#185-#181

#185. Skegss - Stranger Days (#19, 2022)

9th of 2022

Every time I think I have this band and their popularity figured out, I get thrown a curve ball. I can pretend to make sense of it in hindsight, but I think it's a lost cause anyway. They released "Stranger Days" in 2022. It was a Skegss song that I resonated with immediately. Not like instant classic favourite, but enough that I was always happy to hear it, and it was a change of pace to come to that conclusion immediately. Clearly I wasn't the only one who felt this way because it landed all the way up in the top 20, making me conclude that it was everyone hearing the same song I was, just they were more inclined to vote for it than me. Three years later and we get the song "So Excited". I feel a similar way to "Stranger Days", which is a good omen. It lands at #149 and I begin to suspect that "Stranger Days" will remain their last ever Hottest 100 entry. Going out on a high I suppose, but it's still unusual.

"Stranger Days" actually never ended up on a Skegss album. It's not the only time they've done this. "Save It For The Weekend" (#297) also had the same fate. It's something that I find peculiar after growing up and watching Architecture In Helsinki put their 2008 song "That Beep" on their 2011 album. Maybe none of this matters as much in an era where you're less likely to entice potential buyers with an alluring sticker highlighting the included hit singles, but it does create the possibility that these songs just collapse into the ether. Both of these songs are in Skegss' Spotify top 10 for now, but if they fell out, their means of discovery would plummet in an instant. Who'd be looking at the Skegss page and immediately clock that these non-album singles are surprisingly hard to find. You'd just not listen to them like most people. Maybe they paid for it anyway when they followed up a #1 album with a relatively hit-less one in 2024, and it only reached #4.

I'll concede though that "Stranger Days" is a little bit of a pivot for Skegss. Just from the way it starts, it sounds out feeling like a campfire jam, and only barely escapes those clutches after the chorus. It breaks into a classic 'ahhh' moment which reminds me of "West Coast" by FIDLAR. Maybe it just speaks to me on a lyrical level though. You know what feels good? Trying to do good. Being a person who doesn't bring the mood down, and genuinely seems to be worth having around, that's the dream right there. Maybe it took a few too many years for me to properly spot it with Skegss, but it's a satisfying click moment.

#184. Childish Gambino - Me and Your Mama (#88, 2016)

23rd of 2016

It doesn't feel like it was so long ago. In early 2023, so over 3 years ago at this point, Lil Yachty released the album "Let's Start Here.". Maybe you think of Lil Yachty as a goofy SoundCloud rapper without high aspirations ever, but in case you missed this one, that album is psychedelic rock. Maybe it's a little more modern, but I hear something that isn't too many steps removed from Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon". It just makes me wonder why I still call him a rapper. It feels like a reductive categorisation, one that boils down all his musical talents to an ability to confidently string together sentences in a pleasing way. Depending on who you ask, maybe he doesn't manage that, and maybe no rapper manages that.

Even saying this, I don't think it's entirely fair to him. It's a qualification that's boiling down his prior talents as something that isn't high art. Whatever Lil Yachty normally does in his field of music has no chance of being compared to the talent of 20 minute songs that are largely just guitar wankery. Rockism in other words.

It's not the angle I want to approach this from though. I'm just more interested in the way these barriers we set up have locked us out of appreciating music from different approaches. The irony of Lil Yachty making a psychedelic rock album is that he's still largely going to be serving his regular audience. Maybe the net is cast a little wider, but it's still only to people who are on board with the very idea that Lil Yachty could ever make good music. There'd be many swathes of the very scene he's replicating that won't ever give it the time of day, and it'd mostly be because of pre-conceptions on the fact that he's just a rapper, and not even a particularly skilled one.

Anyway this is all a conversation that was briefly had years prior to all of this when Childish Gambino released "Me and Your Mama". Maybe not really though because despite being a lead single, it wasn't a huge hit or anything in its time. It has only gained more favour in the years since though. It's probably one of the most popular songs that could be vaguely described as progressive rock in the past 40 years. It's probably one of the most popular rock songs of the 21st century. This is all while not remotely playing to mass appeal. "Me and your Mama" is a strange rock odyssey. It's probably thanking its lucky stars that the next single was so popular because otherwise there's no chance it'd be coming in here.

I say this all as someone who's loved it from the start. It's a big system shock initially. How do you even adjust to this? Whatever pre-dispositions I'd have about a new Childish Gambino song, it's a long distance away from anything that this song is doing. It just becomes a matter of observing it at its intended angle and trying to interpret it in the lens of an unusual hit. The middle section, when the song goes full Pink Floyd, is definitely a highlight, but you take the loud with the quiet. The song is able to get very tranquil at times and it's a blessing.

#183. Mac Miller - Ladders (#35, 2018)

20th of 2018

Mac Miller released his 5th studio album "Swimming" in August 2018. It received pretty good reviews and had some reasonable opening week numbers. It wasn't really shifting the conversation around him. He had his big commercial peak years ago, and though he started getting better critical reception, he wasn't really entering the conversation outside of his fanbase. He had gotten a surprise hit on Australia a couple of years before (future list entry, naturally), so triple j stuck with him and played a couple of songs on the new album. There was the current single "What's The Use?" and also a deeper cut, "Ladders" which I guess someone just must have picked out for being radio friendly. This is to say that there were multiple Mac Miller songs being played on triple j throughout August and early September, you'd hear him on the radio every day.

Mac Miller died on September 7th, 2018. Unquestionably a shock, and one that put everyone in a weird position with how to look back at his career. Often times you'll have everyone flock to listening to the artist's biggest hits, remembering the good times and all that. I think with Mac Miller, you've got an artist who for many people doesn't have a collection of recognisable hits, and his most famous song was the one that awkwardly name-checks the current POTUS. It's not ideal, really. Mac Miller died of an overdose which was ruled an accident, but it had everyone looking back over his work and coming to realise the reality of his mental health state. Anyone who still had pre-conceptions of Mac Miller as a goofy party rapper would have to realise that he's a man who's been detailing his mental demons across his entire career.

It just so happened that he had a song that could succinctly resonate everyone's feelings on its own. Another single from "Swimming" was "Self Care", a nearly 6 minute song of hazy sounds and feelings. It details his self-destructive moments and also his own ultimatum to find the time to help himself. One of the last lines in the song has him saying he's 'got all the time in the world, so for now I'm just chillin'', a gut punch to end it on in hindsight. A bit like David Bowie's "Lazarus" though unintentionally so. "Self Care" has gone on to be one of Mac Miller's most popular songs, and it was the song that got the most immediate attention on the week of his death, belatedly becoming his first US top 40 hit as a lead artist ("The Way" with Ariana Grande was previously his only one). This is all just my excuse to write about a song I love and would otherwise be holding onto for much longer, had it not fallen just short of this list. Mac Miller was close to having a big haul in 2018, as "Self Care" landed at #108 and "What's the Use?" was #109. The key thing to note here is that triple j barely played "Self Care", as it was understandably an unconventional song for the radio, but the placing tells me that it obviously would have polled with a bit more promotion. I'll also shout out "What's the Use?" which is the song I listened to most at the time. It's just a fun song that felt oddly appropriate for me at the time. I think it's the closest Snoop Dogg's ever gotten to making the Hottest 100.

So for all of that, we're just left with "Ladders", the song that managed to both resonate strongly, and get significant airplay to show it off. I'm under no illusion it would have polled otherwise but it looks so strange in that singular context. Having no other songs within the top 100 makes it stick out oddly in a way I don't think it would have if they were there. In that sense it felt like a concession. You get your posthumous celebration, but only via the song that feels the most normal. As if his fans want to make a case that this song can be enjoyed on its own merits and they're not just tipping the scales egregiously. You know what though, they're right.

"Ladders" stands out to me for its production. There's a full brass section waiting to flex its strengths, but after the first drop you're treated to tasteful guitar and drums. It's a bit like what we got later on "Blue World" (#602), but it's more subtle so as to not take all of the attention and be distracting. Mac Miller once again knows his way around a catchy hook, the kind that gets stuck in your head just after the first listen. I'm also very confident that he knows his ladders from his stepladders, a crucial distinction in the world of engineering, and sometimes litigation.

#182. Internet Money & Gunna (feat Don Toliver & NAV) - Lemonade (#93, 2020)

10th of 2020

The Official Charts in the UK have a rule where if a song has been on the chart for at least 10 weeks and has declined in streams for 3 weeks in a row, its streaming points get cut in half from that point onwards, barring occasional exceptions. It's been in place for nearly a decade now and has reached a curious point where the vast majority of songs within chart space are under this stipulation so they don't actually decline very much, they just massively boost anything else.

The thing about this that interests me the most is the way it creates an artificial history. I've always been fascinated by the idea of a #1 single, a song that at some point in time was moving more units than anything else. It's an achievement that's worthy of attention. In the UK Charts, this is no longer a guarantee, as many long running #1 hits have the length of their reign determined not by their ability to hold the public at large, but how well they can dance on thin ice. If instead of declining on the 3rd week, you find a slight increase, suddenly you've just bought yourself another 3 weeks in a way that will feel utterly arbitrary to everyone 3 weeks later.

Suffice to say, there have been loads of #1 hits in the UK in the last 9 years that can no longer claim to actually being the most popular song of the week. One that sticks out to me is DJ Khaled's song "Wild Thoughts". That song peaked at #2 in the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, but it's a #1 hit in the UK. Having this many matching #2 peaks is a very rare thing and it's only because the global dominance of "Despacito" that coincides with this otherwise lock of a #1 hit. Not the UK though, where "Despacito"'s reign was cut early allowing this artificial chart topper to happen, subsequently misrepresenting its relative popularity in the UK compared to everywhere else.

Early 2026 is probably the biggest farce that the charts have ever seen. In the first 7 weeks of the year, there were 5 different #1 singles. Of those, only Harry Styles' "Aperture" can lay claim to actually having the highest real totals because Olivia Dean's Hottest 100 winning "Man I Need" was silently dominating for months on end despite having its streams halved quite some time ago. The song actually only has 1 week at #1 officially, less than some of the songs that disingenuously took some of its 10+ weeks it should have gotten. There's an irony in all of this which is that Harry Styles' song is probably the least relevant of all these #1 hits and it just got there on early hype, but then that's always been the magic of the charts.

Though I don't enjoy the system, I'll concede that it goes some ways to trying to bring back a more reasonable turnover of hits, something that feels right in an age when everything just feels glued to the top for a little longer than seems sensible. You look at all of the songs that got to the top and they mostly pass the sniff test. There's just one that's always looked so strange to me. One where I can't even use the DJ Khaled global comparison point because this wasn't really one of those songs around the world. In case you didn't know, I'm about to present you one of the most bizarre bits of information, which is that Internet Money's "Lemonade" was a #1 hit in the UK. "Mood" by 24kGoldn had its streams cut in half and "Lemonade" managed to sneak in for a week before Ariana Grande took up residency with "positions".

I've always found this so odd because there's nothing about "Lemonade" that screams of being in contention like this. The best way I interpret it is looking at Australia's equivalent chart of that week. "Lemonade" is at #6 (it eventually got to #5). Aside from "Mood", the other songs it sits behind are "Head & Heart" by Joel Corry, Cardi B's "WAP" (#187), Justin Bieber's "Holy" and "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac. When you look at them individually, you can maybe conclude that "Head & Heart" took off sooner in the UK so they were more ready to cycle it out. "WAP" may have been the same while also being a style of rap that was a little less receptive in the UK. "Holy" also being a tougher sell in the UK (Chance The Rapper is a bit more popular in Australia I think), while "Dreams" is very documented for being popular specifically in Australia before it took off virally. Put in all of those ideas, take a lean moment for UK pop stars and then maybe it makes sense that "Lemonade" slides all the way to the top, but it still sounds ridiculous. Like I also have to ignore the fact that Don Toliver's hits were doing better in the US and Australia than the UK ("After Party" tragically never did pull up to the top 40 there), while Gunna & NAV are hardly big ticket gets at all. I could believe "Lemonade" getting to #1 in the US, and maybe the difference is just that airplay held it back, but I look at the historical record and it's always going to show "Lemonade" as the song that went to #1 in the UK and nowhere else (okay, it got there in Portugal & Greece too, I don't know too much about their charts).

It's all just very funny to me mainly because "Lemonade" is the kind of feature credit salad that doesn't feel like it'd make for much of a calling card. I don't know how much more your potential audience increases with each successive name as there'd be too much of an overlap. Nothing about Don Toliver + Gunna + NAV to me sounds like it's breaking the bank the same way Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart & Sting, or Rihanna, Kanye West & Paul McCartney would. The lead artist isn't even an artist really. It's just the name of a small record label that doesn't even house these particular artists. It's like a DJ Khaled song without his cult of personality. Everyone will say they prefer it that way but you're lying if you genuinely think he's not successfully commanding people to have a look. Internet Money founder Taz Taylor's biggest claim to fame at this point is that he co-produced Lil Tecca's hit "Ransom".

Anyway I've done all this preface while ignoring the simplest solution to it all. An explanation that at the very least puts the song on the map, with all chart variance just being the normal odd microcosms doing their thing. What if the song is just really good? Like, maybe you're not hunting down the latest Internet Money release, but what if it gets put in front of you and you're naturally entranced by it? That's been the whole unspoken part of this entry. I love this song, and have ever since I first came across it. This almost goes entirely down to Don Toliver. He'd been collecting solid credits as a protégé of Travis Scott with a fascinating voice and a great ear for a hook. With "Lemonade" he absolutely cashed in on the promise. The whole song is just everyone knowing he's nailed it, and filling the space with something so we can anticipate when Don Toliver's going to come back. At this point in time it's almost a novelty that you get away with having Gunna & NAV be the ultimate charisma vacuums, and it almost adds to the experience of it. I'll give Gunna some credit in hindsight, but NAV is such a strange individual, I never know what to do with him.

The song's other secret weapon is the music video. It feels like deliberate brand synergy because they got Cole Bennett under his Lyrical Lemonade collective to direct it. He'd been making a name for himself with his distinct, visually striking style. I'm half convinced songs like "Blueberry Faygo" and "WHATS POPPIN" (#617) became big hits simply because of the music videos. The video for "Lemonade" always stuck out to me in its relative simplicity, mostly taking place underwater with a lemonade filter in its colour (this is the polite way of saying it looks like piss). It's just really well cut though. There's a Dutch angle and zoom out he uses while Don Toliver's singing the hook and it's never made more sense to me. The whole thing is just so rickety that it's unnerving, but it absolutely sells the impact of the moment. Who knew how emotional the experience of sipping lean could be?

#181. Luca Brasi - Anything Near Conviction (#90, 2016)

22nd of 2016

I wonder if Tasmania has an identity crisis. I'm speaking from a very far distance and am well aware that I'm susceptible to the same statement, but I do often just forget about it completely. It's comfortably Australia's smallest state, it's not attached to the mainland, and there's very little to associate with it that isn't hacky jokes about incest or the Port Arthur massacre. There are absolutely famous people from Tasmania, Ricky Ponting, Ariarne Titmus, the Riewoldts, Hannah Gadsby etc, but I just never associate anyone with it. It's more like a tidbit you learn after the fact. The main one that usually comes to mind for me whenever I think of Tasmania is that it's where Luca Brasi are from. Their identity is basically being that one popular rock band from Tasmania, even if The Wolfe Brothers are probably more popular in general.

In fairness, Luca Brasi is a pretty good bit of representation. They slot nicely between general alternative rock & dole wave. Their name also reminds me of "The Godfather" which I'm stereotypically going to say is a good movie. It's not the only time they've played to my heart though because later on, they released a single named after the protagonist of "Catch-22". I actually don't think I ever got into the fact that despite all the wacky & memorable characters in that book, Yossarian probably is the most relatable with his drive to survive overriding any sense of obligation to his role. He goes from seeming like a disruptive troll to being the only sane man on Pianosa. Oh sorry I'm doing it again. This is the only entry for Luca Brasi, as much as it'd be nice to see more from them (I thought their Like a Version of "How To Make Gravy" was a very good one). It's obviously a big deal though, they just announced a 10th anniversary tour for the album this song comes from.

When I think about the lineage of Australian rock, I want to draw the comparison to Blueline Medic. They're not a band that have endured in the conversation, but they also have just the one Hottest 100 entry, "Making The Nouveau Riche", a song I severely underrated when I first came across it. It's tapping something similar to Luca Brasi. Clean punk rock energy that doesn't lose any of its grit through the polish, as well as a mighty hook. It's proving they understand both sides of the assignment and you get a resonant plea for support while fighting a broken system. I think in general I just love a song that strikes the right chord, allowing the verses to have as much urgency as the chorus. I think if "Anything Near Conviction" came out a decade earlier, it easily could have crossed over, and fit in with those songs by Kisschasy & The Getaway Plan that everyone seems to remember fondly.

#190-#186

#190. Jamie xx (feat Young Thug & Popcaan) - I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times) (#26, 2015)

27th of 2015

The feeling probably isn't as universal as I think it is because I don't have a good grasp on how most people actually use the app Discord. I don't necessarily interact with most of them, but just for clarity, I'm in roughly 50 different servers. This might be either a lot or not very many depending on who you ask. There's always this weird trepidation when you join a new one though. You don't really get a preview and you're met with various different realisations at once. Does the server have a hundred different channels and how many of them are lighting up instantaneously? Is there a channel that lets everyone know you just joined the server, or left it? Are you about to get a shock to the system seeing the kinds of things discussed on there and the manner in which it's done? It's all enough to thoroughly overwhelm you. This is all just a terrible segue to say that I most recently joined a server that had its members' permissions tiered off as either Rich Gang or Young Thugs. Just one of those charming bits of niche referential humour that makes you feel a little more comfortable.

I've learnt quite a lot inadvertently from Young Thug. He's an artist who will challenge your pre-conceptions if you're willing to take it up. In an era where you continually encounter new rappers who seem only intent to one-up each other on how much they seem to challenge sensible taste, whether through incomprehensible performance or just increasingly terrible stage names, Young Thug is the final boss. No one who calls themselves Young Thug could possibly merit any interest, and the moment you hear him start rapping, that'll probably only reinforce it.

He simply commands so much attention though. At some point you have to assume it's not just a joke, that there's a warranted pull. For me, I don't think I was ready for him in 2014. I was too deep in my pseudo backpack rap phase that I was turned off immediately, even if ironically, I probably was in the exact right audience for him. I was just missing the click moments. When I saw him turn up on this particular album, it felt like a joke at first. I had that adverse reaction you get when you're locked into your specific world but are then forced into one you were straying because your favourite artists have different taste to you. On some level, this collaboration became arguably Jamie xx's biggest hit. It's in close contention with another song from this album I'll discuss at a later point, but as far as the charts and the Hottest 100 were concerned in 2015, this came out on top.

It's hard to really describe the Young Thug experience. On the surface he is just another generic rapper but in reality, he's just such a bizarre character. I recently saw an interview where director Matt Johnson described his creative process of very carefully crafting something that seems amateurish. It gives you the ability to use it as a baseline and then immediately break it, creating an unexpected whiplash for the audience who are even more caught off guard than they might have been. That feeling of 'oh, I'm smarter than the person who made this...wait what did they just do?'. I feel like that's what Young Thug does. It takes a lot of effort to appear fascinatingly carefree. I think about his music video for "Wyclef Jean". It's a video that paints Young Thug an unreliable nuisance to work with, but the end result is one of the funniest things I've ever seen, and it feels like it had to be staged to create this. That exact kind of weird music video that captures his brand perfectly seemingly through doing nothing. One of the most ridiculous figures in music who also has a global #1 hit to their name.

Sorry yeah, I know Jamie xx is here too. This is the only time Young Thug shows up and Jamie xx has another entry that feels closer and more personal. If anyone's reading all of this in sequence and does want some clarification, I'll put in the obligatory note that Jamie xx is a member of The xx, and this is from his first solo album "In Colour". For the most part, the album is what you expect, moody electronica with wild but enthralling sonic shifts. "I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)" is a strange, isolated moment in the middle of the album that has no precedent. Suddenly Jamie xx goes dancehall and gets a guest rapper who takes up all of the attention. There's also a very prominent sample of "Good Times" by The Persuasions, while Popcaan chimes in and occasionally sings along with it. Just a great example of the weird hit single on an otherwise completely different album.

I was not immune to the charms. Jamie xx wields his samples and crafts a pretty addictive beat, while Young Thug is just on full display doing what he does best: jumping all over the place and causing the most unexpected tangents. He says it himself, it's a pop quiz, and he's got me because I didn't actually know who Walter Payton was. Otherwise he's got the all-time great delivery on how he's gonna 'ride in that pussy like a stroller', which causes the great (imagine some fancy text appearing on screen) juxtaposition on the song's Genius page which goes from a joke image of Thugger as a baby in a stroller, and 3 lines later is discussing Aristotle, Wittgenstein & Nietzsche. At some point in time you just have to make the transition from 'Get this mess out of my dignified electronic album' into 'The world is better, knowing that this song is part of it'.

#189. Angus & Julia Stone - Heart Beats Slow (#62, 2014)

22nd of 2014

There's a baseline level of attention that any major success is going to grant you in the immediate follow up. I don't think there's even necessarily a rule on timing because the longer it takes, the more anticipation you build. We're 4 years removed from Angus & Julia Stone's biggest success through their "Down The Way" album, so they're going to stick the landing on the follow up no matter what. This turned out to be true, they got another #1 album, another top 50 single, and another Hottest 100 entry. Nothing about it feels like it's part of the current conversation though, so they're just coasting on that momentum. Compare it to "Chateau" (#743), a song that had to work its way back into the conversation again without the head start this one had.

Just yesterday I was having a conversation about self-titled albums that aren't actually an artist's debut. I lean on being more lenient than most on this, I think it can be done right. On the other hand, it can be a big gambit if it doesn't go over well. The conclusion drawn is that in hindsight, MGMT should've packed it in when their self-titled 3rd album didn't go over super well. They eventually bounced back but it still feels like a massive career killer in hindsight.

I can't decide where "Angus & Julia Stone" fits in this though. On the surface, it's lacking in a really big hit, but its streaming numbers are surprisingly good. You look at the number of people who must've listened to the whole thing from top to bottom, and it has a return that's on par with the two surrounding albums. Just to show how much worse it can be, their most recent album has a Spotify total that can't quite match "Heart Beats Slow" on its own. That's a pattern that can be repeated. "Angus & Julia Stone" has less streams than "Chateau", and "Snow" has less streams than "Big Jet Plane". But "Heart Beats Slow" isn't even the biggest song on this album ("Grizzly Bear" appears to be the breakout in hindsight), so it's a long way down for that one.

I suppose if there is a purpose for this being a self-titled album, it comes with context. Both Angus & Julia Stone released solo albums in 2012. The self-titled album was them reuniting and matching each other's strengths and weaknesses again. It's an album that sounds decidedly more upbeat than the solo work, or perhaps any of their albums in general. I think of "Angus & Julia Stone" as the album where they get a bit more interested in making rock music. Not in a radically different way, just an Angus & Julia Stone way.

It works for me. My favourite songs from them are often the ones where there is a bit more going on to add some flavour to it. Songs like "Private Lawns" and "The Beast" from way back. This all comes in spades on this album. I'm quite fond of the back to back with "Death Defying Acts" and "Little Whiskey", which feels like Julia & Angus taking turns to include some of the most unusual ideas I've ever heard from them on record. Just a very easy album to get through from start to finish.

It also helps that "Heart Beats Slow" is a solid contender for my favourite song they've ever done. It's completing the mission statement of the album by allowing them to harmonise throughout it, and it's generally a song that never lets up. The guitar tone is so rich though, that's what gets through to me.

#188. The Amity Affliction - Born To Die (#40, 2013)

34th of 2013

I'm very open to the idea of The Amity Affliction doing more cover versions. I saw a movie recently with "HOLIDAY" by Turnstile in it. Just absolute hype in the form of a needle drop. It didn't occur to me until later that I had no reason to really know the song, except that I recognised it via The Amity Affliction doing a Like A Version of it recently. Kinda song that just makes you wanna book it to Ottawa.

I'm going to be perfectly honest and say that I did not need The Amity Affliction to introduce me to "Born To Die". That particular Lana Del Rey song and album was a kinda big deal. Not just in the moment, but still to this day, as it remains a permanent fixture of the Billboard 200 to this day. Not just for everyone else though, it was a big deal for me. I think of songs that had a profound impact on me in my formative years, and it's hard to go past "Video Games". It was one of those songs that just stopped me in my place hearing it for the first time. I didn't necessarily know if that was going to go anywhere (these things often don't), but evidently it wasn't just me who was mesmerized, witnessing the birth of a new star. I've heard it many more times since then so I can't fully put myself in that zone, but I know by all recorded thoughts I've had that it was very special to me. It's on such a level that I can never truly discard Lana Del Rey even if I've never seen her reach those heights again.

I'm in a bit of a weird place with "Born To Die", the song. I lapped it up at the time in the way this sort of momentum is bound to send you, but I found a hard time reaching that level of adoration for it. Once the album came out, I found myself liking it less and less. I don't know how much of it I can level on the song itself, but I just found myself wising up to producer Emile Haynie's tricks. He has a credit on every song of the album (except "Video Games") and listening to a whole 45 minutes of songs with those echoed background sounds...it just gets exhausting. I'm pretty fond of the album in general, I think the tunes are strong enough to get around that, but "Born To Die" is the song that I think fares the worst from it. I just don't really connect to it on any level.

This is where I enter full sickos territory because funnily enough, this cover has never worn down on me. Maybe on some level it helps me appreciate the original song a bit more because it shows there's a way to enjoy it on the whole, just not being bogged down by dated production choices. Alternatively, this is just one of the funniest cover versions I've ever heard. I put it in the same barrel as Scarling. covering that one song about being a weirdo who doesn't belong here, there's this sheer juxtaposition between what you're used to and what you get. You feel like the people making it have to realise the borderline heresy they're committing, but because they commit so hard, it turns into magic. This cover starts with the exact same string intro as the original version but adds demonstrably loud guitars half a second later. It's the same as not knowing if you're hearing Gotye or Doechii, except playing out in record time. I'll say just now listening to both versions back to back, it was the original version that threw me off this time, I'm expecting The Amity Affliction now I guess (even though I've listened to Lana Del Rey's version far more).

Most of the excitement is wrapped up in that intro and the first verse. After that, you've put yourself in the zone for long enough that it can't surprise you. I think the melody plays surprisingly well for Ahren, or maybe there's just less in the way of overdubbing his voice, so he sounds pretty alright here. Hearing him and Joel trading lines is such a joy though, I'm so glad this happened.

#187. Cardi B (feat Megan Thee Stallion) - WAP (#6, 2020)

11th of 2020

How do you even start this one? Maybe by saying 'There's some whores in this house'. Did you ever hear the word 'some' in this before that? I feel so completely blindsided that it's been there the whole time. It's like discovering that gorilla during the basketball video. But then I'm even worse here because I also was certain he was saying 'hos', you know, the kinds of immoral pleasure seekers they don't ask about on Jeopardy!.

I've hinted at this one a few times. It's probably the most notable example of a song that courts the controversy of being exactly what it is. I hinted at it when I spoke about "MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)" (#242). I feel like this is the template that Lil Nas X was replicating when he took that song to the top. His example is a little different though, because I think on the surface, you can listen to his song and not be too taken out by it. When "WAP" comes on, you're going to notice it. "WAP" is the song that begs for you to pay attention, and no matter how much you think you're above it, it's gonna get you. There's just no precedent. There have been dirty hit songs in the past, but they're always playing within the rules of the radio to an extent, stopping themselves from going too far. I don't hear a single moment of "WAP" that makes me think they reeled it back in. It's the pure, logical conclusion. The most utterly filthy song that went so far down that it reached the little dangly thing in the back of the throat, and also became a #1 hit around the world. Normally there are enough gatekeepers to keep something safer at the top, but "WAP" just broke all the rules and was rewarded for it.

For both Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion, this is taking all the potential notoriety they'd gained in the years leading up and fully cashing in on the opportunity. It might be a bit weird to say this for Cardi B given that she'd already had multiple US #1 singles at this point, but in Australia she was having trouble converting. Both "Bodak Yellow" and "I Like It" were moderate hits at best. Megan Thee Stallion was even further off here. Maybe you can blame the hemispheres but there was no "Hot Girl Summer" to be seen here, and she was having a little trouble converting to the big time. Beyoncé helped turn "Savage" into a hit, but it was "WAP" that let her show her best form.

When it comes to highly controversial songs, you do find yourself wondering how much of the success comes as a result of the backlash, and the subsequent attention that it gets. These are often songs that appear anomalous to a chart watcher, breaking well out of the standard form of a hit. In the case of "WAP", I'm in two minds. Firstly, it needs to be highlighted that it very much did rush out the gate from the very beginning. That's the kind of response that says the song was a hit on its merits of standing out, possibly being spread by word of mouth but not necessarily in a negative way. These responses take time though. The same way it takes about 3 days for news of the GRAMMY Awards to reach their peak audience translation on the charts, and then you have to add in how long it takes for people to make those videos and posts that circulate. By the time Ben Shapiro made a video about "WAP", it was almost 2 weeks old. I feel as though it's videos like that which absolutely sent the song skyward. If one of the biggest dorks on the internet expresses disapproval of something, it's only going to take it higher, it's the economy of attention. Whether you're doing it to own him or just because he reminded you it exists, it doesn't matter. I just want to point out that about a week after "WAP" first got to #1 on Australian Spotify, it remained at #1 and had almost doubled its daily streams. That's gone from being a curious #1 hit to a monolithic one, and stayed there for 6 weeks.

Part of what made the song so controversial is what always seems to happen in the world. Anything men can do, women can also do, but receive so much more scrutiny for it in the process. Some of it is ingrained sexism, and it might not even be something people are aware of. It's just that same reinforced stereotype of what men think women should be allowed to do, going back to before women were allowed to hold many jobs or y'know, vote in elections. The gatekeepers from back then may have died of old age by now, but remnants of their cause still linger on. This is not to say that a song like "WAP" wouldn't be provocative if it were by men, but when you see the things being said here, it's just not the kind of response you get when men are openly waving their private parts about on the record. We're just less used to hearing it from women and that's the biggest shock value. Forget feeding sugary treats to Victorian children, let Pope Pius XI hear this song and watch him have a heart attack just from Cardi B saying she doesn't cook or clean.

I recognise "WAP" for the absurd novelty that it is. It's absolutely aware of what it's doing and revelling in the opportunity. There are just far too many insane lines and sound effects (*car beep*) to take it fully seriously. If that's all it was though, I don't know if it'd go very far. We get tired of the novelty pretty quickly. If there's a true secret weapon in all of this, it's that it allows Megan Thee Stallion to take centre stage and show the world that when she's not toning herself down for a pop hit, she's genuinely one of the most electrifying rappers going around. Every time Cardi B passes the microphone to her, it's like watching a WWE team finally make that long awaited tag in. She sees the ridiculous things she has to say and doesn't hesitate at running through in double time. Once again, it's the enviable power of absolutely owning the moment with no hesitation that sells it. In a year that was understandably a bit unwilling to produce many thrills, this was the welcome burst of excitement that was sorely needed.

#186. Sia - Alive (#56, 2015)

26th of 2015

It was nearly a year ago I wrote about Sia before for her song "Chandelier" (#698). That entry got so long, deep in the weeds of that particular moment in Sia's career and what the song inadvertently ended up representing, so I didn't get much of a chance to talk about one of the more interesting music careers. A career that we've mostly not witnessed to the fullest because Sia's been around for longer than most people could possibly be aware. This is my attempt to elaborate on that, as someone who jumped on somewhere in the middle, but had a deep connection to that story, which has ballooned in very unexpected ways. Strap in, let's talk about it.

Sia has been making music since the mid '90s. It starts with her work in Adelaide with the acid jazz band Crisp. It's not too much of a stretch to see the step by step process. She's already laying down her distinctive vocal runs, but it's also not anything you're expecting to smash out the gates, even in an era that might be more receptive to this sound. If you've heard her later song "Where I Belong", you can see the throughline.

Her debut album came out in 1997 and positions her as a solo artist, though it doesn't make major waves. The first clear sign of success attached to her is when she teamed up with producer Friendly to sing "Some Kind of Love Song". Sia deliberately chose not to be credited on the song as she was shy about people hearing her speak on the record on such personal matters, but it became harder to avoid when the song became something of a hit (it landed at #75 in the 1999 Hottest 100, ahead of "Blue Monday", "Down Under" and a band called Turnstyle).

At this point in time, Sia has already moved to London. It's with a bit of tragedy initially, as she intended to meet her boyfriend there only for him to be killed in a car accident a week before she departed. She still ended up making the trip but ended up in a very different place. She starts to work with Zero 7, putting down vocals on some very memorable songs that I rate very highly. Her second album also comes out and she surprisingly scores a UK top 10 hit with "Taken For Granted". It's a little bit of a gimmick song that samples Prokofiev, but it solidifies Sia as a potentially bankable artist with some more label priority going forward in her niche of down-tempo, trip-hop adjacent music.

There's an odd nod to her roots on Sia's next album "Colour The Small One". The majority of the tracks were written with an old friend from Adelaide, Sam Dixon. He'd actually go on to win a GRAMMY Award a decade later for producing Adele's album. To date, Sia has 9 nominations but has never won one herself. The album is well received but doesn't make major waves. At this point in time, Sia has started to write some different songs. Specifically she mentions "Stop Trying", "Bring Night", "The Co-Dependent" and "Cloud". If any of those titles sound familiar, it's because she did finally release them in 2010 on her 5th album "We Are Born". That's the album where she pivots hard into something that could be described as indie pop-rock, with strong emphasis on the pop. Back in 2005, Sia's label hated the idea of it and considered it career suicide. Sia stuck to her guns and got dropped by her label as a result. This could have been the end of Sia's story here. A week later, fate throws an unusual bone.

All the way over in California, young photographer Claire Fisher is in a rut. She's sitting on an enormous trust fund from her deceased father that she's unable to access due to legal specifics. When she should be seeing the world, she's forced to take up a demoralising 9 to 5 office temp job. While there, she meets a man named Ted, who seems like a prospective boyfriend, but causes a bit of a stir with his unwavering support of the Iraq War. It might be a deal-breaker, but Claire's brother has a stroke while they're out together and he decides to stay with her at the hospital during an extremely difficult time for her. It shows her that despite their strong political disagreements, he's not irredeemable, so she sticks with him. Following on from all this, Claire decides to move to New York, leaving her friends and family behind. Not long before this, Ted is listening to a Lifehouse song, and Claire criticises his basic 'just likes what he hears on the radio' music taste. Ted makes her a CD mix with the name 'Ted's Deeply Unhip Mix'. Claire says goodbye to her family, drives off, puts the CD in her car and hits play. The song that starts playing is "Breathe Me" by Sia.

This is just me describing various events that happen in the final season and final episode of Six Feet Under. It's now widely regarded as one of the best television episodes of all time, and I'd say the majority of that reputation comes down to the last 5 or so minutes, soundtracked by an extended version of "Breathe Me". The sequence shows future major events from all the main characters lives in chronological order. In keeping with the show's priorities, that means it shows every single major character's death, complete with the signature, finalising death cards. I've known about this for a very long time. Not only is it extremely famous, but I just happened to see it on TV on its own many years ago, where it had no real impact on me because I didn't know who these people were and it's a little (knowingly) goofy. I watched through the whole show  for the first time in 2025, completely aware of how it was going to end. It absolutely ruined me. I can count on one hand all the times that a piece of media has genuinely brought me to tears. The other ones are too embarrassing for me to mention, but Six Feet Under absolutely did it. I've always enjoyed "Breathe Me" but never felt any particularly strong connection to it until then. It makes complete sense to me how much attention Sia got given after this happened. I also want to note that Sarah Blasko's "Always Worth It" also plays in that same episode, shortly before Sia, which if nothing else, suggests that maybe someone picking out music for the show was listening to triple j at the time. The choice of Sia though feels more inspired to me having watched the whole show, where some of Sia's Zero 7 songs had appeared earlier. Given that "Breathe Me" didn't exist at that point, it feels like a worthy shout for seeing a career moving on up along with the show itself.

This revived Sia's career, but it did pigeonhole her again, so she did need to make another downtempo album, which is where we get to "Some People Have Real Problems". This is where I started to witness Sia's career, and also where that initial summary might be a little confusing. To me, Sia was a mysterious singer who had a guest spot on Lior's song "I'll Forget You", and I'd occasionally hear on the radio through her songs "Buttons" and "The Girl You Lost to Cocaine". These are very upbeat songs. So much so that I remember downloading "Buttons" but being a bit too embarrassed to actually listen to it. The latter though, was a song that absolutely wormed into my heart. I found it a little incomprehensible, but something about the slightly edgy title got through to me and suggested that Sia was an intriguing figure.

In early 2008 I started mentally keeping track of my favourite songs in the moment. It was my way of re-assuring myself that there was still good music out there. I didn't ever write it down, but I thought about it so much that I was still able to remember it and accurately document it a year later when I did decide to write it down. There was an odd pattern however, one that didn't register to me at all until I broke it, which is that for a whole year of doing it, I'd only ever reserved the top spot to music by men. There was one band with a female guitarist but in a visible sense, it was all men singing all the time. The streak finally broke in early 2009 after I heard and was enraptured by Sia's current single "Soon We'll Be Found". More than anything I think I was just gripped by the memorable music video where she performs the song in American Sign Language with some very stylish visual direction. It was a song that made Sia's music click for me in a significant way, but also opened the door for me getting more comfortable with listening to music made by women. Sia pretty much opened the floodgates for the present day where roughly 80-90% of the music I listen to is made by women. As a bonus, triple j started playing a remix of "Buttons" by CSS that I found myself enjoying a lot and it helped break down the barrier for her quirkier side. Good timing for that because Sia's next album campaign was right around the corner.

"We Are Born" was a yearlong party for me. Given the music I'd heard from her leading up to it, the sonic shift wasn't too hard to swallow for me at the time, and I just found myself vibing with hit after hit on that album. Much of it was written with Greg Kurstin, fresh from his huge success on Lily Allen's second album and also some songs I didn't realise I'd loved so much from The Bird and the Bee. It all completely solidified Sia as a very important artist to me. There's a funny irony in all of this which is something that I'd usually not respond well to. The extra level of success meant that Sia started getting a lot of attention and to me it felt like she was being treated not as an unappreciated gem, but one of those nuisances the top 40 charts serve up. I wasn't going to refute anyone's opinions on this but it had the opposite effect on me and made me recognise the barriers between these two worlds weren't quite as clear as I felt they were. As well as just how different everyone's responses are to things when they don't have the same background. It's my coping mechanism to say 'of course you don't like this as much as I do, if I came into it this way, I wouldn't either'.

I did already cover the next part of the story in my previous entry. Sia got sick of touring and promoting, and wanted to go behind the scenes. She started working with some pretty significant names, and in the space of about 12 months, racked up an Australian #1 single, a UK #1 single and a US #1 single, with three different songs. Thanks to her contract, another album was forthcoming from Sia, and with a lot of thanks to "Chandelier", "1000 Forms of Fear" became a huge success. I don't quite like it as much as her previous untouchable trio of albums. It starts to sound like Sia, the international songwriter superstar, taking over from the previously more intimate and fun stuff. Some good songs on it still I'll concede, but not really what I was after. I think "Dressed In Black" and "Eye of the Needle" are very good songs though.

This is also the biggest shift in Sia's career in general through her persona. Previously, she was a very recognisable figure but she practically disappeared, performing beneath a wig, not towards people. She stopped appearing on her artwork and music videos, often replaced by the iconography of the wig, or via young dancer Maddie Ziegler. In hindsight there are red flags, but Sia's success is dominating the narrative. She releases another album 18 months later, "This Is Acting", an album of songs she couldn't manage to shop around for anyone else. Ironically, you've got a stacked list of songwriting collaborators including Greg Kurstin, Adele, Kanye West, Jack Antonoff and Sisqó (okay that last one is a sample). I don't think the album was as successful on the surface as the last one, but it has a pretty strong rap sheet, including Sia's first ever Billboard #1 single as an artist, "Cheap Thrills", and that one motivational song that has quietly become one of her biggest hits ever. I'm quite fond of "Bird Set Free" and "Sweet Design", as well as the album's slightly forgotten lead single "Alive".

I've heard everything that could be said about "Alive" probably. It's total inspirational bait but with the added bonus of Sia's voice breaking in ways that isn't as charming as intended. If you're not head over heels for Sia, I can imagine this being the most insufferable song possible. It's just always connected for me though. Songs like this don't work because they get everyone invested in them, but they just need enough people to see something in it. This time, I'm one of them. I think of an artist who's been through so much, an undeniable talent lost in the weeds of marketing and finding the right scene, who's so clearly done with all that nonsense. She's finally reached a point where she can be the queen of her castle on her own terms. That's where the song's title mantra just starts to hit so hard for me. Sadly, it might just be the last hurrah.

Sia's music career didn't completely tank after this album but it has come a long way down. She's accidentally managed a perennial Christmas hit through her song "Snowman" which rides quite high as far as modern Christmas songs in the chart (and oddly appears to be the most popular Christmas song when Christmas music is out of the picture), but it just precedes the biggest failing in her career to date. That's right, I have to talk about the film "Music". Except wait, I haven't seen it yet. Let me stop writing this for a moment and watch it first.

Here's the background information you need to know. "Music" is a film released in 2021 co-written and directed by Sia. It's about a woman who becomes the guardian to her half-sister, who is non-verbal and autistic. That autistic girl (who is named Music) is played by Maddie Ziegler who is neurotypical in real life. A large chunk of the movie's criticism comes down to this. You'll spend a large chunk of the movie watching someone pretend to be autistic in ways that can come across as mockery. The film was a massive box office flop and widely panned.

I have complicated feelings about the whole thing. I'm coming into this as someone who is autistic myself, though admittedly not really in the way it's portrayed here. It's always been incredibly difficult for me to relate to the experience given that there's so little representation out there and it always misses the mark for managing to relay my experiences. I had a similar experience watching "Rain Man". It's a movie I ultimately think I enjoyed, but I found myself distracted by the way that people on the spectrum tend to be treated as a burden, unless there be a use case to be found from their way of thinking. So Charles hates being around Raymond until he realises he has a gift for counting cards and there's money to be made. A lot of my positive feelings around that movie come externally though, it led to some very good conversations, hearing some new perspectives and generally understanding myself better. I also want to add that since writing this entry, I encountered what might be the best, most relatable portrayal of the spectrum in a piece of media I've seen, which I'll bring up again on a later entry.

I won't be able to make the same claim for "Music" which lives up to its reputation as a tough watch. Much of the early part of the film is just watching someone cruelly have their life be put into disarray but with the perspective of sympathy being drawn towards those around her. The only time it feels like you get a 'perspective' from Music is through the film's frequent dream sequences, choreographed dance sequences to songs Sia wrote for the film (and occasionally sings). This all feels like a complete bizarro world recounting of something culturally irrelevant, but one of those songs, "Together", was a minor hit and was for a while, the most played song on Australian radio. The sequences are occasionally visually stimulating I'll admit but it does nothing but paint Music as a cloud cuckoo lander.

There are two scenes in the movie that involve Music having an uncomfortable episode and the film's voice of reason character indicating that the correct course of action is to restrain her on the ground until she stops. This particular part of the movie has been criticised heavily as a potentially very dangerous thing to do that the film treats as if it's CPR for autistic people. It's not something I was really aware of before hearing about it in the movie but it's certainly an uncomfortable watch. There's a happy ending to it all that I'm not sure is earned, but to see the main characters come together with warmth in their hearts and have it not be by means of convenience, that's at least a plus for me.

Though it wouldn't be fair to include this movie in the grouping, it is worth shining a light on a frustrating part about all media discourse. It's the way that a delicate touch is required to handle difficult topics like these, lest they cause the kind of backlash that this movie received. I speak more when it comes to people who are correctly representing their own kind here. There's an intense pressure to successfully tell an all-encompassing story even if it's just an individual one, and it becomes a lightning rod for criticism. Maybe some people are combing through trying to find something to pick apart, and maybe some other people are waiting in the wings to join the pile-on for anything that represents diversity. You just undoubtedly draw a louder reaction when you're part of it, and it's something that many potential creatives can't help but be made aware of. Think of how many stories we've lost because the person who might write them is justifiably afraid of the way it'll be responded to. They might not even have to make a mistake, just have some isolated quote get taken out of context and spread like wildfire. I have trouble talking about my own perspectives because they're so often just completely out of touch with everyone else's that I worry I'm going way out of line by not just saying Sia's film is dogshit without nuance. I see Sia as someone with good intentions who tackled a project whose scope is way out of her reach, and got bombarded with so much criticism that it became impossible to rein it in, in a constructive way.

On one hand, it's been very frustrating to witness an artist who I'd admired for many years do an accidental nuclear strike of nastiness towards my kind of people, the kind that maybe can be learned from, but more likely has just set discourse back several years, and will discourage anyone else from approaching it for some time. I was also very frustrated at much of her response to it. With regards to the restraint scenes, she apologised and said they'd either be edited out of future screenings, or there'd be a warning at the start of the film. As someone who legally rented the film today, I can tell you that neither change is in place. She acted in complete ignorance with regard to the autism community and tweeted dismissively about the concerns at the time. She no longer operates her own Twitter account and is even more in private than ever before. Not that Twitter is the greatest place to be nowadays, but it is another example of someone being shoved out of the lane of expressing themselves because of this reaction.

Did you know Sia announced her own autism diagnosis in 2023? I'm just learning of it today but I don't think I've ever seen it brought up ever. This has all also derailed her music career significantly. Maybe her time in the spotlight was always going to be fleeting, as someone who properly hit the big time close to the age of 40. Sia put out her latest album in 2024 and it performed very poorly; she's now selling less than she used to manage before she was properly famous. It's just not something that anyone wants to get invested in anymore (I'd be lying if I said I was overly impressed by any of the new music I've heard from her). I do see a lot of myself in Sia though. I can't help but admire anyone who (in any capacity) is able to overcome the difficulties of navigating the world on the spectrum. Finding a way to fit a world that isn't shaped for you, and still manage to be yourself. That's the Sia I want to remember. That's the person I want to be. Let's not fight, I know we're lost, but soon we'll be found.

#195-#191

#195. Arcade Fire - Afterlife (#54, 2013)

35th of 2013

There's the opening lyric to "Afterlife" that goes: 'Afterlife, oh, what a terrible thought'. That's a lyric that's always stuck out to me. Not for the poignancy, but because I was sure I'd heard it before. It wasn't quite there, but it was something similar. This is the part where I reveal that I did not just quote Arcade Fire then, but rather a song from 2017 that closes the album from another band. I'm not able to mention them as they're one of a very small handful of artists with multiple entries that haven't appeared yet. If you do manage to solve that puzzle though, check the two songs out because it's just so strange that they did the same thing so similarly. Arcade Fire don't quite end their 4th album with "Afterlife" though, as there's a lengthy reprise after it.

In the world of Canadian indie rock, I happened upon something I wrote back in 2013, where I was surprised to find out that Born Ruffians were still around, a band I hadn't thought about since 2008. I'm here to say that in 2026, they're still around. They had a cameo in a movie I saw recently where they were talking about Lizzy Goodman's book "Meet Me In The Bathroom", about the rise of the New York indie scene in the early 2000s. I haven't finished reading the book yet but I saw the film and generally find it funny how this band with two songs I vaguely remember have taken control of my purchasing. Hopefully I'll have finished it by the time the last Arcade Fire song comes up.

The relevance of this is that James Murphy naturally comes up quite a bit in the book. It talks about how he started DFA Records and started looking after The Rapture. They put out "House of Jealous Lovers" to a lot of excitement, but there's trouble getting the album released. James Murphy starts wanting to get very involved as if he were a member of the band but they don't seem as interested. The great pay off to all of this in the movie is that you get a lengthy spiel from Murphy when he discovers Napster and starts seeing younger DJs start playing tracks that weren't released or available. It's the most predictable but satisfying needle drop to start playing "Losing My Edge", and go into the origin of LCD Soundsystem.

If you're going to remember this Arcade Fire album for anything, it's how involved James Murphy is in everything. He's credited as a producer on almost every track. This all happened shortly after LCD Soundsystem had supposedly disbanded, and I can't help but think about this controlling, egotistical version of Murphy when I look at the result. It's absolutely still an Arcade Fire album, but the influence is clear, and we've got a slightly more danceable version of what might otherwise have been much more morose.

"Afterlife" feels like the clearest example of this. What might otherwise be hostile confusion turns into something a little more cathartic here. It's an exact meeting point between these two bands that feels like it shouldn't work as well as it does. Maybe it is revealing the downfall of Arcade Fire in hindsight because I'm not sure where they're supposed to go from here, but it was a fun experiment in the moment.

#194. Thelma Plum - Not Angry Anymore (#78, 2019)

14th of 2019

It's definitely not the first one, but I want to vaguely cast back to 2007, when that very popular British band released an album and let everyone pay whatever they want for it. As far as the Hottest 100 was concerned, the most popular song on that album at the time was the one about puzzle pieces or something. It's a song that I grew to really love and it's a prime example of songs that use a higher tempo to make even an acoustic guitar sound intense. It's something I'm often falling for. "Second Chance" by Liam Finn, "Gold Guns Girls" by Metric, "Six Months In A Cast" by The Trouble With Templeton, that kind of thing. I don't know if anyone's ever isolated this as an idea and acknowledged it but I like it a lot.

Naturally, "Not Angry Anymore" is also one of these songs. I don't know if it's necessarily a mark of success. Maybe at a stretch you could count "Little Lion Man" by Mumford & Sons but I don't think it fully fits the mold. There's another song that'll appear in this list that also applies, and that was something of a hit. "Not Angry Anymore" feels like more an also-ran, a song that completely got pushed aside by a later single that'll appear on this list. Maybe it's not a fair comparison anyway. "Not Angry Anymore" only starts tapping that momentum on the second verse. A very clear example, but not as prominent as it could be.

I've cooled on this song a little but at the time it was my favourite song she'd put out. A song where the hook just jumps right out at you and never lets go. Contrary to all I just said before though, I also love all the switch ups, it's this never ending thrill ride of new ideas. Much like me when I run into another song without much of a story to tell. Who knows where these entries will go next? Not even I do, usually.

#193. DZ Deathrays - Gina Works At Hearts (#88, 2014)

23rd of 2014

It bothers me so much that this song just makes me think of Gina Rinehart. Or more so, it bothers me that I thought the same thing when the song first came out. She was the wealthiest person in Australia back then, and once again is now. Just the same awful people controlling everything until they're in the ground. And of course recently, she's hitched up her wagon of support to Australia's even longer lasting attention stain. That's speaking of folk who just love the attention.

Anyway, have you got time and space for another surprisingly loud group consisting of just two members? Well I have to break the illusion because actually they've been a trio since 2018. I first heard of them around 2012 with their first album, and was pleasantly surprised to see them get considerably more popular from that point on. This was their first Hottest 100 entry but they'd rack up a couple more afterwards.

I greatly enjoy that second album, "Black Rat". It's a little bit anachronistic, sounding like dance punk from about a decade earlier, but definitely leaning more into the rock side of things. "Black Rat" almost feels like all you ever need to hear. It's a tightly packed set of mostly bangers. My favourite songs on it are definitely "Reflective Skull", "Tonight Alright" and "Night Slave". They set a standard so high that I struggled to get back on board to the same degree with later albums. I guess it's amusing to say that when the later entries have landed higher here, and I've also ruined the illusion lately, as the title track to their latest album, "Easing Out Of Control" might be my favourite song I've heard from them to date.

I wouldn't say that "Gina Works At Hearts" really exhibits their dance punk tendencies, it's just the kind of straight up rock that you might see highlighted on a Green Day promotion. It's a big barrel of fun though. I find the most distinctive sound of it is just the drumsticks being tapped together for the hook. The mixing was very expertly done though. I think this has the potential to just sound like a distorted mess but the guitar's prominence is shifted around enough to give it the appropriate flavour for the moment.

#192. Fred again.. (feat Delilah Montagu) - Delilah (pull me out of this) (#14, 2022)

10th of 2022

I keep going back to the same thought over and over again. Can Fred again.. be considered counterculture? It seems odd to think about, especially for someone so evidently popular, but I'm always thinking about the machinations of it. When you look at the top 40, it's probably reasonable to assume that everything there is popular, and fed into by the pop machine that reinforces this. For as long as I have done this though, I've found there are often quirks flying around to question this assumption. Decades ago it'd be ardent fanbases. People who would very quickly buy up new releases and force their way into a conversation they weren't necessarily invited to. There tended to be a general audience for most of the top 40, which is anyone who primarily heard music from the typical sources of radio & TV. Maybe even people who specifically checked the charts, though I suspect that's a more niche audience than we might sometimes think.

Generally speaking, when something unusual does come up, it needs to make certain that it has the legs to stick around, to become something that can't be ignored. Otherwise it will just be ignored. Sometimes it feels weird, but if you lock yourself into that top 40 ecosystem, it starts to make more sense. There are certain sounds and styles that just seem completely alien, and counterproductive for programming. When I had my teenage discovery of the wider world of music, it felt at the time like a Truman Show style awakening, as if all of it had been deliberately obfuscated to placate me and others. I don't really see it that way, sometimes it's just the more lazy, obvious 'evil' that the people in charge just don't want anyone to turn off the station.

When Fred again.. comes up in discussion, it's often with an air of mythos. Like, you've got to make it to one of his Boiler Room sets, have this generational experience with an undeniable talent at the top of his game. Either he's played a ridiculous street team con or it's something genuinely special with the way he gets spoken about. I can't speak to what it's like since I haven't experienced it, and live music is always considerably better in person than just watching a video. It's that mythos that's taken him to the top, only getting bigger in the years since this list got cut off. He's still almost a complete non-entity on commercial radio though. "adore u" is the only song of his that ever touched top 40 airplay, and then only briefly. He could have one of the biggest hits of the year and still not be let in if he's not playing by the rules. Actually that happened last year.

When it comes to "Delilah (pull me out of this)", it's where I start to wonder if these assumptions have gotten in the way of looking at things objectively. I listen to it with the mindset of how I understand Fred again.. and I think he's in his typical element. Undeniably catchy songs that still sound a bit too different for the mainstream. You're looking at a song with a strange title, with sampled vocals that might stay in your head, but don't feel like mantras to sing along with. The chorus is almost completely wordless, and structurally it just doesn't fit in. Another one for the pile to be ignored, even if it was one of his bigger hits.

Maybe we've got it all wrong though. I can't remember when I saw the observation (I don't think I came up with it myself), but when I listen to "Delilah (pull me out of this)", I just hear "Another Chance" by Roger Sanchez. Remarkably similar instrumentals, and as a bonus, that's a song that's even harder to understand the words to. I could maybe vaguely replicate the hook, but there are very few words I can confidently make out. "Another Chance" is a massive radio hit. It's bread & butter for trance at the turn of the century. Sometimes it's marketing (I'll admit Roger Sanchez is absolutely winning in the music video department here), but it's fascinating to me that with the slow passage of time, something so obviously marketable at one point in time, has just stopped fitting that mark. Obviously this happens a lot with genres that aren't in their heyday, but we're talking about something that is genuinely doing numbers, yet feeling like it's completely unsuitable.

It all goes into a greater point about how I look at music as a whole, and why I'm hesitant to be so negative all the time. So much negativity I do see is rooted in a similar mindset. It's that side-eye I want to do when someone hates something. Do they hate it because the execution is subpar, or are they just out the room immediately upon pegging either a genre or a level of perceived cool that isn't compatible with them. Ideally, I just like to see things met at their own level, looked at for what they're trying to do, who they're trying to do it for, and going into that mindset. Like, I can just imagine a world where the same people who like Fred again.. have instead heard the music and thought it was boring radio dance music, and the same people who reject his music are perfectly content with it. The music won't need to have changed at all, just the way you look at it.

I think to go back to the Roger Sanchez comparison, that's what made me fall for this song. It's not that I remember having any particularly strong adoration for it, so it might just be nostalgia at this point, but finding a similar example that I knew worked, that made this click. Suddenly the disorienting rush of the chorus seemed perfectly in place, and from there, it unlocked the ability to witness the greater tapestry at work. Once you're locked in on the basic premise, it becomes a game of spotting all the other quirks, and listening out for them on repeat outings. You get a song you can enjoy on closer inspection, but also as background study vibe energy. On those grounds, I find Fred again.. to be an undeniable talent. I just don't know if this top 40 hit is a top 40 song.

#191. The xx - Say Something Loving (#80, 2017)

24th of 2017

Whenever I look at streaming charts, I tend to see a bunch of artists who don't play by the rules. You can try to put a cap on how popular they're going to be, just on vibes either internal or external to the music itself, but these artists just don't care. They have this undeniable aura that either keeps people coming back to them, or lucks out in a strange statistical way where it feels like everyone seems to like them enough and the numbers just blow out. This is how it seems like for Arctic Monkeys and The Neighbourhood right now. They're monolithic in a way that seems incidental.

Long before streaming was properly around, this is how I felt about The xx. I'd obsessively look at last.fm charts on a weekly basis. They were made usually from listener numbers and painted a pretty established picture. Bands like The Beatles, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Coldplay, they were mainstays. Just the accepted middle ground of the kinds of people who used the site. It's been a whole generation since then so those once immovable artists are largely out of the spotlight (aside from that same popular British band I brought up not long ago). A new set of stars, most of which were not in the picture in the late 2000s, or at the very least, didn't have the extensive catalogues they do now.

In this regard, I feel like The xx missed the boat. They'd have every chance to solidify themselves in the same way well into the 2020s but they haven't really, and they're a mile away from where they could be. Around 2009 and 2010, The xx were one of those bands. They were new, they weren't really on the radio, but their songs just left a long-lasting impression. Every week I'd look and see them endure unreasonably so. When I think about how long the biggest chart hits spend at or around the top nowadays, I think of The xx as the template that proved the system in the first place. This idea that a combination of word of mouth and gradually acquiring new listeners would just create an endless chart run. It's honestly how I got into them. Just this weekly fascination at how popular this "Crystalised" song is that I'd never heard, wondering if it really was that good, and then convincing myself that it was. How good it all is, almost feels immaterial, it's just a question of whether or not you get sucked in by the simplistic presentation and iconography. The album with a white cross on black background, called "xx" and with just 11 tracks whose titles mostly consist of a single word. It's getting rid of all the distractions. The xx became ultimate vibe music, the kind that could easily be sustaining random global Spotify top 200 hits to this day. Nothing sums this up more than the fact that their most popular song now is the instrumental intro to the album. That's just breaking all the rules. I also think Glass Animals' song "Youth" (#271) sounds quite a bit like it. I'm writing this before that post has actually gone up so I had the chance to just slot it in there but it's a lot easier to do this when I can actually name the band in question.

If all of it seemed like online puff that wouldn't amount to much, they proved they could come good on the second album. At a time when digital downloads were at their highest, and the charts were completely swallowed by loud, intentionally obnoxious pop music, The xx put out their next lead single "Angels", somehow even more minimalist than before, and scored a top 50 hit in Australia. It sat at #46 wedged between a Flo Rida song and a Pitbull song, both seemingly effortlessly part of the conversation at the time, but both songs now much less popular than "Angels" in the long run.

The annoying reality of it all is that I think The xx absolutely could've kept it all rolling but they only let themselves down by not feeding the pop machine and releasing a never-ending spree of new music. They've only released one album after 2012, and it houses two entries here. They feel like they're a band that just need to be put in the spotlight again to remind everyone how much they vibed or at least tolerated them before. They're the perfect kind of band for the streaming era. Perhaps a new album would see them right back into the conversation, but for now, "Say Something Loving" is their last Hottest 100 entry.

There's a very clear link between the two songs by The xx that I'm covering here, and it's the one thing that makes the third album, "I See You" sound a bit different to the other two. I'm of course referring to boomer soft rock. The other song has a much more famous sample, but this one feels considerably more random. The voice at the start of this song is a sample of Alessi Brothers' 1976 song "Do You Feel It?", the opening track to their first album. Not a hit, not even a single, while they're not exactly a band with a huge following. Just one minor hit around the world, "Oh Lori", that went top 10 in the UK & Netherlands but didn't do much else of note. It's a pretty cool song. It sits somewhere in the world of Chicago & Queen and goes surprising places with it. It all means that there was a great deal written about this otherwise completely unnoteworthy song in an interview with Genius that's worth reading. Also The Alessi Brothers are identical twins, just so many of those in the world of music.

Otherwise, this does also feel like a more grown up version of The xx. A band who are no longer content with just hiding behind moody sounds and lyrics, but coming at it with a bit more life and experience. The band has two main vocalists...one I realise I can't name yet. She showed a lot of vulnerability on "Angels" so I'm less surprised by her here, but Oliver brings his A-game here as well, and they've got undeniable chemistry. Maybe it feels like a betrayal of how The xx started, and maybe you can trace that to the fact that it wasn't as popular as what came before, but I see it as a band that have come a long way, and I'll certainly be interested to see what they might do next.