#150-#146

#150. Ocean Alley - Touch Back Down (#20, 2021)

6th of 2021

Ocean Alley have done a tremendous effort to try and restore the year by year balance. The latter years are very quickly running out of contributors, but here they are, absolutely flooding the market and saving their best for last. Hearing "Touch Back Down" was such a revelation that I never could have seen coming, and to make matters better, it still isn't their last entry here, as an even later song is still to come. I think we're all used to generally liking an artist's earlier material the most, but I suppose when you're a little more ambivalent to begin with, there's more possible range to do the opposite. They've come through with some pretty solid additions in the last two countdowns as well.

"Touch Back Down" came out during a pretty pivotal period. Ocean Alley had already experienced their big breakout on "Chiaroscuro", and followed it up with a pretty popular, but ultimately less successful follow up. The next album after that had a chance to sink them down to being yesterday's news, or just 2010s nostalgia. In that regard, it probably filled its role, quickly asserting itself to land in the top 20 for the Hottest 100 despite being released very late, in the middle of November. I wonder if they delayed the album a bit too much after that though, and didn't have another big hit to back it up, so it's certainly their least successful album. Their most recent album, "Love Balloon", has probably steered the ship back on course, but it has an admittedly misleading chart run as the first Ocean Alley album to come out in an era with heavy restrictions on the album chart. It's spent considerably more weeks in the ARIA top 50 than all other Ocean Alley albums combined, which doesn't feel like it's speaking to any particular truth. You take the opportunities you get though.

If you're used to the adage that Ocean Alley make the same song over and over again, I don't know if "Touch Back Down" challenges that assertion at all. To me, it felt like a revitalised version of the band, maybe initially lulling you into familiar territory, but with the secret weapon of perhaps the band's best hook. It all just comes together, the guitars, the 'ooh', the assertions that it won't be long until they touch back down, and how they would very much like to touch back down. It became something of a joke to me at the time, going out of my way to turn it into a prompt and response whenever Ocean Alley came up in conversation, and maybe sometimes when they didn't. I'm glad that this is their second highest entry here. I can't promise you that it won't be long until they touch back down, but they will assuredly touch back down at some point.

#149. Thelma Plum - Better in Blak (#9, 2019)

11th of 2019

I'll start by answering the question that might have risen immediately upon seeing this song title, 'Why Blak?'. It's not a mistake. It's a term that's been around since 1994, when an Aboriginal artist (who passed away in 2024) insisted on the spelling for an art exhibition, 'Blakness: Blak City Culture'. Her reasoning came from the way she had frequently experienced white people using the phrase 'black c***s' and decided she wanted to remove the 'c' from 'black'. It serves as a unique signifier when talking about the racial discrimination experienced in Australia to differentiate it from similar, but different cultures and experiences in other countries.

When it comes to any country's history with regard to European settlers and how they interacted with the native population, the story is never particularly a shining thing to look back on. It's all just a stark reminder of the dehumanising things that were readily normalised and acted upon by a ruling class that bestowed greatness upon themselves. For Australia, it doesn't get much worse. You can talk about invasion, colonisation, genocide, and feel some distance from it because it largely happened hundreds of years ago alongside very distant relations. All history looks pretty bad back then. The thing that always stands out to me with regard to Australia, is just how recently these incredibly horrible things were happening.

I think specifically about the Stolen Generations. There was a policy enacted by the Australian government for most of the 20th century to take Aboriginal children out of their homes and integrate them into white families, with the primary objective to breed the colour out of them. I'd always thought of it as the Stolen Generation (singular), but in reality, this was happening for about 60 years. Through this awful program that was recent enough to still have living 'participants', they've done irreparable damage to the very national culture and identity they were supposedly trying to strengthen. We have an incredibly diminished population of Indigenous Australians now, one that increasingly has lost that distinguishable image. It makes me so mad, the way Indigenous Australians are treated even today, where those negative racial stereotypes continue to filter down to the younger, current population. One of the lines that infuriate me the most is that empty retort to anyone who speaks out on any of these issues because they're not black enough. I'm not someone who speaks in expletives and derogatory language very often, so I don't feel qualified to conjure up the right words to succinctly say how much I wish the people who say that could fuck off.

"Better In Blak" continues the legacy of famous songs that express this experience, alongside "Took The Children Away" and "Treaty", among others. Thelma Plum voices her frustrations with both the system and the individual, the kinds of things that would just never come up for a white singer. It's always worth remembering that this came out a couple of years after the controversy surrounding Sticky Fingers (#705), where Thelma Plum's version of events was so often dismissed. Just that triple whammy of institutionalised sexism & racism, alongside the way that the discourse tends to side with the more popular artist with the most fans in their corner. Whatever really happened, there's no justifying the response she got, certainly not 'calls in the middle of the night, saying 'You're not worth it, you deserve it''. In her own words, this song was born from that vitriol, and she absolutely owns the moment. To make matters better, it's become her signature hit, a double platinum single, and a top 10 finish in the Hottest 100. Not everyone can do that.

I love the lyric, 'But if I keep quiet, I'll be the one who's lying too'. I don't think anyone would necessarily put the two actions on the same level, but it's flexing the personal strength to overcome the moment. A lot of people have never experienced anything close to the level of fame that causes that ugly side of things and probably think they could tank it. Once you're in the public spotlight though, it changes everything and you're no longer always able to shrug it all off, or respond the way you really want to. Your image, career and well-being can be under threat if you're ever caught giving any sort of response to it. Fortunately Thelma Plum was able to turn it into a great song.

#148. Nothing But Thieves - What Can I Do If The Fire Goes Out? - Like A Version (#72, 2018)

17th of 2018

I voted in triple j's Hottest 100 of Like a Version back in 2023. By that point, I was very set on my mission to complete this list, and so when it came to posting my vote online, I made sure to censor it for the relevant information. Most of my votes weren't really a going concern, but I did have to omit two songs that were going to appear in this list. If you've been keeping count here, you might notice that including this one, there are just two Like A Version entries left in this list. I did not vote for this cover. I actually voted for "Dumb Things" (#208) instead. Whether that's a failing on my part for being inconsistent, you can decide for yourself, but I don't think this was really on my radar in those terms. I did vote for the last Like A Version though, that was a safer bet.

Maybe that was a reasonable course of action to take at the time. This particular cover probably represents the more uninspired side of the segment. It's not always really up to the artist, but audience metrics so often tell us that it's most lucrative to just cover the popular song from a year or two ago. Everyone seems to be more than happy enough to just vote for the same song twice (I may have done this once myself, but that's a story for another day). The song is still fresh in everyone's head, and you don't necessarily have to find yourself competing with it by taking a little more time, a win-win for all. It does make it a little strange when I do this list and I find myself having to talk about a cover of a song that I will also talk about at a later date. You know, that Gang of Youths song that Nothing But Thieves covered.

This is not the only time Nothing But Thieves will appear here, but it is very belatedly the first. Nothing But Thieves were building their profile and almost settling into a residency in Australia, 2018 being the third consecutive year they stopped over. Funnily enough, it was actually back in London where the connection comes from. Nothing But Thieves got asked to do a UK support slot for Gang of Youths and got fairly acquainted, something that seems strange to me because I can't think of a time when Nothing But Thieves haven't been more popular than them in the UK.

I'll readily admit that if you're hoping for hugely transformative experiences that become essential counterparts to the originals (or maybe a replacement?), then I don't think you get it here either. That's been pretty apparent early on which is why it didn't really register for me when thinking about my Like A Version votes. It was just one of those surprise packages that came along with making this ranking list, where once I'd give it the time and listened to it, I was always hooked. Maybe it's just that other easy adage where it's very easy to go along with a cover of a song you already like. If there is something I want to highlight about this version though, it's that it's cutting the lengthy original song to a brisk 3:18, and they meld it into their own sound. Not to the point where I'd say it's better (evidently), but the way they ramp up the energy just hits a little bit differently, and Conor's distinct falsetto stands out as well.

#147. Billie Eilish - you should see me in a crown (#46, 2018)

16th of 2018

Depending on where you look around for this information, the word 'flop' is often a dirty word. It's a fun word, certainly. One that has come about and can perhaps be dished out retrospectively for anything that didn't measure up to its potential, or the potential that was there if the music was more resonant. The problem is that once you're aware of it, it begins to hang around in the air as a spectre. You want to spot the early signs, because you've done this dance before and see where it's going. It's no longer done just retrospectively, and it's now a social media race for just how quickly something can be declared a flop to a frankly insensible level. Even though very few songs will have reached even 1% of their total lifetime audience reach at that point, the arms race of first day streaming numbers can have it chucked out after one day of anything short of chart-smashing numbers. I can understand the draw to doing this, especially in an era where negativity is such an easier outlook to post online, but I can't think of a time when I, or anyone, has ever had to go back to an older post and praise someone for their insight in calling the flop in record time. Making fun of someone for absolutely blowing it though? I guess negativity begets the negativity it deserves.

When you break things down, the life cycle of any song, hit or otherwise, is very similar. It gets released on a Friday to good (for that artist's reach) streaming numbers, it dips heavily on the weekend, and then gets a slight second wind on the Monday (because people just like listening to new music on that day of the week). You'll perhaps get additional boosts along the way with an album release, a tour announcement, or if the single gets tacked onto the next single's track list. Otherwise it's mostly just days of steady numbers that don't amount to much in a sea of the rest of the world's music doing the same thing, unless the song goes viral for whatever reason.

I find the album release week to be the most interesting part of it because it's had a history of giving songs the extra boost they've always had in them. When an artist releases so many loose singles along the way, not everyone has time to prime themselves on release week, and maybe it will just flounder from there, but when the album comes out, we get a better picture as to whether everyone was just skipping the song, or if it never got the exposure it needed in the first place.

"you should see me in a crown" is always the first example I think of with this phenomenon. It was released in 2018 to a pretty muted response. Billie Eilish was still getting established, but even in Australia where she'd just had a top 5 hit (it'll be on this list), it struggled to limp into the top 50 and was out of the conversation completely about a month later. You start to wonder if those early adopters to Billie Eilish singles had a certain sound in mind for her which this song just wasn't satisfying. I don't think it's a new sound for her really, as her previous EP had occasional moments like this (see "COPYCAT"), but the version of Billie Eilish that was on the charts at the time wasn't like this at all. There was a missing link in the chain that meant maybe a lot of people who would have liked this from her, just didn't hear it.

The song's fortunes were considerably reversed when the album came out. It wasn't just a single week moment, but for several weeks, this song specifically was outperforming its initial peak in 2018. It's something that might still get lost from a chart observing space, because at the end of the day, it's still a song whose first and second chart runs look like victims of gravity they can't defy, but if you do that enough times, you tend to accumulate winning numbers. This song doesn't have the exciting jumps into a lot of global top 10s like "wish you were gay" (#993) and "bury a friend" (#206), but on lifetime numbers, it's rubbing shoulders with them. Sometimes you have to just escape your pre-conceptions and trust the numbers, because they continue to tick up even if you've decided they're not worth the concern anymore.

Early Billie Eilish is occasionally on the edgy side of things. She was pretty early on the boat of uncapitalised titles that lack correct grammar after all. This is probably not her most edgy entry, but that's for another day. It might be the most sinister though. I always think of that sharpening knife sound effect to set the mood, as well as how much extra weight it has on the song's promise. When Billie Eilish is ruling, you'll be the first against the wall. Good thing we don't have to worry about that. Now I'm just going to take a nice sip of coffee and look at the next Hottest 100 result after this one.

#146. Vampire Weekend - Unbelievers (#90, 2013)

30th of 2013

Vampire Weekend cut their teeth not on necks, but on making quirky, if a little obnoxious songs. They're the "A-Punk" band, and though that was quite a long time ago now, it remains true. It's not necessarily a bad thing either, I like "A-Punk". I don't know if I could confidently pin down why it works sometimes, and doesn't other times, but it's something I've wrestled with ever since "Unbelievers" came out. I've spoken in praise of "Modern Vampires of the City" before, and I'd do it again, with its really nifty arrangements that make for beautiful motifs. On the other hand, I generally just really like this quirky upbeat number.

It was a fruitful time for Vampire Weekend here, capable of polling with the third single on their third album, just continuing to rack up the entries in a short space of time. On these terms, this is actually the last Vampire Weekend song to ever appear in the Hottest 100. They're just not the same band without Rostam. It's technically not the last Vampire Weekend adjacent song on this list, and if you want to talk about chronology, then you'll get into an inconclusive split regarding single and album releases.

"Unbelievers" is actually a song that takes a little while to hit its stride. Generally, I found myself vibing with it for the perky chorus. I love those little staccato notes. Over time though, I've found myself liking it for all the more subtle moments as well. Often times, the band lock in together with nothing really sticking out, but it all coming together neatly. It lets you focus on all those little details, like that rising synth in the background. It comes to a great finish on the song's coda. I'm a big fan of the bridge to "Obsession" by The Cairos, and I feel like Vampire Weekend somewhat beat them to the punch by a handful of months.

#155-#151

#155. Fred again.. - Jungle (#26, 2022)

8th of 2022

I've mentioned it before, but the pivot to streaming has completely changed the electronic dance music scene in ways that it might never return. Obviously it changes periodically, but once the economy changed from getting attention to not diverting listeners, there wasn't a way back. We entered the world of Robin Schulz and Kygo. "Are You With Me" was a #1 hit, and that Scottish guy got his first #1 hit with something unrecognisably his just a few years ago. Once it's clear what works, it'll always accelerate as everyone races to get in on it. Not necessarily in a cynical way, but if you're in the business of needing to make it, it comes with the territory.

Things might be turning around a little bit of late. The era where you'd look at the dance chart and see a whole bunch of pop stars throwing their clout around feels gone, and replaced by some of the least famous singers on record. Maybe the bangers are returning too. There's a steady uptick in attention to that very good Ninajirachi album from 2025, and though he plays it both ways, Fred again.. is delivering a service in that regard too. I never realised how much I missed it until I was listening to the 2022 countdown as it was happening, and found that a song like "Jungle" was as much a point of excitement as songs I'd actually voted for. No one usually sees the strange kinds of dancing that I do when listening to music sometimes, but "Jungle" is the kind of song that's hard not to turn into a one person mosh pit. It's all about tuning yourself to that same frequency and letting everything loose.

"Jungle" comes from a fine tradition of finding an unusual source and turning it into something completely unexpected. The main thing you're hearing in this song is a sample of Elley Duhé's song "immortal". See, she did return to the list (#320). That's a considerably more chill song, operating on a drum beat similar to Glass Animals' "Heat Waves" (#741). I'm not sure how Fred came across this and decided to do what he did, but it's a worthwhile venture. Maybe if I was previously familiar with the song, I'd feel different, but as it is, it's one of the most explosive drops going around.

#154. Tkay Maidza - M.O.B. (#66, 2015)

22nd of 2015

Sometimes you can look at the charts of old and get thrown off by the little things that just don't seem right. Like when the single run for a big album doesn't quite match up to your recollection. I remember seeing the charts of 2007 whilst having created my own version of events and it's interesting how many major players (to me) were non-events, and how the general energy just doesn't match. To me, "If You Keep Losing Sleep" was Silverchair's last big song, and thoroughly doing the rounds in September 2007. To the charts, it's relevant for a single week, when the CD single comes out and it disappears without really being part of the conversation a week later. The era of physical singles isn't too far removed from the modern state of album releases in that regard, it's just odd nowadays to think you could be hearing a song for weeks before it hits the charts.

These kinds of time lapses are very easy to just forget about in hindsight. The chart becomes the record, details about radio airplay and exposure become muddied, giving you very little reason to refute the more objective evidence. I like to set the record straight for that. You have to go digging a little deeper to spot it, but "M.O.B." charted in Australia at the end of June 2015. It climbed to #52 in its second week and went no further, so it's an almost hit in some regards. Once again, it had done the rounds, and was being played heavily on triple j from February to April. Suddenly that lapse looks a little weird. You can't point to physical sales anymore, because the song was very available. I myself downloaded the song from iTunes on February 28th. The song just took months to fully break through.

My only real guess to any of this is that it was part of that brief period of time when Tkay was getting a serious push for stardom by her label. It's the kind of thing that when done right, you can't really spot anything and it all looks organic. My specific recollection is that the song was heavily promoted and discounted on the iTunes store, giving it a short burst that left it a mark on the chart record. Here, I see a song that was never really primed to hit the top 40, but nonetheless had all the stops pulled briefly to give it a go. Not entirely unsuccessful really, and maybe they were pulling all the strings successfully anyway. It's something that stands out more in hindsight, now that we've seen Tkay go through numerous years of great buzz & acclaim, yet is unable to crack the Hottest 100 ever again. This isn't even just baseless puffing up from a loud minority either, she's doing considerable numbers, and it's possible that her 2020 cut "24k" is actually her most successful song to date. I really wish there was a chance to cover some of that later material because she's been on an incredible run since around 2018.

What we've got instead is a still fairly potent Tkay, but one who's still figuring out what she wants to be. The potential is absolutely there, but the direction isn't solidified. Her tone is regularly brash at this point, and it's certainly promising, but compare it to something like "Grasshopper" and you'll realise just how much further she could have gone with it. I'll concede that there's a little less crossover appeal with that one though. In any case, we're left with an undeniable talent who just doesn't have the right audience reach to go all the way.

I guess it makes "M.O.B." as an interesting case where it's arguably the peak of that commercial viability. To me it feels like a tough sell for commercial radio. It has a lot of small moments that certainly sound catchy, but it's a little jarring all together. We can't escape the fact that the title stands for 'Money over bitches', and no variety of censorship is going to make that stick the landing. It's certainly a good showcase for both of Tkay's sides, the rapper with impressive flow who can also sing her own pop hooks. I was certainly on board for it. It's the last time she appears here, but make no mistake, I could fill an entire album with songs of hers that would be landing much higher if they were part of this conversation properly.

#153. Bring Me The Horizon - Shadow Moses (#92, 2013)

31st of 2013

Suffice to say, Bring Me The Horizon have played their cards right. They weren't content with being just another scene band from the 2000s that quickly gets discarded once their audience grows up, they went for much more. This is the 14th and last time I'm talking about them here, and in the years since, they've added another 4 to that tally. They're genuinely one of the most popular international rock bands in Australia, just an incredible turn of events from where things started.

I couldn't tell you when I first heard about Bring Me The Horizon, but I can tell you when they first became a focal point. It was in 2010. There was a bit of doldrums in terms of album sales as things shifted digitally and they became less of a regular cultural purchase. I think we were just lacking for viable choices to energise the economy at the time. A mostly hit-less Linkin Park album had just spent 4 consecutive weeks at #1 (up to this point, they'd only ever spent 1 week at #1, with their previous album). That's a prime situation for a new #1, whether it's something climbing up, or more likely, a new entry. What do you do if there isn't a really big release though? Kings of Leon were about to follow up their monster 4th album, but that was a week away, someone else had to have that turn, and it happened to be Bring Me The Horizon. They'd charted before, their second album "Suicide Season" peaked at #28, notably a fair bit higher than in their native UK. The band managed to break two interesting records with the follow up. They had the longest ever album title to get to #1, all 18 words of that title, and they also had the lowest selling album at #1.

There isn't really much you can do with this but just marvel at the oddities the chart can chuck up. Bring Me The Horizon were a niche band with no crossover appeal whatsoever, and I was in no communication with anyone who was particularly interested in taking them seriously. This was just a band getting a fluke moment of isolated success that we'd all move on from. Listening to some of the album now, it's an interesting experience just because I know what the future holds. Oli's voice is still recognisable, just that he goes for much more growling than we're used to now. Musically though, I don't feel the same range as there is now. Just a lot of confronting, down-tuned guitars that sound very of their time, that's probably the biggest difference in the band's modern sound.

I don't know what it was like for any triple j listeners who don't follow music charts (i.e., most of them), but when Bring Me The Horizon suddenly became triple j mainstays, it was very amusing to me. Seeing this band who were something of an abstract joke to me get the last laugh. They'd go on and get three more #1 albums and it became the expectation at that point, doing so with healthy sales and pretty good longevity. All of this starts with their first single that could vaguely be described as a crossover success, "Shadow Moses".

I will briefly point out that "Shadow Moses" is named after a location from Metal Gear Solid. Or, if you're like me, you'll know it as the stage from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, introduced as Solid Snake became a surprise inclusion in the franchise roster. I've never played any Metal Gear games. Maybe I should just because everything I've heard tells me the story beats are exactly my kind of absurd. I just don't think I vibe with the gameplay. Whether it was related to this song or not, Kojima obviously repaid the favour because the band would end up doing a song for Death Stranding (#378).

The big surprise for me was just how palatable the transition ended up being. There are a lot of possible trajectories for a metalcore band pivoting to the mainstream and it's not something that typically goes very well. It could be disingenuous, or just expose the limitations in how the band sounds under a different setting. "Shadow Moses" isn't a complete transition but it's pretty close. The backing vocals are pretty on the nose, while Oli's singing is mixed to go well in front of the music. They've written catchy hooks for this song and they want to make sure you're hearing them. Once you put yourself in the mode they're running with here, there's a lot of fun to be had. Those down-tuned guitars are still there, but they're not so oppressive in the mix. This is the family friendly version of Bring Me The Horizon, complete with evocative images of sandpit turtles.

#152. Gang of Youths - The Deepest Sighs, the Frankest Shadows (#5, 2017)

19th of 2017

While I am a very information hungry person in most cases, there is an undeniable enjoyment that can  be had through depriving yourself of that. Chart watchers of the present might not realise how we used to have it. In many cases, you'd just wait for the new chart to come out (or be printed somewhere you could see it, any number of days later), with no real insight on what to expect other than anecdotal intuition. What's going to climb? What's going to debut? Is that #1 single on its last legs? The chart reveal would answer all of those questions.

For a while, I'd listen to Take 40 broadcasts being syndicated, which was like the official chart just with things shuffled around a little bit for various reasons. I knew there was a real chart but I didn't have convenient ways to access it. My home internet had serious limitations, and school internet had its own brand of that as well. In 2008, I happened upon a website that hosted ARIA Chart archives, and it was updated on a weekly basis. I now moderate on that website (which mostly just amounts to deleting spam posts), and it's held together by backend shoestring. Those very reliable updates have become anything but that.

I very much trusted it though, and my trust was rewarded. I'd learnt at some point that the school library opened up about 10 minutes before home room, which was enough time for me. Every Monday morning, I'd go to the chart website, cover my eyes, and copy out the entire chart to be printed out on a few pages. I'd then scan it all from #50 to #1, experiencing it all as a countdown, which I liked to do. I still have months of those charts in a folder, and I suspect I only stopped because school holidays started, and by the next year, I had more reliable internet to look at the ARIA website right when it updated. I'd still look at it the same way, scrolling to the bottom to reveal it in reverse order, and even now in 2026, I'm still doing this. I just always get the #1 spot spoiled because the website now auto-plays it on YouTube. Granted, I usually know what's going to be at #1.

Something I do associate with my print-out charts era was the unexpected rise of Kings of Leon. They'd never had a top 50 hit in Australia before, but they'd built up a bit of momentum with their 2007 album. It was quickly followed up by two singles, "Crawl" and "Sex on Fire", the latter entering the top 40 on release. After I'd watched their last album not really garner any crossover success because no one seemed to have heard the songs, it was a gratifying moment to see the exposure tick over. I liked the song a lot at the time, and felt like it had potential if it got played on the radio. This obviously happened, and it all paid off when I experienced the shock of it jumping to #1 on the charts, staying there for a month. Kings of Leon became the hottest property, eventually ending up with the highest selling album of the year, with all the rest of their albums returning to the chart as well. The Australian public, on all accounts, could not get enough Kings of Leon in their life, and subsequently, they scored a second sleeper hit at the same time. Tracking about a month behind "Sex On Fire" was another hit in "Use Somebody". It wouldn't quite get to #1, but it lucked out for a week to get to #2, and would end up being the band's big crossover in their native US.

I was very familiar with their album at the time and I liked it, but I always found the attention for "Use Somebody" a little strange. The higher it climbed the charts, the stranger it got, while I largely just accepted it as a win for the band. It just wasn't really a song that stood out to me in any way. It ended up incredibly high in the Hottest 100 that year at #3. At that point, you can't deny the popularity, although funnily enough the song just completely slipped out of triple j rotation afterwards. From what I can tell, since mid-2009, the song has only been played on the station twice, and one of those times was because they were replaying a segment of the Hottest 100. Kings of Leon's other songs still get played, but that one's been abandoned randomly. It's not a remotely forgotten hit either, and just this week was in the Spotify top 100. I do wonder if I'd have felt differently about the song if I experienced the rollout the way most people did, with it formally introduced as the second hit. To me, it was just one of the tracks on the album, nothing wrong with it, but nothing that stood out either.

I have warmed up a bit more to "Use Somebody" in the years that have followed. Call it American bias but when a song gets that much attention, that much appreciation as one of the last big rock hits without any caveats, it's bound to rub off on you a little. It's mainly about the song's anthemic qualities that never really stood out to me initially. I think I was more interested in more jagged, showboating guitar riffs that I didn't feel this one landed on the right frequency. It's absolutely a song that builds to the right pay off. Funnily enough though, the big revelation didn't come from "Use Somebody" itself, but at one point I was listening to "The Deepest Sighs, the Frankest Shadows", a song I was already all-in on. It clicked with me that the song was remarkably similar to "Use Somebody". Suddenly the (differing levels of) huge popularity of both songs just completely clicked for me, one of those funny realisations that different generations of music fans have more in common than they realise sometimes. Just like "Use Somebody", this song was the initially unassuming later single (they'd released 4 songs before this one) that shot for the fences and landed. It was a little surprising to see this song projected, and indeed land so high in the Hottest 100, a song with a cumbersome title like that should weigh it down, but just like "Use Somebody", it found its audience very quickly, and ended up far bigger than I think anyone would have predicted.

It's one of those cases where I think having a less obvious (though still in the song) title does it some dividends. Partly because calling a song "The Unbearable Triteness of Being" might be a bit much, even for Gang of Youths. I think it compels you to treat the whole song as a performance, rather than just focus on the song's hook, and that probably plays to their strengths. We've gone from the shortest Gang of Youths entry (#157) to the longest, and you certainly feel it by the end of this one. This song keeps showing up in additional Hottest 100 countdowns, and I can completely understand this being someone's favourite song, whether they're here for the Nietzsche philosophies or not.

#151. A$AP Rocky (feat Rod Stewart, Miguel & Mark Ronson) - Everyday (#80, 2015)

21st of 2015

I think I'll always have a soft spot for N-Trance's version of "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy". Just one of those songs that were in the right place, at the right time. Entirely possible that it'd mean nothing to me if it came out a year earlier and I'd missed it, but as it stands, it's one of the most distinct reminders of its time period. That's part and parcel when you're one of the biggest hits to not escape the trappings of the '90s. A song like "Tubthumping" from the same time period feels too eternal to serve as the same kind of time capsule.

I'll admit I don't think the song is very good. It's a series of '90s trappings that understandably haven't aged well, though I'm finding it hard to believe that daggy early '90s rapping should still be doing the rounds when it got released on an album in 1998. At no point could I really compliment N-Trance on providing exciting ideas on the production side of things, although the fake crowd chant moment has its charm. This is all in service of reviving a Rod Stewart hit from about 20 years ago. The one where he abandons his previous sound to jump onto the disco trend, very successfully. My impression once I learnt about who Rod Stewart was, was that he was old. He's always sounded that way which is why I'm inclined to ignore the fact that I'm older than he was when he recorded that song, but he was old enough that the idea of him getting latched onto a hit in the late '90s is incredibly anachronistic. Imagine if he did it again nearly 20 years later, that'd be outright silly.

There's an Australian rock band that I don't think get very much attention nowadays called Python Lee Jackson. They're best known for their song "In A Broken Dream", with guest vocals by Rod Stewart, which they released in 1970 to basically no interest. Two years later, "Maggie May" had become a monster hit single, turning Rod Stewart into a star. Python Lee Jackson re-released their single and on the back of this, it became a big hit, reaching #3 on the UK Charts. I don't know how many people actually remember it, but I certainly had no recollection of it until it resurfaced for "Everyday".

You might be surprised to learn that Rod Stewart's vocals in "Everyday" are not actually a sample, but re-recorded to allow for more aged vocals. It would be quite amusing if they used the original vocals if only because Rod Stewart would ironically be the youngest person on the track, as he was only 25 at the time. He provides a great contrast to A$AP Rocky's energetic bravado. Rod also ends up trading lines with the younger upstart Miguel, who was continuing to establish himself as one of the key figures in alternative R&B.

I was initially a Miguel skeptic. He emerged around the same time I was listening to a lot of The Weeknd & Frank Ocean, who at the time weren't getting much in the way of crossover success. In comes this guy from out of nowhere with a big hit and I immediately don't trust him to be as exciting or adventurous as my guys. That probably was true, really, but as the years have gone by, I've learnt to trust Miguel on his vocal talents. If anything, he might just be the underrated one in that trio now, as he's never really gotten his full commercial dues, generally skirting on the edge for most of his career. He finally had some relief in 2023 when his earlier single "Sure Thing" had a second go through and became a big top 10 hit in Australia, we're talking 21st biggest hit of the year big. Like so many other cases though, it's a very isolated thing that hasn't actually sparked interest in his music. He went from regularly having top 10 albums in America to his most recent album released in 2025 seemingly charting nowhere. On that album, I'll go in to bat for "Nearsight [SID]", with a big, unexpected rock pivot that sounds like the ideal Sam Fender song in my head.

A$AP Rocky probably is the weak link in this. He's certainly not a dreary presence or anything like that, it's just that the one thing I always remember is the brief moment when he starts evoking God and then drops a derogatory slur for lesbians, one that was very out of date even when Kanye West did it on "Stronger" (and at least his was somewhat funny wordplay). Then again, A$AP Rocky calls himself a piece of shit right after he says it, so maybe this just is his villain turn (though regrettably, he's going to do it again later on this list). I'm mostly just here for the cross-generational hook. The idea that A$AP Rocky can flex his own popularity to the extent of getting kids to listen to Rod Stewart again is so funny, but I can't deny that it works.

#160-#156

#160. bbno$ (feat Rich Brian) - edamame (#24, 2021)

7th of 2021

I understand that when you're prompted to consider the rapper who had a novelty hit in 2019 but then unexpectedly had a lucrative career after the fact, you're thinking about Lil Nas X. The bigger twist in this is that he's not alone. Now, I'll grant you that bbno$ has never come close to the level of success that Lil Nas X has had, but persistence absolutely pays off. I'm looking at Spotify monthly listeners and Lil Nas X has 19 million to bbno$'s 13 million, surprisingly close all things considered, and it feels like momentum is on bbno$'s side. He might be the more likely one to get another hit in the future. I need to stop being surprised about it.

This is all admittedly strange if you consider just how thin the thread was that we started with. For myself, and many others, my introduction to bbno$ was when he guested for record producer Y2K, introducing himself to the world by forgetting the melody of his own song. Depending on who you ask, it might just be the most memorable thing about the song "Lalala". It's either that or him telling us all that he's Canadian (or if you go back to the music video, finding out that he was doing the 6-7 motion with his hands back in 2019. Of all artists to do it, this seems most apt). It's a song that's operating on such an insular level that it feels above any criticism. In any case, I don't think I ever expected to hear from him again.

I quietly observed the rise of "edamame" in 2021. I mean that quite literally because I spent a long time just seeing it do solid numbers while not listening to it, adhering to the fact that it had been omitted from the ARIA Charts at the time, meaning I had no mandatory requirement to hear it. Instead, it ended up springing up on me in public one day, which is very odd given how rarely I hear new or current hits in public settings. I found myself weirdly fascinated by it because it sounds so distinctive. Just an incredible beat that sticks out immediately, followed by addictive rap flow that might be doing enough already but they have the nerve to stick all this onomatopoeia and words you're just not used to hearing. I'm inclined to see this as a success story in making people get distracted, having to pursue the strange thing they just heard. I think that's always the goal but it absolutely got me this time.

bbno$ is a particularly serious rapper, which is why the first thing he says on this song is 'Balls hanging low'. For the music video, he and Rich Brian are fully decked out in suits of armour, making it look as silly as possible. I mean, they could lean into that when being threatening but instead we're talking about popping someone like a pea. It's all just wonderfully on brand. He's also probably tricked me into listening to the song far more than I otherwise would because it's so short that I'm always left wanting more. It's very funny though. bbno$ has had 'baby' in his stage name since 2016 and he's just now making a 'Baby in the sun, like the Teletubbies' line, love it. I bet he'd love those "28 Years Later" movies.

I find myself most interested in Rich Brian's contributions here. He strikes me as the better rapper of the two, just without the same novelty appeal, so this is his only real mainstream venture. I've occasionally been hearing other songs of his though. "VIVID" with $NOT sounds like one of the best BROCKHAMPTON slow jams out there, and "Sundance Freestyle" is just a really fun exploration of the sheer wonder of fame and success (I guess recommend if you like Lupe Fiasco). Oddly enough, I think my favourite bbno$ song I've heard to date is "still", an honest to God ballad that sounds like Joji. Put that one on if you want a shock to your system. Otherwise, "edamame" is just a party in your pocket.

#159. Alpine - Foolish (#57, 2015)

23rd of 2015

This is a strange one to tackle. Partly because all of my strongest associations with Alpine come prior to this cut off, yet here they are as late as 2015 still making an impact. Maybe there's an alternate version of history where everything was in order and they were just making hit after hit for years to come. They had everything going for them. A distinct sound & vibe, while being nothing if not prolific on the touring front. This appearance they have here seems to hint at the notion that Alpine were here to stay. Everything just comes tumbling down after that.

Flash back to the early 2010s, and it's absolutely prime time for a band like Alpine. In a time when rock is no longer the dominant sound, there's a lot of room for various brands of twee. It's all so cutesy, what better time to start this minimalist 6-piece band? The fact that there are 6 letters in the band name just feels so apt. I think I first heard them via the song "Villages", which I might not have paid very close attention to. It just sounded a bit different with its stiff guitar riff, and the way that it resolves into its own contained chaos. In hindsight, it's quintessential Alpine, I just didn't have many reference points to go by yet. I'd notice them more clearly a little later on with the single "Hands", mostly just because the video was memorable in an almost elevated horror kind of way. Simultaneous bewilderment at what's going on, and also why the song sounds like it does. It eventually won me over and went a long way to making me pay attention to the band going forward.

Their debut album "A Is For Alpine" comes out in 2012 and it's rather enjoyable. It feels like after some initial trying out, they've solidified their sound going forward. Very clean, tidy instrumentals elevated by the harmonising of Lou & Phoebe's distinctly different voices. It's all very breathy, but very intimate, with very tight compositions. The way they manage to sneakily lock into choruses while you're not paying attention always just sounds really good. At that point it felt like them making eventually the Hottest 100 was a formality, and they did it with "Gasoline", a song that's probably their biggest hit just by being the one that came around at the right time. I'm especially fond of the later single "Seeing Red", which balances the light & dark really well. A lot of their songs sound reasonably similar to each other so it's more just a matter of slight preferences usually.

You can see a clear change in focus by the time the second album comes out, where Lou & Phoebe have absolutely become the face of the band. It was probably already getting to that point, I'm not sure the rest of the band are even in the music video for "Gasoline". The video for "Foolish" ramps this up and instead of getting a whole bunch of extras, they've just done some aggressive cloning (there is a small cameo from the rest of the band if you look closely). It looks a little silly but I still remember it all these years later. The song itself sounds a little more polished but unmistakeably still Alpine, while memorably giving us the title to the band's next album, "Yuck". I never listened to that album quite as much as the first, but it did give me the song "Damn Baby", which answers the question of what would happen if this band suddenly got EXTREMELY LOUD. The phrase 'yeah, I'm here' has been permanently trapped in my lexicon ever since, just can't get enough of it.

There's a slight downturn in success there, which you might attribute to the shift into the streaming era and the subsequent changing of the guard but it's nothing that a big comeback can't fix. The only problem is that it doesn't really come for a while, with the band on hiatus for a few years. When they did return in 2019, it was to reveal that Lou was leaving the band ahead of a new single. She's not on that new single, "Dumb". It's very noticeable but I still thought the song was pretty good, if understated. I didn't realise at the time that it'd end up being the last song they ever released.

This is where it all stops being fun. I don't think there was anything untoward about the lineup change, which all seemed very amicable at the time. The band even went on tour to promote the new single, and posted about how the new album was coming along. There are some new songs they played at those shows too, everything just went radio silent after 2019. The last regular social media post came at the start of 2020. You'd think maybe COVID-19 derailed everything, but apparently the band had just quietly disbanded at some point in 2019.

We all found this out at the end of 2020, when Alpine unexpectedly ended up in the news. The story that broke was that the band's guitarist was accused of sexually assaulting a teenager on the street in mid-2019. There's very little information about the aftermath of this as he apparently fled the state to escape arrest, but with how much time has passed, I assume he did some kind of plea deal to get out of having a criminal record. It was not a great thing to find out about.

All of these conflating factors were more than enough to make the band persona non grata. You just will not find anyone talking about them anymore and their listenership has considerably shrunk. It's a reminder to me about the brutal reality of consequences, which is that it works the same as a fine. For those above a certain threshold of power and influence, it just doesn't matter. For those below, be prepared to be completely abandoned, even if you're merely just within the blast radius. I find the whole situation so frustrating because at the heart of it, you've got 4 or 5 people who've done nothing wrong but be stuck alongside a bad character unknowingly. It's all well and good to have these consequences, but there's never been a good way to do it without adding too many people into the blast radius. Phoebe still releases music, but the numbers are considerably down. I don't even know how many times her most recent release has been streamed because Spotify doesn't reveal it if it hasn't gotten to 1,000. In contrast to all of this, the drummer of The Neighbourhood was accused of similar misgivings (by a famous singer even), which got him kicked out of the band for a few years, but he's back now, and that band have the third most streamed song of all time with no sign of slowing down. If there's value to be mined from the brand, the brand will not sink. Alpine is just a cautionary tale. One that really gets to me, because I remain so foolishly attracted to their music.

#158. Flight Facilities (feat Micky Green) - Stand Still (#48, 2013)

32nd of 2013

I can understand not looking too closely at the little ranking I've been putting underneath every entry, which feels like and probably is meaningless noise for the most part. It's probably starting to rear its head now at the pointy end. The dust is settling and the differences between years is starting to show itself significantly. If you scroll your way up, you'll realise that there are only 6 more songs to come from the 2021 countdown, while this will tell you, and it's no mistake, that there will be 31 more 2013 entries after this one. You should probably just expect a 2013 song to come with every post now because that's the average we're sitting on.

It's easy to draw a conclusion from this, and it's not even one I'd easily refute. My discovery of music was more in line with what was getting played on triple j at the start of this timeframe than it was at the end, and as such, many more of my actual favourite songs featured on the list back then, than they do now. I used to go into the list with no qualms about what was missing from the voting list because basically nothing I'd ever want to vote for would be missing out. Not only that, but I'd reasonably expect most of those votes to get a spot. Stark difference to today when most of my favourites aren't within earshot, and I generally take one successful vote out of 10, about the same hit rate you'd get from just picking 10 random songs on the voting list. On that level, this all makes complete sense, and this result is reflecting that.

The more important thing I think though is that it's more about the year 2013 specifically. It's a year in music I've always highly regarded, in the moment and in hindsight. So much so that when I was first looking over the first 20 years of the countdown (1993 to 2012), I assigned scores to every entry to try and work out my favourite list. The scores ended to jump all over the place, but there were clear spikes that made sense to me. 1997, 2001, 2004, 2007, all have always felt like good years in music to me. I decided to score 2013 not long after and it turned out to be my favourite list all up, no nostalgia required. On either side of it, 2012 & 2014 never favoured particularly strongly (and there are only 18 songs left from 2014, quite a drop off). I don't know what changed in my brain chemistry but I just turned out to be so positive on nearly everything around then. Maybe it all just makes sense though, so many heavy hitters.

I wouldn't necessarily put Flight Facilities in that basket, but at the very least they made sure not to go into a slump for the year. In typical Flight Facilities fashion, they released exactly two songs that year, and maintained their standing of most of their discography having made it into the Hottest 100. This was their 4th year in a row, and they'd keep wringing it out until they got to 6 in a row. I quite enjoyed the other 2013 single, "I Didn't Believe" with Elizabeth Rose, but "Stand Still" was always clearly the main event.

You never really knew what you were going to get from them, arguably still true, and the vibe would just change drastically from single to single. "Stand Still" feels like the most unique of all of them, by virtue of not really having any recognisable hallmarks. No club, disco or even dark electronica beats, "Stand Still" is just a breezy summer tune, complete with whistling. Unexpectedly upbeat for that matter.

Some of this also comes down to guest vocalist Micky Green who makes it her own. She's an Australian singer though I feel qualified to say that she's not particularly famous here. Most of her success happened overseas, in Europe. Her debut album netted the hit song "Oh!" which did pretty well in France in the late 2000s. That's a very bluesy song and maybe not much of a primer for what she's doing on "Stand Still". She's very playful, too cool for school even.

I also want to briefly expand upon something I hinted towards when I wrote about "Two Bodies" (#170) because I realised now that it's going live I never got around to it. Specifically about Flight Facilities' debut album "Down To Earth". It's one of the more hit-laden albums we'll come across with regards to the Hottest 100, as 7 of the album's tracks have polled, with such a careful spread that you'll only once go two tracks in a row without them. I like to think that I trusted them with the sequencing because from what I can tell, I listened to the whole thing from start to finish as soon as it became available for online streaming, which is an incredible show of resistance for me to not immediately jump onto a particular track which I will talk about in the future. Outside of the hits, most of the rest of the album functions as pretty chill downtime. It's all very carefully crafted house music.

Another thing I find interesting about it is that when we talk about the commercial viability and prospects of the album as potentially hinted at with the intro to "Two Bodies", we have to look at what the duo did with the track list and in particular the credits. It's something they spoke about after the album came out, where they didn't want to just overload it with feature credits, lest it feel like an excess of names, so there are a few songs where the guest vocalist is there but isn't credited. One of those uncredited guest vocalists is actually hard to spot on "Waking Bliss", and gets a proper feature later on the album. Another one of them is rather famous Australian singer Katie Noonan on "Apollo". Lastly, they snuck in a guest spot from actual Kylie Minogue to sing the reprise to "Crave You", which actually is credited on Spotify now but never was originally. That's a crazy guest spot to just not advertise when you're talking about optimal crediting. It's a bit like rejecting your own clickbait, and I respect the hustle a lot.

#157. Gang of Youths - Strange Diseases (#50, 2016)

19th of 2016

Sometimes the biggest proof of an artist's efficacy is the sheer volume of attention they get when they're not really shooting for the big leagues. It's something I remember noticing with Taylor Swift very early on. The way she'd send loose non-album singles towards the top of the download charts, it just showed how many people were out there and ready to dig into everything she puts her name onto, which has continued all these years later. This was before she had fully taken over the world too, lacking a US #1 hit for a couple years to come, but that's the sort of thing that implies the inevitability of it.

For Gang of Youths, the stakes aren't going to be quite that high, but the implication was all the same. They'd just put out a successful debut album, but the kind that's not going to show its full potential as word of mouth can be slow and gradual. The next album would let it be very clear, but a year before that, we had "Let Me Be Clear". This was a 6 track EP between albums, though because we're talking about the excess of Gang of Youths, it still runs at 34 minutes long. All original songs until a Joni Mitchell cover at the end, the main focal point was the single "Strange Diseases". The EP got to #2 on the ARIA Charts (their previous album reached #5), and here they are still sneaking into the top half of the countdown while clearly being on a stop gap.

I mean no disrespect when I say this. Just listening to it, I've always felt like it's not quite shooting for the band's usual extremes. It runs at a brisk 3:20, comfortably the band's shortest ever Hottest 100 entry, while their usual average is just shy of 5:00. When you're used to them doing things like that, this is a song that ends very abruptly. That's probably fine, as they still pack enough into this one to be worth admission. The strings provide the usual grandeur, and it all still explodes out the gate when it needs to. There's a neat little shift on the bridge where things go deeper, more suspenseful, and it feels like a prelude to what would happen on the next album. Then it's followed by some of the clearest Arcade Fire worship with the excess 'oh oh's. In general I think they get a lot out of what could otherwise be a straightforward template, and it doesn't feel like a filler entry to any extent, just a nice little entrée.

#156. Caribou - Can't Do Without You (#55, 2014)

18th of 2014

I always find this topic to be a little difficult to discuss, but I think it'd be good for me to get it into writing. I am just absolutely terrible about facing criticism. I don't just mean directed towards myself, but directed towards anything. My own self-preservation techniques involve staying away from anyone who could potentially spell trouble, and that's one of the things that do it for me. There's a fine line between healthy venting and the kind of anger that makes me feel unsafe. The kind where you're suddenly afraid to say anything, lest this person spark up and retaliate either disproportionately, or in a way that reveals that they're finally letting go of their inhibitions, ready to say every mean thing I've had coming. Yelling, disrespecting others, excessive swearing, it's all very disarming to me. I don't know if it's drawn on from very specific memories of mine (my parents divorced when I was young and I was within earshot of a lot of things I wish I didn't have to hear), or if it's just common sense. I only think otherwise sometimes because I never see anyone else react quite the same way as me. Maybe they're just better at hiding it. I remember during the aforementioned divorce that my younger brother was much more visibly upset at the time but I had to do my best to stay strong. Obviously I had very similar thoughts akin to 'I really wish this wasn't happening', though it probably did help me mature in a way that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.

I've been thinking about it a lot recently and to me it feels core to the neurodivergent experience. If you observe anything about it, more than anything, it's that extreme interest in wanting to talk about a current interest. Sometimes probably oversharing to an embarrassing extent, like telling a friend about freeze frame details you spotted on your 5th DVD watch of a movie that came out years ago (on the non-zero chance that person is reading this, and non-zero chance they remember this, I am avoiding details). Maybe this is all fine, something cute to remark about someone who sees life a little differently. I'm always a little weary of where it heads though. I have a handful of entries to cover on the horizon that are going to get incredibly off topic and precisely into that brand of minutiae. Probably to be expected at this point, but I'm not oblivious. Unless you have someone so enraptured that they need to hear every thought you put out there (or maybe that in itself is not something most people ever do), it's annoying. It's testing patience, it's wasting time, I get it. When I think about it, I think the core of why I do these things is because on some level, they provide me some happiness. To experience that, I think it is what we all strive for, and so the desire in it is to potentially spread that happiness. I think of so many people who seem perennially unhappy and I put myself in their shoes, so many sources of joy for me are completely outside of their purview, and they might not necessarily have an equivalent. It starts to feel like a civic duty to spread the word.

The only problem is that I'm incredibly bad at doing it. A lifetime of occasionally being burned will ward you away from wanting to do anything like that again. I think it's part of why I like doing it in this setting. The lack of immediate feedback makes it so much easier to get the ball rolling, while I'll feel a little less emotionally attached to it when the post goes live. It's a slightly different me, 2-3 months earlier who wrote that, and current me is just the middleman. It's a matter of how many chips you're pushing in, and perhaps will be something to contemplate the further up this list I get. This is all something I could have spoken about long ago, but it makes sense to save it up for the higher reaches, where it feels like I'm starting to put a stake into it. Increasingly sincere and severe adoration isn't always given enough presence, in part because offhand cynicism is just so much easier, particularly in an economy when baiting a negative reaction is much more viable. It's the kind of thing where you start getting trained to feel that way. Ostensibly positive posts written knowing they really want you to cut things down a size. Surround yourself with enough of that and it becomes difficult to express sincerity. You just get beaten down into misery until you're convinced that nothing will ever be good again.

As I said before, it's just an energy I don't want to be around, and I don't want to foster. I'm even hesitant to linger so much over it because it becomes its own brand of cynicism to only focus on the kinds of people I don't want anything to do with. I very much would like to focus on the positives; it just needs some initial context which gets its start with the fact that I didn't particularly like "Can't Do Without You". I thought Caribou had done better and that the song was fairly repetitive to little pay off. I had a little bit of patience for it because at the core of it, I was happy to see Caribou get the attention and I otherwise generally liked the album, but it wasn't a song I ever sought out myself. It was seeing very similar views to mine parroted, with a slightly more cynical edge but nonetheless not that different, that awoke something in me. I got so strangely upset about something that I had so little stake in. I think some of it might have been contextual, and an extension of this strange, unfair mental trap I fall into. This feeling that you want everyone to know their place, and that you don't want to hear anyone chime in if they know less than you do. Thoroughly unreasonable and a little arrogant, but I think it manifests itself more strongly when I position it in that negative lens. It's less about the person knowing less about the topic in an academic sense, but that they've considered less about the emotional weight of their words. The idea that they might hurt someone's feelings, and they're not just unaware of that, they might just embrace that. It's something that's taken me over a decade to properly articulate, and like many other circumstances, it's made worse because there's no reasonable way to derive fault, just that there's a resultant unhappiness that you want to pin down a source for. Maybe I can self-reflect and accept I'm the burden here, but it's not something that's going to make you feel any better, which is why I lament the situation more than the individuals.

I've had similar situations in the past. The one that stands out the most to me was about 15 or so years ago. I was watching music videos late one night as I tended to do at the time, and I had a revelation. At the time I was someone still making the transition from ardently being against music, to obsessing over it to a great degree, and as a result, I was constantly having nostalgic flashbacks as I rediscover familiar sounds that meant nothing to me initially, but now evoked pleasant, vague memories. That moment when you finally find out the name to a song and can enjoy it at your leisure. I immediately went online to express my excitement at this discovery, and shortly after, got an indirect clapback from someone who clearly wasn't having it. My revelation seemed now as if I was drudging up a forgotten horror for someone else. Smile and optimism all gone, I may have broken down into tears.

I won't say what that song is, but that it has provided me a frustrating quandary going forward. I've still never forgotten this incident (though I suspect the axe very much has). Listening to this particular song always drudges back the memory, and I'm left with two options. I can either avoid listening to this song in the future, lest it remind me of something unpleasant, or I can listen to it with that particular incident in mind. Powering through it maybe, or perhaps even turning it into a spite listen. See the raise, re-raise as well. I don't particularly like either option. Consequently though, it's been a catalyst to change my own perspective about what I share online. I can't deny that on some level, I absolutely deserved this kind of vitriol (whether direct or otherwise), because a younger me on the internet had no qualms whatsoever about being just as, if not more cynical than anyone else. If something didn't seem important to me, I was quick to make fun of it, disregard it, and never once consider that maybe I was the villain of the piece, simply because I felt it was deserved. I could dish it out but couldn't take it, so I decided to stop dishing it out. Doing so, was one of the biggest changes in perspective for me, because I'd become my greatest enemy. I wanted to distance myself completely from this previous version of me. I got more empathetic to other perspectives and actually gave them the time of day. I didn't just stop telling people that I hate all these things, I genuinely stopped hating them. My recalled version of events can't say it made me happier in the moment (perhaps a story for another entry), but I certainly see the light now. 

In any case, against my better judgement, this is what ended up happening with "Can't Do Without You". My strong desire to position myself away from cynicism found me instead looking at the people who saw something in it. It was probably on a baseline, brought on from my own trust in Caribou, who had made a number of very evocative pieces I loved, so I didn't want to see this as a dud, but mostly I was just very mad. Forcing the song on myself in that sense has made me grow to enjoy it a lot, so my frustration is more pinned at myself for not seeing it sooner. We're looking at something like Daft Punk's "Around The World". It's very funny to point out that the song only has 3 words, but it's doing yourself a disservice to only look at it in that measure. They didn't set out to write an interesting song and get stuck thinking of more lyrics, and the people who like it aren't just looking at a one second loop for several minutes in a row. That repeated line is just an instrument, a tool to provide some stability alongside everything else that's happening, and accentuate it when it stays the same while everything else is changing.

Maybe 'Around the world' isn't the most evocative of phrases, but 'I can't do without you'? That's a phrase that carries a lot of weight. It's sheer desperation from the speaker, and something that absolutely amplifies the more times it gets said. It's appropriate then that the song itself sees this and runs away with it. When you think of how the song starts, and where it ends up, you've gone on a mighty journey. You haven't changed, but everything else has. That big build up and release is done completely tastefully, not in the style of a mindless banger (there's a place for both, of course), and it really justifies the whole piece to me. The coda adds a few more words into the mix but it's really just dressing on a sentiment that was made very clear at that point. It might just be something that I'm subconsciously drawn to, given that I was recently talking about a certain singer I like a lot, and someone affectionately described one of their songs as being very simpy. I'd never really thought about it and I couldn't refute it. I'm now paying more attention as to whether there's some merit to this new theory of mine.

I just feel like this song gets to the core of what had always appealed to me with Caribou's music. It's easy to say that it's just electronic music for a slightly different audience. However, I'm looking back at some of his other songs I've really liked, and seeing that there's a common pattern there. Songs like "Melody Day" or "Second Chance" hit at that same frequency. Tension brought on by boisterous instrumentals that overpower the vocalist, and the older they get, the more that nostalgic mournfulness becomes an ingrained feature. If I was ever so protective of a Caribou song I didn't particularly like very much at the time, it's probably because I was unknowingly projecting these feelings that his music had brought for me. Like I was parasocially defending someone who had tapped into crucial feelings of mine, crying in the corner while screaming 'You don't get what it means to me!'.

Yet I come to the end of this piece not really feeling any anger towards anyone. Sometimes it can be a tough, but important lesson in humility. Something that, if perhaps for the wrong reasons, has set me on the right course. It's just something I enjoy thinking about. I constantly find myself in conversations about these incredibly specific things I think about. They're almost always instigated by me, and I'm aware that I might be a little overbearing about it all. I do love having these conversations though, because it's always interesting to me to find out if anyone else is thinking the same thing, something similar, or something completely different. It opens you up to a perspective that I just don't usually see because they're not the kinds of things that ever get prompted. Bad memories have had me dreading writing this entry for years, but now I'm feeling better than I was before I started. Doing this blog has really helped me see things in a new light. Just typing things out can be the most liberating experience.

#165-#161

#165. LAUREL - Scream Drive Faster (#74, 2020)

7th of 2020

I only ever heard 'laurel'. For that one audio illusion that went viral in 2018, this is technically the correct answer, it can't be disputed that the person on the recording did in fact say 'laurel'. I'm not saying this to discredit the 'yanny' heads in the room. If that's what you're hearing, you're not wrong, it's just a fascinating experience of the way we process sounds. I really wish I was ever able to hear 'yanny' because it's far more interesting to me than just hearing the thing that's being said. If I didn't introduce my brother to the illusion with absolutely no prompting and had him hear 'yanny', I might suspect everyone who said it was just playing a ruse. I do lament the experience for the many Laurels (and occasional Yannys) of the world who probably get reminded of this far too often, I was just mainly hoping that after several years of ignoring it, I might get that experience some people have where it just switches, but nope. Laurel all the way.

When it comes to LAUREL the musician, I was probably more likely listening to Foals most of the time. It's interesting to see her here because I wouldn't really say she's truly broken through at any point, and she's British so there's no local advantage here. We even had our own perfectly working version of LAUREL around the same time too, as I see a bit in common with LAUREL's earlier work to what Stevie Jean was doing then. "Estranged" is a very good song I think, though this will mean nothing to you if you're only familiar with LAUREL's later releases.

There's a clear transformation that's happened. LAUREL started making music at a pretty young age. She had a Dylan-esque moment of pivoting to more prominent electric guitar, which I'm sure bothered someone with a blog at the time, but that became the sound of her debut album in 2018. She had a good amount of airtime on triple j then but didn't really make large strides here, which is why it was so shocking to me when she cracked this list, but then it may as well be a different artist now. I don't know if you can pin it all to this, but it's worth noting that LAUREL got signed to Communion Music. It's a small independent label founded by, among others, Ben from Mumford & Sons, and it's probably best known as an early home to Catfish and the Bottlemen and Matt Corby. All I can say is that LAUREL takes up the synths on "Scream Drive Faster" and has never looked back.

When I listen to "Scream Drive Faster", I can initially hear the LAUREL of old, but it's absolutely smothered by synths on the chorus. There's almost a feeling an anonymity to this where I could imagine anyone singing it, her distinct vocals no longer feeling like the selling point. It'd be a problem if she didn't just excel in the new territory. "Scream Drive Faster" is the sound of going through a tunnel. The combination of synth and guitar creates this wonderful rush of euphoria. She manages to capture something similar to that one Canadian synth pop artist who will eventually appear on this list and no doubt be very fun to write about, when she barrels into a chorus of difficult to discern syllables. It's all just ear candy.

#164. Courtney Barnett - Depreston (#82, 2015)

24th of 2015

For a long time I'd not really been able to grasp the differences between the richer & poorer sides of town. You can absolutely call it some amount of privilege as I spent my earlier years atop a hill with a fairly big plot of land. I did move to a poorer part of town after that but any of the adverse potential effects weren't really felt outside of getting my bike stolen. I think more than anything, I just observed things within their own capacity and never felt the need for anything more. It seems appropriate here that I really felt it in one of my recent trips to Melbourne. Just that feeling in certain parts of town that you're not overly safe, and the depressing state of everything around you. It obviously made me think of "Depreston".

This is one of Courtney Barnett's longer songs, running close to 5 minutes, and while a lot of that is dragged on by the coda, it's generally one of her denser songs. She packs a lot of details into setting the initial scene. On first impression it is just a song about buying a house in a pretty run down part of town (specifically Preston). In terms of mundane observational humour, it's top shelf. We go from discussing the benefits of home-brewed coffee to the multi-purpose utility of having a two car garage. Just ignore the fact that there's a burglar being arrested down the road.

She properly shows her hand about halfway through the verses, talking about how the house is selling at a lower value because it's a deceased estate, implying that someone very likely just died there. That'd be a morbid detail on its own, but it becomes a new topic of exploration as she slowly paints the picture of what is likely an old woman who lived alone and had a husband or son who died in Vietnam. Courtney gets so distracted on these details that she loses track of what's going on and we just get a real estate agent's line about tearing the house down and rebuilding on top of it over and over again. A great bit of juxtaposition, the remorseful, sentimental person vs. the unfeeling capitalist machine.

Really, it's just Courtney Barnett at her best. Just that knack for detail, while anchoring it to a larger observation within itself. I always found this one easy to get into though because it's such a breezy song. Maybe that one guitar loop is a little indebted to Coldplay's "Don't Panic", but it presents us a new version of it that doesn't end way too soon at the 2 minute mark.

#163. Childish Gambino - IV. Sweatpants (#60, 2014)

19th of 2014

Something that made the Hottest 100 work so well for me initially is that it all felt tightly knit. The results reflected what had been played on the station with a tilt towards what made sense in those confines. Not everything that got substantial airplay got a look in, but everything that got a look in got substantial airplay. There'll obviously be an advantage for the higher profile releases, but it was close to a level playing field.

I feel this is something that's changed quite a bit with music charts as well. They also operated in a similar way at the same time. A different (though much larger) echo chamber where we'd all have a chance to be exposed to everything at around the same time, make our assessment and then either move on or stick around. That's obviously never been strictly true either, and labels got very good at wringing out greater potential from some releases than others, but things have gotten so fractured now that it no longer feels like even the sky is the limit. The way a song can have a tilt of virality that instead of lasting for a couple of days or weeks, gives it the momentum to thrive for years, and the way that this can happen to something that either was already a hit just a few years ago, or is currently a hit and is just riding another wave on top of that one. It really feels like we're all just being taken on a ride without much say in it anymore. It's a bit like how if nearly everyone was fed the same song on a curated shuffle playlist at the same time, we probably wouldn't realise until the charts came out a day later and it was #1 by the length of Flemington.

That's all to say that things have gotten topsy-turvy by introducing different variables for discovery and not having everyone clued into the same releases at the same time. As a constant that's been around for over 30 years, the Hottest 100 is a good way of documenting all of this, in ways that I'll continue to observe. Charts may look increasingly funny, but the Hottest 100 is (now) always 100 new songs released in the past year. It's just a question of where they come from, and how distinct the pecking order is.

In 2014, that stable set up I was used to felt like it was breaking down. When I was looking at social media votes across the board, I noticed some surprising contenders, songs that certainly had been on the radio but I didn't consider them to be especially noteworthy. It'd mostly be a lesson in voter demographics on social media and how that would distort reality, because the results would come out and they'd be put in their place, one song that stood out to me in particular was Childish Gambino's song "Sweatpants". It's not a song I was familiar with, but for a decent while it was riding in the top 10 for these 'predictions'. It seemed unfathomable, not least of which because Childish Gambino literally had a song (#207) that was doing well on the radio and the charts in that very moment that didn't seem like it was getting anything by association. It normalised eventually and by the end of my tally I had "Sober" at #37 and "Sweatpants" at #46. They'd end up at #31 and #60 respectively, much more reasonable, but still this is a remarkable showing for a song that had only been played on the station 8 times that year.

If nothing else, it's a reminder that Childish Gambino operates in a different space to most rappers with regard to his audience, many for whom it might still feel a bit weird calling him Childish Gambino as a default. To some extent I was already aware of this. He'd operated as a meme for years. His 1.6 score on Pitchfork being the site's most iconic ruling, the only one where you see the image and know exactly what album it is. "Because the Internet" doubles down on it all. There's a song called "Worldstar", the album cover is a GIF, and because he's still not satisfied, the album comes with a 72 page screenplay with sequences lined up to specific songs. I'm not going to go through the whole thing but at least I got a little more context as for why he slams his fist on a table.

I don't know if anything could have properly prepared me for what the album is actually like though. Whatever your impression is from the singles, they feel like curiosities amidst a generally much more low key affair. For swathes at a time, the album doesn't feel particularly interested in carving out hits, and it's very mellow. The stride does come back in the middle, starting with "Telegraph Ave.", and then there's a nice run towards the end, but it's very much an album I don't know what to do with. By all accounts, it seems to be a running theme in his discography.

"Sweatpants" was clearly being included in one of those noteworthy groupings though, so there has to be something in that, right? I'd say so. Moments when Childish Gambino actually decides to go full on with actually rapping seem rare, so I can only assume it's because he needs to save up all his punchlines. On this song, it's a tour de force of moments. I feel incapable of criticising it because he simply is doing him better than I'm doing me. Shout out to Problem being recruited just to say his own name and make strange sounds, and also shout out to the music video which is extremely well made and pretty hypnotic. WAHHH.

#162. WAAX - Labrador (#88, 2018)

18th of 2018

I was doing my rounds of checking out new music back in 2015. I came across a song called "I For An Eye" by a new band, WAAX. I loved it. Prime content in the short, fast & loud territory. The lead singer had wild amounts of distortion on their singing that gave her voice unmistakeable personality, while also feeling like they're destined to never go big. Maybe in a post-Amyl and the Sniffers world I can believe it now, but at no point would I have said that their songs sound like they have the right crossover appeal. I was just glad they kept making more, because every new release was hit after hit for me.

Maybe in hindsight there was a slight transformation in the ensuing years. Ironically it was the band's most stable line up which went unchanged from 2015 up to 2019, but on the other hand, those iTunes tags did change from Rock to Alternative in 2016. There was also a steady uptick in the band's popularity. It's something I can track in my own Hottest 100 vote counts. They started out top 500 in 2015, then top 400 in 2016, then top 100 in 2017. None of these songs actually touched the real Hottest 200, so it's obviously well off reality. But when you're competing with just yourself, this feels like more of a clear victory. Just to put into context of how far off these projections might have been. Warm Tunas in 2018 had "Labrador" at #23, one of the widest margins of error for that year (it depends on your formula whether it's better or worse than "MANTRA" (#569) which slid from #8 to #45). Still, persistence paid off and WAAX were in! This was as far as they'd ever ascend the mountain, we'd just see a couple more Hottest 200 entries afterwards and I'm not sure we'll see another one.

It's worth noting here that they hadn't even released their debut album at this point. That would arrive in late 2019, doing pretty well and getting them to #11 on the ARIA Chart. I don't know if there's a tangible benefit to releasing an album on the same week as Taylor Swift. Maybe it gets more people into record stores that week, I don't know. Maybe a lot of people came in for the Tropical F**k Storm & WAAX combo given they landed at #10. I'm not sure what the consensus is on the album. It feels like they're experimenting a bit with different sounds that don't always land, while the hooks aren't generally as sticky as what came before. On the other hand, one of the advance singles, "FU" might just be my favourite WAAX song to date. It doesn't go as hard as say, "Holy Sick", but reveals some untapped potential out of Maz's vibrato. Her voice elevates it significantly.

Things got a little messy afterwards. The band did a publicity stunt in 2021, pretending to be looking for a new lead singer, but in reality just setting up a ruse for their next music video. This would all just be a bit of quirky fluff if band tensions didn't rise significantly shortly after. They did get a second album out, but when it came to touring it, the tour was cancelled halfway through. Details at the time were vague, but less than 6 months later, the band went on hiatus, playing a small handful of shows afterwards. Fast forward another 6 months and Maz announces that she's bringing back WAAX as a solo project.

Behind the scenes, I can only speculate what's going on. I've heard that the rest of the band were owed money, I've heard that Maz may have pulled the rug under them both before and after. Press release Maz might be different to behind the scenes Maz. All I can say is that audiences haven't really bought into the drama. I can't determine the extent of it, just that WAAX released a new album in March 2026 and this is the first I'm hearing of it. It wasn't submitted to the ARIA Chart so I can't measure it up to the previous ones. The lead single "HANDS" has actually managed to outstream everything on the second WAAX album though, so it's a start. Taken on its own terms, I love that song. It's fresh, anthemic, and it sounds vital. Whatever the full picture may be, Maz has obviously been through a lot as is tradition for women in rock bands who make music. She can have this moment.

Anyway I skipped over "Labrador", that's what we're here for. All that seemed like a good lead into this because it very much is a song about sexism in the music industry. That might just be the edge that brought it their biggest success, just clearly being a song about something that resonates. Let's just say it's not the only song about that very topic polling in the Hottest 100 around that time period. Like that other song, this one gets a lot of its talking points from the perspective of the higher up men setting the rules. There's a mix of outright insistence ('you're a girl and a girl isn't welcome in here') followed by being blindly complicit of a system that's bigger than them ('yeah, it is what it is'). That can be the most frustrating aspect of it all, the idea of this spectre that's keeping everything from changing. "Labrador" was never one of my absolute personal favourites in the WAAX catalogue, but I can't deny its vitality. We need a mix of protest songs, with the absolutely explicit and the easy to just thoughtlessly sing along with. There are in fact advantages to both.

#161. Stormzy - Vossi Bop (#27, 2019)

12th of 2019

There's a peculiar history of political moments in the UK Charts. In 1977, during the queen's Silver Jubilee, the Sex Pistols released "God Save The Queen". It charted at #2 and to this day, I have no idea if there was a genuine fix, or if people just willed a rumour into existence because they refused the reality they were given. In 2013, after Margaret Thatcher died, there was a concerted effort to get "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" to #1. It fell short of a Duke Dumont song that had too strong of a head start. I heard a rumour that the pro-Thatcher community deliberately bought up Duke Dumont's song to keep it at #1 that week, but after extensively searching discussions at the time, I don't see convincing evidence for it. Perhaps the most confrontationally political song to go to #1 was "Killing In the Name", but that's tangential to its actual role in topping the charts in that moment. I don't think people were thinking about the 1992 Los Angeles riots when they were sticking it to the X-Factor.

In recent times, there's been a pretty explicit one but it almost feels inconsequential, like it was snuck into an obvious hit because you can get away with it. Stormzy was on top of his game in 2019. He hadn't had a #1 yet, but you could see it coming. "Vossi Bop" was just that inevitable moment. In this song, Stormzy raps the line 'F**k the government and f**k Boris'. This would become a redundant statement just three months later when Boris Johnson became the new UK prime minister, which also means that this song was still charting when it happened. He also rhymes that line with 'I could never die, I'm Chuck Norris', a line that's gone out of date in 2026. I wonder if Vossy will still have his coaching job by the time this post goes live...Yep, I wrote this in April.

It's a testament to Stormzy's popularity just how far this song went though. You don't usually get a UK rap song as the 7th biggest hit of the year, and it even splashed over to Australia where it gave him his first ever top 50 hit. He'd have a handful more but this is probably still his biggest lead artist hit in Australia. It'd be his biggest Hottest 100 hit too except in the 3 years it's taken me to make and post this list, he had the Chase & Status collaboration "BACKBONE" go even further. On no level has it ever felt like he's making crossover hits in Australia, the cult of personality just does not translate to another continent.

If I were to ignore the song's own merits for a little longer, I have to give some more credit to the incredible music video. Insanely good editing and aura farming off the charts. He's even got Idris Elba (who is also namedropped in the song). Having since been to London, seeing all these deserted streets is really doing my head in, it's not like that at all.

In general though, it's pretty agreeable Stormzy. I don't think he necessarily sounds as potent in the past, but perhaps he's just grown up and is having more reserved fun. Like, there's an alternate song by this name where it's actually about smashing someone over the head with a bottle of Courvoisier. No point in punching down when you're already #1 though, to say nothing of the fact that Stormzy is a very tall individual.