#87

#87. Ocean Alley - Deepest Darkness (#56, 2022)

4th of 2022

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I'll try not to belabour the point too much but it really is a red flag to me when anyone sweeps entire discographies under the same rug. I'm a believer in putting your best foot forward and choosing your battles. To chime in on literally everything feels like building up an ego that can't possibly be lived up to. I know, because I've sometimes overstepped my mark and felt the blunt force of my own ignorance getting called out. It doesn't feel great. Sometimes you can find yourself in the kind of echo chamber where it's a particularly shared ignorance, and you'll probably get away with it. Anyone willing to call it out either isn't there, or is just going to get shouted down by the collective who aren't willing to concede the fun they have in their broad summary.

Ocean Alley get this a lot, I feel. If you've heard one Ocean Alley song, you've heard them all,  apparently. Their most famous song (#521) doesn't do much to stand out, and so it feels fitting to say it's the band in a nutshell. The crucial mistake of conflating the most prominent example with everything else that hasn't done enough to earn its stripes in the conversation. Anyone dismissing Ocean Alley like this probably thinks "Way Down" (#312) and "Drenched" are like for like, and would never care enough to consider otherwise. There's just nothing in it for them, deep down, you crave the adversarial artist that you can put in their place, and the more popular they are, the more people you can position yourself above for having figured out not to waste time with them.

I have been holding onto a peculiar stat for Ocean Alley ever since around when I made this whole list years ago. In direct contrast to the reported stereotype, I've ended up giving Ocean Alley what could be argued as the most even spread of positions across all of this. If you split this all up into ten chunks of 100, you will find Ocean Alley in nine of them. It's only the #201-#300 section they don't snatch up. I think they had a pretty solid haul of entries in the most recent countdown though so there probably is space in that particular outer ring of my heart for them in the end. I just find the whole thing amusing for twofold reasons, firstly that I just really didn't know I had this in me, yet it made perfect sense as it came through. Secondly, that Ocean Alley have done so completely against the tide, where the latter years are relatively struggling on the overall standings, but here they are getting their highest two entries in 2021 & 2022. The heroes we didn't know we needed.

As a direct follow up to "Touch Back Down" (#150), it was probably the best context for me to give "Deepest Darkness" a proper look-in. I just had no idea that they'd so thoroughly surpass my expectations again and deliver something like this. It's not very Ocean Alley at all, and to me, re-calls mid-90s post-grunge. Think "Comedown" by Bush. Some of that stuff can get bogged down by sloppy production choices that haven't necessarily aged the best, but I can't hear any sludge in "Deepest Darkness", because all the instruments come through so pronounced. You can hear multiple guitar lines over the chorus counter-acting each other, and the drums & hi-hats get their chance to poke in above the mix. Outside of the chorus, even just the song's opening note is the ultimate mood-setter. This is the sound of completely locking in.

#88

#88. BENEE - Find an Island (#25, 2019)

7th of 2019

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I am once again presenting myself with a serious challenge which is to find a bunch of things to write about an artist whose career was very much in its infancy when they notched up multiple entries that all happened so quickly that there's not much in the way of unique stories here. That's right, I've got 3 consecutive singles from before BENEE even had an album out that all share the same producer and don't sound dissimilar. What a prospect.

Well, I suppose if nothing else, "Find an Island" is relatively noteworthy because it's technically BENEE's breakthrough single, the first to chart in Australia. That comes with some big asterisks, but then arguably the more realistic outcome also did, but much like how I said it's weird CHVRCHES got their first Hottest 100 entry with "Lies" (#91), it's weird here too in a different way. This feels like BENEE just trucking along, although I suppose if not for late virality on the part of "Glitter" (#737), then this could easily have wound up as her highest Hottest 100 entry of her career, so maybe I do have to consider it more closely.

I'll probably have more to say about the general vibe of BENEE's music and what it represents specifically for me in the future. I tend to enjoy introspective music which lets you into the head of the artist, and it's something I find she's generally quite good at. "Find an Island" is a slight change of pace as the song is directed outward. Instead of direct feelings, we're instead gleaming from this by her choice of words and tone. "Find an Island" could easily be a break-up song, but instead it's just a petty argument BENEE was having with her guitarist, turning into the logical extreme of asking them to get as far away as possible. By all accounts, I think she knows it's a bit silly and that's why it's expressed in this way. I am fond of committing to the bit, starting to talk about rafts and a search party. I wonder if BENEE has also seen Lost.

Up to this point in her career, it's probably her most openly upbeat song. I get the feeling that she was generally using a slight veil of darkness to shyly come into the world of music and not try to be too boisterous, so this might just be her getting more comfortable about it all. The production is a key part of this as it manages to suit the generally bouncy lyrics with some silliness as well. That one little cowbell is the signal not to take it too seriously, but also works as a solid transition. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to sound so effortless.

#89

#89. Flume (feat Kučka) - Hyperreal (#90, 2017)

12th of 2017

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Australia has a funny tendency for claiming everyone as our own. I remember a bit of uproar at Ladyhawke being included in the ARIA Award nominations and winning a couple, and then a few years later, Kimbra managed back to back wins for Best Female Artist. The first was for a single, the second was for an album that contained that single, which came out a month after the first cut off, a glorious gambit. Around the same time, Brian McFadden had managed to get himself on the books as Australian (which almost seemed like a case of 'We're the only country that wants him'). The rationalisation is usually that they're recording and promoting their music within Australia, but it looks a bit silly, and then you get someone like Joji whose link is tenuous at best.

Kučka is an Australian singer, that's what I tend to go with. The curiosity here is that she wasn't born in Australia, didn't move to Perth until she was 16, and not long after, moved to California where I believe she still lives. Australia is where she started her career though so I suppose it's sufficient but it feels like such an increasingly small part of her life. She does seem to still have an Australian accent though so there's that.

This isn't the first time Kučka has come up here, nor the first time on a Flume song, as there was "Smoke & Retribution" (#344) that came before it. The two have worked together many times, and have at least 8 different collaborations out there. I think the simplest explanation is that Flume is a fan and wants to expose her relatively niche music to a wider audience, but it also tends to be a strong match. Much of what Kučka already does has similarities to Flume's music, and her high pitched voice proves to be very malleable no matter what he throws at it.

Also yes, this will just be a Kučka blurb, Flume has had plenty of the limelight as it is. I feel a bit more connected to her music because I cottoned onto it a little earlier, and that also tends to happen when they're the less famous one. I first heard her via the song "Flux 98", which is a fairly minimalist song but immediately, her unique vocals just make everything stand out so much. Not just that though, but her gift for melody stood out immediately, a bit like R&B music under the disguise of electronica. Not long after that, she teamed up with Cosmo's Midnight on "Walk With Me", which I suppose proved that her music could be fun too (I don't know how much of that is just the jarring feeling that she has a song with the hook 'I just got a text from you').

Kučka has proven to be one of the most consistent artists for me because I very rarely go a year without downloading one of her new singles that catches my fancy. There was a bit of a lull on her own music while she was working with Flume and moving overseas, but she's been going strong ever since. My favourite song of hers came out not long after this, "Real", no relation to this song. There's probably something you can find from back around 2007 that explains it but I just love the combination of subtle strings in electronic music. It all comes together to make something beautiful. She's one of those artists that I might pigeon-hole a bit and then get surprised every time she finds something new to mine from this sound (hanbee is another one lately).

When we go back to "Hyperreal", it's Flume's song really, just like with "Smoke & Retribution". I feel this one gives her more of a starring role, and not just because Vince Staples isn't there. It just feels more distinctly like her kind of melody line. Even when the music is increasing in volume, she's still commanding it. The most distinctly Flume parts of the song, I think, aside from the instrumental breaks are the very sudden transitions between verse & chorus. It feels like an economic decision to ramp up the excitement, and I'll admit it's a good one. "Hyperreal" is an immaculate listen though because everything's been wound up so tightly and sounds so clean. I've never really gotten sick of it.

#90

#90. Vera Blue - Temper (#72, 2021)

1st of 2021

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That's 2021 for you, not a bang, barely a whimper. I don't think it warrants any grand declarations beyond it just being a particularly unlucky year for my voting prospects. It's the only year where nothing I voted for made the top 100, and if that's not enough, only one vote of mine made the top 200. Given the size of the voting list, someone picking at random would likely do better than me. Several artists I did vote for got in with other songs. The one exception was a bit of a close miss with Holly Humberstone's "The Walls Are Way Too Thin", a rare song that lifts a similar riff from The Police's "Every Breath You Take", but doesn't immediately get dragged down by that over-familiarity. It got to #123, with the potential to get high enough if it wasn't sharing vote space with her other song, "Scarlett" at #169.

There are other songs I'm rather fond of in that second half too, "NDA" might be my favourite song from Billie Eilish's second album, Clairo has "Amoeba" which is at her typical best. Inexplicably I'm very fond of Drake & Travis Scott's team up on "Fair Trade". One of those songs that takes their usual dark, moody sound and makes it sound captivating. Then you've got AURORA who has never made the Hottest 100 before managing to channel the opening line of The Walkmen's "The Rat" with her song "Cure For Me", but make it goofy and fun. Lastly, as I say before, I was so close to partially salvaging it with MAY-A's "Time I Love To Waste" landing at the unlucky #101 slot, which I'd probably have a little bit higher than this. I've seen people make countdowns where the #1 spot is a big statement that the whole list stands behind, but sometimes it's just the best of what you've got. As a year in music, I'm very fond of 2021, which has a serious contender for my favourite song of the decade so far (by an artist who will eventually appear in this list), but it's time to wrap it up with...just another non-album single by Vera Blue.

I do find myself associating this song pretty strongly with "Lie To Me" (#94). They both came out at roughly the same time of the year, a year apart. Both landed at roughly the same spot in the Hottest 100, and I liked them both about the same. Ask me another time and I might even swap them on this list. Maybe it's all just her perfectly manipulating the voter set by releasing singles at the optimal time. She had one of her best performances with "All The Pretty Girls" (#215) released in October, so here's another one. It also had the bonus of being the only song she released at all that year, and that might be why she's so suddenly fallen considerably out of favour since. "Temper" is actually her last song to register in the Hottest 200 entirely.

I don't think I'd typically lean into a song as light & airy as this one, but I do think it's very well crafted. A lot of that comes down to the performance, firstly where Vera Blue shifts it up on the pre-chorus. If I was confident enough at making declarations from thin air, I'd say it's thematic and she's expressing her mood shifts through her vocal melodies. She treats her temper as an uncontrollable aspect of her and evidently just runs into it unexpectedly. It feels like she borrows from OneRepublic's workbook after that by starting the chorus with a 'Lately,', but otherwise uses it more as a build-up of tension that isn't released until the song's actually hook comes in. Then, as if to counter the set up in the verses, she actually raises her voice up higher for that, giving the song a surprising amount of dynamic range for what it is. After that, we're mostly just going through the motions to fill out the next two minutes, but I'm pretty sold anyway.

#91

#91. CHVRCHES - Lies (#60, 2013)

18th of 2013

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You have no idea how badly I just want to copy paste the first two paragraphs of my "If I Could Change Your Mind" (#102) entry. Basically everything I said there could have been written word for word on this entry that occupies a very similar space in my mind. They basically came out at the same time, are both living in the shadow of bigger hits without much in the way of distinctive gimmicks. Haim just landed in the list first and got the 'Get out of writer block free' card.

This isn't all a problem though. I think it's an opportunity to explore another aspect of how these kinds of entries happen, because it's hard to think of them as casual entry points. I think back to 2009, when I was basically listening to almost nothing but Muse for months on end. I wanted their newest album "The Resistance" to conquer the world, and to an extent it did, with bigger first week sales and hits than the band had really had before. I wanted them to top the Hottest 100 again, but I also wanted them to get as many entries as possible. I remember someone on the triple j forums suggesting that the best plan of attack was for fans to vote the deeper cuts that need the support. So I had it both ways and voted for both "Uprising" and "MK Ultra". I learnt the hard way that the world doesn't actually revolve around Muse, so not only did they not win the countdown again, but all those extra songs just scraped into the bottom end of the top 200. Not a bad result still, and generally could be considered a win as pretty much the whole album, barring the 3-track symphony at the end, and the much maligned "Guiding Light" got in there.

I look at it as that occasional moment where you feel so obsessed with an album that you put aside any inhibitions and nerves and you just kinda want everyone to be listening to it. It gets extra effective if the album is already in the spotlight to an extent because you both feel encouraged by a likeminded army, while feeling like it's actually possible to tip the scales just a little bit more. I think about that the way that Olivia Rodrigo's fanbase continues to get her #1 hits that easily could have fallen a little short. Or otherwise whenever any artist has a field day with the Hottest 100. If you're on board with it all, these can be some of the most fun experiences. Hanging out to hear your favourite artist and to have it actually start with a whimper because the bang is coming later, it's promising a good time. I've felt it a bit recently when it came to Billie Eilish in 2024, and Ninajirachi in 2025, because most of those songs are just really good.

The experience with CHVRCHES in 2013 is a little tame by comparison. It's possible we can pretend they had a 4th entry if "The Mother We Share" were eligible, but otherwise, "Lies" is just the cherry on top of a particularly good debut performance for the Scottish trio. Now that I'm saying this, I suppose "Lies" was literally their first ever appearance, which is a strange thing to bestow on a late album single that again, I don't think is very gimmicky or noteworthy. That's just what happens when you measure things on a yearly basis instead of weekly.

I felt strongly about "Lies" at the time as quite clearly my 3rd favourite song on the album. The song has only gone up in my estimation since then while still sitting clearly in 3rd (one of those songs will appear later in this list). I want to say that it's the most straightforward CHVRCHES song, but I don't think that's true, if only because there's a certain darkness undercutting the song's chorus which later reveals itself in the song's menacing outro. The whole song is built on this big synth explosion that only has a lighter melody peppered over it to make it sound as sparkling as you might expect. It's a little trick the song has going for it where the song's big hook is from Lauren extending out the title while a bunch of notes are going on behind it, a combination of slow and fast that nonetheless never feels out of place.

#92

#92. Ásgeir - King and Cross (#10, 2014)

13th of 2014

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There's a throwaway line in one of the Danganronpa games by walking Nirvana reference Sonia Nevermind, who says that in her home kingdom of Novoselic, there's an anime that gets watched by over 90% of the population. It's obviously just done for laughs but it has me thinking about the way we don't often talk about ratings or anything like that in terms of percentages anymore. In the world of monoculture, these things got pretty out of hand, but now everyone just tends to their own interests (if they even have time) and even the most popular things feel pretty niche altogether. I remember having my mind blown when I found out that the #1 single in the country was generally being purchased by only about 0.05% of the population. That's making it all feel meaningless.

There's a stat I've seen thrown around from back in 2013 saying that one in ten Icelanders own the album "Dýrð í dauðaþögn", which is an incredibly impressive management of the population for something that doesn't even necessarily feel like a breadwinner, and has no outsider influence promoting it. There's not a single album that can claim that honour in Australia, as Meat Loaf's "Bat Out of Hell" falls a little short with its 26xPlatinum sales here. Put your hand up if you'd ever heard of "Dýrð í dauðaþögn", or its performer Ásgeir Trausti by that point in time. In any case, it might just be a true statement, as from what I can see, the album is certified for 40,000 sales, which tracks in a country of less than 400,000. As recently as 2025, the album returned to the top spot on the Tónlistinn album chart, seemingly being a fixture on the chart since 2012. Just absolutely incredible numbers for a folk & electronic singer who seemingly sprung up out of nowhere.

Iceland as a country also just seems to punch above its own weight in the world of music. I'm about to throw a bunch of praise onto Ásgeir, meanwhile you've got the obvious cases with Björk & Sigur Rós, two artists that have managed to make very beautiful and interesting music in very different ways. Even just heaping generic praise onto them doesn't do enough justice, they really are as good as they're made out to be and more. Meanwhile I think Emilíana Torrini and Of Monsters and Men are very underrated, mostly known for small pockets of their discography with a lot of gems, and more variety than you'd think. Lately I'm also very enraptured by Laufey and it's very funny to me that I'm writing this on the same day it was announced that she's getting her own God of War game. Truly a goddess on stage and screen.

I'm not entirely sure what the step by step process was that got us to where we are now, but I do know that we have American musician John Grant to thank for bringing this up for me to talk about. John Grant is a polyglot who can speak fluently in 5 different languages, including Icelandic, and he moved to Reykjavík in 2013, just in time to perhaps hear famous songs like "Leyndarmál" and "Sumargestur". Later that year, he came up with the translation, and Ásgeir was on board with it, giving us all the English translated album "In the Silence".

Once again, I'm missing some steps, but I came into this story at the same time as most people I think, which is when triple j featured the album in March 2014. Back in the early 2010s, triple j giving albums the feature status was a serious mark of honour that would frequently boost sales considerably. You can go back to 2011 and see a Lykke Li album on the charts going 30-33-31, a very strange run without the usual plummet, because those 2nd and 3rd weeks were during its feature album tenure. They'd also feature albums yet to come out, or on the week they came out, and those are harder to measure, but there's no doubt the boost was there.

When it comes to "In the Silence", it's probably the biggest splash I've ever seen with thanks to this boost. The album had come and gone earlier in the year in a few European countries without much of note, the highest it had gotten was #32 in France. triple j first started playing the album with some cursory spins for a week (I hadn't noticed it) before immediately giving him the feature album status and forcing everyone to take notice of this international gem. I'm extrapolating my own experience because two days later I bought it, but it just feels like they took him from complete obscurity (in Australia) to stardom. The album debuted at #18 on a busy chart week and then vaulted up to #8 on a less busy week. In an age where it's difficult to get people to try new artists, here's a lot of us going all-in on this guy we just learnt how to maybe pronounce the name of a week ago. I've never seen anything like it before or since. He also had a charting single with the most played song at the time on triple j, "King and Cross".

I mentioned "King and Cross" earlier here because it is actually "Leyndarmál", which as far as I can tell, is also the most popular song in Iceland. It's probably doing a lot of heavy lifting here because as much as I liked the vibe of the album, I didn't clock at the time that I was probably just hearing this particular song again and again. I certainly was interested in the whole thing, but this song was a big highlight. What can I say? You might not think of folk music for its big hooks, but when the king takes sides, it's already stuck in your head again.

I haven't really properly described the album musically. Saying folk with electronic elements is the shorthand but I don't think it does it justice. Ásgeir's tender voice is probably the star of the show, with a very tender falsetto that doesn't feel like he's showing off, but just smoothly setting emotional stakes to it all. It's very much a more accessible Bon Iver in hindsight, but at the time, the foreign curiosity of it all made it feel like we were unlocking something new in what could be done in these genres of music. My favourite song on the album is "Going Home", which narrowly misses being in this conversation because it landed at #108, but leans more heavily into the electronic side of things and really emphasizes the sorrow in the performance.

To me, it's all one of the great triumphs of curiosity, and a reminder of why it can be worthwhile to trust those often villainised gatekeepers who really do just want to spread the joy of all the music that's out there. It's possible Ásgeir has set the bar so high, and everyone who laments the direction of triple j is being left unsatisfied in their hunt for the next Ásgeir. On any given week I've probably discovered a new song I greatly enjoy by an artist I've never heard of, and it's pretty exciting. Just the idea that the whole scenario can be changed in an instant, and a new voice enters the fray. It's what's so fun about keeping up with new music.

#93

#93. Lorde - Green Light (#6, 2017)

13th of 2017

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Talk about a lucky break for Lorde. I almost completely dogged a good chunk of her discography by continuously leaving her just outside the top 100, the pitchforks could easily have come for me if I also had this one a little bit lower. I'd never do that though, would I? (This is a very niche reference that's not important if you don't know it, but those who do had already thought of it and I need to placate that feeling. Otherwise I try to keep my in-jokes either subtle or inclusive). It's mostly the luck of the discography because I'm not sure there are many Lorde songs I'd put above this if I had free rein. Rather fond of that other Hunger Games song she did, and because we need another update, I can say that "Fallen Fruit" has now stood the test of nearly a year and I'm very invested in it.

"Green Light" is a very important release as it's Lorde's second lead single. The one that's here to test if she was just a fancy fling of 2013 that's otherwise too left field to really connect, or if we're looking at a generational star starting to spread their wings. The results were fairly inconclusive. One thing's certain, it's that she chose the worst possible week to release it in the UK. It was the same week Ed Sheeran released "÷", so right away that's 13 new debuts above her at #28. Such as the magnitude of this release, that it was something that couldn't be salvaged by just holding up, as the whole album's stubborn persistence kept her underpowered for all of the time it was in the limelight. Who knows how much more attention she'd get if it really was the biggest thing out at the time. That's an underrated commodity because we just can't measure it. As was established with "Magnets" (#116), she did much better in the antipodes. Another #1 hit in her home country, while she can lay claim to actually having the highest debut in Australia that week, so there's much less in the way of what could've been. The song held up pretty well to be a very respectable hit in those two countries, but the rest of the world just couldn't quite do it.

The peculiar thing about this is that if you look out for opinions online, this is a very beloved single. This wasn't a controversial left-turn, it was the opening move to an album that very much did solidify Lorde in all those positive ways I previously indicated. She wasn't just a singles artist with a quickly cobbled together album, she was making magic on both the album & single format. I've always found this disconnect interesting with pop music because it's not the same as the avant garde music that gets acclaim, this is popular music made to be a hit that's getting a big tick of approval.

I actually feel like the tides are turning with this. Though TikTok still feels suspiciously astroturfed to me at times, it's one that feels like it gets more personal approval through mass inundation of options. That's always going to make it feel like there's a greater chance to get more strongly attached to something than if you're just perking up at your favourites on the radio with the knowledge they're just going to be overplayed to death in the long run. With that in mind, I feel like there's been a shift for a lot of 'beloved on the internet' pop music to finally get a good run in the charts. The problem is that if you flash back to many other earlier times in the world of popular music, you're working with a large, ominous majority. It's a majority that's reasonably open to new ideas, but is slow to make the change, and will often congregate around a handful of popular sounds of the moment. It's kind of interesting because I don't think most people even think about it, they're just reacting to what they gravitate to and the numbers just show similar ideas working together until everyone gets sick of them.

So while it's easy to listen to "Green Light" and think that it sounds like pop music, and it is, it also doesn't really sound like pop music in 2017. The piano's a good start, but it really needs to be sharper, maybe add some light guitar and a drop is a near necessity. When you look at what was hitting big on the charts just before "Green Light" came out, it feels like you need to go in whole on the current tastefully pleasant dance music, or go so aggressively against it that you placate everyone who isn't interested in that. Lorde doesn't really offer a full alternative to this which is why I feel she landed in a weird spot where the song has a relatively smaller but very passionate audience. I don't want to knock that either. It's possible to find a middle ground where you validate niche online popularity without also dismissing everything else as co-worker music.

I wouldn't call "Green Light" a failure by any stretch, but it does feel like it's the point that solidified Lorde's position in popular music for most people. She wasn't really going to have another "Royals" (#134), but she's going to stick around for those who are along for the ride, and that's typically been sizeable enough for her to make serious dents on the chart. The experience is slipping a little but Lorde's last lead single still went to #1 in her home country, and top 10 in Australia. That feels so out of line with what's going on in the charts that it's worth celebrating, and it's hard to not feel like songs like "Green Light" sowed that seed.

What makes it interesting for me also is that it's one of the most successful examples of what feels like a 'Dazzle them with the premiere' kind of songs. There are many of these cases where an artist returns and you really have no idea what you're going to get, but then you find it to be an odyssey of sorts, where there's often a surprise later on and you haven't just figured it all out after one verse and a chorus. "Flash Delirium" by MGMT is one of these songs, "The Last Man On Earth" by Wolf Alice is another. There are perhaps a couple of songs I could describe this way that are still to come on this list. It's something I generally find quite exciting. It's satisfying that feeling in the back of your head when you're thinking that there are still minutes to go on your first listen and still surprises to come. It doesn't always pan out, but in the best cases, you're just left scratching your head and thinking that the artist has really stepped up and who knows what else they've got coming later. Maybe "Green Light" is a little too structurally conventional to really pass that, but I just think of every development in the song. The sudden start, the gaps Lorde leaves to let the song breathe, and when the verses pick up some new melodies along the way, all leading up to the realisation of why the song's called "Green Light" and how readily you can feel assured that that's the moment. It makes me wonder if Lorde could have really turned it into a smash if she had a bigger fanbase going into it. I think of Olivia Rodrigo whose second album lead single "vampire" features very similar tropes and ideas to "Green Light", but a bolder structure. That song turned out to be a very big hit regardless, which could just as easily be a sign of Olivia Rodrigo's popularity and momentum, but also maybe lends some credence to the idea that songs with this sort of theatricality just have more of a chance to be the proudly big hit songs that they seem to announce themselves as.