#69

#69. SAFIA - Counting Sheep (#35, 2015)

14th of 2015

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I live with some kind of undiagnosed sleep disorder. If you've managed to avoid this affliction, thank your lucky stars and appreciate every night that goes by without a stir. The simple version of this is that I just struggle to get to sleep a lot of the time. Sometimes my mind is wandering for this, other times it isn't. All I know is that it's likely a gamble that I'll feel like I got a satisfying sleep that'll suffice for my energy for the next day. It's been like this for basically all of my life. I remember being very young and asking my grandfather how he manages to do it, and I felt a little let down that his trick didn't seem to work for me. The weirdest thing about it is something I've discovered in my adult years, which is that my sleep tends to follow a very specific pattern. I'll go to bed, and after any amount of time (I want to say it's usually 20-30 minutes) I'll have an extremely vivid dream that lasts about 5 minutes. I'll wake up after that, and then at a point in time I can't recall, get to sleep properly but I'll wake up every couple of hours often certain it's been eight hours when I look at the time and find that it's only been two. I'll feel pretty tired through all of this until eventually I reach a point where I'm pretty confident I can't get back to sleep and I'll know I have to get out of bed.

It is possible that I have some variety of narcolepsy. The most telling symptom I've had described is that I can often take a short nap and will almost certainly have vivid dreams from it. It's so expected that it does seep into my unconsciousness and the dreams will often be lucid (though other times they are so wildly out of step with reality and I believe every moment of it until an hour after I woke up). I'm told this is the brain catching up on some of the missing REM sleep during the night. Back in 2019, I had a sleep study to try and get some closure, where they'd hook a bunch of things up to me overnight and study whatever happened. The only problem is that I didn't get enough sleep that night to conclude anything (I'll admit it's a little harder to get to sleep as it's a bit uncomfortable/foreign), so I remain in the dark about this. Perhaps I'll try it another time but my night owl schedule is difficult to work around, except oddly when I've travelled to different time zones and found myself going to bed much earlier, jet lagging in the wrong direction for whatever reason. Outside of the trying to sleep portion, it's the general fatigue that gets to me the worst. I can be so tired all day and struggling to stay awake when I'm watching a movie or reading a book. It makes me think back to my schooling days where I'd often plant my head down and close my eyes. I didn't think I'd ever fallen asleep in public before, but looking back on it, it matches more recent experiences when I've completely zoned out, and I just continue to feel so bad for my younger self who didn't remotely have the resources or context to clarify some things that were really starting to ruin my life. You can probably track the end result on my report cards where I went from a near-straight A student to barely passing two of my five Year 12 subjects. So much of it all comes down to the fact that I just cannot get enough sleep to save my life.

Anyway these are just the things that come to mind when SAFIA come up with a song called "Counting Sheep". It's said to be a song about insomnia though I can't find that quote from the band itself. The only thing they've said is that it's the evil sibling of the other SAFIA song that will eventually appear on this list. The only useful evidence you really get for this is the song's chorus that says 'never ending' and 'never get no sleep'. It definitely feels like it's more to do with a general Halloween theme (ignore that they released it in March). The middle section of the song has a bunch of movie references. Some appear to be directly lifted audio but the Casablanca quote is wrong enough that they must have done it themselves. The other quotes are from Peeping Tom, Misery & Nightmare on Elm Street, all movies I've seen since this song came out except for Peeping Tom but I'll see if I can't make that happen before this goes live (I did, it was interesting). There's a cameo in the video during this part by Keli Holiday. 

The message clearly got across though because the song has seemingly caught a second wave of popularity years after the fact, as someone made a Five Nights at Freddy's video for the song that actually has more YouTube views than the real music video does. I have never played any of those games because I suspect the general gameplay loop doesn't appeal to me (it feels like a clear case of a game made for streamers, more than anything), and I've no heightened views of the franchise after watching the first movie. I'm probably just 5-10 years too old for it though. Nice for SAFIA to get some kickback from it though.

I really enjoy this one. It's still very early in the days of SAFIA and they only had a small handful of songs at this point. This one felt like a step into greater popularity for them though. It managed to spend 9 weeks on the ARIA Chart and get as high as #55, making it unquestionably their most commercially successful song until "Make Them Wheels Roll" (#532) did a little bit better. It just makes the most sense to me. A song that's short and punchy. There's constant rising tension with the strings, and Ben's putting on a great performance on the pre-chorus. I don't know if the pitched down chorus is the best option just because it's taking away the group's best asset. When the band performed the song for Like a Version, Ben sings the whole thing in his crooner mode and it's quite nice. It's also backed by the other two band members sneaking in the riff to "Stairway to Heaven" which works oddly well. They've also done it backed by a string section and it still works even if it's not as scary as perhaps initially intended. Some say that's the sign of a good song, where the bones are simple enough that it can be transposed in all sorts of ways and still come out working.

#70

#70. Denzel Curry - Walkin (#80, 2022)

2nd of 2022

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I feel like I don't often give rap music enough credit lately. It's not that I don't like it, or I'm not interested in liking it, it's just that my current mode of listening to music for discovery purposes tends to do it the biggest disservice. It's an unavoidable problem when you're sifting through so much that it's not possible to give everything a fair go, the kind that can take many listens. I find this is the worst for rap music because it's often so dense, with lyrical touches that might go unnoticed at first. I end up favouring only those that have some kind of peculiar production style that makes it instantly stand out. Aside from that, it's just hard to latch onto a new generation of stars, something that I feel is universal as most of the big names in rap are still the same ones from a decade and a half ago, or more.

Denzel Curry falls somewhere in the middle of this. His big breakout single "Ultimate" came out in 2015, which is getting to be a while ago. He might still feel like he's a relatively young figure in the rap game only because his contemporaries largely aren't. Landing in this middle zone can get you the best of both worlds. I still feel like he was coasting on previous moments of fame when he got this song onto the list. That's not to say that the song is redundant, far from it. It's just the kind of song I'd expect to be largely filtered out due to not fitting in with what crossover rap tends to be. This is like an alternate universe where all the hip-hop heads got to tell their version of the story. The kind of artist people would be begging for you to listen to with self-assured confidence that it could just as easily fit in as popular rap music as well. Not necessarily the only time this happens here, so I guess in both cases, we have to thank that Californian rap metal band.

I actually was listening to Denzel Curry quite a bit in 2022, I just wasn't listening to "Walkin". It was the next single he released after it, "Zatoichi" that took my fancy. It exemplifies my point when compared to "Walkin". "Zatoichi" is much more immediate by way of its instrumental. It has this relaxed, kinda breathy sound looping through it that all just reminds me of some of the more introspective moments on Kendrick Lamar's 2015 album. Then the song's chorus comes assisted by slowthai and turns into a surprise drum & bass moment with all the intensity that usually entails. It's very easy to conclude why this might click with me on a single listen.

"Walkin" is a little bit more straightforward. The instrumental is light and airy again, but much simpler, so it doesn't stand out quite as much. Denzel Curry occasionally does some offbeat things, like cutting out the track so he can insist that he's not done yet, but in general this is one of the least gimmicky rap songs I'll encounter in this setting. Therein lies the appeal because Denzel Curry has always been good at rapping. He might not always keep his goofy tendencies in check, but in moments like this where he can just ride his own momentum, it feels great to witness. I did finally come around to the song by the end of the year and it felt rewarding to see it have its moment.

#71

#71. CHVRCHES - Clearest Blue (#51, 2015)

15th of 2015

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I feel like in the absence of a major viral or nostalgic hit (I'm not counting the Marshmello one), CHVRCHES don't necessarily get a lot of credit nowadays. This is the 7th time I'm writing about them, and there's another one that'll come after that. This is quite a lot to just sweep under the rug. In that sense, the historical record is there to cherish CHVRCHES in the long run, but I fear it'll only be at best on a superficial level. Just picking out the smallest morsels because curiosity won't run much deeper.

It is therefore my duty to report that "Every Open Eye" is an absolute gem of an album. It might get lost a little behind their debut album which had bigger hits and more direct appeal, but this is the sound of a band that absolutely tightened up their work and created an incredible body of work for it. It was released right around the same time as Carly Rae Jepsen's "E•MO•TION", which is another great album that does get its flowers, but alas, the only flowers you'll see here are the partially pixelated ones on the album cover.

I just think the whole thing comes together so well. Rarely is a moment wasted, and they'll have you potentially re-evaluating just what synth pop is capable of. I've not heard another CHVRCHES album that quite lives up to this one, but they do continue to find isolated sparks along the way. I think their 2021 song "California" would fit pretty snugly on this album. I just love all the big, encompassing sounds they come through with, as well as melodies that take unexpected left turns. "Keep You on My Side" has this wonderful frenetic pace to it, while "Playing Dead" has a big lift to match the initial stakes it lays out on the chorus. I wasn't especially fond of when Martin had lead vocals on the first album, but I think he fares better this time around. One of those albums where you're on such a high that I don't even want to stop ahead of the bonus tracks. To be fair, one of those is "Get Away" (#555) but they're all good.

I can understand the logic behind making "Leave A Trace" (#300) the lead single here. It's a clear, direct statement. I do feel however that "Clearest Blue" as the 3rd single is the big hold out we were waiting for. It almost feels like it's still making you wait for a while, until it decides to enter the pantheon of all-time great pivots. I'm talking "Dance Yrself Clean", "Nights", "Clearest Blue". You get the briefest warning before the song turns into an all-out rave. The obvious comparison point is Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough", but it's not living in that song's shadow at all. Just the sheer commitment to the moment, the intensity of it. It's all just incredibly satisfying, in a way that's simultaneously par for the course on this album, but also completely singular and nothing like anything else on it. CHVRCHES easily could've run into the typical sophomore slump that comes with reduced buzz on return, but the material was just too good to possibly deny. They made me a fan for life on this one. Hopefully that's meeting them more than halfway.

#72

#72. A$AP Rocky (feat Drake, 2 Chainz & Kendrick Lamar) - F**kin' Problems (#79, 2013)

14th of 2013

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There's a famous audio file that's been circling around on the internet for several decades now, the recording is older than I am, I believe. It's a two and a half minute skit of a man talking about the word 'f**k' ad nauseum. He goes on about the word's versatility. The way it can be used as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, or how it can be used to cover a gamut of emotions as well. It's all largely just an excuse to say 'f**k' over and over again, while being juxtaposed by the decision to play part of Vivaldi's famed violin concerti "The Four Seasons" underneath it. I suspect I came across it as a wave of internet virality in the very early days of YouTube, but the main reason I think about it is because it used to get played infrequently on triple j during Super Request. Just an evergreen bit of fun to put on the radio.

The strange thing about it all is that I could never figure out what the 'song' was actually called. Back when JPlay was still a thing, I tried to find it at some point to no avail. Subsequently, I had no idea where it came from. It may have been something that got played on triple j constantly a few years back and I was just coming in at the tail end. The truth is that it's one of the early remnants of perhaps misleading internet sharing. The recording was misattributed to more famous names in order to get it shared around, until the misconception just stuck. Part of why I got so curious is because if I were pressed for a name, my recollection was that it was a Monty Python bit, but that got increasingly hard to believe as I learnt more about the troupe's work and couldn't really imagine where it'd fit in. You'll also find it sometimes attributed to George Carlin which is more believable given his famous stand-up routine about curse words, but it also doesn't sound like him. In case you need more reason not to trust it, Google's AI search confidently said it was Richard Pryor. It's all a bit like how every comedic song that gets shared around always gets attributed to "Weird" Al Yankovic, despite them all being too crude for him.

The interesting answer to this is that the recording you're possibly familiar with was actually done by Jack Wagner. If you don't recognise that name, he was a long time employee of Disney. His voice is recognised by many as the voice of the PA system at Disneyland. His voice is prone to pop up elsewhere as a result of that, and I can't say for sure if I'm familiar with it in those contexts because all I hear in his voice now is that one skit. This wasn't really uncovered until around 2005, when the ever familiar skit was brought up specifically about trying to attribute it, and solved when someone who worked with Jack on the recording managed to chime in. The recording is actually a remake of what this person describes as 'the original crappy version (that I am positive no one here has EVER heard)', and it was given to them by the nephew of Bobby Cochran. Jack decided to record his own version with much better quality, better grammar, and his own decision to include Vivaldi. So that's the answer to the mystery of the skit that gave us the phrase 'f**k the f**king f**kers' in such a mature voice.

You're right, that does have next to nothing to do with this, and I was fully prepared to start this post like normal, but what better opportunity to provide some clarification on something that goes misunderstood pretty regularly. It's also very slightly pertinent here because "F**kin' Problems" operates on a partially similar level, which is that the word 'f**k' can be both used in both the sexual and the frustrated sense. 2 Chainz eloquently puts it when he says that his love of bad b*tches is a f**kin' problem, but that he also literally has a f**kin' problem because he likes to f**k. He'll never be the darling of the so-called "City Fathers", but he does internally justify the opportunity to re-use lyrics to reinforce the song's hook. On that level, it's pretty genius. It's the same 2 Chainz who brought us the lyric 'She got a big booty so I call her Big Booty'.

I would like to highlight 2 Chainz here because it's the only time he's ever made the Hottest 100 ever. He came close the year before, as "Mercy" with Kanye West was a near miss at #111. Admittedly he's the least memorable of the four on that song and gets tucked away at the back. Later on, he got even closer, courtesy of Chance The Rapper's "No Problem", which would have made for an amusing titular pairing from him if it made it. I'll admit that it took a while for me to warm to his particularly direct brand of bars, but in a world without regular 2 Chainz guest features for many years, absence has made the heart grow fonder. Just in general, I find him an interesting case because he didn't release his debut album until he was just about to turn 35. Like you wouldn't think he's only a few months younger than Kanye West. His southern drawl is key to making this whole song work.

This song has gained a new reputation that grows more noteworthy as time goes by. It's the last time that Drake & Kendrick Lamar ever appeared together on the same song. This is by the slimmest of margins because Kendrick released "good kid, m.A.A.d city" just two days before this, which has the song "Poetic Justice" on it. It's very loosely a collaboration this time. The music video gives off the impression that they were never even together in the same room and there isn't much of a throughline in their verses. Drake is generally the odd one out here who hasn't gotten the memo to be as utterly depraved as possible. He's better for it though and easily has the best verse here. I clearly just want as much Drake as possible here, because the music video actually changes the song slightly and has A$AP Rocky finish his segues into each verse, which sounds weird and I don't like it.

The other thing I don't necessarily like is some of what A$AP Rocky starts saying. I've called it out once but he really managed to get in here with song where he can drop a derogatory slur for lesbians and make the same joke about how he's able to get them to sleep with him. He is a sharp dresser for sure though, and I'll admit that the lyric 'Put the chrome to your dome, make you sweat like Keith' got a little bit funnier in 2025. He's just lucky to get carried by everything else around him this time around. Kendrick's verse is mostly just funny for the general juxtaposition. We really did not know what his career was going to be like when he was doing guest spots like this, or with The Lonely Island, or with Robin Thicke. It's interesting to see him invoke "Money Trees" with the Halle Berry line, as if it was already a classic and not just a song he dropped two days ago. There's only one word to describe that kind of hubris, beast.

#73

#73. Phoebe Bridgers - Sidelines (#99, 2022)

3rd of 2022

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This feels like a glitch in the matrix. This is the only time Phoebe Bridgers comes up in this whole list and it's with a loose single that isn't particularly noteworthy in her discography. Technically she comes up again in 2023 because boygenius had a bumper year but otherwise it's all we've got. I think what you take away from it is two things. One is that it represents the sometimes realistic document of the year in review that triple j's Hottest 100 provide, the other is that sometimes triple j just fumble the bag a little bit.

In some regards, you can probably combine the two factors in one. The idea that triple j didn't fully prioritise Phoebe Bridgers sooner is a relic of a time when she wasn't quite as famous as she is now. You could make the argument that they should have been on board with her, but there just wasn't enough irrefutable evidence at the time that she was a major player outside of all the blogs & tumblrs of the world. The end result is that she landed at #109 in 2020 with the song "Kyoto", maybe an underperformance in hindsight, but it's a song triple j had played once prior to December 2020 and only scarcely after that. It's very rare you'll get something that isn't a crossover hit to defy the airwaves like this, and it was a big sign that there was something in all of this.

The only problem was that Phoebe Bridgers hadn't released a new album since then. I feel like there was serious potential for her to surprise everyone but we just hadn't had the opportunity to see it. With the right material, I suspect she could have seriously cashed in with this, whether intentionally or not. A bit like how it's not very surprising nowadays to see Lana Del Rey cracking the singles chart despite clearly not operating in that lane. Now that I've changed this paragraph all into past tense I feel there's some truth in the matter. Phoebe Bridgers now has charting singles in the US & UK as a lead artist, and also a #1 album in Australia. I suspect the Hottest 100 will follow suit.

I'll admit I'm not sure what that might sound like because I'm not entirely sure I'm the right market for Phoebe Bridgers. I'd listened to her first two albums and I often found the thrills to be few and far between. Of the two I'm somewhat partial to "Punisher" more so (early days, but I think "Lost Weekend" might be my favourite though), which has a bit more variety to it, and more lyrics that seem to poke their head out and take you aback. "Kyoto" is a very good song, and I can't not mention "I Know The End", the album's explosive closer that tricks you into thinking you know where it's going before it takes it to yet another level. I'm not opposed to her sound on principle. The elephant in the room here is that since that album came out, I've grown especially fond of Lizzy McAlpine who is not at all subtle with her influence from Phoebe Bridgers (with a side order of musical theatre). She put out 3 albums between "Punisher" and "Lost Weekend", and it nearly ended up being 4, so there's a gap in the market being seized. I must admit also that it's a nicer fandom to be in because while they're similarly popular, I feel like Phoebe's space as a critical darling & generally eccentric personality means people bring out their weirdest when talking about her. Strongly cultivated niche following backed up by algorithm friendly music and a genuine crossover hit (but not too big of one) feels like the sweet spot.

None of this all matters when it comes to "Sidelines" though, which I've always been enamoured by. It feels like an obvious single because it has a properly pronounced chorus and hook, but the whole thing sticks pretty easily. I wonder if it's partially indebted to the verse structure with repeated use of the phrase 'I'm not afraid of...', which uncontrollably recalls Hoobastank's "The Reason". It's a solid vessel though for Phoebe to deliver her typical gut-punch lyrics though. I love the little sprinkles of instrumentation though, you know you're obsessed once you start mentally cueing up something like those strings that break up the second verse.

By all accounts, I'm still a little surprised this is here. When you're sitting right on the edge at #99, it's a genuine toss-up that could've gone either way (lucky G Flip took another year to put out that album), but by all accounts, this just feels like a song without quite enough of a profile to get across, just stellar top 200 material. Whether it speaks to just how strong the song is, wanting to make amends for a near miss in 2020, or the potential avalanche of a fully focused Phoebe Bridgers campaign, I can't say just yet. I do love that this is the song we get out of it though.

#74

#74. Amy Shark - All Loved Up (#36, 2018)

7th of 2018

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I feel like I have to issue amends for Amy Shark. It's an inevitable part of the process that not everything with this list will hold up to scrutiny over the years. I look back at lists I've made over the years and want to shuffle things around. It's been a good 3 years since I started making this list and it's inevitable that it won't all sit perfectly. That probably includes things I haven't even reached on this list to some extent, though I find myself mostly content with it for now.

It's been nearly a year since I last had Amy Shark appear on this list so I haven't had an appropriate chance to mention this. Back in January, I caught "C'MON" (#928) on my shuffle playlist. This was an incredibly chance encounter because a few weeks later I'd load the newest Hottest 100 onto it and suddenly it'd fall so far down the priority list that I genuinely might not hear it again for years. As these things often happen, because it didn't have my entire attention, I couldn't lock into my own recalled feelings and it just kind of jumped out to me. I rather enjoy the song now. Measuring it on what the song is actually doing, rather than my own idealised version of it, there's something worthwhile. The instrumental doesn't take too many bold risks, but the gravitas comes across. I see the vision, and though I'll spare myself the task of re-sorting this entire list, know that the previous position is not doing it the justice I would like. That concludes the minutes of the previous meeting, let's get on with the current agenda.

I did not have the best first impression of Amy Shark (#871). Learning that she's also a landlord did not help either. The road to rehabilitation is a long and largely pointless one. When she's getting these Hottest 100 entries, she's getting my money either way. It's just a nice cache to have because I am sincerely not a hater and I don't want to be. I managed to prove myself somewhat open minded around the release of her debut album because she just casually released my favourite song of hers, and I wasn't at all shy with my enjoyment of it.

We have to get the elephant out of the room. This is a Jack Antonoff song. You could be forgiven for just thinking it's his non-union Australian equivalent, but it's the real deal. This is getting him at a pretty high demand part of his career, as he was just done with co-producing half of Taylor Swift's latest album "reputation". As a matter of fact, that might just have been the thesis statement on here because something that clicked with me pretty quickly is how much "All Loved Up" sounds like "Call It What You Want". That's the Taylor Swift song obviously, in case the title still only makes you think of Foster The People, it's important to consider all of the perspectives here. I'm a big fan of "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things" so I know what it's like to have Taylor Swift take some of the most specific of song titles away. If I can fit it in, I might even have another story like that on this same album, because Taylor Swift's villain arc just knew no bounds at the time.

It's a superficial similarity I would say. You won't spot a familiar melody or anything like that. They're just both very washed out songs with echoed background vocals and a pre-chorus melody that feels like it's stepping over what was previously established. There's less than 10 seconds difference in length between them with very similarly reserved bridges. I know, I can't believe it either. There's history of producers doing this with Australian artists. Max Martin & Dr. Luke produced The Veronicas' "4ever" and P!nk's "U + Ur Hand" at around the same time and largely got away with it. Australia is the country that made both "Sexual" and "What Lovers Do" big hits, two versions of "Macarena", two versions of "Waiting For A Star To Fall", two tropical house versions of "Fast Car", we just do not seem to care.

I also don't really care. Mainly because it's funny, but because I like trying to pick out and ascertain the advantages in either case. Usually the winner is just marketing and I don't really get my wish, but it's fun to think about. Is Amy Shark ever competing with Taylor Swift? Oh absolutely not. I do like to think of this one as the slightly improved second attempt though, as "All Loved Up", just has all the extra dynamic range to get more out of it. Every moment of it just pops out.

#75

#75. First Aid Kit - My Silver Lining (#38, 2014)

11th of 2014

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A lot of discourse is perhaps unintentionally kneecapped by a need to be universal. It can have wider implications, and is possibly resting on those, but the headlining few have to be recognisable names. It makes the whole thing become a constant act of recycling that doesn't get to the depth of it at all. I'll suffer from it myself even when I do know better. Just earlier today I caught myself briefly unable to name any member of The Living End, something I've otherwise been able to do for decades, because they're not in the international cycle of discourse.

This is generally what happens when we start talking about big genre or stylistic movements in popular music. The top handful come to mind quickly, but then the rest of the suspects slip through the cracks. I think of the early 2000s when Coldplay became ridiculously successful and brought along with them, a wave of bands working under similar ideas. I know there are lots of them, but every time I try to name them, I just get as far as Travis & Keane. Given more time, I might also come up with Snow Patrol or Doves but I feel less inclined to count them as they feel bigger than that moment. You need to really dig deep to find all of the Starsailors of the world.

Another big one that seems to get a lot of attention is the rise of overly earnest folk music around the start of the 2010s. In fairness with this, triple j showed the very early signs of it in the late 2000s, showing surprising commercial viability for stuff that didn't remotely fit with the zeitgeist. A Hottest 100 that could've been a battle between Art vs. Science's quirky electro-rock and Hilltop Hoods' ever-charging popularity ended up with a late runaway victory to Mumford & Sons who created unusual buzz by finding a way to make banjos tenable to the top 40. This was the start of what could easily have been a long streak of rock music being phased out again for folk music as there arguably hasn't been a song like "Sex On Fire" at the top of the poll ever since. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis coming out ahead of Of Monsters and Men is the strange glitch in the matrix that did a lot more to diversify the results than is given credit for. You could even argue it goes further back, just isolated to Australia, when there were back to back winners from Bernard Fanning & Augie March. It'll be interesting to see the future reception if we break our current girly pop streak at the top.

To go back to my original point, whenever this whole scene gets brought up, it's always that same small number of names, the ones that crossed over. I pored through numerous discussions just now and outside of some people on the Indieheads subreddit (who know their stuff when it's in their wheelhouse), you'd never know anything that existed outside of "Home", "Little Talks", the other "Home", "Riptide" (#885), "Ho Hey" and your Mumford & Sons song of choice. It's reducing a supposedly hipster-driven movement by only the pieces that may well have been rejected by those same people who are being characterised. It'd be like making fun of someone who listens to Aesop Rock & Talib Kweli because Ja Rule was big at the time. triple j is such a melting pot for this that you just know someone isn't doing their homework if they don't know about Matt Corby, Boy & Bear, Xavier Rudd, Angus & Julia Stone etc. To me, nothing exemplifies the instinctive listening habits of people like this than the popular songs that weren't 'hits'. The bands that would sell eager quantities of albums and get big festival slots without really crossing over. Bands like First Aid Kit.

Unlike all of the artists I just mentioned, First Aid Kit aren't Australian, they're Swedish. Australia was a pretty lucrative market for them, but it pales in comparison to their home country, where they scored three #1 albums. Big enough that they might even brush onto the singles chart by pure volume, but they've never really made a crossover single I'd say, or rather, they don't have a song that has one of those quirky hooks that make people recall it in resentment. They exemplify this movement through steadfast refusal to oversell. They're so obscenely earnest about sounding like they've never gone more than 500 metres away from a cabin in the woods. The main draw has always just been the wistful quality of harmonies between sisters Johanna & Klara Söderberg.

By all accounts, the band easily could have disappeared, or faded into obscurity after the success of their first album, one that I don't think actually was successful enough to overturn the march of time and desire for new sounds that tends to throw out the also-rans. Maybe they just got lucky to start the next album campaign with what's ended up being their most popular song, but it's the kind that you'd expect too many people to just skip over in the first place and never give it a chance. I wouldn't really call "My Silver Lining" a crossover hit, but it did briefly chart in Australia, which speaks to just how efficiently they managed to win people over again, because they weren't remotely in that conversation before or since. More and more, it feels like this song single-handedly kept the band in the conversation for another album cycle.

Maybe we were all just won over by the tenacity of the song's message and wanted to see it through. I don't think they were specifically fighting against the tides of musical trends when they vied to 'keep on keeping on', but it shows a grown up tenacity that gives the song stakes. Without specificity though, the song becomes incredibly relatable, just that internal desire to stay headstrong and do the right thing even when you're beaten down by the weight of the world's inexorable march in the wrong direction. Sometimes these actions are eventually rewarded in a material sense, and other times they aren't, but I can't count how many things I utilise or examine from a distance that come about because somewhere along the way, someone has deemed it their duty to do an unrewarding task. The world stops spinning if we all give up. Miss me with that 'earnestness is cringe' nonsense. I much prefer it over providing surface level reactions to anyone who dares have a personality trait that isn't cynicism. I'll even take 'Alabama, Arkansas' over that, any day of the week. Also I love those strings, and "Cedar Lane" is a very lovely song from the same album.