#335-#331

 #335. Kid Cudi (feat Pharrell Williams) - Surfin' (#40, 2016)

35th of 2016

Sometime in 2008 I became aware of the song "Day 'N' Nite". I'm not exactly sure when, because triple j never seemed to include it on their online hitlist (or if they did, they included it for such a short period of time that I couldn't manage to spot it just now on the Wayback Machine). It was on the Hottest 100 voting list in 2008 though, at least some proof that it came up. I won't pretend that I paid close attention to it myself, just that when we jumped forward to 2009 and the song became a global hit, it felt unusual to see this second wind. Depending on who you ask, it was more popular through the remix by Crookers (which also was released in early 2008), but that's becoming more of a footnote over time. Kid Cudi's moody rap might have come out too early for its own good, but now it feels like a prototype of rap in the 2010s, one that hasn't aged a day.

As is often the case, it put Kid Cudi in an unusual position as a rapper with mainstream appeal who wasn't necessarily playing to those expectations. Lupe Fiasco is always my primary example of this conundrum. He's obviously very gifted at playing to both sides of the fence, but not always at the same time, which has resulted in a very uneven discography. Like when the next thing you hear on "Tetsuo & Youth" after all 9 minutes of "Mural" is a Guy Sebastian hook, who's it being made for? Kid Cudi fell into a different trap. After years of being mostly adjacent to the top 40 and occasionally troubling it, he started getting really weird with it. I remember being put off by 2013's "Indicud", partly because of when it came out and the unrelenting copium I was huffing at the time regarding triple j's feature album selection, but also because it betrayed his initial ideas and just felt a little too strange. I haven't forgotten about that weird sampling of Father John Misty's "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings".

Things took an even sharper dive 2 years later on "Speedin' Bullet 2 Heaven", an album I can't bring myself to go back to, but one that brought about a weird fascination at the time. Maybe it'll get its cultural reassessment over time, but its combination of loud rock riffs and Beavis & Butthead interludes left me a little cold. If there's something that should be looked into, it's the downward spiral of the lyrics, that's only gotten clearer further into his career. I would like to touch on that as well, but it's probably better served for a later entry (where Kid Cudi will not be credited, maybe you know the one).

That might be enough to derail a career, but Kid Cudi kept going along as if nothing happened. About a year later he had another album, "Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin'", which steers a bit closer to what everyone wants to hear, but not necessarily languishing in the past either. "Baptized In Fire" is a very early Travis Scott collaboration that's another stone on the foundation of his future dominance. What we're concerned with here is "Surfin'", a song that for whatever reason, charted in Australia's top 100 and nowhere else. Not the last time an American rapper will inexplicably do this and also be rewarded with a pretty good Hottest 100 position, in 2016 even.

My only guess is that triple j had enough reach that people actually heard the song over here and that made the important difference. Recent projects had probably taken Kid Cudi off Santa's Nice list for the radio, so it was probably harder to get him on there, even though the song is extremely radio friendly. By the time the album came out, the song was tucked away at the back of the album with a new 6 minute version that drags on a bit, so it's just a big hit that never got a chance outside of this market. That album version does have one other notable thing about it though, which is that Pharrell can actually be heard on it. If you'd never heard it, you might be scratching your head at how producing the song warrants a feature credit here, or wondering if you just missed him. This is also the first time Pharrell has come up at all here, and there'll be a decent amount of that, even without some of his biggest hits getting a guernsey. For now though, I was riding this wave. Just extremely good vibes here from the bright brass and lively percussion.

#334. Urthboy (feat Bertie Blackman) - Long Loud Hours (#33, 2015)

41st of 2015

It's so mundane that I haven't seen anyone ever comment on it, but I have a deep fascination with the ending of "My People" by The Presets. During the final chorus of the song, Julian changes the lyrics ever so slightly, to include the line 'party time, all of my people'. Ironically, for me it's always the clear sign that this seemingly unstoppable song is about to end. I'm just realising tonight there might be a good reason for me paying attention to that. A handful of months before "My People" was released, Urthboy was on the radio with "We Get Around". Another song that feels like an unending chorus, but also a song that does the same trick, as Urthboy decides just once to say that 'we stay around', leading into the song's bridge & coda.

Yes, this was another regularly scheduled 2007 nostalgia moment, which usually isn't for a good reason, but in this case I think it's fitting. Urthboy teamed up with Bertie Blackman and got into the Hottest 100, and on the ARIA Chart in the year 2015. It's such a strange moment in time to witness, and it's not as if it was done by playing the game. It was done with this odd-sounding song about the 1999 prison escape by helicopter by Australian criminal John Kilick. All around, an interesting story, and one that enough people bought into.

If you're hearing about all of this for the first time, you might also want to know that Urthboy is an Australian rapper, best known as a member of The Herd, a group that might have rivalled Bliss n Eso as the second biggest rap group in the country for a while. I'd say he's the leader, but no one in The Herd controls The Herd, that's why it's unpredictable. They were pretty early in the game though, and even if they weren't initially on the most serious of terms (ah, scallops), they were one of the more provocative acts of the late Howard era. In 2003 they were taking the whole country to task for abiding Johnny on "77%", and 5 years later they were dancing on his political grave with "The King is Dead". It would be easy to deride the latter as just courting an easy political stance, but I think it needs all the more credit for the sheer volume of quotable bars they pass around. How can you come back when you're being rhymingly called out for losing your own 33 year old seat?

The rise of Bertie Blackman comes a little bit later. She had her career very much on the fringe initially, with pop rock that wasn't quite finding its audience. In 2009 she played around a bit more with synths and saw unlikely dividends with what else was going on, that album "Secrets and Lies" easily being her most successful. It feels like the kind of album that I now discover was her first major label release but that didn't come until the next album. Her most recent album was released in 2014 and she's only occasionally done guest appearances since then. She's done arguably more important things since then like getting married and having a child. If she does decide to make music again, I'd probably be on board.

When this song did come out, it heralded a surprising late career surge for Urthboy. In the era when you might have expected him to have higher charting albums, he wasn't even cracking the top 50, but this one, with the cumbersome title "The Past Beats Inside Me Like A Second Heartbeat" managed to crack the top 10. I bought it, it's a good album. Especially fond of the pseudo-title track, which features an artist that will later appear on this list. "Long Loud Hours" is a good one too. What's surprising about it is that it tells the story mostly from the perspective of John Killick's girlfriend Lucy Dudko, the one who hijacked a helicopter to bust him out of jail. In that sense, this performance is largely gender-flipped as it's Urthboy providing this side, and you only hear John's side when Beato joins for the chorus. Both of these people are still alive but I haven't been able to find any response to the song from either of them. Killick did say in an interview in 2025 that he's tired of the story, so maybe he doesn't take much interest in there being a minor hit song about it.

#333. Drake (feat 21 Savage) - Jimmy Cooks) (#76, 2022)

28th of 2022

A little while back, I had something very strange happen to me. I received a DM on Twitch from someone I didn't know, who criticised my way of playing Tetris, I presume having just encountered me a few times and looking up my name from that. In all fairness, they were correct in part, that I'd been relying on a lazy method to begin my games, one that's very easy to spot and ridicule. My defence is that it's only something I do for about a minute or so, and afterwards I play normally (in case you're wondering, it's a technique called '4-widing', where you build exclusively on the 6 leftmost or rightmost columns, save for 3 tiles at the bottom. If you build all the way to the top, you just about get carte blanche to very lazily score a 15+ combo as you can very slowly drop pieces down the hole you create. Competitively, it's very difficult to fend off without adequate preparation). My rationale is that by giving myself a head start, it allows me to fend off the people who will continue to do it for an entire match, perhaps even warding them off their boring playstyle as it's not as infallible as they might think.

I was probably dealing with a troll but I decided to explain my perspective in a reasonable way. I left out the part that calls out what they must be doing if they've noticed this from me. I eventually got another reply mocking me further except I was blocked from responding again. It's not anything I'm too mad about, but it got me thinking about how unwinnable the situation is. Either I continue doing it and they get to mentally mock me should they continue to encounter me, or I stop doing it and they get the satisfaction of getting into my head. Once you've smugly decided you're above someone, it's very difficult to come down from that, whether you're right or not.

There's a messy allegory here, and it relates to the online response I saw to Drake's musical output in 2022. You could extend it further back than that, but 2022 was the year we got some serious data that proved the worst tendencies of both Drake and his fanbase. At this point, he's been on a decade-long streak of diminishing returns. Regardless of how successful he was, the general consensus of 'This is the worst album he's ever released' was coming through like clockwork. Drake was overexposed and washed, incapable of trying new things and just relying on his successful brand to stay afloat.

This changed a little bit in 2022, when Drake released the album "Honestly, Nevermind". In theory, it's a long awaited sea change. Drake steps away from reliable trap beats and makes an honest to God house record. There's just one problem; it's not well liked at all and it tanks. Every Drake album has gone at least triple Platinum in America, except this one that so far has just limped over to Platinum after a year on sale. Any further certifications it gets will likely be carried on the back of this one song. You know, the one song on the album that isn't house music, it's just that reliable team up with 21 Savage to make the trap music we expect from both of them. Of course, five months later they'd course correct with "Her Loss" and everything would be back to normal.

What I saw from all of this was the most tedious form of win-win smug commentary. That same kind where it's always anchored around disdain for Drake and his fans, and so it's just a matter of choosing the right reading from it to justify it. Here, it was mostly about the way his fans responded to the album, who are so narrowminded in their interest that as soon as he tries something different, they outright reject it. The success of "Jimmy Cooks" is proof positive that they're unadventurous and scared. Never mind the fact that a single collaboration on the album that sounds a bit different to the rest is always going to stand out. Never mind the fact that the execution on both might differ a tad, you've got more ammunition to say you're objectively better at listening to music than Drake fans, like you needed any proof.

Am I coming in the defence of "Honestly, Nevermind"? Not really, I've not been that interested to go back to it. I don't think it's a complete failure though, and I think if you want a trimmed down experience, "Falling Back", "Sticky" and "Massive" makes for a nice little pocket that shows a good bit of range within Drake's bounds of the genre. "Falling Back" was seemingly supposed to be the single from the album (it has a music video), but the quirks of the ARIA Chart that seemed to be linked to digital sales performance meant that it never even charted in Australia. It was probably supposed to be a top 10 hit. Our charts are known to be a little odd sometimes.

If I also choose to look at "Jimmy Cooks" on its own merits, I think it's a good one too. Drake's in his element obviously and fires off a verse that isn't necessarily memorable (the beat is doing a lot of heavy lifting here), but glides along nicely. It's yet another song for him that feels like multiple songs stitched together (possibly a Travis Scott song has a lot to answer for), but it does provide us with possibly the funniest start to a 21 Savage verse ever. The same kind of wingman energy we got way back when Jay-Z was summoned by his own name on the remix of "Diamonds From Sierra Leone". Just recently 21 Savage is facing tough competition from Stormzy on who has the best delivery of that one word. Beyond that though, he's still the heart of this song. Absolutely no reservations about his performance, it's the kind of thing I wish Drake would take more to heart and consider emulating. At this point he just exists to have circles run around him on his own songs.

#332. Middle Kids - Stacking Chairs (#39, 2021)

28th of 2021

Once upon a time I was extremely liberal in my tendency to overplay the songs that I like. Probably the important factor here is that I built up my music library from scratch and didn't have a lot of options. It's huge now, but it used to just be a handful of CDs and single downloads, you're gonna end up listening to "One Crowded Hour" quite a lot. I think I was also very obsessed with looking at my most played stats. Even in 2007, I was jotting it down on paper so I could witness how much it changed, and I was probably deliberately acting upon that.

Fast forward to the present and it's not really something I can play around with anymore. My most played songs have been locked in place for over a decade now. My last.fm profile tells me I've listened to 87 songs at least 100 times. That number will probably still grow, given that numerous songs are just on the cusp, but they're all songs that were in from the ground floor. Everyone who came in too late for that is aware. The last song I listened to 100 times was "Warning" by Cymbals Eat Guitars, from 2014. The only song after that which is even within striking distance is "Golden To Thrive" by Samsaruh, but at the current rate, it'll be another 18 years before she gets there, and then the song will be 26 years old, not exactly improving the state of play.

Part of what's happened is that my music listening has gotten so ritualistic. I have a current playlist of songs I'm listening to at the moment, and I listen to it once a week. At best you can maybe expect to last on it for 6-7 months and then that's it. Log about 30 plays and reside in the back catalogue to only occasionally be brought back up. My most played song of 2023 got 33 plays, and has only gotten 3 more since then. This isn't anything that's very important, and it's probably for the best that I'm spreading out my music listening a bit more, but it does mean that I'm just not hearing these songs as much, and they're likely making less of an impression on me, even though it doesn't feel like it in the moment.

The weirder side effect of this is that it's often making it harder for me to listen to albums. Here's a likely sequence of events: You hear a song you like, you stick it on your playlist and come back around to it as often as that might entail. The next time it comes up, you might start thinking 'oh, there's an album, I should check that out'. I have this frustrating problem where I hesitate to take this step, because I just listened to one of the songs, and I don't really want to hear it again in quick succession. My listening habit has become an odd crutch that makes me not want to overplay any songs. Just listening to something twice in a week is a rare privilege that I'll rarely dole out.

So I just don't listen to as many albums as I used to. I keep track of it on a spreadsheet for myself and there's a huge spike after I start using Spotify that very rapidly declines after 2017, until reaching a flatline in 2023. Often times when I've been listening to albums for this blog, I'll refer to this sheet to put them in the log, and be surprised to find out that I already listened to them, just because my current mindset is one that would surely not lead to me listening to these particular albums. Middle Kids did not make the cut. I'm listening to it now, but "Today We're The Greatest" is just the 25th album from 2021 I've heard. How many people could honestly say that it'd be one of the first couple dozen albums they'd go out of their way to hear in that year? I feel like anyone who heard it, probably heard so many more.

I had a good reason to do it too. The title track of the album is a big favourite of mine. I don't know how to pitch it, but I think if you're moved by the emotional swell of Coldplay's "The Scientist", I think it might resonate for you. It's taken this moment here for me to finally take the plunge. I think the best thing it has going for it is its surprisingly deep run of singles. I'd almost heard half of the album already, even though it's very top and bottom loaded. It never really comes close to those soaring highs I craved, but if you want to see a small scale version of one of those kinds of stacked albums, maybe give it a shot.

In any case, "Stacking Chairs" has proven to be the big song to come from it. One that I blazed past initially but found a warmer reception for it once it polled and became part of my increasingly monstrous music library. While I might be craving more just because of the song that's sitting just after it, this is still a good step in that direction. Maybe it's appropriate after all that I said that we've got a song that says 'When the party's over, I'll be stacking the chairs', because they might not get to reap the celebratory reward of being a permanent fixture in my most played songs list, but it is a viral function to serve by continuing to provide new hits, because I don't exactly just want to listen to the same songs over and over again. It's not a very Middle Kids sentiment though, is it? My good authority of being a kid is that stacking the chairs at the end of assembly was a riotous occasion, one that allowed all sorts of creativity in playing around with what the laws of physics allow. Maybe they're more like Upper Middle Kids at this point so they're just bored of it all, darn teenagers.

#331. Baker Boy - Mr La Di Da Di (#51, 2018)

36th of 2018

Let's just say for example, someone could potentially have a lot of money but be unable to use their wealth to be happy. Perhaps they tell themselves and everyone else that they're happy, but deep down, they exhibit a pattern of miserable behaviour for which money is no cure. Surely no one like that really exists, but if they do, then "Mr La Di Da Di" is here to rub it in their face.

When it comes to this song, that's one of two things you can really say about it. The other is that it sounds just a little bit familiar. Perhaps fans of Kendrick Lamar, or an album that beat him to a GRAMMY Award might be able to fill in the blanks, I'm not allowed to. Maybe there's some irony to the latter, given a certain song's materialism, but that would be a crazy war for Baker Boy to start. How famous does someone have to be for a rap feud to have any spice?

I think though in all sincerity that this is just Baker Boy tipping the cap to his idols. In an interview he gave with Musicfeeds about a month after the song was released, he says Kendrick Lamar is one of his favourite contemporary rappers, and then proceeds to fanboy over him and imagine having an awkward fanboy interaction with him at Splendour In The Grass. If you're a creative of any kind, it's always going to be hard to avoid cribbing from your favourite artists, I do it all the time. "Mr La Di Da Di" is still justifiably Baker Boy's own thing. He'll always have the bilingual aspect going for him, and it's just another notch in the belt of his endless positivity, even when he's saying rich people are stupid.

#340-#336

#340. Holy Holy - Teach Me About Dying (#50, 2019)

24th of 2019

Thank you so much for putting up with this bit. We'll meet the same time next week, and the next week after that too, and the next week after that, and the next month, and then it trails off. I won't be supplying any more Holy Holy, however. What a closing statement though. This feels like it's a discarded Dishwalla lyric, just unreasonably heavy.

When Holy Holy entered their imperial phase, I took pretty quickly to this one. I don't know if it stands out for the title as much as it does for the intense pace. They just lock into it and never deviate the entire way. Nifty guitar solo near the end if you can catch it.

I really wish I had more to say about this one, but there isn't a whole lot to it. When Holy Holy made a video talking about it, they seemed more interested in talking about how the song was composed, rather than anything specific about the meaning of the song. It's actually about living, not dying, but that's about it. Even in these trying times, I won't resort to using predictive text to waffle on about nothing, I can do that myself. I once wrote a 10,000 word story that was about 95% filler, this is nothing to me.

#339. Middle Kids - Mistake (#64, 2018)

37th of 2018

It's time for the exciting reveal. You can go back to the entry for "Edge of Town" (#600) and fill in the blanks with the important context. Middle Kids are the band that made "Edge of Town". Middle Kids are the band who couldn't quite make the Hottest 100. Middle Kids are the band who got beaten to the post by a cover of their own song, and Middle Kids are the band that finally broke through on their own terms a little bit later. A huge watershed moment as the heartbreak subsides, akin to The Big O getting his premiership medal last year. Even if it's not necessarily their most shining moment, who could possibly be mad at this?

I certainly wasn't mad. I go way back with Middle Kids because I was one of those people championing "Edge of Town" while it was going slightly under the radar. One of the funniest things for me on social media is that to this day, nearly 10 years later, they still follow me on Twitter. This isn't one of those 'we follow back everyone' deals; that list of followed accounts is pretty slim and exclusive. Being one of the 360 thousand accounts Kevin Rudd follows is a bit less interesting I think. In that intervening period, I kept listening to the band. I'm surprised at just how many singles I accumulated in my music library in this time, songs I've admittedly not listened to in years. The other unsung hero of this time frame I think is "Old River", a song that runs through The Jezabels' playbook without quite reaching for the dramatic highs.

"Mistake" was another good one though. It felt like a very low ceiling kind of song at the time, maybe it still is. But while it was lost deep in the sea of being just another Middle Kids song, I think it proved to have better legs than I imagined. When I hear it now, I hear a melody that might be a little sluggish, but still manages to tug at you. If nothing else, you can also make an allegory out of what we've got here. The word 'mistake' never appears in the lyrics, but we do have a chorus that mentions 'a debt to pay back, for something you did way back'. Consider it all a soft launch for the campaign to get Middle Kids into the Hottest 100, making up for the mistake of those who didn't vote for them the first two times.

#338. Violent Soho - Viceroy (#14, 2016)

37th of 2016

I've never watched Succession. It's another one of those gaps that come about when you spend a decade or so of your life being void of pop culture, and then spend the next decade catching up more on what you should have been looking at then. Maybe someday I'll catch up and that'll be next cab on the rank. The handy thing is that I've tended to be very good at avoiding big spoilers, or they just get clouded in so much vague discourse that it swings past me. By all rights, I should have known that [character] dies at the end of [tv show] I just watched recently, but I guess it's one of those details that gets lost like that. All I really know about Succession is that it's an allegory for the real life Murdoch family and the cacophony of what's to be done when old man kicks the bucket (my reverence for "Umineko When They Cry" leads me to believe there's something of value in this). Also that the family in the show have the name Roy, an old French term for a king. It's something I wasn't able to pull up when it appeared as a Final Jeopardy clue a few years ago, and maybe I should have, given that this Violent Soho song has been staring at me for many years. It makes you think 'oh duh, that's what a viceroy is' and then realise how dumb you are for not connecting it sooner.

"Viceroy" is the best-placing song from "WACO" in the Hottest 100. In 2016, that's by a handy margin, but the lead single came out in 2015 and landed just one spot lower. Even divorced from the politics of what it means to be a leading single, and what that entails (kind of like being the first-born son?), it's hard to know which song should get the honours when it's split up like this. This one's got a narrow lead in the Spotify streaming department though. It's just so very apt to say that I don't know if this song is king, or the viceroy, or if it's just king of the shit given that the most popular Violent Soho song obviously isn't part of this conversation, and that Violent Soho aren't part of most people's conversations either.

I don't think anyone is particularly surprised with this outcome though. Even without chart positions to go by (as they are an uncommon part of the Violent Soho lifespan), rarely does a single more clearly point to itself as the obvious hit. It's the one to vote for if you don't know which Violent Soho song to vote for, as it's clearly going to be the highest one. They're in their accessible mid-tempo era, with one of those supposed 'giant f**k off choruses' (#475), the kind that can serve as both a massive singalong, and also an opportunity for the mosh pit to get going. At this point we're just filtering down the ideal Violent Soho song to the basic necessities.

#337. Peking Duk (feat SAFIA) - Take Me Over (#5, 2014)

38th of 2014

We need to talk about performative, exaggerated outrage. It's the kind where the reaction feels so overblown for its catalyst that it looks ridiculous on the outside. Like when otherwise reasonable minds seem to genuinely think that kids finding '6-7' to be funny proves the decline of society (maybe they don't actually think this, but why do they do the performance?). I know I'm supposed to be talking about "Take Me Over" by Peking Duk, but let's be honest, no one else is talking about it, even when it's put in front of them. Such is the state of the algorithmic re-shuffle of priorities, that even one of the rare few Australian artists who were able to find consistent success in the streaming era have been demoted to a footnote. That's not the whole of it though, they haven't been necessarily forgotten. The current chapter is bringing an unprecedented level of discussion, just that it isn't about Peking Duk.

In late 2025, Peking Duk performed at the AFLW Grand Final. I think it's a pretty good choice. Keeping it local but still finding a band who have numerous recognisable hit songs (possibly the most if you keep out internationally famous ones of late). It ended up how it always seems to go. They've got a stage that's too far away from anyone in the crowd, and they're not moving tickets for it either. Any hype is strictly contained within the stage, and anyone who is excited in the crowd will be outnumbered by the disinterested many who probably can't hear it very well, and just want to see their North Melbourne girls complete the undefeated season that's been on their mantle for months. I thought the performance was fine, there's not much variation that can go into it for a band like Peking Duk, and if it was in a large part pre-recorded, that wouldn't surprise me. But it's all those bored crowd shots that told the story. It's one broad gesture that affirms a very important thing for many people lately: Adam Hyde is not only a hack, but a hack that the industry is forcing down the throats of a public that rejects it.

This is a story I've unwittingly told during this countdown. You might say I proved the point by siding with the mob before it had even formed. After a few years of success, one of the guys from Peking Duk decided he wanted to be more than that, and started putting himself behind the microphone, with disastrous results. I didn't actually think he was awful, just a step down from the usual talent that Peking Duk were usually wrangling (#926).

Ever since 2021, he's taken it a step further with a full solo project, Keli Holiday. That might be a revelation to some. I've seen many comments to the effect of him only having one song, much like "The Whale" has only one frame. It's really not true, he's got over a dozen songs (actually by the time this post goes live, there'll be an album out), but in this economy of limited chips, you've got to put everything in towards the one that's knocking on the door of the charts. If there is a major difference between 2021 and now, it's that he wasn't dating Abbie Chatfield. That's a can of worms I'm not fully qualified for, but I know the short version. She finished 2nd on The Bachelor Australia, got a villain edit, and would later present herself as a feminist with progressive views that she isn't shy about sharing. The first part of it is the most important here, as when Murdoch affiliated sources need a way to tend people towards belittling certain views, they don't even need to take the mask off. They can just point people in the direction of someone whose claim to fame is being stupid and unlikeable on a TV show people watch with a degree of metaphorically looking down. This superiority is a core world view that cannot be shaken, so any time Abbie says anything, it's an excuse to smugly unravel the ball of yarn, and maybe post a laughing emoji reaction, because you've figured out that life is unfair and anyone who calls for change is a naïve fool. Some people are so far behind in a race they actually believe they're leading.

Since they started dating in 2024, Keli Holiday is now an extension of the Abbie Chatfield brand. It's not like he's an unwilling participant. You can see him in videos she posts on social media, and it's easy to believe that he's just as left leaning as she is, just less likely to build a platform about it. His biggest solo hit thus far, "Dancing2", is literally a song about falling in love with Abbie. I've said it before here, but I don't think it'd go as far as it has if not for that connection. It's given a jolt of relevance for someone who hasn't really moved the needle in a few years.

Here's where a different algorithm enters the equation and breaks everything down again. All these people who have been foaming at the mouth about the worst act in the country of late have been doing it to themselves, they have, them and everyone else. I've experienced it myself on Facebook. If you so much as engage with any topic, even just clicking to enlarge an image or to look at the comments, the algorithm will take it as a blank cheque of approval. Any post, anywhere, that brings up the same topic will come into your feed. It takes a very strong will to recognise this for what it is, but in the moment, as you see the topic come through again and again, you'll think it's being forced down your throat. It actually is, but there's no conspiracy about it, you're just a victim of your own inhibitions, falling prey to discovering the difference between what you think you want to see, and what you actually engage with. Then you sprinkle in a bit of confused misinformation that comes from the way we all get small shards of the truth instead of the whole package, and any superlative can be believed. The narrative of the industry push sounds really good when you find out Keli Holiday won an ARIA Award. It falls a little flat if you realise he won it in a Publicly Voted category, and otherwise didn't make it into the industry voted contingent. The industry is actually pushing Young Franco and Folk Bitch Trio harder, didn't you know?

I'm writing all of this in December. By the time this goes live, not only will the Keli Holiday album be out, but the Hottest 100 will have happened, and regardless of anything else that happens, "Dancing2" will be the lightning rod. Much like how people praised Billie Eilish for defeating a certain supposed evil in 2019, Olivia Dean will probably be seen as a saviour, somehow proving that a still very high finish that is not at the top of the poll is a sign of rejection. Keli Holiday could always be more popular, but it's the people who are constantly enlightening us about how they think they can smell a video of him, the people who are giving him so much free algorithmic promotion, the people who are incapable of any deeper level of introspection whatsoever. They will once again declare victory and continue to have their world view shaped by an online landscape that is profiting on their worst tendencies. Here I am now in February to say that I haven't changed a word of this entry before it goes live, but it looks like it was pretty spot on.

I'm saying all of this to turn this entry into what the Peking Duk AFLW performance is to everyone else. The performance started with "Dancing2", before leading into half a dozen Peking Duk songs. There was no thrilling nostalgia brought upon by hearing songs like "Take Me Over" for the first time in years, the way these kinds of performances tend to go. The well was tainted in the first three minutes, and so Peking Duk, by its second degree association with that annoying woman, is also tarnished. I would like to take a moment to acknowledge it on its own merits. Mr. SAFIA is an inspired choice here, a collaboration to break the internet in Canberra. Given the big profile boost they got immediately afterwards, I can't get too mad at the song carrying an erroneous feature tag that implies the whole trio are involved. I do find it interesting that the song itself was a slightly tougher sell. It has an interesting chart run where it debuted high but initially seemed to be getting pushed aside before getting second wind. Maybe there was something about the song's rigid rising synths that made it seem like it was lost in indulgence. You just don't often get these kinds of chart runs anymore where you can measure up the initial weight of the brand with how the greater public chooses to get on board. It's something more suited to the top heavy sales environment of the album chart. A similar chart pattern to the latest Gracie Abrams album I suppose.

#336. Alex Lahey - You Don't Think You Like People Like Me (#97, 2016)

36th of 2016

It has to be mentioned here. For a long time, I thought this was my introduction to Alex Lahey. A pretty good breakout single that was a sign of things to come. Maybe you know where this is going, but I'd actually very briefly heard of Alex Lahey a couple of years before this, under very silly, but interesting circumstances.

I've been reading xkcd since around 2009. A friend in high school who had spent more time online and discovering the world beyond our small town mentioned it to me, and I was fascinated. The web comic was still in its infancy at that (I knew it in its 4th year, now it's up to 21), though it didn't feel like it. I kept reading it ritually, and there have been points in time when I was able to know exactly what hour of the day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday it would update. I'd go straight to the embedded forums to read the tri-weekly discussions. It was one of the first things that challenged my perspectives by the sheer notion of occasionally grand, sweeping notions. Just a lot of geek humour made by a geek, for geeks. Also it's very silly.

That more silly aspect manifested in the 'what if??' blog that launched in 2012. Initially a weekly segment that aimed to answer some potentially unnecessary burning questions, like how long it would take for a single penny in the tray of your car to end up costing an additional penny in fuel due to it weighing you down, or how many bouncy balls would you need to drop from a tall building to potentially kill someone. He's made a couple of books that compile these, and I own the first one, which is notable because of this question included in it. Back in 2013, years before finding fame in the music world, Alex Lahey was trying to cook a steak by dropping it from space. About a decade later, this resulted in a funny Twitter interaction as two people who thought they were only parasocially aware of each other found a long, lost connection. A few months later, Alex Lahey got the honour of being the last artist ever tweeted by the @triplejplays account, just a bumper moment for strange online interactions for her.

It was either mentioning this or getting way too fixated on her mentioning Mulholland Drive in this song and going on a 20 paragraph deep dive into David Lynch's filmography, which I'm not remotely qualified for, though I have seen that one. Before (or partially after) all of that, she was just an artist whose songs I heard and liked on the radio, in spite of any cumbersome components like say reining in a title. Maybe it's appropriate given what I just said that this is a song about second degree perceptions. It's something that's fundamentally interesting but always sounds a little bit cumbersome if you want to be clear. You can say Chess is about reading your opponent or thinking several steps ahead, but what you really mean is that you've got to know what your opponent thinks you know, and take advantage when they don't know that you know that they know that you know. I had no idea I'd be running back to back entries about the difference between what people say & think, and what they show. Who knew that "Good Luck, Babe!" actually already came out in 2016? Maybe I find this one a little bit more relatable because there's a heightened layer of self-doubt in it. There's no spiteful scorn, but she's a more passive voice of consideration to it. Then again, gay marriage wasn't even legal in Australia when this song came out, so that can be a factor as well. I think I just like it because it's fun to listen to though.

#345-#341

#345. The Rions - Anakin (#64, 2022)

30th of 2022

I'm sorry, I'm not very knowledgeable on the Star Wars franchise. I've seen three of the films but only remember one of them particularly well. Most of my knowledge comes from either internet memes or the things that people yell about. I've never felt compelled to dive deeper into it because of the aforementioned yelling. It's not too important in this case though because even The Rions admitted in an interview that there isn't really anything to do with it in the song. They seemed happy that people who don't know what it means seem to like the song anyway, but I'm not convinced they know either. To me, this recalls a different 1999 film, mainly when they say 'I want you to want me'. Don't ask me for hot takes on "10 Things I Hate About You" either, haven't watched the whole thing.

Nonetheless, we've finally reached arguably the most successful Unearthed High winners, or at least the ones that have most efficiently transferred interest beyond the initial grace period. The Rions have 9 Hottest 100 entries, no one else has more than 2. They recently debuted at #5 on the ARIA album chart, higher than anyone else. Of course, I'd have to ignore some other finalists like Hockey Dad, The Kid LAROI & Genesis Owusu, but it's proof that the selection panel had the right idea. Things could change, but none of their fellow 2021 nominees have had a big breakout moment yet. The Rions have fully succeeded in seeming like a regular band who made their way into the system by making memorable and catchy songs for the radio. On the surface they might seem a bit boring, but I'm putting the proof in the pudding that I generally like these songs.

For "Anakin", I want to draw the comparison to The Rubens, a different kind of Unearthed alumni, who I suspect are pitching to a pretty similar audience. They've got the same soulful affectation in the vocal delivery, and play a brand of rock that's not going to offend anyone for being too ambitious. I think it's the drumming that makes this one stand out a bit more. It feels like Tom is taking every possible opportunity to have his moment on this one, and it never feels indulgent, just makes the whole thing pop.

#344. Flume (feat Vince Staples & Kučka) - Smoke & Retribution (#37, 2016)

38th of 2016

Grab a Sprite, you know where this is going. It's late 2015 and I've just been introduced to a new classic. A career defining song not just for Vince Staples who rapped it, but also Clams Casino who produced it. Pick out your favourite lyric I can't say out loud because it's "Norf Norf" time. I don't think it necessarily asserted itself in the moment, but I'm looking at it now with over 300 million streams and it's fair to say we got there in the end. It's become so normalised that it's even in the most recent Tony Hawk's Pro Skater remake, or at least, all the words they were able to keep in it are. I'll now associate it with trying to get the secret tape in Canada the wrong way because I hadn't found the secret switch. The song also got more famous in another way, thanks to a white Christian mother going viral on YouTube complaining about the song's lyrical content. It's a fascinating look at a foreign perspective. Someone who is perturbed by the violent lyricism, but doesn't skip a beat to say the n-word, and takes most offense at the lyric about skipping school. If the mission was to warn people about the dangers of modern music, all it really did was make the song more famous. It was the first and only time I ever saw the song pop up on the iTunes chart. Why else do you think I don't like talking about songs I don't like?

Between these instances, Vince Staples had something resembling a pop career. Feeding off the release week hype of whatever ended up being the next single released by Flume after "Never Be Like You" (#400), he got onto the charts for a single week, with one of Flume's least convincing crossover singles. Nothing about "Smoke & Retribution" feels like it should work other than it coming out when it did, and being the convenient song for Flume to perform when he came in for Like A Version later that year, since he had Vince Staples and Kučka in supply. For that matter, I should mention Kučka, but she'll be on another Flume single later on, so I'll do it then. Flume comes up here 18 times, so I've got to spread out the topics as best as I can.

If you think electronic music is just bleeps & bloops, I don't think this one's gonna change your mind. Maybe some credit can be given to the performers here for carving out a unique sound here, but maybe it's just going to sound like multiple songs thrown together. I am fond of the half-hearted effort to put it all together though. Just this cold, metallic sound with some of the most fun audio panning going around.

#343. Alex Lahey - I Haven't Been Taking Care of Myself (#36, 2017)

35th of 2017

Sometimes an artist gets a new biggest hit of their career, and it might not feel like the logical pick. In these cases, it's probably a placeholder that represents a general increase in popularity, but one that doesn't have the appropriate song to manifest it just yet. Then their actual career peak comes along and we're left reminiscing that brief period where something else was suggested. Sometimes, it just never comes along and we're stuck with what we started on.

In the case of Alex Lahey, maybe there just never was going to be a likely candidate. She's not really going for gimmicks, so nothing is going to stand out in that way. There'll be a biggest hit by some measure, but it won't stick out and have you say 'yes, that's the one'. Well, if I was pressed to pick one, I might go for another song that comes up later here, but under these bounds, "I Haven't Been Taking Care of Myself" is as big as it gets. Before you're tempted to think the obvious joke, I'll have you know that it actually isn't even the longest title she's got here, so no, it's not that.

Maybe on a superficial level, we're treading familiar ground. Not that the song had been released at this point, but I see the title here and listen to the lyrics, the only thing that comes to mind is "Pretty Grim" (#423). Songs about being a basket case have been doing numbers on the Hottest 100 since at least 1994.

I've always been taken aback by this result. It has me waiting to see if I'll listen to the song and finally have it click. I always liked it, but more in a steady follow up single way, so it's never really been the star of the show for me. Those late singles can sometimes have the longest legs, as Two Door Cinema Club might tell you. It still hasn't happened though. Maybe this is a bit more upbeat than usual which springs up some attention, but it doesn't come off as naturally as some of her others.

#342. Teenage Dads - Teddy (#63, 2022)

29th of 2022

I don't know if it's often appreciated just how few one and done artists there are here. I've had a small handful of late, but the vast majority of it all comes from those who just keep finding their way back in. That notion of a gimmick artist we're not going to check back in with just keeps getting rarer. Future Lucas iterations stay firmly with the lid on. Teenage Dads aren't one of these either, but they've just got the one entry here for me, saving me the trouble of finding multiple ways to say they sound like The Strokes or Katy Perry or whatever they're up to at the moment.

I already hinted at this a few weeks ago, but I'll get the important thing out of the way. When Teenage Dads first got together, they were teenagers. Still in high school even. They chugged away at the music thing for a whole 6 years before they finally got signed to Chugg in 2021. This is still going on today; I'm writing this on the same day they released a Christmas song. They first got on my radar in 2022 with the song "Exit Sign", one of their more Strokes influenced songs with a good grasp on dynamic variation. They're not a very gimmicky band if that's what you're here for, but they can make some likeable tunes.

"Teddy" might be the closest they've gotten to challenging that notion. We briefly put away our comparisons to The Strokes and instead look more closely to Ball Park Music. I want to say they put away their wacky hat at this time because they'd only polled with "Stars In My Eyes" (#568), but that would be ignoring the elephant that's 70%, 60%, 50%, 40% in the room. Maybe they really were getting weirder & weirder. They hadn't been using the zany hat though, the kind that gets us songs like "Fence Sitter". If that's what you're after, you'll immediately get your fill with "Teddy", an absolute sugar rush of a song. It's the kind of thing that I've wanted to hear them do more of. I guess Teddy doesn't live here anymore.

#341. Olivia Rodrigo - good 4 u (#4, 2021)

29th of 2021

If we imagine a hypothetical version of this list that I started one year earlier, we'd have a pretty different list to be working with. Rudimental would be waiting down the line with three drum & bass bangers instead of just one. Maybe I could rehabilitate that one electronic song I never much liked, but heard on shuffle the other day and wasn't bothered, the one that isn't "Love Is All I Got", though I can't say the artist's name yet. Most of all though, it would just help me out a little bit here. "good 4 u" is a remarkably successful song, even by the standards of Olivia Rodrigo where basically any song she's ever released does rather well. It's also a song that holds an ominous degree of infamy: The infamy of copyright nonsense.

At present, there are 4 credited writers on "good 4 u". Olivia Rodrigo and Dan Nigro are the obvious two. The other two I can't mention yet. Again, if I were doing this a year prior, it wouldn't have been a going concern. I could just say them, because they're not from a triple j relevant band at all. That flipped over in 2022, and it just so happened to be a welcome entry at that, so we're keeping it under wraps for now. At least I've been able to say Muse freely at any given opportunity instead, I probably get more mileage out of that.

You probably know what it all is anyway, but the shorter version of this all is that "good 4 u" got struck down in a case because it kind of sounds like a different song. It's never sat right with me. Firstly because spotting similarities in songs, especially by wildly different artists is one of the great joys for me, one that I have to control myself from spreading because I don't want to be the first domino in a chain that leads to disrespecting Colin Hay. Secondly because I just don't buy it. When "Blurred Lines" lost a case to the Marvin Gaye estate on a matter of vibes, it set a hugely dangerous precedent, and here we go. We're talking about two songs that don't even sound alike. Two songs that are only connected because they're pop punk songs performed by women, and in the mainstream zeitgeist, there just aren't many of those. To engage in the discourse of X artist ripping off Y artist is to be no better than the dregs of social media comment sections. Bad faith engagement that doubles as proudly spouting ignorance.

Aside from that though, this was a big deal single for Olivia Rodrigo. The one that proved she wasn't just a higher budget Lauren Spencer Smith (a reference that only makes sense doing this years after the fact). She was here to stay, and set new precedents for just how successful a debut album could be. Or for that matter, pop punk in the 2020s. It was already making a slight splash in the previous year, but it was more in the form of mgk and iann dior, where it felt more like an extension of trap. "good 4 u" isn't mixing it up with modern sounds at all. That's broken open the charts in a pretty big way after a decade of walls closing in on each other. It's like a wake up call that a new generation is here and they're bored of what we we've been listening to. I like that.

As for how this track fares on its own terms, I think pretty well. I think if you're going to re-open a sealed vault for popular music, you've got to be immediate about it, and there aren't many songs that more readily sound like a hit on first listen quite like this. There's a direct simplicity to it that's just so difficult to follow on from. This is probably why when it came to the follow up album, nothing hit quite as well as this, and any attempts just feel like an odd mutation. It doesn't make them bad, just lacking the same general appeal. They're probably the songs that work best for me anyway, because "good 4 u" hasn't had spectacular shelf life for me. Overplay will come for everyone you've ever loved if given the chance.

#350-#346

#350. Skegss - Under the Thunder (#27, 2020)

28th of 2020

Sometimes these things write themselves. Not talking about my own part in it (though it does apply), more about the songwriting process. I like to look at things and try to unravel the mental process of how you get from one point to the other. You probably can't solve the whole thing, but maybe you can crack a small component. Something like 'thunder' rhymes with 'under', thunder is associated with lightning. Don't think too much about which one you see and which one you hear, you've got a catchy hook. Then 'lightning' rhymes with 'exciting' and you can genuinely see the gears turning to fill out the next line. It's a process I'm familiar with. If you've ever played the rap battle Jackbox game, you're stuck with a first line, then you have to think of a rhyme first and work backwards from it. Syllable control is an important skill, but sometimes you've got too many to work with, and that's how you end up with 'This world makes me wonder, yeah, it all seems so exciting'. Not the greatest poetry, but it gets you from Point A to Point B.

The one tidbit of information I have about this song is that it started as an AC/DC parody. Maybe not the one you're thinking of, because Benny was jokingly singing like Bon Scott at home, and Bon Scott never sung "Thunderstruck". This turned into a bit with his girlfriend, and he tried singing it in his own voice. This became "Under The Thunder" and allowed them to succeed on the basis of setting the initial bar incredibly low. If you're not at all impressed by Skegss, then this is going to do nothing to change that, especially as it's become one of their bigger hits.

It's a remarkably serviceable song. I think it gets by with one neat trick, its rollicking guitar riff that grounds the song in a playful way. The vocal melody also follows along with this, and you get this unique oscillating feel to it, slow, then fast. It's an endearing element that's taken it a long way for me, even if it really might be Skegss by the fewest necessary numbers otherwise.

#349. Peking Duk (feat Elliphant) - Stranger (#9, 2016)

39th of 2016

Back when there was an ARIA Award for Single of the Year, it had one important criterion, where the single had to have reached the ARIA top 100. If you look at the list of nominees, you'd be forgiven for thinking that top 50 is actually the requirement, as they so rarely included singles that peaked in the lower region. I can spy "No Aphrodisiac" by The Whitlams, "The Captain" by Kasey Chambers, and "How To Tame Lions" by Washington. Maybe it is harder to get that recognition, which is why they so rarely did it, but when I look at nominees like "Dark Storm" by The Jezabels, and "Heart It Races" by Architecture In Helsinki, you get the feeling that the top 50 exposure is important and they'd be overlooked otherwise. I guess it's funny to think about all the voters going through the list of eligible singles, filtering through a whole bunch of entries that would surely never appeal to them, and picking from a much smaller set of praiseworthy entries.

I wonder if this is why ARIA changed the award in 2012. The nominees are now selected in an objective manner of being the highest selling singles, and chosen in the subjective manner of a public vote. There was a growing sentiment that the ARIA Awards were getting heavily influenced by the triple j crowd and creating a hegemony where it was difficult for anyone else to be observed. Only incredibly successful pop artists had a chance of being nominated and it was increasingly unlikely that they'd win. The last year's nominees look like a logical extreme. Birds of Tokyo, Boy & Bear and The Jezabels taking up half of the nomination field with singles that barely cracked the top 50. No room for huge hits from Zoe Badwi, Jessica Mauboy, Havana Brown, The Potbelleez, Justice Crew etc. They just had too many people like me on that board zooming in on their brand. The only funny thing about the timing is that the last ever winner of the award was "Somebody That I Used To Know", perhaps the greatest no-brainer winner of the award in all history, Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera in Round 20, 2025 type stuff. If Gotye isn't winning that award, something broke.

It's been a truly fascinating award to follow in the years since then. In part for the nomination process, something that's gotten a little off the rails as Australian hit songs have gotten harder to come by. 2025's initial field of 10 nominees included just 4 songs that cracked the ARIA top 50, with two of those 4 being a very brief fling. As the streaming economy doles out success in more peculiar ways, it starts to even less resemble something that looks like the top of the field in popular music. Multiple entrants that are just rehashing international hits of the past, including Royel Otis recording a quick cover for an American radio station, while there's an inexplicable inclusion of the modern remake of "Somebody That I Used To Know". Mostly it's just inexplicable because it was released in February 2024, has '(2024)' in its own metadata, but by the way charts work, accrued more sufficient points in 2025. The winner ended up being The Kid LAROI with one of only two songs there that looked like genuine crossover hits (the other one was "Somedays" by Sonny Fodera, but hard to imagine he has the profile to get votes).

So voting can be weird because sometimes the public is given a strange task, but it's also weird because it's really not clear what this public really is. ARIA doesn't have a significant amount of reach to the broader public, so when they ask people to go onto their website and vote, you can't imagine you'll get much of a response. There are social media fan accounts with more reach than ARIA, which is why initially One Direction, and now Taylor Swift essentially is a guaranteed victor every year in the Best International Artist category. It's possible that depending on how the voting is set up, drive-by voters for that category actually have the greatest sway at times. In any case, it still ends up being a little weird. 5 Seconds of Summer won the award three out of the four times they were nominated, and that makes sense to me (they lost to Guy Sebastian once, another artist whose early career was predicated on getting people to go out of their way to vote for him). It's every other year where there isn't a vote magnet, those are the ones I get confused by. Often it just looks like they end up voting for whatever the biggest ARIA Chart or Hottest 100 hit was in the previous year. 2017's field was odd though. It was the first time since 2010 that there wasn't a #1 hit to pick from in the field, and not much jumps out of the page. "Stranger" by Peking Duk won that award. It's one of only two ARIA Awards the duo have ever won in their career (though Keli Holiday won one for Best Video last year) and it's never felt more like a write-off year. I don't begrudge it though. If not for another one of the nominees sneaking into the field, I probably would have voted it as well. Very much a 'by default' kind of vote, but we don't exactly weight our vote based on how strongly we feel about it.

Of course, I think the success of "Stranger" stands out a little more in hindsight. At the time it was just another cog in the standard machine, where Peking Duk have a huge hit every 12 months or so. It's looked upon less favourably because it wasn't quite as big as the ones before it, not meeting the previous KPIs. Now nearly a decade later, Peking Duk have never had a hit this big since ("Fire" (#377) might be catching up though). If Peking Duk getting smash hits was destined to be a brief fling, then it was the sheer might of "Stranger" being as good as it was that kept it afloat a little bit longer.

Elliphant is an important part of this equation. She's a Swedish singer who's been making music since around 2012. She does pretty well but has never really burst out of the gate even in her own country, so "Stranger" is actually the biggest song she's had her name attached to ("Too Original" by Major Lazer might be a close second, what a banger). If you haven't heard it, or haven't heard it in a while, "One More" featuring MØ is another worthwhile cut that's aged tremendously well. Just a prime example of getting a singer who doesn't have the star power on their own, but has an undeniable presence if given the opportunity. Peking Duk have that profile in Australia, they lend Elliphant the spotlight, and she absolutely nails it. Her quirky, warbling voice gives a new sense of character as Peking Duk pound us with another overblown drop.

I do think on the production side of things though, this is a good song. I'm not sure why they released the song heading into summer because all of the synth stabs sound extremely icy. Still, I do come back to it for the drop. It stands out a bit for Peking Duk because it's their first big single that tries something new with it, turning it into an ascending melody rather than just a blasting monotone siren. I've often thought that it has an unintentional 'This is what an elephant sounds like' bit to it. Really though, it's the sound of a duo that has the country eating out of their hand, as they solidify themselves as the reigning champions in this particular brand of electro-pop.

#348. Lizzo - About Damn Time (#7, 2022)

31st of 2022

I've always found myself a little bit frustrated about the way hit songs, or otherwise, are spoken about. It might just be a product of me overanalysing some things, but it just seems like a natural conclusion to reach. It's this idea that the songs that make it have an element of randomness to them, which makes it hard to give them special credit. Lately the GRAMMYs have gotten very afraid to nominate anything for Song or Record Of The Year without it being a huge chart hit, finally giving in to popular demand after decades of their own flavour. It's just that when I look at those lists of nominations, I see songs that feel lucky to be there, and it makes me question the credibility that it's really the best that's on offer. Or alternatively, that whoever missed the cut, did so not because they weren't good enough, but because they didn't have that chart clout. In the 2020s, this can mean artists are scoring nominations for TikTok trends, how odd.

There's another funny angle to it, which is that these hits can get a higher level of scrutiny put on them once they're everywhere. Fair enough, I suppose, but it's interesting to see the way people react to them. It's this looming notion of the pop machine that's choosing which songs become hits. They don't earn it, they're just inevitable. It can cross my mind when I see artists fly in with songs that chart high instantly. A new Billie Eilish or Taylor Swift song would have to be doing something very unusual to not immediately burst out the gate, but that's the trust they've earned with their audiences. These are also the kinds of artists whose labels are going to work day and night to make the song stick, and hide any cracks in the armour from even the most ardent chart watchers. When we get to "About Damn Time", there's a very different picture to what we're used to.

Maybe it's the same for you, but when I see "About Damn Time", I see one of the biggest hits of 2022, a song that was made to cruise Lizzo's moment through from 2019 and into the new decade, and it did succeed. It became another Billboard #1 hit for her, and it even won that GRAMMY Award for Record of the Year. It was completely inescapable because of course it was. Just listen to that infectious disco groove, while Lizzo's back on her quotables again from the very first line. This is a hit song that was written by someone who knew they wrote a hit song.

Anyway did you know that "About Damn Time" was a massive flop when it was first released? This might not have been a complete surprise at the time, I can defend "Rumors" (#683) to an extent, but it's hard to deny that it fell short of Lizzo's previous performance, and that can be a huge waving flag to either music fans or the industry that your trajectory is washed and everyone can move on. When "About Damn Time" was released, it got to #50 in America thanks to decent opening sales and streams, but it looked like it was on a fast track out of there. Here's what its daily US Spotify numbers looked like for the first two weeks: 36-82-150-130-151-163-184-176-171-196-186-115-82-52-35. On Tuesday, a week and a half after the song was released, it finally got that shot in the arm with TikTok virality, and it was off to the races after that point. A bunch of people started dancing to the song's second verse, and Lizzo won a GRAMMY for it. Now, maybe the whole thing is an astroturf, it's something you tend to get suspicious of when the same artists keep winning this mysterious lottery every time and they're the biggest names in music. I just find that first week and a half to be so interesting, this idea that one of the biggest hits of the year was just left to its own devices and wasn't really catching on. It's the sort of thing that makes you critical of the whole process, or the idea that the biggest hits are special in any way. How many potential hits have missed out because they didn't get a second chance, or because the artist in question wasn't even big enough to get a first chance? It makes the whole notion of flops or non-entities just meaningless to me.

At least this one, I was willing to get behind. I think Lizzo is an interesting artist to market because in many ways, she's a bit too unusual to really fit in. Just her whole image flies in the face of what we're used to, and it's hard to work out what her actual market is as someone who could loosely be described as a pop rapper. Maybe "About Damn Time" is sanding down those edges a little bit, but I think the fun side of her personality shines through here. Mainly I've always loved that one of her more interesting background traits is that she's a flautist, and here she is topping the charts with a song that has an actual flute solo she plays in it. That's absolutely nailing the brief and giving the people what they want.

#347. Denzel Curry - RICKY (#45, 2019)

25th of 2019

For quite a while now, Australia has had difficulty latching onto rap music if it's not either a monster hit, or by one of the handful of big names we all keep an eye on. I think there are a lot of self-professed rap fans who know there's a lot out there, but might need word of mouth to decide what to sample in that avalanche of 'Oh yeah, I've heard good things about that one, their new project's probably pretty good'. Hottest 100 results have followed a similar suit. Every now and then, you'll get a seemingly random surprise, but for the most part, it's just the artists we've chosen to be invested in. Sometimes that collective expands a little beyond the obvious, and you'll get a huge showing for the otherwise niche BROCKHAMPTON, and then for a while we just went all in on Denzel Curry.

There might be a good reason for this, I'd go so far to say that a big part of it is looming in the future of this list, but here I am talking about an American rapper who struggles to make the Hip Hop Bubbling Under chart coming through with one of 3 entries he had in 2019. Maybe those first two could be explained by their attachment to more trusted properties, but what do we make of "RICKY", a Denzel Curry song whose gimmick is just that it doesn't really have a gimmick, the most peculiar one of all.

How did we get here anyway? Well, I am like many people in that I first heard of Denzel Curry through the song "Ultimate". It's a song that had difficulty clearly distinguishing itself outside of being a meme, which might have held back its full potential. I always think of it when I used to think about what music might be like when people my age start making it, with all our cultural touch stones in line. It's extremely young millennial coded, in that he mentions both Senzu Beans and Broly in unrelated bars, we're so predictable. It didn't really click for me until 2018 when he released "TA13OO" in 2018. I think I was more primed to listen to hip-hop at that point, and I started to appreciate what he was doing. "BLACK BALLOONS | 13LACK 13ALLOONZ" has a ridiculous title but it's just elite pop rap. He's still making DBZ references then, of course.

After this, I need to bury the lede, but obviously Denzel Curry got to be on a lot more radars in 2019. That can have some overflowing effects. No one was campaigning directly for "4ever" by The Veronicas to make the Hottest 100 Australian Songs countdown, but when you've got enough people voting for "Untouched", it's gonna have some splash back. Maybe though he just picked up enough new fans that were further impressed by what he was doing on his own, and they channelled it through "RICKY". I was more into "SPEEDBOAT" myself, but this one still works in a pinch.

"RICKY" is a tribute to Denzel Curry's father, much of the song is quoting advice he'd given out, which mostly boils down to being cautious around strangers and not to abandon those close to you. As a bonus we also get some of his mother's advice which is much more specific with talking about unprotected sex. The juxtaposition with the previous line is very amusing. The whole thing just never lets up though, so if nothing else, it's proof that he was able to compartmentalise his aggressive flow into something with some semblance of crossover power.

#346. Post Malone - Better Now (#33, 2018)

38th of 2018

One of the biggest dead heats I've ever seen following the charts was actually a competition between two songs from the same artist. In 2018 when Post Malone released "beerbongs & bentleys", he dominated the charts and looked pretty likely to go to #1, the question was what song would do it. The well-perched "Psycho" (#563) looked a good chance as it was operating with a big head start, but the underdog was "Better Now", not released as a single but becoming an instant hit. In the end, "Psycho" did cruise to #1, but it's the Spotify chart I find most fascinating. In Australia that week, "Psycho" managed 1,739,382 streams, while "Better Now" got 1,739,247. That's a difference of 135, or if you will, less than 0.01%. The kind of margin where it starts to matter how streams are counted when they take place across midnight between days.

You wouldn't get any of this heightened drama coming out of the actual ARIA Chart for that week though, because "Better Now" only debuted at #4. It's something I've thought to be very suspect ever since then but unable to actually prove it. When I see the actual numbers involved, it just looks to me that "Better Now" hasn't been fully counted, though I can't be sure of the degree, just that it's something that seemed to pop up a bit at the time.

If you follow charts, you probably know this, if you don't, it'll sound ridiculous without context. In many parts of the world, if you listen to music on a Thursday, it probably won't count to the charts. This is due to a slight delay in reporting streaming figures (largely from Spotify), and an eagerness from chart companies to put the charts out promptly. I think I can see the rationale behind it, because honestly if you just have 6 days of charts, it's hardly going to change a lot after that, so just a reasonable estimate can get the job done. How do they do this estimate? I genuinely don't know, but I'm convinced something was going wrong with it regarding new debuts back in 2018, they just always seemed to land lower than I expected, only to slightly course correct the week after. It makes it seem like they just got the previous Thursday's data, but I dunno. Maybe in the long run it didn't matter, because "Better Now" would eventually climb up to #2 where it belonged, and get stuck there for a very long time, but I do remember thinking it had the slightest chance to debut at #1 which just didn't pan out. Not that Post Malone is desperately wanting for more #1 hits, but this would be one of the better ones I think.

I want to talk more about the album when I get to the remaining song from it, but I had a lot of trust in Post Malone at this point in time. "Better Now" is a pretty good example of this. It uses all the tricks in his arsenal to craft something that's just incredibly catchy. There aren't many songs that have better managed to use trap production to make something so radio friendly. Part of why it succeeds is that it doesn't really just rest on one mode. Every time we transition from verse to chorus, bridge to chorus, chorus to second half of chorus, there's just a little tweak to it that makes it feel more urgent. One of those ways you can get away with just saying the same two words over and over again.

#355-#351

 #355. Tame Impala - Breathe Deeper (#33, 2020)

29th of 2020

I don't even know how I feel about Tame Impala anymore. I can catch any song from the first two albums and it's an instant dopamine rush. After that, it's all an increasing scale of frustration, where I'll have reservations about albums that I can hold back on because of the redeeming factors. For every odd decision, there will be moments where it clicks into place, and soaring highs for it, perhaps on the future docket even. As time sails on though, those highs have not been leaping quite as high out of the page. Finding highlights out of the new album is a struggle and it gives me this sinking feeling that Kevin Parker is actively wasting my time. A long Tame Impala song used to be a point of excitement, but now it seems like a threat. I just can't believe that "Breathe Deeper" is a longer song than "Apocalypse Dreams", nothing about that makes any sense.

I think possibly what made the project work early on is that there was a distinct evolution in the sound, but it's one that's been stagnating for a while now. In "The Slow Rush", I hear a lot of clues towards where "Deadbeat" ended up going, and I'm not even sure it's moved into a much worse place, just that there's no intrigue to be tapped from it. Maybe that's why I liked the earlier singles the most, and haven't really fallen over in love with any of the tracks from these last two albums. I have to make that specific version of the comment because technically there's still a future non-album track that will appear in one of the 354 positions above this one, maybe that's my saving grace to think that I'm not capable of enjoying another new Tame Impala song any more than this one. I don't like to rag on things too much, but when I see Tame Impala having international success as I write this, it's the song in the chart that's most desperately begging me with pleas of 'You must like this one, right?', and it's just such a wasted bid.

At least for the span of "Breathe Deeper", I can meet it at its level. It's an attempt to fuse the strange odyssey Tame Impala with the pop song structure Tame Impala. I'm not entirely sure it actually works (the last 75 seconds just hits you unexpectedly like a brick), but there are definitely components on both sides of the scale that I can find myself nodding along to.

#354. Big Shaq - Man's Not Hot (#51, 2017)

36th of 2017

I wish I could selfishly re-order this list for the means of telling a coherent story, because this feels like Part 3 of the long, rippling waves that resulted from Kanye West performing "All Day" at the BRIT Awards in 2015. Maybe I'll reheat it at a later date, but the short version of it is that Stormzy was on stage for that performance, prior to him being a hitmaker of any measure. He had surprise success later that year when he managed to send a freestyle single into the UK top 20, and before long, he'd be topping charts on the regular.

This all ran somewhat parallel to comedian Michael Dapaah, the man better known to many as Big Shaq. He and Stormzy go way back, which is why you can actually catch him in the video for "WickedSkengMan 4" hyping Stormzy up. It was all setting the stage for a new era of UK grime & drill to come out firing. The early success of Stormzy indicated there was a genuine audience for it, despite it having difficulty winning over more conservative tastemaker ideals.

Something funny happened in 2017 though. Michael Dapaah was on BBC Radio 1Xtra for Charlie Sloth's 'Fire in the Booth' segment. Generally it's a space that's housed many genuine MCs, many on their road to stardom (I'm now learning Nines had a hugely popular one back in 2013). Michael Dapaah was here for novelty purposes, presenting himself as his character Big Shaq. Big Shaq is an exaggerated version of a roadman. The whole interview and the freestyle contained within it went viral, and resulted in the freestyle being turned into a properly released song. As a 4 minute music video is easier to pass along than a 22 minute radio interview, the song went even more viral with hundreds of millions of views. Check the statistics, Americans who know nothing about UK drill will know this song. It's to drill, what "Gangnam Style" was to K-Pop at the time: a blatant novelty that appears genuine once the regional context is taken away. This had a peculiar effect. All of a sudden, it became a massive hit that completely surpassed everything adjacent to its genre. Stormzy made his first Hottest 100 appearance in 2017 but he was still easily surpassed by Big Shaq (he'd do better in subsequent years). The face of the scene became a comedian making jokes about how vital his jacket is regardless of the weather.

As it tends to be the case, the studio version lacks some of the spontaneity of the original freestyle. What it does manage to retain is some of the most memorably stupid jokes, which is what mattered the most in the long run. Just being the song with 'the ting goes' would be enough to set it for life, but we've also got '...quick maths' and 'your dad is 44'. Somehow never noticed him bragging that one of his friends has a pump action shotgun, and that his other friend has a frisbee, complete with a frisbee sound effect. There's something so satisfying about all the threatening aspects of his life mixed in with the more mundane elements, as if we're seeing all the facets of someone who really doesn't have a lot going for them. I don't think it's true, but I really want to believe that this song got the ball rolling for the phrase 'got the sauce'.

The problem with anything like this is that once something cracks its initial audience wide open, it's likely to end up in front of people missing the initial context and taking it all literally. In the case of "Man's Not Hot", I'll admit I had trouble discerning how much criticism came from the novelty nature of the song, or if it was just an extension of the form it was sending up (akin to disliking "Blazing Saddles" because of either its language or if you don't like westerns). It got frustrating though because it made the song one of the biggest beacons of disapproval.

This happens during the Hottest 100 for any novelty song. I might have done it myself in the past, a symptom of taking it all too seriously. Despite the many, many hours I've put into this project, I implore everyone to not take the Hottest 100 very seriously. The whole countdown exists as an antithesis of that way of thinking. When Lawrie Zion first conceived it, it was in reaction to the tired punditry on music history that rewarded a certain perspective on it. The idea that it would be more interesting to see what the public likes the most, rather than be told again that "Stairway to Heaven" is the greatest song ever written. Public opinion can do some very interesting things that counter what would be considered good taste, and it's inherently interesting for it. I will never get tired of the fact that the first time this countdown became an annual poll, the winning song was Denis Leary's crass spoken-word track "Asshole", beating out some soon to be legendary band that I'll probably have to force some words out of myself about in the future. That's the spirit of the Hottest 100 there, and it lives through every goofy novelty song that comes through. They're entries that are doomed to be dated very quickly, but they can be a vital barometer of the times, often more so than whatever safe songs are playing to proven trends. I guess I think about "Bevan the Musical" more than I think about "Heaven Coming Down" (maybe Pete could've used that one as well). "Man's Not Hot" has just made an undeniable mark on the world. As Big Shaq would say, 'you done know'.

#353. Flume - Slugger 1.4 [2014 Export.WAV] (#50, 2022)

32nd of 2022

2022 feels like a strange identity crisis year for the Flume brand. On the surface, it's a massive success. Topping that year's poll with one of what are effectively 4 entries for Flume. "Say Nothing" (#472) is doing a lot to hide the cracks, particularly with regard to the album he put out that year. Maybe asking for more is greedy, but I'm always struck by the fact that "Say Nothing" was the only song on that album to actually poll. The rest of Flume's entries came from a novelty (#387), mercenary work (#677), and...whatever this is. There is an answer to that but I'll delay it a little more.

I think more than anything, we're highlighting the difference between 2012 Flume and 2022 Flume. Somewhere along the way, he scored massive success by leaning into the game (whether intentionally or not), but he didn't let that take over his creative decisions. Maybe he'd still release the occasional single that fed into something similar on the surface, but on the skeletal structure, we're looking at a very different collection of work. It's all those intense glitchy sounds you hear, you'd never mistake Flume circa "Palaces" for any other point in time.

It's created a situation where you've got two kinds of Flume listeners, the ones from before, and the ones from way before. Neither are really being served to the fullest with the new music, and what better way to show this than have a new Flume song that's really an old Flume song. "Slugger 1.4" was released for the 10th anniversary version of his debut album "Flume". Technically it's a little later than that, but it certainly sounds like that era of Flume. It's even got a slight bit of guest vocals from a singer you'd probably associate with that era, but it's a slightly later entry that's stopping me from saying her name.

It is an amusing circumstance when nostalgia tries to create new memories. You're probably banking more on nostalgia than you're willing to believe. It's like how there's that deleted scene from Season 8 of The Simpsons, which should be solid gold because we're in the right era, but it's just a bit weird and doesn't fit. I wouldn't really put "Slugger 1.4" in that same boat though. If anything it almost proves its own point. It might not be teeming with memorable hooks in the same way as "Holdin On" or "On Top", but it does transport you back to a time that you haven't visited in a while. It has me thinking that I like his new old stuff better than his old new stuff.

#352. Skepta - Shutdown (#68, 2015)

42nd of 2015

So anyway as I was saying, back in 2015, Kanye West performed "All Day" at the BRIT Awards. It's pretty memorable, to the point that it has more views than the normal version of the song. It's got multiple flamethrowers so you know they're cooking with gas. At first I start wondering if one of the flamethrowers isn't working, until it finally gets a turn, but then at the end of the song they seem to have run out. I want to learn more about the flamethrowers. The performance also has more cuts to Taylor Swift in the audience than the average Chiefs game. Anyway, at the end of the performance, Kanye West shouts out Skepta specifically, who is probably on the stage but in a large crowd I don't think the camera operator knows where to look. He's the one who was responsible for the large ensemble, and is another artist that has decided to speak about it on record. I too, cannot wait until I land on another Stormzy song and tell this story again from a slightly different perspective. I love the version of "Rashomon" that exists in my head.

"Shutdown" features a brief skit that references this, with what sounds like a British woman being interviewed on TV to say that she's not fond of the performance. It sounds genuine enough that I thought it might have been an actual vox populi, but it seems to have just been created for the song. I suppose it's hard to convey a bunch of angry tweets which is where the commentary mostly sat. If it didn't already live on through another 2015 song (I know I don't have to censor it, shut up), it's immortalising the moment by being part of one of the biggest grime songs of all time, from what might have been an unlikely source once upon a time.

I don't know if everyone knows about this, but Skepta's rap career goes back much further than "Shutdown". He had his first UK chart hit as far back as early 2009, with a cheesy sample of "Sunglasses At Night". He followed it up with a cheesy sample of "Born Slippy .NUXX", later on he'd do a cheesy sample of "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)", you get the idea. You'd never think from this that he'd be a pioneer for a huge genre of the 2010s. I'm of course talking about dubstep. You'll get a lot of people pointing to the success of "I Need Air" by Magnetic Man, and "Katy On A Mission" by Katy B, but Skepta got in before both of them when "Rescue Me" became his first top 20 hit. In general though, Skepta made pop rap. He's still showing the same intensity that he'd make into his brand later on, but then some Nelly & Flo Rida raps also go hard, no one's expecting them to step out of their lane.

He wasn't gone for long, but Skepta came back in 2014 and completely reinvented himself on "That's Not Me", a song he released with his brother JME. Maybe on the surface, it's just another gimmick, but you can instantly hear an evolved version of Skepta on this track. It no longer feels like he's just dropping mindless hype lyrics, and feels like he's got something to prove. True, he used to be a bit different, but that's not him.

"Shutdown" comes along a year later and it's a bit of a victory lap (but not "Victory Lap", that's way later). You might have thought, reading that previous paragraph, that you've heard "That's Not Me" before. Maybe you have, or maybe you're thinking of all the times Skepta says the title again in "Shutdown", it's like he's evolved a second layer of the punchline. It might not be quite as inventive the second time around, but it sure is fortunate that the song goes so hard. You won't believe just how tempting it was to try and end every sentence of this entry with 'and it's shutdown', but there are limits to how many rocks you drop in the stream of consciousness before it becomes a dam.

Also I should probably mention that Drake is sampled at the start of this song, being embarrassing with his use of patois as he's known to do. On its own, it's pretty funny, but in this context, it's rolling out the red carpet for his first proper Hottest 100 appearance. He did appear as a guest artist on a posse cut in 2013, we just have to gradually lower the number of rappers who need to be alongside him for him to appear. If you can choose to ignore 2025, then the number would end up going back up again in the future.

#351. Miike Snow - Genghis Khan (#15, 2016)

40th of 2016

I'm making myself write this down so I don't forget it. Kublai Khan is the grandson of Genghis Khan, not the other way around. It's spiked me so many times in the past. My rule of thumb when trying to organise history correctly is that the further back in time you go, the more notable you need to be, in order to be remembered, and vice versa. When in doubt, I use this rule, which along with common sense, generally works, but has its shortcomings. How did I know it was grandson and not son? That's just the beauty of memory, sometimes we flawlessly remember half of the password, enough to earn modest credit, not enough to convert that Daily Double or get the coordinates from the French 75.

Miike Snow is three guys. I don't know if that's a revelation but if you're mostly used to just hearing the name, it feels like an understandable mistake to make. They're a rare band where every member has some claim to fame. Andrew Wyatt pops up from time to time on other people's songs, as well as writing some pretty notable ones as well (that song about the explosive device with a pin must get him some pretty nice royalties). Then you've got Bloodshy & Avant as the other two members, they've got a huge catalogue of hits but it tends to be best to just mention that they produced "Toxic" by Britney Spears, making them pretty untouchable. Bloodshy also doubles as a hitmaker on his own, now the sole member of Galantis. Even if this cuddly jackalope band is rarely in your periphery, you're probably hearing their music all the time.

It makes it easier to see how they won the hitmaker lottery at the time. Without all of this, you'd have no reason to think that "Animal" was a sign of future greatness. I did buy into the hype myself though, inexplicably, their album track/bonus track (depending on where you live) "Billie Holiday" is just one of my favourite songs ever. I'll keep saying it for anyone who'd listen. A song that's sinister and intense with some neat production ideas that revealed a lot more to the project than I might have otherwise thought. It's all part of a through line with 2011's "Devil's Work" and 2012's "Paddling Out", songs that feed off each other's ideas.

I'm not sure "Genghis Khan" follows suit. It was a difficult sell for me initially. Seeing a band constantly on the fringe go from that to suddenly scoring a top 50 hit will have you asking questions. For me, it was things in the nature of 'What are these weird sounds he's making between the verses and lines?' or 'Why would anyone compare themselves to Genghis Khan?'. He sounds like a very controlling person. At least he left out the bit about the eyes of the children of another man.

Over the years, I've warmed up to it a bit. There's a novel appreciation I've found with just how many conversations I've ended up in that end up quoting or referencing this song, not even by me most of the time. It might not have the grand scale and ambition of some other Miike Snow songs, but it's a punchy little treat, and it seems to be how most people saw it, given that this surprise crossover hit did very little in the way of converting to album sales. They actually performed considerably worse than the one before it.