#110-#106

#110. Billie Eilish - bad guy (#1, 2019)

8th of 2019

Listen

Where to start with this one? Well, one tidbit I love to share with anyone who will listen is that this is perhaps the most uniquely Australian song to ever top the poll, apart from "Elephant" (#730). In an interview with Rolling Stone, Billie & FINNEAS revealed that part of the instrumental to "bad guy" comes from pedestrian crossings in Sydney. Billie excitedly pressed the button as we all did at some point in our lives to hear the slow beeping sound. She started recording it, and got spooked when it suddenly changed to the faster 'You can walk now' beeps. I would love to teach more people the fact that you can very audibly hear it in the song, right after she says 'duh'. Until the release of "HIT ME HARD AND SOFT", I believe this contribution (which was actually cleaned up by FINNEAS) was Billie's only production credit in her discography. Later on, their dad was excitedly talking about the same traffic signal only to be informed that it's in their song. This is also obviously the most important retort to the notion that Billie Eilish doesn't care about Australia. This same idea was also used a few months later by Polish Club on the title track to their album "Iguana". Of all things to get beaten to the punch on.

"bad guy" has also created history in many ways. We took our time getting there, but it was the first Hottest 100 winner by a solo female artist, something that's happened for the past 3 years in a row now. On the charts, Billie Eilish was the first artist born in the 21st century to get a #1 single (in Australia, and also America). She set a new standard for chart domination on album release when she managed 6 songs in the top 10 on that week, a record that stood for a surprisingly long time. She was also the first artist to ever debut at #1 in Australia on both single & album charts at the same time, something we might take for granted nowadays (Taylor Swift has done this 7 times). We got a little preview to this inevitability very early on. Australia's Spotify charts are a little wonky because their synced up with UK time zones, and that means streams on a Wednesday morning will count to the Tuesday's chart (I have no idea how ARIA adjusts this information, if they even do). Something I don't think I'd seen before is that after releasing her album on a Friday, Billie Eilish started peppering the Thursday Spotify chart with tracks already, including "bad guy" at #50. This only works for albums that were released at midnight Australia time (which can be touch & go for big stars), but it's proven to be a reliable preview for impending impact. These successes tend to be based just on initial curiosity, but I find it interesting sometimes how quickly people have been known to pick out the hits and run with it (I would be lying by omission though, if I didn't acknowledge that "bad guy" was immediately pushed as the focus song).

I do unfortunately, have to slightly discredit the success of this song (in America, at least). The week it was released corresponded with the beginning of the 19 week reign for Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" on the Billboard Hot 100. This was a reign that lasted so long that it put a stop to so many potential The Number Ones columns. At one point in time it had 7 songs blocked from the top spot, running for so long it took down two potential Taylor Swift chart toppers. Two of those songs did eventually get to #1, "Señorita" by Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello, and also "bad guy". The only problem is that "bad guy", the track we all know and love didn't really get there on its own. There was obviously a concerted push to get it to #1 in America, thinking something new had to get there eventually. Looking back on discussion at the time, it was wholly expected that "Old Town Road" was poised for a 20th week at #1, though I suppose prediction tools have gotten a little better since then. What I did learn is that on the last day of that tracking week, "bad guy" had a limited cassette release, and also a vertical video to buff its numbers on Spotify, two classic techniques.

It also had a remix. You might possibly remember it as it was noteworthy at the time. Billie Eilish channelled her inner Belieber and got Justin Bieber onto the song. She's very open about how much of a fan she was growing up so it feels very genuine, though it's also the exact kind of marketing decision that screams of pure fluff to bolster chart positions. It seemed to be pretty universally panned at the time, but it did maintain some decent numbers for a while. This remix came out a few weeks before it went to #1, but I feel confident in saying that it wouldn't have gone to #1 in America without it. This very deliberate, forced week at #1 is to date, the only week Billie Eilish has ever spent at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It would be unfair to not acknowledge that she was largely being held off #1 by Lil Nas X with thanks to him also aggressively using tactics to maintain this, so it really is a race to the bottom. Justin Bieber also had one of those songs that were blocked from the top spot by Lil Nas X so maybe on that level, it's a little gratifying, but he's not actually credited for the #1 single anyway.

With all that in mind, it's hard to say that this single and its success don't represent a sea change in popular music. It's Billie bridging the gap somewhat. At this point in her career, her music didn't really get much of a run on commercial radio, and it still largely wouldn't for a while, but "bad guy" was the big exception. When they wanted to hitch up their wagon to this rising star, "bad guy" was the song you could play. When she swept the major categories of the GRAMMYs in the following year, "bad guy" was the song you could be familiar with if you weren't that invested. It's still largely within the bounds of what she'd always been doing at this point, but with a well pronounced bass line and some sticky vocal & production hooks every step of the way, it made for a neat little package. An artist statement if you will. This is what your kids are into nowadays, time to get used to it.

#109. Birds of Tokyo - Brace (#100, 2016)

15th of 2016

Listen

I thought there was a minor bit of folklore attached to this song but I've been sorely mistaken and I suspect you have been too. When the Hottest 100 is taking place, triple j have tended to post the songs one at a time on social media as they happen. This has led to some occasional gaffes when posts go off too early, or things like that. It wasn't always like this, because until 2015, they'd do most of the list with ten songs at a time, allowing people to focus on their favourites among the relative also-rans before going one at a time for the big top 20. From 2016 onwards, they went with one song at a time, which creates a peculiar situation where most people are now being inundated with individual posts for songs they don't especially feel strongly about (usually). Poster brain activates, but how does one possibly process all this information? The solution was simple: Turn it all into a meme.

If you want to be hyper-critical, you can witness the decline of cordial interactions with media through this shifting landscape. What might have started as just playing around in the concept, devolved into distraction, ('Don't let this distract you from [something that happened during the cricket]'), and then into disdain. Before that though, there was a vote of frustrated positivity through the most famous example of this that has since been permanently etched into our language. A guy named Ben who just wrote 'Ya joking shoulda been higher' under every single entry, building up to the final punchline under the #1 song (#400) 'Ya joking, should have been Daryl Braithwaite - The Horses'. All just a bit of fun at the time, made worse by everyone trying desperately to become the next Ben, but I have to shock you to your core right now because Ben didn't actually post it under every song. He only gets started with Thundamentals' "Think About It" (#829) at #82. I prepared to go into this post for months under the notion that at #100, "Brace" by Birds of Tokyo was the origin of this meme, but I guess it turns out that Ben was either content with its placing, or thought it should have been lower, same going for the next 17 songs.

My history with Birds of Tokyo is fairly long. It starts in 2007, when I recall seeing an interview with them on jtv. Maybe the name stood out to me because I was quite interested in learning Japanese at the time, and also it was interesting because they were something of a Perth super group. There's another tangent to this probably, you'd think. In any case, they had some songs on the radio I tended to like, "Black Sheets" and "Wayside" were the main ones. I actually had a real favourite in "Off Kilter" but I didn't know the name of it until there was a promotion on triple j for a Birds of Tokyo Live At The Wireless set that used the song, and I had to look into it just to discover what the 'so long, see you in good time' song was. They were making a name for themselves and got into the Hottest 100. The big leap came when they very quickly followed up their debut album with another one, "Universes". Despite the quite turn around and the usual problems that's known to have, the album was very popular, and I suspect most will tell you it's their best one. I possibly would as well. I found myself endorsing the album very heavily without having heard it, because no less than 6 songs on the album because triple j staples. "Silhouettic" and "Broken Bones" are the big two, but you know you were listening to triple j in late 2008 if you also heard "White Witch" an obscene number of times. If there was any hesitation to the brand for me early on, then I was all-in from this point. They were rivalled only by Muse & Gyroscope as my favourite band at the time, and were probably winning at one stage.

Things develop drastically in 2010. It's mostly business as usual at first, they put out a new single, I'm obsessed with it, and it actually gets onto the lower half of the ARIA Chart, a first for the band. Otherwise, I don't think that single really moved the needle as much as it just represented the new standard for them with a more established fanbase. The real big moment was the album's second single, "Plans". That song went gangbusters for them. It spent a very long time on the ARIA Chart and was pretty unlucky not to reach the top 10 on multiple genuine attempts, making it one of the biggest ever hits to stall at #11 at the time. From here on, the discourse around the band changed a bit. Birds of Tokyo were a pretty steady-going alternative rock band that I don't think caused too much of a stir for those who weren't into them, but the success of "Plans" seemed to turn them into pariahs. I have to give the song credit because it has such an unusual arrangement for a pop hit, and doesn't really have a chorus. I always want to compare it to R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" in that regard, though maybe it's because that song also peaked at #11. But it's also a song that sands down some of the band's edges and would end up getting extremely overplayed. This was coupled with the reception for the band's self-titled album that it came with (which I've never really understood, it feels like a hyper-focus on some softer songs and not crediting the whole thing).

Things only get worse with their next album, which gives the band their biggest hit, "Lanterns" (#662). Birds of Tokyo scored a massive hit, had their first #1 album, and became commercial radio darlings for several years. All this together and they've been a laughingstock ever since. I never know how much I can trust this because I just know deep down that I've been listening to Birds of Tokyo longer than most people, and I shaped my opinion on them through different material, and under different circumstances. Maybe if I'd only started hearing them from "Plans" to present, I'd also feel that way, but I'm not certain. I don't always have loyalty to the bands I listened to when I was much younger, but here it just rings too strongly. I thought there were some singles coming from the band in more recent years I was happy to ignore. To quote Jack Black in High Fidelity, is it in fact unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter-day sins?

In any case, we saw similar things happen with a lot of bands in this time frame. They'd storm out the gate, save rock to some extent, and then decide to mellow out as they get older. Their fans would lose their mind, demanding for them to rock again, and bands would largely ignore this call. The unsatisfying answer to this tends to be that for all the hot air that comes about from this, these same complainers don't seem to turn up when the sun is shining. If these bands decided they'll rock again, they won't get those fans back for the most part. Birds of Tokyo did it, after all.

It's hard to get a good read on this because we rarely get the necessarily detailed information in the long term, and very few albums get certified nowadays. My suspicion though is that "BRACE", the 2016 Birds of Tokyo album where they suddenly sounded louder & darker than perhaps ever before, is also their least successful album. I don't want to knock it, or them for making it, but I just feel like it's another chapter that doesn't have much in the way of exposure, so again if Birds of Tokyo are just that boring/annoying band on the radio, then their not-for-radio album is not going to move the dial because you'll never hear it. It's somewhat miraculous that they have a song here for their troubles, though they did only just sneak in.

In any case, catch me on a good day and I might say "BRACE" is their best album. For all the praise I'm willing to heap, I won't deny that every album has a handful of songs that I don't ever really go out of my way for. They're very much a singles band for me, where the term 'single' can be expanded into any random album highlight they have in their pocket because every now and then they'll just inexplicably include a song like "White Leaves" on the back end of an album. "BRACE" is just the very solid set of songs that isn't overstuffed and also just all goes well together. Only "Empire" sounds a little out of place because it feels like something from their next album just with louder drums, almost like it's a contingency plan to make sure there's something resembling a single here.

Instead, the attention goes to the title track, and that seems very valid to me. It's a massive return statement that's saying they can make music like this again if they want to. In saying that though, it still doesn't really fit in with their older stuff because it's just so stuffed with distortion and pounding riffs. No critical retribution to brace for though, and now the only time I see Birds of Tokyo brought up is in an increasingly nostalgic 'Wow what were we/they thinking?' way, or to be put down with regard to Ian Kenny's other band. I will talk about that band in the future, brace for that.

#108. Calvin Harris (feat Frank Ocean & Migos) - Slide (#37, 2017)

14th of 2017

Listen

It's been twelve times. Twelve times I evoked this Scottish DJ in the lead up to finally reaching his only appearance on this list. Maybe there's an alternate version of history where something like "Summer" is part of this and the whole bit never came up. Just in general he's had such a solid run here that it's strange that this is the only one from the time frame. In the meantime he was busy being one of the biggest stars on the planet. I mean that literally because he's very tall. I wanted to acknowledge when Something For Kate covered him (#630), it was one of the tallest cover versions of all time.

On the surface, "Slide" is just another hit for Calvin Harris. Honestly I might be setting up a bell curve meme where that's the low & high IQ response to this, but let's try to look at things objectively. Calvin Harris has stealthily been a good album seller in the past. I'd see him dismissed as a singles artist, and that's probably still how a lot of people liked him as well, but the reality of it is that many artists you wouldn't think capable of getting whole album purchases, did so with gusto. Mostly off the back of two very big hits, LMFAO managed to keep an album in the top 10 in Australia for half a year (this is before streaming). Flo Rida just kept selling even beyond the first album curiosity factor, stuff like that.

Calvin Harris managed here by sheer persistence. His album "18 Months" is stuffed in a way that Greatest Hits packages often can't manage. In the UK, that album had 9 different top 10 hits in the exceptional sense. We're not looking at brief splashes for the stat sheet; they were genuine crossover hits and most of them peaked at #1 or #2. When you've got that many hits, you can make for one hell of a sticker in the record store and it's probably enough to get people past the 'yeah but am I going to like the other songs on it?' hesitation.

This is not really a sustainable business model. Crossover hits are increasingly hard to come by. Calvin Harris's next album "Motion" also came stuffed with some hits that he'd accumulated leading up to it, but much less once the whole thing was out. If not for a surprise top 10 bolter in "Pray To God", it probably would've slipped out of the charts after just a couple of months. It's possible that he was hurt by the transition period to streaming, which started seriously eating into the album market around 2014, but wouldn't actually contribute to the charts until 2017. These kinds of albums would be monsters on the charts in the current age. The very direct evidence we have to this is that his latest album, "96 Months", basically a compilation of all his hits of the last decade, has been locked on the chart for about 2 years now just accumulating streams.

In any case, Calvin Harris was never an artist who generated much discussion over his albums. Almost like it's not something to take seriously when they're glorified compilations. That might not be the truth of it, but it's hard to shake it when so many of your songs are just a vessel for whomever you roped in for a hit single at the time.

"Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1" feels like it was made to challenge this notion. I don't know if there's a singular factor that does it. Making the whole album a singular intent to explore a different sound is a good start, leaning on Frank Ocean's credibility is another one, or maybe it's all just as simple as making a single that jumps past the novel curiosity into something that's actually really good. All that together and you've earnt a whole lot of trust and good will that wasn't there previously. I never listened to Calvin Harris's older albums, but I did put this one on and enjoyed it quite a bit. Helps that it's also a pretty brisk length. The album only really had one other major hit in "Feels" (I think "Rollin" is very underrated though), but all things considered, performed pretty well on the charts. Not actually as well as the albums before it, but given the severely reduced budget of hits, you can take that as a win. When he released a Volume 2 five years later without much in the way of hits, it was basically persona non grata in the charts. The sheer difference that "Slide" brings to the table. I'm listening to Volume 2 right now and it's mostly unfamiliar to me but still a pretty fun time. It's a mix of chill instrumentals I've grown very fond of, like city pop with some groove. My point of reference is always the soundtrack to the idiosyncratic video game Paradise Killer (another murder mystery!). Really feels like you're moving around an enormous empty world to pick up pointless trinkets.

Anyway I haven't been meaning to ignore the Migos but I didn't have a good way to get into them here. They're another point to Calvin Harris's favour because the timing could hardly be better. Migos had spent several years being 'notable' without much to show for it, but in late 2016 they had a massive boon. They released a single whose featured artist will eventually appear on this list. The memetic appeal of Offset's commanding verse in combination with that featured artist's incomprehensible contribution meant that in an era of short attention spans, this nearly 6 minute song managed to thrive, becoming a Billboard #1 hit. Migos were no longer speculatory, they were genuine hit makers, and they rode this momentum for several years. Aside from Quavo constantly turning up on pop hits, they didn't really ever change their tune to fit in. In 2022, Takeoff was killed in a shooting and the group respectfully disbanded.

With that big Migos breakthrough, it's just perfect timing for everyone involved. Frank Ocean is also something of a speculative artist at this time. Incredibly popular, but not really scoring hits because he self-sabotages most chances of that ever happening. It's a worthwhile tour de force for everyone here. Calvin Harris's instrumental working perfectly with Frank Ocean's slow singing and the faster Migos flow. At the end of the day, it really is just another hit for Calvin Harris, but one that opened up everyone's perception for him to switch things up, and trust the process.

#107. The xx - On Hold (#20, 2016)

15th of 2016

Listen

When I was younger, I just made the declaration to myself that Daryl Hall & John Oates were demonstrably uncool. It might have been because of the name or image. I wasn't knowingly aware of any of their songs, and that could've been a factor too. To have no enduring songs is to be locked in the '70s and '80s. This perspective took a very long time to change, mainly because I continued to not hear any of their songs or look into it. The xx didn't really change it either because I never checked out the song being sampled here. Instead it was years of watching "You Make My Dreams (Come True)" slowly put itself into the conversation, slowly bubbling on the sales charts, and then even more surprisingly, the streaming charts. If the kids can listen to Daryl Hall & John Oates, maybe I can too.

Nevertheless, my opinion has completely flipped. Now I just get weirdly excited whenever I hear any of their songs anywhere. They've just got so many bangers. There was a lengthy period of time where I would watch that one 'Out of Touch Thursday' post every week. It's getting to the point where my kiss is probably on their list. They know you're listening, they've got those private eyes, watching you. Anyway, it's "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)" that's being sampled here. As a very 'chorus first' kind of song to recall for me, it feels so jarring hearing the segments of the song that have been sampled on "On Hold". That, if nothing else, is proof that The xx got to me first. Perhaps for other people, this perspective is completely flipped. There's not often much weirder than hearing a sample of a song you know incredibly well.

"On Hold" was the answer to something speculatory for me. Previously, The xx had leveraged what was to me, strongly unsung popularity on their first album that largely manifested through strong last.fm popularity. When the second album came out, they proved it to be the case when the largely radio unfriendly "Angels" became a top 50 hit in Australia. This was only half of the puzzle though, because behind these strong sales were even stronger streaming numbers. The xx's second album was one of those albums that took over the streaming charts when it came out, but since this still wasn't factored into the charts, it didn't show anywhere.

By the time the third album by The xx came out, this was part of the equation. In an era that was largely pushing aside previous safe bet artists, The xx felt to me like an artist that could make the transition. My faith was rewarded as they went from barely making the top 50 in 2012 to just barely making the top 50 in 2016, only they got a little bit higher this time and stuck the landing. The two songs ended up one apart in both ARIA peaks and Hottest 100 positions, but in opposite directions, so they really nailed the mission of making another strong lead single. The band fell out of favour with voters when triple j did their Hottest 100 of the Decade, so I couldn't really see which song fared better, though I suspect "Angels" has the right age profile to do it.

"On Hold" was just another very agreeable single by The xx. If I take one thing away from it, it's that after two albums of sounding and looking generally miserable, "On Hold" feels like a bit of a rebrand. Now they're sad with a beat. I feel like a big part of the group's evolution has been seeing the lead singers get more comfortable with doing their part. That awkward wallflower feeling replaced with a confident doubt. For Jamie xx, I feel like it takes a lot of guts to make your chorus be roughly 30 seconds of someone else's more famous song, but it's vocal chopping that fits in very well with the song's own production. I can in fact, go for that.

#106. Billie Eilish - my future (#79, 2020)

5th of 2020

Listen

I presume for many who follow charts and things of that nature, part of the fun in the game is getting to pick and choose what you want to positively acknowledge, to put in your retinue as a winning contribution. Everyone picks their own set, and then we can remark on the different choices being made, seems fun. There is, however, an inherent power scale imbalance that's written into the whole thing. Whatever gets really popular, that's the consensus. A lot of people think that it's good. Anything that falls a little short, that's going to be a harder sell.

It has a strange psychological effect to it. My head tells me that everyone is genuine in their opinions and it's as simple as that, but my heart sometimes wants to intervene. There's this feeling that when something doesn't make a big impression in the first place, there's just no reason to give it credit. It might even be discouraged, so as not to hitch your wagon up to a failing brand. I always feel like the material should speak for itself, and lesser success can be compounded from a promotional perspective, but sometimes I just feel wronged by the consensus.

I really enjoy "my future". It's always been a big favourite of mine. So often though, I've just seen it discarded. It's just a loose single was eventually included on an album but wasn't part of the promotional cycle for it (and in fairness, it's her least successful album), which doesn't help it. It's one of many songs of hers that debuted high on the charts and immediately nosedived. Its lifetime streaming numbers are actually fairly solid, but on the low end for a Billie Eilish single. I just keep seeing it written off and can't get my head around that. This just feels so self-evident as a great single and launching point between her first two albums.

Okay though, I will contend that I perhaps have a stronger inclination to it than most because it just hits the right spot for me. It starts off a little slow for the first half, but the beat kicks in and reveals the truth of the song all along. It's just secretly been a late '90s Morcheeba song. Getting to that very respectful drumming is just part of the process.

#115-#111

#115. Violent Soho - Kamikaze (#78, 2022)

6th of 2022

Listen

I think it's a classic example of not getting enough time to simmer, but I feel like the top ends of the 2020s lists for my personal preference just get a little weird. It's also a consequence of my music taste drifting elsewhere, and rather than being a reasonably encompassing experience of it, it feels like I'm just picking out the few workable scraps that stuck along for the ride. I look at the 2023 list and I think "Stockholm" by DICE is like my 2nd or 3rd favourite song on that list. Doesn't feel right, but I don't know what I'm supposed to put ahead of it. This is how I feel when I arrive on the Violent Soho song that is absolutely serviceable and doing what it needs to do, but feels so inconsequential all the same. I don't punish songs for lacking cultural impact, so here we are at the pointy end with...'which one was this again?', you might say.

There's even an argument to be made that "Kamikaze" has gotten even more irrelevant in 2026. Its one standout claim to fame was that it basically signalled the end of Violent Soho. They announced they were going on hiatus and left us with this last single. Earlier this year, they must have realised I needed more content for this one so two of the band members joined Mark Hoppus on stage, where he let slip that the band would be coming back together. Now they're gearing up for one of those classic 'Australian tour but only those 3 cities' that the internet loves so much. "Kamikaze" is still their last single, but there's every chance it also becomes their LCD Soundsystem at Madison Square Garden moment.

I touched on it a bit with the last entry (#122), but Violent Soho are not really a band that play by the modern script of hit making. If you try to look at them that way, you might be disappointed with "Kamikaze" for lacking bells and whistles. What it does have is one classic riff that goes into another classic riff, then overlays that classic riff and gets followed by a third classic riff. It's also got some solid action 'oh yeah', they sure know how to write a cliche song and get me to scream it.

#114. Lorde - Yellow Flicker Beat (#18, 2014)

15th of 2014

Listen

The main thing you need to know about "Yellow Flicker Beat" is that it was released as the lead single to the 3rd film in The Hunger Games franchise. These soundtracks tended to get some fairly notable names even if they didn't always translate to big crossover hits. There was a bit of weirdness to how it turned out though. Big team ups like Taylor Swift & Coldplay could net minor hits, while the real chart dominance came via the 3rd movie's score and "The Hanging Tree". There was also eventually big success for Sia's "Elastic Heart" though not the version from the soundtrack. Lorde was part of this as well, "Yellow Flicker Beat" roughly following the "Magnets" (#116) tiering of success in different countries. It did feel like competing elements of the major film sync up, Lorde's profile and the song being very catchy, coming at odds with the song not really sounding like a hit in the year 2014. It's a bit like when James Bond & Twilight were making "Another Way To Die" and "Meet Me On The Equinox" into minor hits.

For a long time, The Hunger Games was a big blind spot of mine, and I couldn't really tell how much of it was just me being the wrong demographic or not. In many regards, it inherited a lot of its reputation from Twilight as a monster YA novel with films coming out every year to massive success. That also meant that it seemed to come with the same backlash, readily dismissed as fodder for teenage girls and abundantly without merit because the kinds of people who dislike it on the outset will find any and all reason to point out its shortcomings. Not just bad because of a gut reaction conceptually, but objectively flawed in a way that makes you very smart for pointing that out and staying away from it.

I was content to stay away from reading Twilight because it clearly wasn't for me (though a few years ago I watched every single film, I wasn't overly fond of it but it doesn't ire me). The Hunger Games was different because it did genuinely interest me. Maybe romance wasn't necessarily my calling card, but we're talking about a story that's centred around a bunch of teenagers being forced into a fight to the death. That's surprisingly morbid for something aimed at teenagers, and it's also surprisingly in my wheelhouse. Strap yourself in.

I'm going to feel stupid for saying this because I just saw a post that was mocking this mentality, but I find death to be a very interesting trope in media (though in fairness, some examples I provide will also be evidence to say that I'm very okay with stories that meander and simmer in the moment). There's a permanence to this. A character that may have had some contribution to the story prior to this moment is immediately cut off. They're no longer actively moving the plot, and everyone else around them has to re-shape things around the fact that they're not there. If you re-experience the story, you do it knowing that they're a ticking time bomb, just filling out their role before it's cut off, and potentially not directly impacting the big climax. In reality, every character in the story is destined to die at some point, just that it usually would occur after the story is complete. It leaves things open ended, while if you don't make it to the happily ever after, your tale has been told.

More than this though, I think I'm drawn to things resembling elimination games. Taking a character, or two, or ten out of commission means more focus drawn to those who are left, potentially getting more to do, while also gaining a bigger target on their back as potentially the next to go. It probably starts with my interest as a child in the WWE. My favourite match was the Royal Rumble, where they'd get 30 wrestlers into the ring one by one and eliminate them by throwing them out until there's one left. The idea that no matter how battered and bruised they might end up, you know there's going to be a final person left, and it's exciting to see who that is. Slashers have a similar appeal though in those cases, the final survivor(s) are not always guaranteed. You still feel like you've 'won' in some regard if your favourite lasts the longest though. Reality TV competitions often work in the same way, just with eliminations instead of death.

On a similar tangent to this, I've long been interested in murder mystery stories. They appeal to the puzzling part of my brain, but they also provide an enticing premise: Someone in this cast of characters you've been introduced to will be killed off, and another person will be responsible. Maybe there's a strange cruelty to me in my fascination with reading or watching some otherwise normal people have their lives completely upended (my defence of this is that I do not care for true crime, too voyeuristic for me), but it's an extension of that notion of seeing how death changes circumstances suddenly.

What's strange about this is that I'm really having trouble working out when I got on board with this, because every example feels too late. It feels like there had to be something that came earlier, and that I'd have made more of a mental note at the time that it was something new for me. The first thing that comes to mind is the 2009 TV show Harper's Island, a murder mystery with an ensemble cast and the promised gimmick that someone gets killed off in every episode and someone else in the main cast is doing it. Strange cosmic coincidences meant that I ended up in the periphery of so many conversations & discussion groups about the show that my mental echo chamber insists to me that it was a very big deal and wasn't immediately cancelled due to poor ratings. Objectively, I don't even know if I could say it's very good, but it's such a core part of me that I cherish, and I lament that they never got a chance to do additional seasons/settings in order to potentially subvert the shortcomings.

It's a fix I've always been wanting to fill. I've read some Sherlock Holmes stories, I've read many Agatha Christie books, I also have very many more sitting on my shelf that I might just read if I wasn't currently spending my free time writing about them instead. They're good though and I find them to be an interesting exercise in seeing just how much variation can be done with the premise. When I pick a new one to read, I always go with the oldest one in my collection because I like the idea of an author having to subvert themselves over time to be less predictable. Like I can't believe how early Agatha Christie put out "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd". "And Then There Were None" is much later and that feels like a deliberate exercise in convincingly pulling off one of those death elimination stories, taking it to the natural conclusion and making it work. Wanting to see that pulled off is probably singlehandedly why I've read so many of them now, it's just a great hook.

I also accidentally stumbled into this world through my interest in visual novels (or adventure novels if you want to be more specific). It's a very accidental thing that I once made an absurd flowchart for, but the short version of it was that I liked the Professor Layton games (often for the story more than the puzzles that pulled me in initially) and I was told about the Zero Escape franchise on the Nintendo DS. Just a YouTuber I sometimes watched saying that it was like Professor Layton meets Saw (a franchise I hadn't actually watched yet at the time) and that was a funny enough pitch to pull me in. They're not strictly murder mysteries just because the scope is so much bigger, but they still hit the same itch. What's funny about it again is that I nearly backed out of it early on until someone I followed on Twitter started praising it (which itself is a crazy sequence of life events that led me to finding them) and that convinced me to dive back in and finish the game and its two sequels. I still wanted more.

Dive enough into the Zero Escape franchise and someone will mention its spiritual sister series Danganronpa. I assume most people who follow me are aware of it, but if you're not, it's a story where a bunch of super talented (read: quirky) high schoolers are trapped in a school and have to get away with murder to get out. If you've read this far, then you'd know that it could not be more of a no brainer and I loved almost every moment of it. Actually it was a nice bit of timing to discover it because the 3rd and thus far final mainline game in the series was due to be released later that year, and that's up there as probably the hardest I've ever binged a video game, as I cleared the whole ~60 hour story in the space of 3.5 days. It's a contentious one in the fanbase but it's definitely my favourite. Very much looking forward to 2X2 next year, though I'll probably moderate myself with that. Just playing these two series has turned me into someone who basically has to pay attention whenever these two writers do anything (they've since gone on to form their own studio together). Actually, I just had to quickly finish their latest game "SHUTEN ORDER", a multi-genre adventure game where you have to solve your own murder. A little rough around the edges but I can't fault the ambition. In hindsight, if there's one thing they've inherited from the Saw franchise, it's not the gore (though, yeah), but the penchant for absolutely ludicrous plot twists, and I can't get enough. I am fully convinced that the AI: The Somnium Files games (a goofy murder mystery with branching paths you create by exploring suspects' dreams) are built from the twist up.

The other dark horse in this whole conversation is the series I picked up while I was waiting for Danganronpa V3, which is the When They Cry series, specifically Higurashi & Umineko (I apologise to Ciconia, you did nothing wrong). On the surface, they're classic murder mystery stories. Higurashi is about a boy who moves to a small town whose annual festival is punctuated by someone getting murdered, and Umineko is about a rich family who meet up in their mansion on their island to dispute inheritance only for numerous murders to unfold, supposedly by a witch. Beyond that, they're so much more. Higurashi balances psychological horror (which was a new one for me) with commentary on the way children & outsiders are treated by institutions, while rounding it out as being a remarkably wholesome story about the power of friendship. One day I was so impressed with the chapter I had just read that I wrote an extensive review of it online (it's still on my Pastebin), which started another chain of events to helping me find some long term friends, which I'm eternally grateful for. Umineko feels like an enormous deconstruction of murder mysteries in general, getting you to look at them from every possible angle and then ask yourself what you're really trying to accomplish here. It's a story that's such an enormous undertaking (one of a few pieces of literature that are longer than this entire blog) but leaves a big impression on everyone who gets through it. The joke is that it makes people realise they're transgender, but for me, I was all about the great lessons in humility and empathy. You can genuinely track my online interactions and there's a big shift in how I treated people after I finished reading Umineko.

Now that we're through all that, I would like to go back to The Hunger Games because there's an elephant in the room that should be hosting Game Changer because it's been here the whole time. My entire perception of The Hunger Games has been shaped by the fact that many people will point out that its entire premise is largely lifted from the Japanese novel & film Battle Royale. That's one of those points against it especially if you want to denigrate it for not being quite as bloody as that story. For years now I've been grappling with the greatest mystery relating to murder in my life, which is that I don't know why I knew about Battle Royale in the first place. I know for a fact that I didn't just get it from The Hunger Games' discourse because I had in fact tried to write my own knock off when I was bored one night, years earlier. I even seemingly ripped off some very specific details which is strange given that I hadn't actually read it or seen it at this point. The answer that makes the most sense to me is that someone must have told me about it at school, or I saw it on TV Tropes.

Anyhow, about 10 years ago I decided to finally watch the movie. I thought it was fairly fun and engaging but I struggled a bit with getting attached to a cast of characters that mostly don't stand out or get much screen time & personality (understandably). The adage of books fleshing out characters better drew me in, so I ordered it online expecting to forget about it when it arrived 2 months later. Instead it arrived about a day later and I read the whole thing within a week. It does indeed flesh out the characters better and I found myself drawn into the pulpy style of it. Morbid, but engaging. I once started writing an extensive review of it, got to nearly 2,000 words but never finished it. Several fates are also changed between the two mediums to an extent but what I will say is that I had the most visceral reaction of incoming tragedy when I realised I was up to the lighthouse scene. I got so weirdly invested in characters that had barely appeared in the novel up to that point and it's just like watching a delicate thread slowly unravel.

All of this in mind is my far too long deliberation on why I felt out of touch with The Hunger Games discourse. I was supposed to believe it was bad because it was supposed to be bad, but all I'd spent the better part of a decade thinking was 'I just need a good excuse to watch this because I think I might like it'. That excuse ended up being the knowledge that I was eventually going to write this entry. So it ended up being right around when I started this blog, in late 2024, I just watched the first three films. Enough to get to "Yellow Flicker Beat".

I regret to inform that I just don't have very strong feelings about the films, one way or another. I think they're reasonably well made, the cast is solid, the adaptation probably does what it's supposed to do. I do not want to say that I was unsatisfied by the very expected result that there was considerably less blood than its contemporary, but I suppose I live more for the fun twists and turns. It's a lot of build-up and the Hunger Game itself never quite lives up to that. The internal politics are interesting, but it didn't have me on the edge of my seat like I had hoped. Not going to hate on it though, and maybe if I'm really up to it, I'll give it another go because I'm thinking by the time this post goes live, I'm going to have a lot less of a backlog of posts to be working on instead. Mainly I just want to live up to my promise that I really thought this was always going to be the longest post I ever write, though I think it's probably better this way. Big fan of "Yellow Flicker Beat" though. Just now wondering because it was so long ago if there was ever a chance I might actually overlap a back to back Disclosure with a back to back Lorde, it's felt so silly writing all of these on the same weekend.

#113. Tones And I - Dance Monkey (#4, 2019)

9th of 2019

Listen

Every now and then, a song comes along and it captures the imagination of the nation, maybe even the world. It's popular, but more than anything, it will start to infiltrate the minds of many who are certain that they want nothing to do with it. There will probably be an element of novelty to it. It needs something about it that stands out, otherwise it probably will never make this leap. You need something so singular, that just hearing the name under a prompt or discussion point about it being the worst thing ever will cause a gut reaction and get people agreeing even if they'd probably never had a strong thought before. I've done this before myself. Think of the most obvious novelty song of the '90s and I've probably thought and said that it's one of the worst things ever and it makes my life worse just thinking about it, like it's a torture device that should be against the Geneva convention. Utterly hyperbolic, but it's just the trap you fall into.

Shortly before I started writing this, Keli Holiday ended up in the news again. This time it was because he was detained at the US border for seemingly unknown reasons, which has prompted a bunch of gut reaction internet sleuthing. That's the better part of it, if anything. The far worse part is seeing a whole lot of reactions siding with ICE purely because seeing a picture of Adam, or remembering either his partner or his hit song is enough to throw all rationality out of the window. As if there's some accomplishment in so wittily coming up with an extreme adverse reaction to a headline that literally everyone could have thought of as well. It's something that happens so regularly that it feels like a hivemind virus. Like how there was a post from ARIA about when "Dancing2" first debuted on the charts that went largely un-noticed, but then you look back at it and suddenly there's a monster influx of comments that all came within about a one week window, months after the post went live. What a feeling to be arbitrarily goaded into doing something that only props up and exposes the very thing you supposedly want to put aside. But it's that group mentality, the way there are so many other things to be looked at, but strangely only this one beacon of activity draws everyone in like a moth to a flame. It only serves to make all the 'individuals' look so individually deranged. Just picking up the one sandwich out of a hundred that's covered in dog shit just so you can let everyone know that you don't like eating dog shit.

There was of course a much worse version of this year's before, and I suspect you know about it. In 2019, Tones And I had a breakthrough hit with "Johnny Run Away" (#530), getting a surprising amount of traction for a new Australian artist in a time when very few were afforded the opportunity. There was a fair amount of backlash to this because Tones And I's vocal style is evidently an acquired taste. Nothing could have prepared anyone for how nuclear this all went with the next single.

There's a brief window of time in which "Dance Monkey" was just the speculative follow up single to "Johnny Run Away". It did decently out the gate, but it was in the shadow of its predecessor for a decent while. It's only after a couple of months that the song had enough exposure for us all to realise that this was the big hit after all, and the ceiling for this went ludicrously high. It hit #1 in Australia at the start of August (unlucky not to get there in July, honestly). In January, it was still at #1, making it comfortably the longest running #1 hit of all time. I am hoping by the time that this post goes live, the ever-looming threat of Olivia Dean's "Man I Need" overtaking it will have subsided. In any case, the Tones And I streak feels more impressive and notable because it actually had major hits biting at it for most of its reign. "Circles" (#883), Dua Lipa's "Don't Start Now", Maroon 5's "Memories", and another song that will eventually appear here among the many that tried but failed to get over the line. "Man I Need" only ever blocked two songs from getting to #1, and one of them was one of her own songs.

You can probably solve the case of how Tones And I spent so long at #1. Early on, I pegged it as a likely long runner just because it had built up a pretty big lead and didn't look like slowing down, though I was more thinking in the world of 10-15 weeks at #1, not the absurd 24 weeks it wound up with. What happened to its favour is that its stint at #1 coincided with a gradual climb around the world, the kind that would tend to have some splash back over here by proxy. You'd suspect that something similar would have happened if "Somebody That I Used To Know" was a hit in the streaming era. Unthinkable that it was just barely hanging around in the ARIA top 50 while it was simultaneously #1 in America. I have to sell it on this notion because if I dare try and utter the idea that the song is clearly appealing and catchy as a hit song, many will want to tell me that they projectile vomited at the notion.

For as much attention as the song got, it came with an extra-large dose of disdain, and it's something like I'd never seen before. Even before the song hit big internationally, I was just seeing some of the vilest things I'd ever seen being accepted as the entirety of the song's Overton window. Anyone who dares speak up, confessing they understand the appeal of the song without disavowing it, and anyone who likes it, is offering themselves up to be loudly discredited. It felt like I was witnessing an unspoken contest of just how far you could go to say you don't like the song. Because the song was so popular, I suppose on some level it must have felt like a whole lot of isolated 'Am I the only one...'s, but all I could think at the time is that if you saw all the sheer hostility from the anti-Tones and I camp, you'd rationally come to the conclusion that this is not the normal group and want to disassociate yourself from it, even if you didn't like her.

When the song did become internationally famous, it got even worse. It'll always feel like punching up when you're talking about an artist who's getting millions of streams a day, but to me, it feels like the logical extreme of taking the easiest possible road. There were artists I dared not criticise because all it would do is make me out to be the pariah (this is not an open contest to speculate on, I largely just don't get that negative anymore), but if you pick on the likely one hit wonder artist with no discernible online fanbase, who isn't conventionally attractive enough to get an army of simps, you're shooting fish in a barrel. You're farming likes & karma because you're answering to the lowest common denominator without any chance of recourse.

One thing that always stood out to me, and it's probably a reminder not to read the comments in general (if this whole entry isn't that), is a nasty rumour I kept seeing spread around. In the absence of real evidence of a reason to root against someone, it's easy to just make something up because stopping the rot is just unreasonably difficult in a world where context gets lost, and not everyone is willing to scrutinise everything they read. What I kept reading was that Tones And I was racist. I saw it constantly. The smoking gun evidence that I would see shared around without any scrutiny was a photo of Tones And I wearing clothes that were draped in extremely blatant KKK style slogans, as well as some tweets from early 2019 before she was 'famous'. The irony in that is that the given time frame meant that it was after she'd made a name for herself in Australia, and the photo was an edited one of her on the red carpet at the ARIA Awards. I got a little offended on behalf of all of Australia that this massive scandal seemed to be right in front of us and the industry and completely ignored, like we're some monstrously openly white supremacist nation. On an unrelated note, I have severely cut back my use of Twitter in the last few years and while I won't say nothing of value has been lost, that's only because what used to be worth using it for, isn't there anymore.

I found the whole thing just very difficult to deal with. I'm not good at starting or maintaining conversation because it takes a lot out of me to work up the courage to bring something up, lest it trigger something in that person that they express externally or internally. I was particularly interested in following the dominance of "Dance Monkey" because it was such a plucky underdog story. A song that was originally uploaded to triple j Unearthed became the biggest song in the world for months on end. It's a feel good story for anyone who wants to see their favourite artist hit the big time, or maybe even be that artist themselves. It just got hard to keep up that enthusiasm when it felt like I was seeing nothing but shit flung at it from all angles. It's not even just a seasonal thing either, it feels like a cultural reset. The kind of song that still inspires incense 7 years later, the big punchline to agreeably be the worst song ever made.

The whole thing just feels so performative to me, like I have never really understood why this is *the* song that does it for everyone. Maybe it's a symptom of reaching too wide an audience where there's surely something less competently produced and recorded that has heightened hallmarks beyond the relatively tame things that are going on here. Maybe I'm just the problem because I've always liked this song. I think it has a potent bassline that keeps things moving along, and I'm a sucker for the staccato notes. More than anything though, I find myself drawn to the song's big build up. Like when the piano gets brought back in on the second half of the second chorus, or when she slightly changes the key right at the end. Simple trickery perhaps, but the stakes just feel so low. Surely the most ungodly, most repugnant song of all time can do worse than a hook that mostly just says 'dance for me' and 'move for me' on repeat. We used to hate songs because they were trying to stoke the flames, but this just feels like a large collective of people who occasionally pride themselves on listening to challenging music. Like Geese fans who won't hear a word of it if someone says Cameron Winter's voice is unpleasant, but they're unable to conquer a song that children can comprehend.

This is like the third or fourth time I've written in extreme length in response to the reaction that this song gets, but it's my only way to deal with something that just feels so unwieldy. This adverse, and apparently obvious reaction that I cannot fathom for myself. I find it hard to really tell what the grand consensus should be because it feels like the team of haters are so widespread and quick to the trigger that no one can entertain the thought that maybe that whole coalition of hatred just look increasingly weird. No doubt the nostalgia cycle will come for it someday, but like, at least call it the 5th worst song of all time, make it look like you have some original thoughts.

#112. Billie Eilish - bellyache (#38, 2017)

15th of 2017

Listen

I've said this before, but in order for music discovery pipelines to actually work, you need a sufficient amount of people willing to convey the news at every step of the way. If you throw things off kilter and leave one portion un-watched, the whole thing breaks apart and no longer works. Music charts can paradoxically be part of the problem because they act as a promotional tool for only the biggest of the biggest. Chart fans might think they want the charts to matter and be relevant, but the more they matter, the more their very systems start to crumble and the whole thing resembles a nightmare.

I think about this with the state of triple j's Hottest 100 in the 2020s. By all accounts, it's not adverse to breaking in new stars, the last two polls were won by artists who'd never appeared before. In reality though, they just represent another pipeline of promotion working as planned. It's still highly possible for artists to break through on TikTok, and maybe Spotify, but that just reveals a new lean of preferential treatment for some and not others. Australian music obviously gets shafted on the global stage.

In a way, we actually started seeing something like this with regards to Australian music that did get popular. There was a steady ecosystem where for every triple j darling that had a crossover hit, you'd also have the major label stars spruiked on TV and the radio making generally much bigger waves. Australian Idol was such a boon for creating household names that suddenly labels were signing up numerous also-rans from it, with the knowledge that they had a built-in fanbase ready to pounce. All of this seemed to dry up as a consequence of that initial bubble bursting, and there not being enough investment into sustainable long-term promotion. Australian music was still popular in the mid-2010s, but you saw a significant shift where nearly all of the artists who got big, had their start in triple j. All those old avenues are still out there, but they've lost the investment from the public to generate stars. A winning song from Australian Idol might once have been in the conversation as the biggest hit of the year, now they don't get within a mile of even grazing the chart.

This is what you can also say has happened with triple j's influence lately. I'm not qualified enough to say that the station has 'dropped off', because in reality even in its best years, its ratings were never reliable and it was always relatively niche. It just has to compete with so many outlets of entertainment and a growing feeling that the radio is old fashioned, while scrolling through reels & posts from people you don't actually follow is the opium of the masses. It's why 2024 was such a wake-up call. New Australian artists just aren't getting their name out anymore, and all we have left are the ones who already made it. They're keeping the fire burning but largely also living off nostalgia for more vital years.

This process is also exacerbated because the Hottest 100 had previously served as a proving ground. Whenever you hear talk about how triple j broke an artist early on, this is the pudding where you'll find that proof. It's a receipt that proves triple j were on the money, but in reality, it comes with the requirement of the listeners to trust them on that ride. I've described the modern situation as a catch-22, triple j need to break new and major artists to feel relevant, but triple j aren't relevant enough to break new and major artists. They're still on the cutting edge, but with no Hottest 100 receipts, you just don't get the same gratification. triple j have become that music fan who gets excited about these new artists to a disinterested friend, only for that friend to suddenly turn around and praise it 6 months later when someone else makes it popular. Everyone had their chance to stamp down on the Chappell Roan train in 2023, or the Malcolm Todd train in 2025, triple j gave them the keys to the city, they just didn't believe it.

Now if we turn our attention to Billie Eilish, this is one from back in the 2010s, so triple j have that receipt. Perhaps ironically, this still doesn't always work because her star has grown in such stature that it's hard to even think of her as a plucky underdog. After all, if everyone had known her at that point in time, she wouldn't have been a plucky underdog at all. I think there are enough people aware of this that it makes its way into the discussion every time it comes up, but I still see a reinforced, incorrect stance that bobs its head up every year.

triple j's Hottest 100 brings out fiery passion. If you're not upset that your favourite song didn't make it, you're heavily scrutinising what got the most votes, and why you so badly wish it should've been something else. The five stages of grief fit it to a tee. Bargaining breaks down to so many classic problems like 'Actually that song shouldn't be eligible', 'Actually people were only voting it because they wanted the artist to win', 'Actually they only won because the other artist split their vote', things of that nature. Another very easy one to trot out is when a non-Australian artist wins, and you can make the argument that the winning artist either doesn't know or care about it, or that they just couldn't comprehend how special it is by comparison.

Billie Eilish is a very common target of this. I think possibly because she's become an enormous celebrity and we can't help but let our instinctive feelings about that position of influence get in the way of facts. Now, it's probably true that Billie Eilish doesn't value the win she got as much as Flume or Mallrat may have, on the other hand, it's just not true that she doesn't care. When "bellyache" made the countdown, she did an interview with the station during the countdown. A year later when "when the party's over" (#809) made the top 10, she did an interview with the station during the countdown. A year later when she won the whole thing (I forget what song this was), she STILL did an interview with the station, and that's getting into seriously degenerate hours of the day for her. I kind of wish she kept this up, like how she's does the same Vanity Fair interview every year for nearly a decade at this point. I understand though that she's reached the summit and hasn't been back, so there's less imperative to shout her out unless she breaks the all-time record for appearances or something. I think part of why it isn't always remembered is because in reality, it wasn't very noteworthy at the time. It's a bit like how she & FINNEAS came in to do a Like A Version in early 2018, and it also wasn't a big deal. If she came back now, it'd be the event of the year, but it's all part of the process when you're in the process of eventual domination.

That's why it's fun for me to look back at her first EP, "dont smile at me". When I first heard Billie Eilish on triple j, I was pretty quickly into what she was doing. For a while she'd keep drip feeding new singles from that EP, complete with new utter failings at understanding how to use a ladder in the artwork. It was fun though. Along with BROCKHAMPTON at the same time, she was just the new artist I was really invested in, seeing just what she had to dish out. I particularly liked the dark sounds of "Copycat" and "my boy", but then it was "Idontwannabeyouanymore", the tender ballad that really stood out to me. Also it's about time I say that the first domino here was the song "bellyache".

When Billie Eilish released "bellyache", she had only recently turned 15. This was one of the big curiosities about her at the time. I remember doing this song & dance previously with Laura Marling and Joey Bada$$, but this was a step further. Like how Gout Gout isn't necessarily the fastest runner going around right now, but by all accounts we know the potential is there. Getting in on the ground floor for Billie Eilish's big moment has proven extremely lucrative. She & FINNEAS are now making music they couldn't dream of making back in 2017, and it's very good. There's still a lot to get out of those early recordings though.

When I think of "bellyache", I think of how readily I was won over by this catchy tune. Nothing too deep about it, just a good bait & switch melody that resolves itself in a way that felt fresh. Listening to it more, it became clear that there was more to it, and it became a fascinating case as a surprisingly dark song. It's funny because you can perhaps choose to look at it metaphorically and it doesn't come out too badly, but by all accounts, this teenager was very literal in her lyrics. When she says her friends' bodies are in the back of her car, she's not being cute, she's outing herself as a mass murderer. She plays around with it in a macabre way, where every moment of grief or concern is undercut by how apathetic she is about it all. She gets as far as questioning her own sanity before using it to boast about how she dumped her ex's corpse in the gutter. Maybe this is all the logical conclusion of that 'fun song, dark lyrics' dichotomy, but it's fun to think about. When I was that age (and younger), I was very interested in creating & drawing incredibly violent scenes (in contrast with how cowardly I was), and that's just part of the mind palace of someone that young. The serious explorations of relationships & life can come later when you have more experience to draw upon.

#111. Haim - The Wire (#11, 2013)

21st of 2013

Listen

I had a big plan here, I was going to use this entry here as an excuse to make up for lost time and binge the entirety of The Wire, the HBO TV series from the 2000s. The show I hear nothing but glowing praise as one of the greatest TV shows of all time, with its highly realistic depiction of crime in Baltimore from the perspectives of both the perpetrators, and the people trying to stop it. All that great character driven stuff and a huge ensemble cast of stars who'd go on to bigger things in the future, such as appearing in a Hottest 100 (#983). It was perfect, with the added bonus that it helps me cover for myself when I have to cover Haim here multiple times still, but all from the same album. I'm always looking for an out.

What I wasn't ready for is just how dense The Wire is, or rather how dense it makes me feel. The Wire is incredibly complicated and treats the viewer as someone who is fully aware of it. You don't get recaps or constant reminders of the big important details. Sometimes you don't even get to see them play out. While another show would fester on its big reveals with dramatic cuts to commercial & music stings, The Wire might not even show it in the first place. You'll learn second hand in an unrelated conversation that a character died off screen, treated not like a revelation, but something that's readily apparent. You'll be inundated with plot threads and be unaware of what you're really trying to focus on. I've watched the first two seasons and I would like to watch the rest, but my revelation by this point is that the show has far too much going on for me to possibly just casually watch it while I'm working on this blog. It needs my full, undivided attention, without a deadline to rush me along. Maybe it's for the best because it really has nothing to do with this song, and I had no consideration for pacing these things out when I put all these mammoth entries together that'll end up on the same post.

"The Wire" is Haim's big hit. I'm inclined to say that it made sense at the time although in hindsight it looks a little weird to see it get so much more attention than their other hits. Maybe it's technically not their biggest hit. They spent a decent while with this one crossover hit that got to #13 in Australia and that felt like it would be it, but a Scottish DJ threw them a life raft a little while later and got them a top 10 hit that is so unlucky not to be pending its own appearance here (it's very good). If that's not enough, they got the blessing of a Taylor Swift collaboration and one of the more popular songs on her album "evermore", which means that in the end, Haim do have multiple hits that on the surface are roughly equal in popularity.

I unintentionally learnt a lesson from this song. When I, and others were praising it highly as a fresh and exciting hit, I was getting some clap back, or stomp clap back. It was readily pointed out that "The Wire" has a passing similarity to "Heartache Tonight" by the Eagles. It's largely just the percussion but even the Eagles tune has a similar guitar riff that pokes its head in at times. This was treated as the ultimate gotcha. Putting those young millennials & zoomers in their place because their golden idol had a lot in common with exactly the kind of boomer music we'd readily dismiss. Maybe at the time I would say 'Whatever' to it and dismiss the claim as superficial, but I think there's some merit to it. Time and time again I find it very amusing to spot these kinds of things. It's a reminder that for as much as the youth want to find their own music to set them apart from their parents, we keep having these moments where we reveal our similar interests all along. You might still want to turn away from your parents' very uncool music, but before you know it, you're suddenly listening to something with the very same baseline appeal, it's just been presented in a package more suited for you.

Actually, it's not the only old music that "The Wire" resembles. A while back, I made a Spotify playlist because I'm very fascinated with one of the most common vocal stims in popular music, which is the performer saying 'I know, I know, I know'. The most classic example is Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine", but it has perpetually come up, even on this list. I had the realisation when I was writing the entries for "Leave A Trace" (#300) and "Cigarettes" (#290) that they were also part of this, but I didn't want to get there until we finally reached the most obvious example here, "The Wire". I just want to say that the playlist is public and I can almost guarantee there's a song you know here and never even noticed is part of this endemic. It's also maybe my excuse to sneak in some slightly less well known songs and give them clout by association next to Prince. I'm all ears for further suggestions, as long as it's a song I know, wouldn't want to ruin the title.

And yet with all this, I still think "The Wire" stands to its own merits. Danielle has lead vocals for most of this song and brings such a force of personality to it. What could be an entirely perfunctory song just rises to greater heights every time they do something a little different with it. That big percussion blast on the chorus, the choice and utilisation of 'retire' as a word to rhyme with the title phrase, and all those moments where they decide to complement each other's lines almost like they're the Beastie Boys (it felt right!). This is all to say that I'm screwing it over again by leaving it out of the top 10% of the list, but it surely won't be the last we see of Haim here.

#120-#116

#120. BROCKHAMPTON - 1999 WILDFIRE (#83, 2018)

11th of 2018

Listen

When it comes to grand, sweeping statements about artists, I don't usually care much for them. It's mainly because it's used in the pejorative sense, such-and-such artist sucks, or whatever. They're very easy to agree with, and therein lies the desire to do it, but I find myself wondering about the logistics of it. Like, if someone says Imagine Dragons suck, brave statement there, but how many of their songs do they actually know? I'm not saying the deeper cuts would change their mind, but when we're all working from different experiences and approaches, these grand statements have a habit of meaning one thing to the orator, and another to the observer. People often tell me I'm good with music trivia and stuff like that. Part of the appeal of writing music trivia myself (which I've done quite a bit in the past) is to put these things in perspective and remind myself what tidbits I take for granted.

The slightly more relevant example I think about with this is that I wonder how many OutKast songs the average person actually knows? I'm a bit warped by the Australian perspective where they have about 3 or 4 big hits, but it makes for such a small slice of their overall discography. Alongside the hits, you've got slightly deeper cuts, songs that feel important to me, but I've had to go out of my way to hear them. It'd be wrong to assume everyone else knows "B.O.B" or "Elevators (Me & You)", just because I do.

This is my long, roundabout way of saying that this song sounds like OutKast to me, but it's up to your own experience as to whether or not that sounds true. I just feel like especially with their earlier albums, you'd get more stuff like this, sounding carefree and natural with something resembling acoustic guitar for a beat. "Rosa Parks" is the obvious example, or if you want to go somewhere completely different, there's a DJ Shadow song from 2006 featuring Lateef the Truth Speaker and another rapper who will eventually be credited on this list, a core memory for me, at least.

You can look at it as a natural evolution for BROCKHAMPTON, who I feel spent much of their early days making a lot of songs that were aggressive, braggadocious, and generally in your face. Maybe that's part in parcel when you've got so many MCs trying to make their mark. They've considerably mellowed out on this one and generate one of their first genuinely believable crossover attempts. If you want to make this throughline actually connect, then Joba calls them all a group of 'outcasts' in the middle of his ludicrous (but clean) medieval verse. He also says that you cannot have magic if you don't believe, and here's my 5,000 word essay on why Umineko When They Cry is the most life-changing piece of writing I've ever read...no, I can't get that off topic yet.

#119. Dom Dolla (feat Clementine Douglas) - Miracle Maker (#37, 2022)

7th of 2022

Listen

I actually do remember the first time I heard this song because I was in the car going to the doctor. Nothing interesting I assure you, it's just that I very rarely commute like that. I'd been aware of the song for a while but didn't really have much interest in pursuing it, Dom Dolla isn't going to make a song that's going to blow me away. Oh wait, never mind.

This wasn't really a big hit for him in the grand scheme of things, he'd cash that cheque in far more a year later, but I feel like the potential was there. What I've found is that there's a serious market for throwback dance hits because they tap into something innate that's not often served because the genre just moves on so much. Around the same time this song was out, LF SYSTEM had a massive hit by speeding up a 1979 R&B song and otherwise breaking rules of sensible arrangement because it's just interesting what they've done. Some Scottish DJ also scored one of his biggest ever hits shortly after by tapping into a wave of trance revival. 

"Miracle Maker" sticks out to me because it sounds so flagrantly like the late '80s & early '90s. A big part of that is the song's main sample, a vocal line from MC Duke's "I'm Riffin", where he uses a series of words that you would never hear in a modern rap song. Outside of that though, the song just kicks into gear from the first second with an energetic buzz I'm not used to hearing. I feel like the throwback vibe is only heightened with the way Clementine Douglas's voice is played around with. She says 'set me free' but when it's looping, it feels like the first consonant slips out. There's a tension to it that I'm just waiting to be resolved, and the beat drop absolutely provides the goods. Much like with "Jungle" (#155), I found that this satiated that deep desire to just hear the kind of banger that makes you want to flail around uncontrollable. Shout out to Clementine Douglas also, she's a strong asset in any song she ever ends up on.

#118. The Weeknd - The Hills (#19, 2015)

18th of 2015

Listen

A while back I was talking about Tate McRae (#233), and how my perspective on her music comes from a different starting point because I was paying attention to her music for a little longer than most people. It's not usually what happens but when you spread your interest around with so many undiscovered artists, some are gonna occasionally land. The main point is that it becomes borderline impossible to follow the general consensus because you came in at the wrong point, you know different OutKast songs, however you want to frame it. The other point is that Tate McRae is clearly not the only major Canadian pop star for which this story unfolds, the big one is clearly The Weeknd.

I've held off on talking much about this until now, which feels fitting because not only is it the last entry here for The Weeknd, it's also the one that probably provides the closest match for the vibe. There's a fairly stark difference in The Weeknd's discography between his trilogy of mixtapes and most of what came after ("Kissland" is a bit of a rough middle point, but it's not an album that gets talked about much anyway). On one hand, you could almost be talking about two different artists here, but in reality, it's not a complete transformation, and many of those early tropes and aesthetics still find their way into The Weeknd's newer music.

Getting to the point though, I'm an all-in "Trilogy" fan. I first learnt about the "House of Balloons" mixtape in the middle of 2011 and became deeply obsessed with it. I don't have properly tracked listening stats for it because the truth of it is that I downloaded the whole thing onto my phone and would frequently listen to it on my uni commutes. The Weeknd was one of my most listened-to artists of the year anyway, though I found it hard to quantify. I extremely undersold his merit when I was making lists of my favourite music at the time, I think because I was struck by the need to fit my expected touchstones. The Weeknd's brand of alternative R&B was so far away from everything else I was listening to, which in addition to the general depravity of it, made it feel like what I was doing was wrong. It probably was just a badly needed injection into my music taste, and that's probably why it stood out so much for me at the time.

I still go back to it 15 years later and I think "House of Balloons" is basically perfect. No filler to speak of and so many high points. Abel welcoming us to the inner workings of his mind, and finding comfort in the debauchery. The production, largely from Doc McKinney & Illangelo is a big tick. It may have also been the first step I had in becoming a massive Beach House fan because there are multiple samples that I didn't recognise for years. Even now I twitch hearing "Master of None" and "Gila" because it's just uncanny to see these elements I'm so accustomed to via The Weeknd. The crowning achievement of it all is the semi-title track "House Of Balloons / Glass Table Girls". It's one of my favourite songs ever, and I'd very strongly consider putting it at #1 if it were improperly included on this list. I always enjoyed it a lot but I just don't think I was ready in 2011 for how ambitious it is. Canon event, cultural reset, whatever your preferred hyperbole. The Weeknd obviously released two more mixtapes later in the year, and they're very good, but my heart is always firmly fixed on the first love.

This isn't the music that directly made The Weeknd a star, but I'm fairly positive it gave him the necessary push. My deep adoration is not isolated, and it's an example of popularity that can't really be measured properly because The Weeknd was releasing these mixtapes for free on his website. All of the chart impact was limited to a reasonably successful re-release push for "Wicked Games", which did fairly well for a song that wasn't all that new when it happened. The Weeknd eventually capitalised on that good will, and in 2015 very quickly became a global star. That's where it starts to get weird for me.

As per usual, this is all optional homework and I don't expect most people to have done it. There are numerous videos of The Weeknd performing at Coachella, or something like that and he'll mix in some of the early stuff to a completely dead reaction. I think the tide may be shifting a little bit, because now through Spotify we can see that some of these songs have very impressive streaming numbers at last, but a lot of people only know The Weeknd through the hits, and that's fine.

Except it's very weird to me. The Weeknd thrives on his early reputation. Whenever he releases a new album, many of his older fans will listen to it in the hope that it scratches the same itch again. It rarely does (I think he generally puts out pretty good albums still), but it's a sign of just how significant that early impression was, building all that loyalty. If you weren't invested in him back then, I don't know where the loyalty comes from. Maybe you've heard that he's a very acclaimed artist and trusted that (I've done this for many artists), but I've always been baffled by how big a star he's become through just the hits. He just so often hits the range of serviceable that I'm surprised there isn't a bigger backlash, though I understand the epidemic of calling everything 'mid' hadn't arrived back then. Maybe I'm just the one with the weird perspective because of how I've known The Weeknd, but I just can't imagine hearing "Earned It" and "Can't Feel My Face" (#839) and thinking 'This is the guy'. I understand liking the songs, but isn't it the strangest feeling to see this kind of worship when you think something is just 'pretty good'? I suppose I'm due to start doing that with every other entry here soon enough. I don't want to yuck anyone's yum, it's just an extended exploration of the fact that I clearly didn't come to this from the same perspective. I would love to be able to witness how I feel about The Weeknd's music if I missed the mixtape era. Would I like the hits more, or less?

I say this all while understanding that The Weeknd's music is clearly not for everyone. I'm not trying to make the case that he deserved more success (I mean, I'd take it, but I'm realistic). On the other hand, he has occasionally made slight nods to it that hint at the possibility of it working. He's teamed up with Illangelo a bunch of times since then, and even scored a US #1 hit with him on "Heartless". The title track to "After Hours" is another one that justifies keeping up with him after all these years. And of course, he's got one of his biggest hits about being f**ked up, "The Hills".

I do feel compelled to ruin some of the magic firstly. "The Hills" was a big hit, something of a slow burner. Notably The Weeknd followed the example of OutKast and Rihanna by having an earlier released single hit #1 in America after a later one. It was pretty big in Australia too, getting to #3. That's the peak position I tend to remember, but in reality, the song was just barely struggling to scrape into the top 10, and it only got so high because it got separate remixes featuring Nicki Minaj & Eminem. I'm willing to guess that you've likely not heard these remixes, and even more likely forgotten about them. They've just done their job, because my mental filing of "The Hills", the standalone Weeknd solo cut, makes it out to be a bigger hit than it actually was.

You might think that with all this in mind, that I was all over "The Hills". It's The Weeknd on his dark, hazed out shit again, right in my wheelhouse. In actuality I was not really sold on it at all. To me, it just sounded off. The Weeknd's voice goes through some major pitch shifting and doesn't come out as it's supposed to sound. It's like when you just quickly try and edit two unrelated pieces together without cleaning it up. It doesn't work, and your ears are trying to make sure you know this. I couldn't tell you what made me change my mind but as far as hit songs go, this has been one of the biggest growers I've ever experienced, to the point where I don't have any problem with how it's produced anymore. Maybe the hook is just too good. There has to be some credit given though, because I feel like this song broke new ground for the commercial viability of trap music. It's not the first trap song to go to #1, it's clearly beaten by "Harlem Shake" and "Dark Horse", but if you'll pardon the pun, those feel like trojan horse trap hits. This is the first one where it feels like the main draw of it is that it sounds like this, and everyone's finally ready for it. It was such a strange hit to wrap my head around at the time because I'm so used to these kinds of elements being a limiter for appeal. Hard to tell if it's a hit because The Weeknd was so hot right then, or if The Weeknd was so hot right then because of this song. Either way, in a world where many artists are caught deleting their older material to clean up their discographies, I will always respect that The Weeknd respects his original fans. With no relation to a song that will later appear on this list: XO for life.

#117. Disclosure - When a Fire Starts to Burn (#23, 2013)

22nd of 2013

Listen

"Settle" is a really good album. I don't think I gave it enough credit at the time because I never quite fell in love with any of the singles I heard. I did buy the album pretty early on because it was being discounted ludicrously, but it was a faint curiosity. The obvious thing that sticks out is just the general sound of it all. They land on this crisp, clean sound that utilises empty space very well. A lot of very good electronic albums can end up dated very quickly as technology moves by and they sound blatantly stuck in their time. I don't think that's the case yet with "Settle", which only sounds better and better whenever I go back to it.

"When a Fire Starts to Burn" is based around a very specific sample, which is parts of a motivational speech by Eric Thomas. I must point out now that as I went to look up this original source, I got a first time ad for the Steven Spielberg film "Disclosure Day" that will have been released by the time this post goes live. Maybe that's normal, maybe it's an algorithm that doesn't understand the meta-data it's being fed, but it was very funny to me. I also want to point out because it's not necessarily clear that they actually sample three different sections of his speech, which is why the sentences don't necessarily make much sense together. Disclosure would go on to sample him again on "The Mechanism", and he's also sampled on the album's intro which leads into this song.

I had a strange revelation with this song that I wasn't really listening to it properly. I was too used to Disclosure's vocal-driven songs that I treated this as one too, and found it pretty annoying for the most part. I'm still drawn to the sample as a sticking quotable, but for me the song is about everything around it. It almost feels like it's there to deliberately disarm you, which is why they constantly cut it off before he finishes his sentence. It's mostly just the same three notes played over and over after it, but they feel filled with uplifting whimsy. It's strange that it still feels like it's building to a natural conclusion.

Mainly I am a little surprised at just how popular it is. The whole album is somewhat star-studded in that you'll look through the track list and see a lot of familiar names that might not have been very well known at the time. Generally though, a very large portion of the album is just vocal-driven songs. The only other real exception is "Grab Her!", which like "When a Fire Starts to Burn" I wasn't a fan of initially but it's grown on me...right now as I've been writing this. Still, Disclosure are talented enough that even if you do treat their hits as vocal pop songs, there's clearly a lot going on to keep you listening to the music. They really love a dramatic beat switch going into choruses. I don't think they ever captured the world's imagination quite like this on later releases, but that's something to look at when we go back to that follow up.

#116. Disclosure (feat Lorde) - Magnets (#10, 2015)

17th of 2015

Listen

I want to draw a reference to some comments Lorde made in September 2015. She was talking about Drake's approach to songwriting, and specifically a certain song of his that was doing the rounds at the time. That song will eventually appear on this list so I can bring it up again. It's basically her talking about the use of striking noun concepts that make a song stickier, which Drake had done many times at this point. I think about it a lot because she said all of this not long before "Magnets" was released, and it feels like it was written with the same intention. At least, it has to be the reason the song is called "Magnets", and not "The Point of No Return". That title probably has potential, but I feel like it's reaching too broadly. Make that the title, and you're gonna want a thesis on the concept, not just making it the hook.

"Caracal" doesn't seem to be very well received on the whole. I don't think it's a wholesale rejection, and I've been reading a lot of high regard for it, it's just that overall, a lot of people weren't interested and jumped ship. On paper it's a little strange because I don't think the album is a big departure from its predecessor, and it even feels like there's a bigger budget for the guest list. You've got The Weeknd, Lorde & Miguel on this thing. Maybe that Weeknd collaboration could've been a genuine crossover hit if it wasn't nearly 7 minutes long. You can make the argument that it's not what Disclosure fans are interested in, but I'd counter that by saying that the general public very much received the album with this in mind. I mistakenly mentioned that "Omen" (#221) was the lead single previously which is not true. The actual lead single was "Holding On" with Gregory Porter. That's the song that feels like the closest approximation to the sound of "Settle", with its skittering production and loop based hooks. It wasn't really a hit, and everyone just gravitated to the easier choices, the songs with Sam Smith & Lorde on them.

"Magnets" is a funny one like that. It's a relic of a bygone era where you could very easily spot the difference in taste between English speaking countries, and what they'd gravitate to. It's proof that despite "Royals" (#134) being a #1 hit abroad, it's really Australia and Aotearoa that treat Lorde as queen bee, getting so wholly invested as to make it Disclosure's biggest chart hit over here while the rest of the world was considerably less interested. Lorde still has a little of that in her, because "What Was That" went #1 in her home country and nowhere else, but it still dropped out of the chart very quickly because there aren't enough Kiwi influencers to prop it up and it just fell out of discovery rotation. All I'm saying is that at no point has it felt like Tame Impala's greater Australian profile has made "Dracula" into a notably bigger hit here than anywhere else.

That makes "Magnets" interesting. To me, it's a hit, and that shouldn't be questioned. To someone elsewhere, it just never was part of that conversation and it might feel like an affront to gaslight them with the notion of it. It's hard to argue with the result though. "Magnets" isn't just a hit because we were craving anything from Lorde, but because given the opportunity to sample it, we were liking what we were hearing with this one. Lorde dominates the track, but Disclosure retain their usual flair. Just a neat little track that I suppose never got so overexposed either.