#295-#291

#295. Beyoncé - BREAK MY SOUL (#42, 2022)

23rd of 2022

For a number of years now I've been playing video game randomisers. It's taking a game you're already familiar with, but just moving all the key items (or potentially other things) around. It's designed algorithmically so it's still possible to complete, but it creates a very unique experience. An experience where you might get a powerup designed for the end of the game very early on, but be otherwise crippled because you're missing an essential starting item. Some of the most important story events can net you an utterly worthless reward while the key to beating the whole game is just lying on the ground. Sometimes you can learn some utterly bizarre consequences, like beating the final boss in Hollow Knight only to discover that you can't trigger the final cutscene because you're lacking the initial healing ability needed at that point. In some form or another, you just become Achilles, utterly unstoppable if not for that one issue you hope sorts itself out before it becomes a burden.

I'm likening this to my experience writing this blog. As far as I can tell, I've still never mentioned an artist by name before they turn up properly, and we're at the point when there aren't too many major players still embargoed. When it comes to artists with multiple entries, Beyoncé has been one of the biggest. She's had a vice grip over pop culture for close to 3 decades now. I've wanted to refer to the American pop star so many times before now, but we're finally here. I've finally found the Beyoncé key item.

There's a certain caveat to it all. Beyoncé is obviously a pop icon, but we're talking about the last 10 years. I wouldn't really say that her star has faded in that time, but it's taken a different turn. It's something that's better suited to discuss when I get to another song, but if you think that she hasn't had a "Crazy In Love" or "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" sized hit in a long time, then it's hard to argue with that. She presently seems to capture the exact moment of excitement when she puts something new out, only for it to be pretty memory-holed by the end of the year. Maybe that's not right to say when she's polling pretty well here, but her hits lately don't seem to have the longevity associated with their initial peaks. Did you know "BREAK MY SOUL" was a Billboard #1 hit? It was her first as a lead artist in over 15 years, and yet it doesn't really feel like it's earned that status.

Not a knock on the song at all, mind you, I think it's pretty great. It's a glorious tribute to early '90s house music. Every element works in tandem to create something that sounds equally retro and fresh. You might think the Big Freedia sample is a big intrusive at first, but the more I heard it, the harder I could imagine taking it out. Beyoncé jumps into all of this with a level of confidence that avoids the trappings of sounding washed or out of her depth. Here's an industry veteran who's still willing to try new things, and can stick the landing.

#294. Beddy Rays - Sobercoaster (#57, 2020)

21st of 2020

Beddy Rays were so insanely ahead of the game. They released this song in April 2020, and I presume to promote it, they created a Twitter account. The account still exists, but it's been 6 years now and they've still never tweeted a single thing. At the very least it gave the triple j accounts an @ for whenever the band got played. I would not ever encourage anyone to tweet anymore. Just let that fascist hole collapse in on itself.

Pop punk is not really my area of expertise. As a whole I just feel like I'm looking for something different in it than most people. It's very hard to get a grasp on what works when you don't have the same priorities as everyone else. Sometimes I feel like it's just pop music masquerading with some edge that ends up not getting the best of either world. I look at some of the pop punk music I do like and I don't know if I could tell you what it's doing right, because it probably all just sounds the same either way. Maybe I'm just falling prey to image and reputation, or maybe I'm just falling for different variations on the same song over and over again.

In 2008, Anti-Flag released their 7th album, "The Bright Lights of America". You probably had to be there at the time because it's not really a big career highlight for them, and given what's been said of their lead singer in the past few years, I'm not encouraging anyone to jump on the Anti-Flag train. In any case, I find myself pointing towards the title track on that album whenever I hear something that sounds a bit like it, which is surprisingly frequent. Much like my white whale melody that sounds a little like "Someday the Dream Will End" from Final Fantasy X, I don't think it's actually the origin point. In both cases I'm not sure the song exists and it's probably just a more idealised version I invented in my head. I'm sure there are earlier examples of it though. Kim Wilde's "Kids in America" has a bit of that energy itself, though the similar title probably helps. It'd be nice to have a less problematic example.

Beddy Rays have within my periphery tapped this well twice. "Sobercoaster" was the first, and then "Week On Repeat" was the second. I do wish I had the chance to have the latter here as well, but alas it landed at #110. Much like MAY-A's "Time I Love To Waste", it might be a contender as my favourite song on that list if it had the chance. Shout out to whoever ends up the Steven Bradbury of that year when we get there. Admittedly I'd just want it there for the purposes of there being another song I love in the list, I feel like I'm pretty spent on things to say about Beddy Rays here.

"Sobercoaster" is still an adequate substitute anyway. I think it slots itself into a certain niche that we don't catch here very often. It's a strange one though where the verses are probably catchier than the chorus. I suppose when you start things off at 11, there's no way to keep going up from there. It's not like anyone's ever invented amps that go up to 12; it just can't be done.

#293. Daft Punk (feat Julian Casablancas) - Instant Crush (#58, 2013)

45th of 2013

As I write this, "Instant Crush" is currently available to unlock as a goal song in Rocket League as part of the Battle Pass. I would almost be tempted to indulge in this (let's just say my current one is a tad stale), but Rocket League is also running a promotion in tandem with that series of very popular children's books written by someone who in her own words, uses her profits to fight against trans rights. I used to go out of my way to pay charities whenever I encountered her work, but I've since just set up regular payments. It feels good to fight back against a bigoted monster, I encourage you to consider it.

You've heard of The Strokes, I imagine. They went on a hiatus after the release of their 3rd album. They returned 5 years later with their 4th album, "Angles", and it was quite successful. It's their only ever #1 album in Australia. This is despite numerous reports of turmoil in the recording process, including a general rumour I kept hearing that the band only did it for the money, and didn't seem to enjoy each other's company. Whatever might be the case, they've continued to stick together through all of that. They released their 5th album, "Comedown Machine" in 2013 and it didn't land quite as well. They've been relatively out of the spotlight ever since. If I was to point to one particular reason, I might highlight the lead single "One Way Trigger". I'm quite fond of it myself, but it's a hard sell. If you're used to the traditional Strokes sound, get ready to completely abandon it for a strange bit of synth pop. A brazen bit of "Take On Me" biting that "Blinding Lights" (#786) and "STAY" (#669) could only sniff at by comparison. Julian's vocals are also at times heavily distorted outside of his typical range, both muffled and high pitched. The one moment it does sound like him comes with a serious strain. I could see this singlehandedly just killing the band's momentum on the spot. It's possible they could recover still. The next album was well received, and some of the songs on it have held up to be very popular in the long run (you might not guess that "The Adults Are Talking" is their second biggest song on Spotify now, and it's pacing for the top spot this year). It's all just funny in hindsight when we consider what else was happening in 2013.

"Instant Crush" is taken from Daft Punk's last album "Random Access Memories". It was obviously not the big hit at the time, but it put its hand up early on as a popular deep cut. One of those areas where the Hottest 100 serves as a better time capsule than the charts do, but more on that for another entry. In it, Daft Punk recruit Julian Casablancas to be barely recognisable as he croons through a layer of vocoder to sing a mostly slow jam. It's the kind of collaboration made to upset rock guys, as they're potentially promised something that was never going to be delivered. If you're willing to give it the chance, "Instant Crush" is a bit of a rock song. The whole thing is anchored by steady bass & drums, while the second verse throws up a genuine guitar solo. You're just not getting rock star Julian, and if you were already let down by him earlier in the year, I can't imagine what you're going through.

"Instant Crush" has only gotten more popular in hindsight. Not a patch on the biggest Daft Punk songs, but it's certainly doing alright for itself when it wasn't really smashing out the gate as a hit single at the time. On Spotify it has more streams than any song by The Strokes, so it's possible that there was some hesitation at the time that's been lifted from a new generation of fans who aren't as bothered. Personally, I think everyone's just falling for the fact that it sounds like "Last Christmas", streaming candy if there ever was such a thing. "Every Breath You Take" by The Police is huge at the moment and the same thing applies. Everyone just longs for that warm, steady lullaby. Maybe they're right to do it. I've always liked "Instant Crush". It's a 5 and a half minute song that never feels overly long.

#292. Cosmo's Midnight & Ruel - Down for You (#83, 2020)

20th of 2020

"Down For You" was released in January 2020. When Cosmo's Midnight were gearing up to release it, they'd so far made the Hottest 200 in 3 different years without cracking the main list, including a very near miss in 2018 when they got to #107 with "Get To Know". That's the kind of result that makes you want to smash the emergency glass and finally break the hoodoo. The solution is to just team up with Ruel, because he knows the way to reach the top half of the charts, maybe if they work with him, they can perfect the art.

They'd have no way of knowing it's a moot cause because they did end up landing in the top 100 with "C.U.D.I. (Can U Dig It)" (#840). No need to use the Ruel wizardry anymore! Well, suffice to say that it also proved itself to work, and it landed a little bit higher, so it's a worthwhile tactic. I'd also go so far as to say it's a really good song, so it has that going for it as well.

I don't know if this is a popular view. I approached it with a high degree of cynicism, especially as I hadn't been fond of Cosmo's Midnight in a while. I think it ends up as a very successful team effort where they both cover for each other's potential shortcomings. Cosmo's Midnight craft a nifty backing track, though maybe not one I'd consider listening to on its own. It fits Ruel like a glove, and we get a great performance out of him in absolute simp mode. I think that's where Ruel's performances are most engaging. I'm not sure who else would be able to pull it off, really. From the same album, Cosmo's Midnight had the song "A Million Times" which I really love, and is possibly even more lovelorn than this one. The vocals come from one of the two brothers in the band (I wanna say Patrick, if I can trust their overalls in the music video. They're twins so it's hard to tell most of the time). I think he works really well there, where the sentiment is a little more exaggerated, but I can't imagine it being quite as convincing as Ruel. Kid's come a long way.

#291. Post Malone (feat 21 Savage) - rockstar (#24, 2017)

31st of 2017

Depending on how you look at it, "All The Right Reasons" by Nickelback might be the last truly big rock album. There are other close contenders around it. Linkin Park's "Hybrid Theory" was the last rock album to sell 10 million copies in the US. Evanescence's "Fallen" came out in 2003 and has sold a little more than Nickelback's album, but then you just immediately run out of options. There's a case to be made for Arctic Monkeys' "AM", but it's not even close on sales, and dare I say, cultural impact compared to Nickelback. The thing that seals it for me is something that tends to work across generations. When you hear the titles "Photograph" and "Rockstar", you think of Nickelback first, right? By all chart merits you can find, there have been substantially larger hits of the same name since, but they just can't seem to unseat the cultural cache of Nickelback. It helps that most cases of the latter are typeset a little differently, but I doubt that makes a difference. I'm one of a rare few who will bother differentiating "Rockstar", "rockstar", "ROCKSTAR" and on occasion "Rock$tar" if I feel like bringing it up. Another one will come up later on this list, but for now, we're dealing with "rockstar".

The term 'cultural reset' gets thrown around a lot. Usually just by fans of an artist who are looking for a new form of hyperbole to build excitement around their latest hit, but it can warrant mention. Sometimes a new single or album comes out and it immediately changes the game. Our very notions of what can and can't be a hit gets completely flipped as we have to recalibrate everything to explain what's going on in front of us. It went from 'oh, Post Malone has a new song, maybe that'll be able to sneak onto the chart', into a sudden realisation that it was immediately asserting itself as one of the biggest hits of the year, one that turned both of its artists into bona fide stars going forward.

Arguably, the signs were already there, but they were hard to put a lot of faith into. Two months before "rockstar" came out, 21 Savage released "Bank Account" and it became a pretty big hit, especially in the US where it was a streaming monster but just missed the Billboard top 10 due to lack of airplay. It sat on the cusp of the top 50 in Australia but was a tougher sell for the market. Post Malone was coming off the back of a pretty successful breakout with his gimmicky single "White Iverson", and had found another big hit on the same album with "Congratulations", the mother of all slow-burning hits when it came out. Spending 9 months in the top 50 and only getting as high as #30 is just incredible. Maybe teaming up two of the hottest names of that moment was a surefire hit, but I don't think anyone could've predicted just how well it would do.

I mentioned previously how "Panda" (#324) was a harbinger for the future when it got to #1 in the US. It was followed by numerous more trap-influenced #1 hits, but the important distinction here is that they'd always underperform outside of the US. "Black Beatles" did not hang around very long in Australia, and that 'rain drop, drop top' song not long after barely cracked the top 40 (both artists on that song will eventually appear on this list). Not only did "rockstar" go all the way to #1 in Australia, but it stayed there for 7 weeks with a monster chart run. From this point on, trap was able to thrive in the mainstream without any reservations. Post Malone would pick up more #1 hits in the next year, and even 21 Savage eventually had a solo #1 album too. Fair to say that Post Malone abandoned the genre shortly after, but I still think he was a big part of making it what it was. I guess we just needed a goofy white guy to ease us into it.

The success of "rockstar" felt pretty self-evident once I'd heard it. Sometimes trap can be about trying to find the most cold, sterile beats to flex over. From the first few notes you just know that Louis Bell and/or Tank God have nailed the assignment. Both the beat and Post Malone take turns at being the main character, just poking out with intensity. Post Malone will revert to the tried and true vibrato on his voice, something I've thought he overdoes at times, but strikes a good balance in this case. More than anyone else though, it's 21 Savage that this production feels made for. I mostly just stick to his hits so as not to overdo it, but he strikes me as one of the most reliable rappers. Even on his pop hits he's still sounding menacing, like he's incapable of any other mode. So yeah, I was into this one. Great artwork too. Just can't imagine anything better to fit the tone that this song carries.

Whenever someone releases a song called "Rockstar", the peanut gallery come out hard and fast to make their declaration on credentials. It's such a small range of artists who'd be able to get away with it, massive poser-core otherwise. Post Malone is an odd one because I don't think he necessarily sells it on this song, but he has had surprising rock pivots at times. I remember listening to "beerbongs & bentleys" and occasionally being surprised at how he could fit the mold. "Over Now" comes pretty close to it (the guitar sounds a lot like "Closer" by Kings of Leon). Then of course a year later, he teamed up with the prince of darkness on "Take What You Want", which can't really be denied.

It should also be worth noting that it's a funny inclusion in the Hottest 100. Post Malone was not a known triple j entity at this point, and they only played this song a couple of times in 2017. It was belatedly included on the voting list and evidently soared up the list despite the airplay handicap. It's gotten more common to see these kinds of success stories, and they go their own way to shape the future of the station's sound as it becomes clear that there are many hit songs that absolutely have their audience in triple j's audience.

#300-#296

#300. CHVRCHES - Leave a Trace (#32, 2015)

39th of 2015

I got radicalised pretty hard in the mid-2010s. I might side-eye anyone who says that they don't really think about politics (it translates to silent acceptance), but that was me for a long time as well. We'd all like to think that we're the good kind of apolitical, but in truth, I recently found some very poor taste jokes I made when I was a teenager. This can be treated positively. Nothing shows growth better than bearing witness to something you'd unquestionably never do again. I don't consider it a gotcha to find out about long gone misgivings of others.

I'm probably not alone in my experience. Atrocities were always being committed as long as I can remember, but they always felt distant, just poking out on the news and maybe casually in conversation with a tone that clearly put the wrongdoers in a different group. No one I know would ever do this, it's all politicians and stupid, hateful people. I probably had opportunities to wake up to it all, but it's all too easy to avoid things that don't directly affect you.

In 2015, one of the big talking points at least in my circles was Gamergate. It was a loud social movement that supposedly was about ethics in game journalism. If we want to put that in terms of things that people might get impassioned about, then let's say it's for games journalists receiving some kind of favour for positively promoting games. Maybe that's a feasible enough angle to get enough people to go along with what was really just a brigade of relentless hate against women. As someone who used to read gaming magazines in the early 2000s, this was simmering for a while. So much rhetoric felt backwards and exclusionary towards women for so long that it poisoned the minds of a generation, who saw women as casuals who encroached upon their passion. The heart of it all was from a position of mistrust towards women from men who couldn't possibly take their side on anything. For me, it was a point when I started seeing YouTube videos on both sides of the subject, and see dislike ratios that felt baffling. I'd never before found myself questioning the majority opinion like this before. Maybe it was a brigading effort but all it did was break my faith in the very system it was trying to uphold.

History has stayed on my side. Gamergate fizzled out, and is now more of a laughingstock than anything. The views contained within it still live on, but also feel increasingly antiquated. You're more likely than ever to be mocked for complaining about a game having a female protagonist. Gaming culture on the whole just feels much more inclusive now.

Unfortunately it's probably also true that the whole thing was representative of a much wider culture that has this mentality coded into it. If you know one thing about CHVRCHES outside of the music, it's probably that Lauren Mayberry is an outspoken feminist. She's never been shy about speaking out about her beliefs even at the risk of sabotaging her career (e.g. disavowing their Marshmello collaboration after he teamed up with Chris Brown). She wrote about her experiences in 2013 and subsequently became an even greater lightning rod for some utterly depraved and sometimes threatening messages. I implore you to look it up because nothing's more effective than seeing first-hand the kinds of messages people seem content to send to a moderately famous woman. It happened again in 2015 when the band started rolling out their second album with "Leave a Trace" as the lead single. There were more comments objectifying Lauren in the music video and she called out some 4chan users directly. My 30 minutes of fame mean that I too have experienced being derided in a 4chan thread and it's a soul-draining experience to spend too much time there. Just a hall of people so confident in their baseless assertions simply because they go unchallenged. While I was researching this, I stumbled onto a more recent thread there about CHVRCHES and it was only modestly more civil (some of the depraved language has cooled off, but the misogyny carries all the same). It's all coated in this pathetic notion that women being objectified is just a natural part of the process and it's on them to deal with it, rather than the dregs receive any kind of retribution for it. The notion that all of this is fine because your life sucks and you get pleasure out of seeing people who seem to have it all getting dragged down to your level. Fuck that nihilistic shit.

"Leave a Trace" is aptly a pretty righteous single to return on. Maybe you could blissfully ignore the lyrics the first time around, but now they're gonna have you singing along to some absolutely vicious words. It's a breakup song dedicated to a callous and controlling man and almost every line of it feels like a scathing takedown of an easily imagined archetype. She's reminding us that he's someone who's not only done wrong, but is incapable of recognising his mistakes, and is going to come out of it the hero from his side of the story. I can't claim to knowing the experience, but I've seen more than enough evidence to completely believe that they're one of many men who cannot possibly give an inch to a woman. Their masculine coding is ironically what won't let them leave a trace of a man.

#299. FISHER - Just Feels Tight (#86, 2021)

22nd of 2021

For a couple of years in high school, I was habitually looking at the ARIA Charts but my curiosity didn't extend much further than that. I would hear the hits here and there and have a good idea of what was going on, but it also meant that some songs would slip through the cracks. Seeing there's a Gym Class Heroes song called "Cookie Jar" on the chart for a while and expecting it to climb up because their songs tended to do that, but it stalls out pretty early and I just never heard it. On occasion lately I'll go on extended delays between catching up on what's charting and all you can do at that point is imagine what things might sound like. Nothing's too surprising these days so it doesn't affect the chart watching experience very much.

Sometimes you get it way wrong. Maybe there were clues I missed, but in the middle of 2009, "Riverside" by Sidney Samson debuted on the lower end of the chart. For some reason I focused only on the title and imagined some kind of folk/blues song sung by an old man, a Sidney Poitier kind of person. It climbed into the top 10 after a while and I still just never went out of my way to hear it, and it seemed to avoid my usual channels. Then one day at school I just hear someone playing it in the home room and I'm flabbergasted. A shock to the senses not just for the profane lyric, but for all the sounds that surrounded it. Just this unending feeling of tension with one of the most ominous melodies. Just hearing it invited an unrivalled feeling of despair. It was perhaps just heightened for the previous mystery factor, that it would be revealed in such a way to completely destroy the harmless image in my mind.

I find myself liking "Riverside" a lot nowadays. I don't think it's particularly well known nowadays, held back by only being a major hit in a small handful of countries. There are also numerous versions of the song and I suspect it's possible that many like me have trouble remembering which version of it they actually want. It's important for a song like this because there are all these slight variations in the drop and I find myself hunting an ideal version of it that may or may not exist. When you've sparingly heard so many iterations of it, it becomes a new mystery bag of what sort of syncopation are you gonna get. The basic riff is always there, but it's those little changes that keep the song fresh all these years later.

To me, "Just Feels Tight" is a more modern song working under a similar principle. This song is credited to FISHER but whether it's him or Chris Lake, they're both old enough to have grown up with "Riverside" in the club scene. Whether it's an intentional nod or not, I'm not sure, just that the structure is remarkably similar. Just a steady house groove that builds up to a single title lyric that leads into a drop that isn't always exactly the same. It has a blatant male gaze music video too so he knows what the mid-2000s were like. On the surface, it's probably completely disposable but I found an odd sense of affection growing in me. It's perhaps heightened by the initial lack of stakes, where this has all been its own long, drawn out build up for me to say that the final drop that comes in this song is one of my favourite musical moments in this whole list. It's only slightly different to the previous drop but by adding just a few more notes into the mix, it becomes this utterly disarming moment. The high only lasts for about 10-20 seconds but it just perfectly captures the best of what music like this is capable of doing.

#298. Hilltop Hoods - Cosby Sweater (#3, 2014)

35th of 2014

When I partake in trivia games, I find that one of the most useful skills you can develop is just remembering when things happen. For the sake of pinning questions (i.e. making sure there's only one correct answer), an easy method tends to be including years. It'll reward the more attentive players who are more easily able to rule out potential answers because they just don't fit the timeline. Don't try to name Julius Caesar if you're being asked about a Roman in the AD years for instance. Remembering years is very boring and tedious though, even if you live through those years. I once had to try and remember what year 'covfefe' happened and though I eventually figured it out, I just had no reason to ever remember it by year.

Sometimes music can help out with this. My perennial attention to charts helps me with the uncanny skill of knowing what year most songs come out. That's not always direct memorisation either. There are often some mental processes, trying to associate something with what was around at the same time until you can clue onto a safer bet, those unforgettable moments like "Gangnam Style" in 2012, or "Despacito" in 2017. There are flow on effects from this, because once music starts to permeate other parts of culture, it'll overlap. Most commonly you can use movie soundtracks to remember what year the movies came out. It's helped me on countless occasions. Now, I don't necessarily think you're ever going to need to know when the Bill Cosby SA cases were brought to light, but it's tremendously easy to do because it lines up exactly with when "Cosby Sweater" became a hit.

It's something that Hilltop Hoods have commented on numerous times, this unfortunate timing. In all fairness, it probably should have been more widely known long before 2014. Hannibal Buress mentioned it in a stand-up routine he'd been doing for most of the year without fuss until he made it to Bill Cosby's hometown where it caused more of a stir. It was always information that was out there, it was all just consigned in the past, pre-internet and in an era where powerful men rarely faced consequences. You have to remember the MeToo movement didn't start until 2017. There's a comment from Hannibal's partner in sitting down Eric Andre from the time that laments that this is the way justice was served. That it had to come from a male comedian instead of people just listening to his victims. The power dynamics are far from where they need to be.

It probably all looks a bit strange from the outside. A big hit song in Australia in late 2014 that's name-checking Bill Cosby. Just another classic case of Australia being lost in its own backwards world. I don't know if it needs to be said, but I don't think it should be read as an endorsement in any substantial way. It's all just pure Hilltop Hoods dad rap, in line with them writing "Clark Griswold" (#769) a few years later. At most it's just a strange divine coincidence that's just an interesting story in it all. We can laugh a little just at this aspect of it all because it's ultimately harmless and maybe is an extended excuse to shed more light on something terrible. To paraphrase Norm Macdonald, the worst part of it all wasn't the Hilltop Hoods, but the SA, and I'm not talking about their home state. While we're taking the song's subjects to task, Bobby Fischer was not a man who held stellar opinions about World War II.

If there's another shame to be had, it's that it takes away from everything they did get right with this release. Hilltop Hoods' career lives in the shadow of the fact that they dropped their career defining song over two decades ago. When "The Nosebleed Section" has been canonised as one of the greatest Australian songs of all time, nothing you can do is going to live up to that. It's fortunate that they were able to leverage it into an incredible career, anyway, scoring massive hits for years to come. At the time, "Cosby Sweater" was a contender as the biggest. It came out right around when digital sales were at their highest, so it was potentially the best-selling Australian rap song ever ("The Nosebleed Section" has probably overtaken it on streams now). They had everyone eating out of their hands.

It's not something they kept to themselves though. Hilltop Hoods have always been keen to shout out their idols and friends, and it's something they kept up on this release. If you watch the music video, there's a rapper you'll see getting a lot of screen time. I can't say who he is yet, but none of his entries had actually happened at this point in time. It's all a prelude to the song's ultimate moment in January 2015. triple j held their Beat The Drum concert to celebrate the station's 40th birthday, with numerous guest appearances. Hilltop Hoods were naturally among this, and they took the opportunity to do a full 9 minute version of "Cosby Sweater", extending it out by calling out a full rolodex of Australian rap. Mostly all names I've spoken about here already, Illy, Drapht, Horrorshow, Seth Sentry, Tkay Maidza, Thundamentals. Technically the closest we did get to a comment on the Taylor Swift situation came when Illy mentioned it in his verse, and just to make the non-endorsement clear, Drapht makes sure to say 'f**k Bill Cosby' multiple times. For me there aren't any weak links because the energy just feeds into everyone so well, but Tkay Maidza is the big surprise package. By far the youngest person on stage but doesn't let herself get intimidated. It feels appropriate that she'd end up being one of the biggest stars in the long run, and it's an added layer with her landing at #100 in the Hottest 100 that aired later that month.

I hesitate to call this the pinnacle of this group because I have too much affinity to their earlier work, but for their '90s Metallica era chart dominance, it's probably about as good as we're gonna get it. Just a nonstop party and worthy victory lap for the eternal titans of the Australian rap scene.

#297. Skegss - Save It For The Weekend (#31, 2019)

21st of 2019

I sigh and say 'ladies and gentlemen, "Save It For The Weekend"'. Skegss are coming into this off of what's probably the biggest hit of their career. The next single isn't gonna come close to that, but it's probably going to find its way in. Oh, actually it ended up pretty high on the list, I guess I put too much stock into my own 'Pretty good' assessment and need to remember that  the bar for being good enough for the fans is sometimes lower than it is for everyone else. Isn't the whole point of being a fan meaning that you're more likely to like something that doesn't mean anything to other people? Surely there's more to it than just being overly critical to the point of putting people off.

If you haven't seen the music video, it hits all the classic touchstones of self-deprecating humour. The band themselves become their own Beavis & Butthead as they point out all of their own foibles while watching a music video they simultaneously don't enjoy much but can't get themselves to turn off. I get so distracted that they purposely put a 'The' in front of the band's name that I didn't even notice they spelled it 'Skeggs', a mistake I might have still caught myself doing in 2019. There's something apt about the whole thing that just concludes with as little fanfare as it started. Just an utterly mundane 3 minutes in the life of Skegss. In the future, if you're lucky, you'll remember the little moments, like these, that were good.

I think the song is good too. If we're talking guitar riffs, then it's not necessarily as memorable as "Valhalla" (#394) but it's fun in its own way. Once the whole thing gets going, it's all just expertly crafted to be catchy at every turn. Great use of repeated lyrics, great release for the chorus, not much about it I'd really like to change. Maybe they could end it a little better, but I've watched so much Dexter and its spinoffs lately, endings are hard.

#296. Post Malone & Swae Lee - Sunflower (#27, 2018)

32nd of 2018

Sometimes you just want to know what the biggest hit of all time is. This shouldn't be an unpopular sentiment here; it's a more expanded version of what the Hottest 100 does every year and why it generates so much interest. You make a game out of the speculation, considering whether one song or another has done enough to pull it off. Maybe you'll be close but you just haven't quite lined up everything correctly. The wrong release date, the wrong competition, something like that. Maybe it's a fruitless pursuit because you're trying to compete with a cultural monolith that doesn't play by the normal rules.

These are all things to consider when you expand it to all-time music charts. It's always going to be subject to debates because there's no truly accurate way to merge together incongruent chart formats. Deciding how you want to prioritise it is just another way of trying to decide which time period deserves the biggest leg-up. Look up the biggest hits in any particular format and it'll often conglomerate around a certain period of time.

With that in mind, I bring it all up because there's an argument to be made that "Sunflower" is the biggest hit of all time in America. You won't find it riding high on Billboard's All Time Hot 100, but that's just because it's a song that didn't win the lottery of generous radio airplay. For whatever reason there was hesitation on this song. Perhaps the callouts weren't too great, or maybe there was less incentive to focus on it when Post Malone was already promoting his own album (and had another one on the way). The streaming public didn't seem to mind though, and that's what US certifications are largely driven by now. "Sunflower" became the first song to go 2xDiamond (or 20xPlatinum). Another song has since gone 21xPlatinum, but I suspect "Sunflower" is just an outdated certification away from taking the title back. That other song is an early career #1 hit by an artist who will eventually appear in this list.

The science of which songs perform particularly well in the grouped up numbers of streaming successes doesn't always make a lot of sense. It has a habit of carrying on perpetually in a way that makes it feel like the work of mindless zombies, especially if it doesn't align with your tastes. The idea that "Sunflower" could be so monumentally successful is a little strange, but then it makes sense too. There's something warm and inviting about it. It's over so quickly, and doesn't feel omnipresent so it's hard to get sick of it. I'd say the movie tie-in helps but it's a bit of a weird one isn't it?

I've spent the past year and a bit watching every Marvel adjacent movie I can. It's for cultural understanding and a bit of niggling fascination as well. I don't really have a favourite superhero, but if you wanted to ask me whose top billing gives me the most reassurance, then it's probably Spider-Man. It's something that's come to me late. I saw the early 2000 films and didn't register much appeal, but in hindsight there's a lot to like about them, fun popcorn movies that have since been bitten by the radioactive meme spider that permeates the whole run time. They've since rebooted the franchise a couple of times and it's always among the best that the MCU has to offer. Maybe it'll implode when they run out of ways to raise the stakes, but it's had my attention the whole way through.

Long before I watch pretty much any of these though, I watched "Into The Spider-Verse". It's still Spider-Man, but it's animated and focuses on a different iteration of him here in Miles Morales. I don't know what else to say but it's a really good movie. I think animation is an extremely underrated medium that doesn't get enough credit when it's done exceptionally well, mainly because Pixar tend to rule the roost while not being nearly ambitious enough to uphold their reputation anymore. They're often movies that could be live action and not lose much of the appeal. "Into The Spider-Verse", I couldn't say the same thing about. It captures the comic book energy perfectly and constantly steals your attention with just how much personality it carries. It is an enjoyable enough movie in its own right, but as someone who's tried to do animation many times before, I'm just in awe when people find new ways to use it to the fullest. The sequel was also pretty good but it's hard to say much about it when I'm still waiting for them to put out the last half of it. This is not an uncommon opinion I've seen. There are many people who have no interest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but love these movies.

I said it was a weird one though. The reason might be because it's not technically part of the MCU, or maybe it being animated without big name stars' faces to stare at. When it comes to Spider-Man on film in the 21st century, all of the live action films have done better at the box office than Spider-Verse. It's still done well, but it hasn't really done Spider-Man numbers, so it's a little bit strange that an absolute monster hit got tied up with this film. Far more people heard Chad Kroeger's "Hero" get belted out in the theatre than "Sunflower". If there is a point in its favour though, it's that the song is incorporated in a diegetic way. Sometimes you'll watch a movie knowing that it's been boosting a song and find out that they've absolutely rinsed it in the movie as if to make it look like a vehicle to make it into a hit. "Sunflower" just has the approval of the main character from the very beginning. It's a very elaborate way to say 'Hey, this song is cool. Don't you want to be cool? You better listen to "Sunflower"'. This could all backfire immensely if the song just didn't have the sauce, but they were thinking correctly when they handed it to two hook machines that were at the top of their game at the time.

I have a habit of calling this a Post Malone song because his name appears first, and because he's the big star with the name power to move units with ease. This probably should be a Swae Lee song first. This song lasts for two and a half minutes, and you won't hear Post Malone's voice until there are less than 70 seconds left. He doesn't even change it up much, just provides a second, less memorable verse, and then sings the same hook. Maybe there could've been an extended version where they try to harmonise on the chorus, maybe it'd come across as unintentionally queer coded, but you do end up with one of those early casualties in the world of songwriters just packing it in early. Maybe by ranking this fairly high, I'm validating their decision, and maybe the song could've been ruined if it got unnecessarily bloated. It's just the one thing that takes the shine off an otherwise generally enjoyable song.

#305-#301

 #305. CHVRCHES - Recover (#28, 2013)

46th of 2013

At this point it seems like a reasonable bet to say that "Recover" will remain CHVRCHES' highest ever polling position here. Maybe there's a chance they go down the EDM route again like they did with Marshmello and find some fluke crossover success. Lauren has one of those voices that are difficult to emulate and might stick out in a good way there. It'd be difficult to feel like it's actually pure-blooded CHVRCHES song though. "Recover" is wrapped up entirely in the brand of a buzzy new band, and you can't beat that.

It's good to have a historic record of your listening experience online so you can cross reference your memories with what was actually happening. It's very easy to forget the specifics when they're illogical and don't make any sense. On the surface, I was introduced to CHVRCHES with the song "Recover", and if you look at my listening stats, it was the only song of theirs I was hearing for months. Except after a little while I just declared that "The Mother We Share" was my favourite song going around, admitting that I was probably going to download it before, but then "Recover" came out and I bought that single instead. I can't fully quantify all of my strange past decisions, but maybe I was just caught up in the same hit machine as everyone else. "Recover" was the CHVRCHES song of the moment and I seemed very unwilling to break from the pack at the time. Perhaps they just didn't know how to market the song over here, so they opted to let it just be a behind the scenes word of mouth song while attention was foisted on the newer song. Even if they had, the Hottest 100 had just clamped down on release dates so it's not like there's a likely future where I'm still holding off on praising that song.

Evidently I bought into the CHVRCHES brand very quickly but it's interesting what happened afterwards. I seemed to just burn out on "Recover" in record time. My best attempt to try and give it some logic is that I had started to hear other songs of theirs I liked more and it made this one feel like a step backwards in comparison. It's like playing GoldenEye 007 as a kid, thinking it's the greatest thing ever made, playing literally any other first person shooter since then and then trying to recapture that Bond glory. It's rusty, stilted and just doesn't seem quite right. GoldenEye 007 hasn't aged very well either! It's possible I come off too hyperbolic when it comes to talking about songs that have cooled off on me a little over time, it might just be that it's very difficult to describe a slight, gradual slide like that. Obviously I still have some respect for what they've got going on with "Recover". It goes without saying that it's one of the best surprise choruses going around. I just think it's better suited to a more reserved tiering among other CHVRCHES songs that iterate on the initial idea.

#304. SZA - Shirt (#20, 2022)

24th of 2022

It feels strange having the "SOS" artwork up there. That album feels so new, too new for this project. As a matter of fact it is, since it was released in December 2022. There's an alternate universe where I'm waiting to eventually talk about "Kill Bill" here. If I decide to return to the concept in the future, that'll be a very long time from now. It's also strange because we once lived in a time when the idea of the second SZA album was a pipe dream. Just years of pushbacks inviting the possibility that she'd be another artist whose career was completely botched by the label. By the time "Shirt" came out, it was probably a safe bet, but I wasn't ready to believe it until I'd heard it all for myself.

It's probably always been true, but it's certainly felt in the past 5 or so years that the Hottest 100 is very much a vibe check. To have a well-liked song is one thing, but what's more important is how much buzz is around the artists themselves in the present moment of voting. It's probably why some songs thrive on the early release while others seem to fall by the wayside. Few artists demonstrate this better than this brief time capsule for SZA. "Shirt" was the only single she released in 2022. While voting was happening, she went from having the most hyped upcoming release to it completely living up to that hype. Everyone was listening to SZA over that summer. Then they went to vote in the Hottest 100 and there was only one SZA song there. I don't think it's a lot of people's favourite song on "SOS", but you're likely to either accept the parameters and go along with it, or reject them and still go along with it. I think "Shirt" absorbed a lot of SZA good will in this moment and it netted a very handy top 20 finish. There's nothing untoward about that, except when you flash forward a year in the future, suddenly "Kill Bill", easily the biggest solo hit of her career, just limps in at an underwhelming #13. The song wasn't forgotten by any stretch, but it just wasn't the new hotness anymore. A lot more hype at the time for a Jack Harlow song that fizzled out quicker, but has the better Hottest 100 finish etched in stone. In 2011, The Black Keys finished at #2 with "Lonely Boy" and followed it up a year later with "Gold On The Ceiling" which also landed at #13. Either The Black Keys got their buzz a little later and were able to carry it into 2012, or the voter mindset has changed a bit in the decade since.

I tend to think this way because "Shirt" is a song that makes you question the whole process. I'm complimentary for it, but it's one of those hits that don't have the requisite refinement to really crossover. It sits in a weird zone where it might be too R&B for the pop crowd and too pop for the R&B crowd. There are hooks here but it feels like more work to dig them out, it doesn't come as pronounced as the other singles on this album. Maybe I'm wrong about that and I should just trust my own personal experience. Sometimes it's just the je ne sais quoi that draws us into certain songs. I do like some alliteration.

#303. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Nuclear Fusion (#73, 2017)

33rd of 2017

There's an interesting chart record that popped up a couple of years ago. In 2024, the Grateful Dead took the lead for having the most top 40 albums of any artist ever in America. It feels odd, doesn't it? The band broke up over 30 years ago and only ever released 13 studio albums, but they've spent the last 10 or so years just racking up archival releases. They're very consistent, on the dot every 3 months, and despite the changing chart landscape of late, have not stopped doing just enough to get in there for that specific feat. A lot can be said of a loyal fanbase, but it puts me in a bit of disbelief when I see it play out. Sooner or later you'd think you're going to see things fizzle out. There's a science to it usually, and if you're not generating new hits, you're probably trending downwards. Some bands are just built different I suppose. I can't really claim to understand what it's like to follow the Grateful Dead saga. The closest I've got is the world of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard.

I don't think King Gizz have actually amassed any chart records of that nature yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was on the cards. At the time of writing, King Gizz have charted 29 albums in the last 10 years. There are plenty of live albums adding to that tally, but for the most part, it's just raw discography. The unrelenting release schedule of the band has been their calling card for about as long as I can remember. While that might suggest a stagnant sound, the band's second calling card is how much that is not the case. The extent of how well they do it might get called into question, but they're a band that's fully willing to sound nothing like the album they just put out 3 months ago. Of course a band like this is going to generate fanfare.

It's always put them in a strange position here. Grateful Dead were never exactly a pop crossover band; they had one top 40 hit in all their time together. King Gizz are even less attuned to that wavelength. I don't think they've ever had anything close to a hit song. Whenever voting comes around, there's the faint notion that they might be able to get in, but they don't have quite a big enough voting demographic to guarantee it, so it needs a more considered campaign that doesn't usually end up happening. They've had a few near misses over the year, but for all of their (Gila) monster-sized discography, I get them just the two times here. Maybe it's for the best so I don't exhaust myself on finding things to say, but it does feel awfully quaint. Like a story that never got finished.

Remember when I said they release a lot of albums? 2017 was when they made this explicitly clear with a promise to release 5 of them by the end of the year. I feel like this was when they were closest to having some sort of mainstream following. They weren't all just ready to go though, as the last two came out in mid-November and then December 31st respectively. They're all reasonably different albums, though the one that got the most attention by far was the first, "Flying Microtonal Banana". If that's a nonsense title to you, I don't think I can change that view, but it is at least 33% accurate because it's the first album where the band started utilising microtonal tuning. As best as I can understand, it doesn't mean that the album is faster, just that the notes are coming in at less rigid intervals. It's the kind of tinkering with music theory that can risk turning into an absolute disaster, but I think they got away with it here.

The most popular song on this album is probably "Rattlesnake". It won't come up here because they released it in late 2016 and it didn't have the time to capture its memetic audience. Easy to forget across its 8 minute run time that there are lyrics that aren't 'Rattlesnake rattles me'. There was enough interest to get a vote across this time. Just the one song across all those albums so it's a stellar effort in concentrated voting, and "Nuclear Fusion" was the song that reaped the benefits.

I wouldn't say it's my favourite in the mix, I've got "Sleep Drifter" sitting right by it, and a lot of joy to be had from the more frantic "The Lord of Lightning" and the brooding menace of "Crumbling Castle". If you had to confine it all to a concise experience though, "Nuclear Fusion" isn't a bad way to do it. It's a pretty relaxing song outside of the unpredictable arrival of all the drum solos that disarm it at time. It snaps you out of the trance, ready to be lulled back in momentarily.

#302. Tash Sultana - Murder to the Mind (#43, 2017)

33rd of 2017

Following up a huge hit can be difficult. That first moment is nice, and can provide the leaping point to fulfil it, becoming an untouchable entity from then on. It's proof that you've got the public eating out of your hand, tapping into something special that just unquestionably clicks. What about the more likely scenario though? You had a big hit, but it's kind of a gimmick to everyone. It's gonna be the defining song of your career whether you like it or not because you just won't be able to convince enough people that it's not the best you can do. It's a sure fire way to accelerate your decline because in this cutthroat world of popularity, nothing gets more people to jump off like a clear sign that your stock is trending down.

We're still yet to get to the most important part of this story, but I think the point comes across. Tash Sultana had that big moment and then needed to follow it up. Their choice was to expand on their sound with "Murder to the Mind". A perfectly fine way to do it, but one that seemingly had audiences not quite on board in the same way. When Hottest 100 voting rolled around, more decided they were content with the mostly more familiar sounding "Mystik" (#773). It's one of those things we often get from streaming algorithms. If you get discovered from a genre pool, then the only way you can maintain that audience is by doing the same thing.

I'm not saying "Murder to the Mind" is a radical re-invention or anything, just that it prioritises on different things than the EP that came before it. Catch me on a good day and it might be what I want to hear the most. It's not so much a song about setting a mood, but disrupting it. It's one of their most out and out 'rock' songs just from the inclusion of the guitar noodling on the chorus. I've always thought it to be a very strong hook, but maybe it sounds off kilter to others. The shredding outro could be seen as indulgent, and maybe it's the last straw to keep it off people's chill playlists, but it's kept to a brief length and doesn't overstay its welcome. I liken the song to a showcase of what they're capable of doing within this space. While it may not have won over as many people as possible, it did have me thinking there could be more to enjoy in the future.

#301. Genesis Owusu - Gold Chains (#75, 2021)

23rd of 2021

I have a fascination with the way international music fans interact with and perceive triple j. There isn't really a clear comparison point that I know of around the world. BBC Radio could be it, but the vibe just isn't the same. I've seen Americans lament that they don't have anything similar. At the very least, it'd be fun if there were more Hottest 100 style polls with sufficient following to make them worthwhile and interesting (I suspect they'd just tell us which fan army is the most enthusiastic). On the other hand, I also see a lot of negative onlooking. triple j can at times position itself to have more music knowledge than the average person, and promote some of those big names from the blogs and online communities. That creates higher expectations that are destined to be disappointments. What do you mean there's no Swans on this list? Chet Faker is #1 instead (#862)? What even is that? It can create an extra layer of challenge at refuting though when you don't have globally known whipping boys up there (like let's say Imagine Dragons won a Hottest 100). Harder to get mad about names you had to look up before you could say anything.

Anyway it's funny I just picked 2014 out of a hat because I remember thinking about things like this then (Taylor Swift hadn't happened yet). Anthony Fantano was doing a promotional tour in Australia and when he was there, he stopped by triple j to do a Take 5 segment. I thought it was interesting because while there is some overlap, his interests in music were largely in a whole other world to our government-funded station, so maybe a lot of it felt quaint to him. I just want to bring him up for this because he's responsible for one of my favourite memories from the 2021 countdown. At this point in time, he was a big fan of Genesis Owusu (he gave the album an 8, which is not a score that he just throws around easily). Someone tweeted him to tell him that Genesis Owusu had made the countdown and he was excited, but then it had to be extremely tempered because he just got beaten by Tones And I with the next song (#863), an artist whose album he was considerably less fond of. It was just this wonderful set up and punchline on my Twitter timeline that you can't manufacture, made all the better because they ended up being the only appearances for either artist that year. It's an entertaining reminder of how the Hottest 100 giveth...I forget the second part, and I also think about this every time one of my favourite songs gets beaten by the most underwhelming successor. It's been happening so often lately that I just can't get mad at it anymore, it's like a vital component of the experience.

This felt like an assertion that Genesis Owusu might be here to stay. "Gold Chains" is an instantly likeable song, but not one that sticks out very much. It's not dull, just unassuming outside of the hook and all the odd guitar scratches. He'd have bigger hits in the future with songs that were harder to ignore. This one is here to say that he's got enough attention on him as an artist that something like this is able to take hold.

#310-#306

 #310. Arcade Fire - Everything Now (#65, 2017)

34th of 2017

Arcade Fire's song "Rebellion (Lies)" appears in a Season 5 episode of Six Feet Under. It's diegetic as it's playing in the background during Nate's 40th birthday party. Everyone's trying to keep it together while there's a feeling of unease going around for multiple reasons. At one point a magpie flies into the house and after some attempts to peacefully shoo it back outside, Nate ends up killing it and putting it in the garbage. It's an omen and a half for what's going to take place as the show starts to wrap up from there. "Rebellion (Lies)" plays again over the credits. I can't properly cast my mind back to 2005, but I like to imagine it's one of many specific examples that put them on the map.

The rise and fall of Arcade Fire is one of the great musical tragedies of the 21st century. Maybe it's not a tragedy if you're not interested or if you think certain people got what was coming to them, but if you were invested, it's a monumental bust. It's like finding out the captain of your favourite sports team is a serial womaniser, again. Just takes the wind out of the sails of past triumph. In 2011, Arcade Fire were standing in front of all the biggest stars in music to accept a GRAMMY Award for Album Of The Year, and it was all downhill from there.

This is one of the shining examples of a downfall that's incredibly hard to come back from. It's one thing to put out an album that isn't very well received. It's another to be courting unflattering controversy. Do both at the same time and suddenly your biggest fans are abandoning you left, right and centre, or otherwise sticking around to watch the collapse. Look, there's a part of me that will gladly look back over the highs of the Arcade Fire experience in a future entry (they'll have two more songs after this one). In the meantime, I've spent quite a long time being very mad about the whole ordeal and what better place to get that out? On one hand, the albums were gradually getting worse, but now a pattern tends to emerge with that cycle. Underwhelming album followed by some news that puts Win Butler in a bad light. The more I see, the worse it gets. Late last year, Win & Regine finally divorced and it feels likely they'll never put out another album, leaving it all on a very underwhelming whimper of a final album. I have to be the one who breaks this news because hardly anyone actually listened to it. They went from a #1 album in the US and #2 in Australia, to not even being able to chart in either country two albums later. You can owe some of that to the streaming tide, but they're not making up any ground on the vinyl resurgence because I just can't imagine wanting to buy into the brand anymore. At least Six Feet Under ended on an absolute triumph.

Your mileage may vary on the pace of it all, but for me, "Everything Now" (the album) was the major red flag. A band capable of some of the most soaring possible highs was reduced to being so utterly unremarkable in a flash. All the ambition, really any reason to listen to the band at all just vanished. What few small highlights could be found never wormed their way into essential listening for me and were surrounded by a nightmare rotation of bad decisions and out of touch misfires that I can't think of them in isolation from that. "Everything Now" (the song)? Pretty good. "Put Your Money On Me"? Pretty good. But wow, the ceiling sure had a few mezzanines installed under it.

Even with this in mind, I find it hard to get behind "Everything Now" the way I'm probably supposed to. A nice bit of fun at first, a bit of ABBA's "Dancing Queen" via Arcade Fire but they mostly get the memo. It even became a little bit of a crossover hit which was interesting, but for a band that so rarely take that leap, I probably would have preferred if it was someone else's song. I guess I feel for anyone who got into the band on the back of it. This song truly is the front side of the disaster liposuction Homer Simpson meme.

#309. Bring Me The Horizon - Happy Song (#86, 2015)

40th of 2015

I've always been truly fascinated by songs that push the limits on how short they can make their verses. I think I first noticed it when Kings of Leon put out "Radioactive" (imagine if they actually polled with "Supersoaker", I'd have them on redacted watch for so long). The instrumentals drag it out a little, but you still end up with two verses at the start that are two lines apiece, 13 words each! I get that there can be a shared understanding between the artist and audience that the big chorus is what you're there for, but it can get just a little bit distracting when you start to notice it.

Bring Me The Horizon put their own spin on it with "Happy Song". There are definitely more words, and I might be generous enough to say they pull it up to 3 lines. On the other hand, if you count the seconds from when Oli starts singing to when he starts belting, you might be lucky to get up to 11 seconds. Then the second verse comes in and I'm not even sure they crack 10 seconds. There's probably a valid meta interpretation of this. "Happy Song" is not actually a happy song, but one about being told to smile through the pain. Just engage with the things that are supposed to cheer you up and it'll just happen (or at least, the outsider won't have to tackle the issue as it appears fixed. I dare say this might not be the last time I say something like that.

When this song was first released, we were still pretty early in the secondary transitional phase of Bring Me The Horizon. It was one of the songs that helped sell me on the idea of it a little better though. They hadn't changed a lot; they were just having a bit more fun with it. "Happy Song" is something that could be a disaster if not handled correctly. Perhaps their most shameless crossover attempt on the surface, but it's those contrasts between light & dark that I find a lot to get out of it. Just a very reliable rush of energy in a bite sized package (you'd never think the song is just shy of 4 minutes, it just breezes by).

#308. Maggie Rogers - Alaska (#64, 2016)

32nd of 2016

Whenever I watch singing talent shows, there tends to be one judge who's infamous for being the mean one. It's a trope that's codified by Simon Cowell and spread out from there. They tend to be the last one to chime in because whether you love them or you hate them, they're the one you feel won't hold back and might come up with some creative adjectives to utterly annihilate someone for the crime of making you hear them sing for a minute on national television. At the end of the day, these shows gained their notoriety through their eventual product, so the Simon Cowell serves a second purpose. After the potluck fun of the auditions, it tends to get a bit harder for them to keep up the act. They've already gotten rid of the people they don't like, that was the point. Now the criticism is more constructive, and maybe they'll even find some compliments. What better way to sell the star quality of their finalists by showing that even the hardest shell has started to break. Then the other judges need to up the stakes too, perhaps they get a little emotional.

This formula might just be why any of us have heard of Maggie Rogers or "Alaska". In March 2016, the NYU Clive Davis Institute had a masterclass with Pharrell Williams, where he hung out with young musicians, listened to their music and gave feedback. It's probably not anything that would have gotten any wider attention if not for one moment. If you watch the video, you're introduced to a musician who grew up playing the banjo and making folk music, but had a spiritual awakening in France listening to EDM music and wanted to incorporate it into her music. Up to this point, Pharrell has been pretty positive about the students' music while offering constructive feedback (if you haven't gone back to the video since 2016 or just never watched the whole thing, you'll also spot a young Cafuné). When this next song gets played, you can tell pretty quickly that he's floored. Maggie is sitting next to him being adorably wholesome and Pharrell is trying to hide his visceral reaction to it. He offers no notes and compares the experience to the arrival of the Wu-Tang Clan, where there's just no point of comparison and no way to actually critique it. Those talent shows I talked about earlier are in the interest of manufacturing these kinds of moments, to the point that they probably wore themselves out and it no longer feels genuine. When it instead comes from something like this, where there's no specific profit margin trying to be met in the moment, it feels so much more real. If you want though, the set up for a joke is all there when you realise Pharrell is wearing a hat that says 'PLANT' on it.

Three months later and Maggie Rogers was properly integrated into the system. She's never blown up to an unavoidable degree, but she's been on the radio, scored some chart appearances and got nominated for Best New Artist at the GRAMMYs (in 2020, naturally). Last year she collaborated with the Dalai Lama. I'm sure to her it's just a remarkable build-up of chance encounters, but it's still a future of which she constructed the foundation for when she wrote "Alaska".

One of the most interesting things about music is the way that our past experiences shape our responses. I often wonder if consensus raving comes about because a lot of people are steered into hearing a very similar subset of music, and how if you're ever feeling estranged by it all, it's because you've taken the road less travelled. I've seen people describe "Alaska" as boiler plate indie pop, and maybe it is, but how much indie pop does the average person actually come across? I've often wondered if you can get a distorted view just from what gets popular, which aren't always the most representative examples. In the case of Pharrell, I can imagine his expertise lies elsewhere, but maybe he was just thrown for a loop because of how it was described initially. He compares Maggie's notion of genre blending to what Avicii had done on his "True" album, so I can imagine some difficult adjusting to something that's clearly not operating the same way.

I've always thought "Alaska" stood out though. Not necessarily for the general sound of it, but it's got one of those killer hooks that everyone wishes they came up with. It operates ironically and counterintuitively because Maggie raises her voice in a way that's difficult to make the words out, but there's nothing interchangeable about it at all. I wouldn't say I had the same profound experience, but then to be fair I'm not above it, and it's probably a good analogue for how I felt about her next single "Dog Years". It's one of the finest inclusions on my 'I know, I know, I know' playlist, which I'm sure I'll bring up again because one of those songs is in this list and I'm writing down a note right now to bring it up. I'm not a Maggie Rogers devout or anything but she's had a good run and every few years she'll put out something that really gets me off-guard. Sign me up for more of this.

#307. Tame Impala - No Choice (#73, 2022)

25th of 2022

Many moons ago when the last Hottest 100 list we had circulating was the 2010 one, I tried ranking it for fun. Shockingly, rather than take years, I managed to get it done in probably about half an hour. I don't remember the details of it and I can't imagine it's aged terrifically, but I remember taking a parting shot at Tame Impala. My thought was that of all the songs on that list, "Lucidity" was the most redundant. It's the one that the fewest people would miss if it wasn't there, and the one that felt the least essential. It wasn't at all my least favourite song there, but it was just there. I don't think the statement really holds up, mainly because I'm not sure I'd try to foist that title onto anything. "Lucidity" isn't my favourite track from "InnerSpeaker" but it does cut it down to a nice segment. It continues to sound better and better as Tame Impala continues to no longer sound like it.

This was all something I just recalled independently when I was thinking of ways to open this entry. Which is all to say that I remembered it after I was thinking about "No Choice" which itself could be a solid contender for the most forgettable song in this list. Perhaps you got an increasingly large number of people to hold similar rankings for this set of songs, "No Choice" might be the one I'm least expecting to top anyone's list. There are already so many Tame Impala songs to choose from, and this is just a B-side for one of the less beloved albums. It gets through on the strength of being the Tame Impala song to vote for in 2022, besides "New Gold" (#432). A while back I was talking about the discrepancy between triple j & Double J with respect to the Tame Impala songs that get played on the two stations. "No Choice" is the biggest point of difference. It couldn't get bigger if it tried! "No Choice" is the most played song this decade so far by Tame Impala on triple j. It's never been played on Double J, not once. I don't think of this as reflecting the content of the song at all, but just the nature of the release. It's a song that so easily slips through the cracks, you wouldn't notice it if it wasn't there.

For me, it got me thinking about the potential slide in quality for artists over time. How many times have you heard someone say they haven't liked anything from an artist since [a long time ago]? Maybe you've thought it yourself. When I hear it, I just imagine someone relentlessly continuing to soldier on, trying out every new release from this artist and feeling a new wave of disappointment each time. It's comical to imagine it, but it's something that doesn't feel genuine or fair. How could any artist, previously on the nice list just monumentally fail to connect so many times in a row? It's a statistical near impossibility. It probably means that either the artist or listener has changed in some way in the ensuing years, but often times you can see these artists going through such a phase and not have their audience numbers be particularly hampered. That's what makes it feel more personal, watching everyone merrily continue to listen as if nothing has changed.

I haven't really enjoyed the last two Tame Impala albums. Admittedly there were worrying signs on "Currents" as well, but there are enough positives to redeem that project (three more songs coming on this list by the way). "The Slow Rush" was still passable but the highlights were fewer and felt more like mediumlights. "Deadbeat" I just don't really gel with at all. You can't catch me ever willingly listening to any of it. So we've got a pretty steady downward slide while Tame Impala continues to see strong chart performances and is in no danger of sputtering out (just scored an equal highest charting hit this week in Australia). I'm the issue here. It sucks though because it starts to feel like my brain won't actually let me enjoy new Tame Impala music. It starts to feel like a modest reflection on my overall views of the project over time, rather than assessing everything on its own merit. I really want to believe there's another knockout punch coming in the future, but when I think of it like this, I start to wonder if I'd even allow the possibility.

The unlikely hero here is actually "No Choice". It's not anything I'd ever paid close attention to at the time, until it became just another also-ran for this collection. New stat sheet padding hit for Tame Impala? Sure, I'll just go through the motions with it and give it the same amount of investment as everyone else has, not very much. I said this is a song that probably no one would put at #1 on their list, and I probably stick by that, because this has all the makings of a song that you just have to deal with, chuck out and move on. It's there to be unceremoniously eliminated somewhere in the middle of the Tame Impala song eliminator forum game. No one feels compelled to give it an extra chance because there are no stakes attached to it.

Anyway, what if "No Choice" was actually really good? Like, it has no business putting itself out there like that, but somehow it provides a strange redemption for "The Slow Rush". It's running with the same playbook we're used to seeing in the 2020s, cute little falsetto hook over a more playful beat. Tame Impala oldheads get thrown a little bone with the guitar solos, and I do like them, but I don't think they're what won me over. It just feels like out of all the Tame Impala songs under this template, this is the one that gets drilled into my head. This is that earworm that I love to revisit. It ended up being a huge bolter for this list because I'd given it so little thought before. I don't want to just penalise something for doing its own thing with very little cultural impact, otherwise this list would look mighty different.

#306. Stace Cadet & KLP - Energy (#21, 2020)

22nd of 2020

For as long as I've listened to triple j, they've had an editorial policy on the music they play. Simply that no presenter is allowed to play their own music. It's pretty straightforward and makes sense, but it's always struck me as funny when the presenters in question do have new music going around. I first started listening in 2006 when Jay & Lindsay from Frenzal Rhomb were hosting the breakfast show. Frenzal Rhomb had also just put out a new album and I knew this because I heard their music on triple j, just never on the breakfast show. It ends up feeling like a strange loophole that prevents something that's readily getting played on the station from being heard for a wide stretch of the day, perhaps hampering the exposure. It wasn't just them though, Ash Grunwald used to host Roots 'N' All, and Hau from Koolism was a long term host for The Hip Hop Show. Double J presenter Tim Shiel made music that I always thought was best suited to be heard on the segment he hosted, alas.

KLP was also part of this crew for a while. I still think of her as the House Party host first and a musician in her own right second, even if the relative tenures are considerably different in length at this point. She wrapped up her hosting duties in 2018 and I figured that would be the last I hear from her. Maybe she'd keep making music but she wasn't setting the charts alight before, and there was no reason to think that'd ever change. Especially in her field, it's usually the young upstarts that get all the attention. I guess that's also a cheat code sometimes.

The shackles were removed for "Energy" and it was able to be played at all hours of the day on triple j. I'm sure they'd find a way to play it on Hack if they could. It ended up being one of the most played songs on triple j for all of 2020, I've got it ranked 4th. It wasn't just random filler though, as it converted the airplay into some genuine popularity. It reached the ARIA Charts for a bit, and has been certified Platinum, though it wouldn't surprise me if that's outdated. Nothing else ever reached these highs for Stace Cadet afterwards, but you look at who it's sitting alongside in that year's Hottest 100 and I've got to commend the excellent job at pushing it to reach its absolute potential. You just don't tend to see success stories like that anymore.

If I want to talk about marketing though, I do think it's a song that has its own branding on lock. They've carved out a specific niche of monkeys playing cymbals that I don't think I'll ever be able to disassociate. For the past 6 years I've been unable to look at one of those things and think anything other than 'every time you're touching me, your loving gives me energy'. Just absolutely spot on, it's the perfect song for it. It feels like a throwback to the era when music videos and physical singles were more important, and you might see some shared branding between them to catch your eye on the shelves. There isn't actually a music video for this song, but we do have a lyric video that absolutely looks like a late night Rage fever dream. It all just works. There aren't many elements to the song, but they know when to bring them in and take them away, platonic ideal for a song that doesn't really have any verses.