive one-upmanship.

This song comes so many years after the fact that the meme is nearly as retro as the song was at the time. Yung Gravy was pre-adolescent at the time so he's certainly old enough to have witnessed it first-hand in 2007. This song whose title gives no allusion as to what's in store manages to find a new way to Rickroll everyone. There's no time to process it as you're hit with "Never Gonna Give You Up" the instant you hit play on this song. The result was actually a lawsuit because he only had permission to use the instrumental, but not to have a Rick Astley impersonation to boot. Generally not a fan of these sorts of cases, but it's another story for another entry.

As a rapper who doesn't take himself seriously, this is obviously a perfect fit for Yung Gravy. It gets a bit tiresome by the end of the song, but the combination of the ludicrous sample with anachronistic (and incompatible) lyrics gets a chuckle out of me whenever I think about it.

#821. The Kid LAROI - SO DONE (#37, 2020)

78th of 2020

When I was first writing about Thundamentals, I mentioned how they arguably were still the fresh face in Australian hip-hop since the sub-genre stopped producing stars to that degree shortly after then. That's not strictly true, it's just that many of the artists we have had on the rise since then have lacked the commercial cross-over factor of Hilltop Hoods or Bliss N Eso. No one's really had that full package to feel like they're following the lineage the same way. Huskii had a #1 album, Chillinit & Complete have both made a name for themselves, and then there was the whole Sydney drill scene, that perhaps felt primed to usurp a new generation of fans but was stifled by industry reluctance and unbecoming crime associations. You can't get big if everyone's rooting against you. That's become a dead end that hasn't really been filled and Australia is severely lacking in new stars this decade. With this one notable exception I suppose.

I don't know how most people feel about calling The Kid LAROI a rapper. By definition he is, but the vast majority of his most famous songs don't really feature him rapping at all. I first heard him through early singles like "Diva" and "Addison Rae" where the shoe fits, and then he changed so gradually I didn't even notice. It makes sense though. He showed a lot of promise early on and had the fanbase to support it, but he just didn't have songs made for crossover. Enter "SO DONE", he's instantly a top 10 hitmaker and it just makes sense. It's the obvious hit that he always had in him.

When I think of hit songs taking ideas from songs that weren't 'hits' in the traditional sense, I'm going to usually think of that one Tame Impala song that I promise will be on this list eventually. It's not alone though, as something similar can be said for Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" which has gone from being a bespoke classic to one that has the catalogue streaming numbers to back it up. In 2020, it popped up as sounding very familiar twice, first on 24kGoldn's "CITY OF ANGELS", and then on "SO DONE". They're not official samples in any capacity but I challenge you to hear anything else in the guitar strumming of both of these songs.

It's not a bad template though, and it makes this song a considerable earworm. I liked it quite a bit at the time, but it's cooled off on me a touch since then. Now that I'm far more familiar with his catalogue, I can't help but view this one a little less favourably. Something about his singing is just incredibly off here, like the whole song has been pitched up in post. I think his singing has gotten a lot better since this. He tends to go for a lower register where he's more comfortable, but even when he goes high, the end result comes out a lot stronger.