#180-#176

#180. RÜFÜS DU SOL - On My Knees (#9, 2021)

8th of 2021

As far as I can recall, if you look at the Hottest 100 through any reasonable statistical model, what you'll find is that Kanye West is probably the most successful artist who has never made the top 10. There's one slight exception to this as he has a producer credit on "INDUSTRY BABY" (#439), which is an entry here where I've started it off with the same fact. It's relevant again because I think he's very 'lucky' to still hold that distinction. It's something RÜFÜS DU SOL could easily have taken away. They're very good at polling well and polling often, they just had one stroke of luck when they finally got rid of that hoodoo on their 4th album. "On My Knees" is the only RÜFÜS DU SOL song to ever make the top 10. Okay, "Innerbloom" made it for one of the special countdowns, but there's something that can be more noteworthy about the ability to so quickly win that respect. "On My Knees" was released in late September 2021, so it was just a few months they had, while it was already fighting an uphill battle being the third single released from "Surrender".

I'm not sure if it's the most likely contender, but "On My Knees" became something of a crossover hit, the kind they hadn't really had since "You Were Right" (#274). That's momentum you can carry to the bank and something that's stuck the landing. "On My Knees" remains one of their most popular songs to this day, always impressive for an artist that was arguably well past their commercial peak. All the more impressive too for its finish in the Hottest 100. In one of the more US pop dominated years, they managed to take up one of those underdog Australian slots.

To me, this all makes sense. "On My Knees" is a culmination of everything I want from RÜFÜS DU SOL, and packaged in a relatively pop friendly context. I'm reminded of The Presets' big hits from "Apocalypso" in 2007. There's a sinister darkness in the sound of it, but it never feels at risk of frightening you off. You're drawn in by the light at the end of that tunnel. On top of that, they're a group that have fully honed their craft in a way that can't help but sound big. Every synth stab, every drum pound, it's all working together to create this monster of a song. I wouldn't call it Tyrone's best vocal performance, but the pleading tone works well with this backdrop. There's a nice, underrated moment on the bridge where they briefly reel it back in and I'm reminded of the very early RÜFÜS DU SOL days, the RÜFÜS days if you will. It sounds so pretty before building back up to a completely earned climax. I think on the surface I just liked this song for being catchy but the more I go back to it, the more I just admire the craft of it all.

#179. The Amity Affliction - I Bring the Weather With Me (#67, 2016)

21st of 2016

The album "This Could Be Heartbreak" is the black sheep of The Amity Affliction's discography. It's absolutely one of their most successful albums, released at the height of their popularity, but it's been pushed aside in the years since. It's the necessary follow up to the big commercial breakthrough, with all the classic trappings. You'll listen to it and just get something that sounds similar to their previous album, "Let the Ocean Take Me". For the many people who jumped on board with that album, it's probably close to what they want, but it's hard to justify picking it up first after the thrill is gone. I listen to "Tearing Me Apart" and I can't escape the clear similarities to the last Amity Affliction song I'll be talking about in this list.

This isn't just the view from the fans though, by all reports, it's felt even more strongly by the band themselves. Gleaning from interviews, Joel & Ahren both weren't a fan of the album, and it's possible Joel associates it with a time when he was going through an alcoholic relapse. Generally though, they accepted that they leaned too hard into what they'd done before and ended up with some of their cheesiest songs. It's an album that gets very little coverage in their modern setlists. The one song that seems to have survived is "All F**ked Up" (#827), and even that song fell out of favour for a while when they had just released "Not Without My Ghosts", taking up the mantle for a while as the token softer song in the metal setlist. By comparison, their most recent setlist has had them typically playing 2 songs from "Chasing Ghosts" and 3 from "Let The Ocean Take Me". I don't think many people are lamenting the lack of "Some Friends" to be fair.

The only other song from the album that still got a reasonable shake is "I Bring the Weather With Me". They haven't played it in a while, but they stuck with it for a pretty long time, so there's always the chance it comes back. On an album full of attempts to find the next hit, this might just be the one that makes that most clear. I wouldn't say it's the most derivative, but just the song that's always felt like it packs in the most hooks. It always feels like it's ramping things up to a good pay off, and I think having Joel sing the title line works better than when Ahren does it. Just a very well put together effort.

#178. DZ Deathrays - Like People (#47, 2018)

19th of 2018

I was blessed a while back when someone brought this song up while I was researching for my entry on San Cisco's "Reasons" (#495). They seemed to think that both music videos were filmed at the same venue. It's something I couldn't get myself to confirm (I spent a lot of time looking at windows). If there's a similarity to be noted though, it's that both videos do start with fairly long cuts (36 seconds for San Cisco, 27 seconds for DZ Deathrays). Both videos abandon this style afterwards.

This was an important entry point to this because it introduced me to a music video I'd either forgotten about or never seen before. I'm now willing to put in all my chips and say that the music video is a strong contributor to how "Like People" did so well. Maybe it wouldn't have been a convincing take in 2019, but we've got some added evidence in the 2020s to suggest what we probably should have already known. People who listen to triple j just love The Wiggles. I love to imagine someone catching the video on TV on a late night and having the slow revelation as a man emerges from a bathroom stall wearing a suit and puts on his glasses. Maybe you recognise him or maybe you don't, but then a minute into the video he re-emerges in a red dress shirt and you realise you're looking at Murray Cook. What an absolute legend. I watched it multiple times before I realised he grips a steaming potato because he's making a Wiggles reference, I just thought it was neat. It all just feels like a full circle moment. DZ Deathrays are about the right age to be some of the first fans The Wiggles ever cultivated. Murray would go on to play the song with the band at Splendour In The Grass that year, and also join in on a cover of AC/DC's "Highway to Hell". This was clearly hinted at when Murray mimicked the Angus Young guitar dance in the music video.

"Like People" comes from DZ Deathrays' 3rd album "Bloody Lovely", which after the breakout success of "Black Rat", earned them much more attention. They went from a #23 charting album to #4. They outsold Shannon Noll if you can believe it. I don't know if the band ever quite captured the exuberance from that release again, but in its place is just the mother of all chunky, chunky actual guitars. They were definitely playing around with distortion effects before, but it all combined with the drums to just make the songs feel more danceable. Here they just smash you over the head with an enormous guitar riff and leave you to pick up the pieces. The chorus is just classic DZ Deathrays release, that's a knack I'm not sure they've ever lost.

#177. Gang of Youths - Let Me Down Easy (#2, 2017)

23rd of 2017

Recently in the world of petty, silly internet drama, there's been a lot of focus on the TV show Breaking Bad. In most places you can look, it holds up a pretty significant mantle as a common go-to answer to the question of 'What is the best TV show ever made?'. Whatever the real answer to that question might be, it's not really important, it's just that the show has more fans willing to stake the claim than anything else. Maintaining that status quo is of highest importance to them.

It's so important that they're willing to tear down any potential threat to this. There's a Game of Thrones prequel of sorts that recently came out. It's getting very good reviews. I've pretty much memorised every word of the trailer that plays every time I try to watch an HBO show. In fact, one episode of the show even managed upon release to reach a 10.0 rating on IMDb, the highest rating you can get, and one that has been held exclusively by an episode of Breaking Bad for over a decade. I should clarify firstly that a 10.0 doesn't really mean it's the obscenely high approval of rounding up at least from 9.95, because the site heavily filters perceived trolling. Secondly, it's a reasonably common thing in pretty much all websites like this that scores start off high and then find a more realistic chasm in the days and weeks following, as people come to check out the hype and don't have the same enthusiasm as the day one die hards. That didn't stop Breaking Bad fans from attempting to right a perceived wrong and put Game of Thrones in its place. They succeeded, and dropped the new episode down to a 9.8 or something.

Once this happened, it opened up a war worthy of both TV shows as suddenly everyone got tired of Breaking Bad fans pushing them around, and fought back. That Breaking Bad episode that had been sitting at 10.0 for over a decade? It's now down to a 9.5. So laser pointed is the targeting that it's been bumped below about half of the episodes from the same season. The fans have truly lived the experience of being Walter White. Their need to be on top getting in the way of swallowing their pride and causing a cataclysm in its wake. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy Breaking Bad a lot, it's definitely worth watching, but its fans are just so obsessed with an impenetrable status they want to foist on it that it can't possibly live up to. They make me want to dislike it out of spite. Nothing wrong with passion (lest I be the blackest pot), but rein it in before you turn into everyone else's villain, all awaiting your downfall.

I mostly find all of that to be pretty funny and it doesn't affect me, but it's a good way to lead into an issue I've had with Gang of Youths ever since they became demonstrably one of the most popular bands in the country. They've brought along with them that exact kind of insufferable fanbase. It's probably helped them in the long run. By all accounts, you need fans who have no qualms about bringing up your music in conversation with others. Enough so that you can be looking around online and just see the name pop up over and over again, enough to convince you it must be important. For Australian artists, this is even more important because it's very easy for our local music to feel insignificant without the global reinforcement. How nice it must be to be able to talk about an Australian band who are actually very good, and not just a watered down, less inspired version of something that could be found in the US or UK. These are the people who have turned Gang of Youths into some kind of international sensation. They're also the people that very much damaged my feelings for the band's music.

It's something I've been grappling with every time the band have appeared on this list. That slight pattern emerging where their later releases have been working less for me than the earlier ones. Normally I wouldn't find this weird, but I see so much enthusiasm for the later stuff that I can't help but feel like the problem rests with me, where I can't muster as much myself because on some level I just don't want to. None of this is fair to the band themselves who have done nothing wrong in this regard, which itself bothers me. Now that all the players are on the field, it's easier to finally explain this one.

Ever since 2005, triple j have been giving out J Awards. It's the big climax of Aus Music Month every November, where we find out among other things, what's been judged the best Australian album of the year. It doesn't hold quite the same level of interest as something like the Mercury Prize does in the UK. Historically, you can't really see the needle moving much from hype. It might have helped on a small intangible scale in the past, where you could look at any belated success of The Panics being bolstered by that little conversation-starter. I've always been interested in it, but that's just me.

The one time that it certainly did make waves was in 2017. Gang of Youths were of course nominated and it made sense: They had everything going for them. Huge acclaim, huge sales and a plethora of certain hits just waiting to be canonised. It even could serve as belated gratification for anyone who thought their first album should have won back in 2015. Gang of Youths did not win the J Award. They lost to A.B. Original's album "Reclaim Australia", an album whose most famous song will eventually appear on this list. The "SICKO MODE" (#229) incident had not yet happened, so as far as I was concerned at this point, I'd never seen a more utterly inane outpour of the 5 Stages of Grief on full display from everyone who was not content to let this stand. Clearly the mood was akin to Skin on Skin (#288) for them, 'If it ain't Gang, I'll burn them bridges'. For months on, I'd just keep seeing variations on the same comments that were so clouded by their personal judgement that they'd try to apply unnecessary logic. Suggestions that everyone knows Gang of Youths should have won because their album sold more (people whom I suspect would not cede then that Bliss N Eso would have deserved it over Gang of Youths considering their album sold even more). They'd boast that the ARIA Awards actually got it right by giving their equivalent to Gang of Youths, and following the Hottest 100 which saw three songs by Gang of Youths in the top 10, start laughing at the fact A.B. Original had nothing to show for it. Top it off with a lot of barely disguised racism (which is odd, coming from fans of a band like Gang of Youths), and they just created the most toxic fanbase in Australia. My instinct tends to be that I never want to publicly side with anyone when they make an arse of themselves like that. Gang of Youths probably did put out my favourite Australian album that year, but I've also never listened to the whole thing since November 2017. I just can't give them the satisfaction.

Obviously, the situation sucks. Gang of Youths have done nothing wrong by me, and anything I say about a terrible portion of their fanbase doesn't change the fact that I've encountered no shortage of fans who aren't like that, and are just willing to enjoy a band that makes music they greatly resonate with. Given the volume of their songs still to be seen in the pointy end of this list, I probably still am one of those fans myself. I just feel like I'm holding onto old memories of when there was palpable excitement on all accounts. Why must Icarus always keep flying higher?

The J Award was just the first time they'd fall short after seemingly having conquered everything. Something, if treated right, could be a means to stay humble. A reminder that there's always more to learn, and to not get complacent. Sometimes we all need a Jackie Chun (this is a Dragon Ball reference, not a spelling error), or whoever'd keep beating Ash at the Pokémon League. Two months later and it happened again. Gang of Youths had a mighty haul in the Hottest 100 no doubt, but they were stuck the bridesmaid. "Let Me Down Easy" finished at #2. Suddenly the popularity argument doesn't work anymore, they were beaten, outnumbered. You can make excuses for this (I might save some up for when I talk about that song), but some of the things I saw made me all the happier for the result. I don't think I could take in those dangerous, volumetrically compressed volumes of smug if that brigade truly had things go their way. There's just no way my opinion of "Let Me Down Easy" would have lived to tell the tale.

With that all being said, I have always felt a little odd with this particular song. I guess I just can't really pin down its audience, and what in particular it does to be the de facto hit from this Gang of Youths album. I hesitate to call it their biggest hit because some other songs make a strong case, but when they were at the peak of their powers, this was the song that drove most of the votes. It was something I found puzzling. I found it easier to imagine passion and excitement elsewhere, but this was just a bit perfunctory with its best crossover appeal elements feeling insufficient. Like, it feels like it's the most easy-going song, it has a title that doesn't feel like it's a learned literary reference. I just couldn't muster up that extreme enthusiasm so it was hard to place in general.

It's unfair to this song to say it's just the simple, radio friendly single. It still clocks past 5 minutes, and while you can maybe take a way a pleasant, simple mantra out of the hook, this is a song that isn't pulling any punches for being just as lyrically dense as any other Gang of Youths song. I don't think anything else resembling a hit song has ever used the word 'solipsism' before, although funnily enough JAY-Z used 'solipsistic' on the song "Caught Their Eyes", which came out just a month after "Let Me Down Easy".

Maybe I pine for something more exciting, and thrilling, which we get in other Gang of Youths songs. I will be perfectly fair to this one though, it's not without its moments either. There's a subtle touch to it that plays off well. Maybe the strings aren't doing anything exciting, but they do accentuate the mood and give it a good lift in the chorus. What I really love is that little synth that comes in afterwards though. It's this little magic touch that veers on the side of goofy, but gives the song a real 'floating in the air' vibe. I like to think that's what they were going for. I also feel like I should shout out the song "Rainbow Kr**t" by The John Steel Singers. I enjoy the steady guitar riff in this song but I think it's in part because it reminds me of that song, which does something similar.

#176. Bloc Party - Ratchet (#36, 2013)

33rd of 2013

When I was a teenager, Bloc Party felt like one of the biggest bands in the world. It wasn't entirely unfounded. Their quick turn around on releasing albums at the time meant that from my perspective, they were the band that got played the most on triple j for a while. I used to check the old JPlay website which would re-affirm this. They had memorable music videos, they made the Hottest 100 most years, everything was coming up Bloc Party.

The irony in all this is that like many cases alongside them, I missed the boat when it actually counted. Bloc Party are more than anything, the band that made "Silent Alarm", their debut album. It's a wall to wall selection of extremely tightly made post-punk revival that might just be the flag bearer for the entire sub-genre if Interpol weren't also around to make a case. At the same time though, they found a way to make it just a little more crossover friendly with extremely danceable tunes and guitar riffs that weren't content to just set a steady pace. That's not even acknowledging the band's true secret weapon in original drummer Matt Tong. One of the first things you hear on the album is his contribution to "Like Eating Glass" and he single-handedly sets the pace for the whole album. It's not unreasonable to say the band haven't quite been the same since he left in 2013.

This is all to say that I did eventually get around to "Silent Alarm" mostly through gradually picking up songs I'd hear from place to place over the years. I absolutely love it. In 2025, Bloc Party went on tour for its 20th anniversary and I immediately snapped up tickets because the album does mean that much to me. It ended up being a bit of a misnomer as the band didn't actually play all of the album, but it ended up being a mix that not many could really argue with. I didn't realise when they played it, how rare it is for "Two More Years" to end up in their set.

I've gotten a certain thrill out of seeing less obvious songs converted into the live experience. Any song that doesn't just sound like a typical four piece band plugging it out with their instruments. One that stood out to me is "Mercury". It's the lead single to their third album, the one where things started to go a bit off the rails for them. I remember at the time they had the most songs on the Hottest 100 voting list that year but then none of them made it. It was an album with a strange roll out and strange songs that people didn't know what to do with. I have a certain fondness for the singles from then, and the main thing I remember was how surprisingly "Mercury" came through in the live setting. It just came alive in an unexpected way. Even more than that was one of their much more recent singles "Traps". That's one of those songs that I think with its studio version had a lot of people scratching their heads at what had become of this band. When they sneak it into the setlist though, it's surprising just how much it fits in regardless. I was grinning through the proverbial window with my SICKOS shirt as they snuck 'cute like Bambi' and 'lick, lick, lick' into the set.

The whole experience could have been a great bit of research for this blog, only they let me down by leaving "Ratchet" out of their set. Maybe on the surface it shouldn't be surprising, as it's just a standalone single and in the same standing as "Two More Years", but Bloc Party do have a knack for those. It's an odd quirk that they've only polled songs from their first two albums in the Hottest 100, but their first 4 album eras all had non-album singles that got through, with "Ratchet" being the last one. It's also a song that they generally include in most of their sets. I feel it's a song that would absolutely soar in this setting. A song where any moments of emptiness are filled out by everything going on, giving it every opportunity to sound better than it does on the studio recording.

It was odd at the time to see Bloc Party turn back the clock with this one. Overall, they've only ever had three charting singles in Australia. "Ratchet" managing to do so in a time period where it was difficult to break through was all the more surprising. I couldn't tell if they were preaching to their core audience or had tapped into something that went beyond it. There isn't a global bat signal that says 'Hey, Bloc Party have got their shit back together', and even if there was, I'm not sure "Ratchet" is the song to do it.

"Ratchet" feels quintessentially like later period Bloc Party. The kind where Kele puts strange things into the lyrics that can be distracting, and the whole core of the song just sounds so strange from a band that got famous for being so tightly locked in. From what I've seen, the whole situation can be a little touchy and it's something I can't help but notice with any rock band with a black singer. Whether it's Living Colour or it's TV On The Radio, there's this weird expectation that they're supposed to fit in and not express themselves fully, lest it be seen as an incoherent mess. It's something that Kele has spoken about in interviews before, this idea that he's a novelty that doesn't fit in with his contemporaries. This only got more relevant in 2010 when Kele came out as gay. To me, it's all part of the package and I'm not sure Bloc Party would have stuck around quite as long as they have if they conformed and just made "Silent Alarm" over and over again. I love hearing him having fun on this song.

On the whole, it plays out like a strange experiment though. There's no foundation to anchor in the guitar so it just feels like it's revving up on its own, and then becomes a loop to bring in and out of the song. Shout out also to the loud siren that plays just before the chorus. It's an experiment that mostly works though, Kele goes a long way towards sending it all soaring.

#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.