#135-#131

 #135. Ali Barter - Girlie Bits (#58, 2016)

16th of 2016

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In late 2015, triple j were playing the song "Hypercolour" just about once a day. It largely passed me by for weeks until it suddenly clicked with me one day to become one of my favourite songs released that year. Just a really lovely brand of shiny pop rock that manages to ramp up the action upon successive choruses without making a big show of it. It was followed up by "Far Away" in 2016 which I liked even more. Huge soaring vocals and psychedelic rock riffs. I want to link it but it's been partially subbed out online for the album version from 2017. Maybe I'm just too used to the single, but it's never sounded quite right to me, whatever was done to it.

Afterwards, Ali Barter had a pretty big career boon in the form of "Girlie Bits". It mostly proved to be a one-off moment as nothing has come close to matching it since. I feel like she did plenty of note after that. I'm particularly fond of the song "Backseat" which appears to be written in her own younger perspective meeting her husband Oscar Dawson of Dukes of Windsor/Holy Holy fame. He's an active part of her music career with producer credits all over her discography. It couldn't have been planned but the song also mentions Tool within months of them finally releasing their 5th album. In any case, I don't think another hit is coming because Ali Barter appears to have put an end to her music career. She's now a tour guide in India, as I'm sure you expected.

For these purposes, we've just got the one song. It probably isn't that surprising. As we've seen before (#162) and we'll see later on, one solid way to tap into the zeitgeist is to make a song about how sexist the music industry is, whether it's the fans or the labels (who are enabled by those fans). Writing songs about industry stuff can be potentially risky because a lot of the biggest issues faced by musicians are ones behind the scenes that the public aren't necessarily empathetic to. It helps when the statement feels universal.

I'm going to once again lift all my information from an Inspired interview. "Girlie Bits" was written on Ali Barter's honeymoon and in part came from her own self-esteem issues with her body. A big driving factor though was the essay that Bethany Cosentino from Best Coast had recently published (my timeline tells me it was just a few weeks prior). She spoke largely about the double standards experienced by women who are expected to put up with more unreasonable responses while also having much less capacity for response to it. I can't believe she was generous enough to do an AMA on /r/indieheads a few years later given how awful their response was to the essay at the time. The song's most memorable lyric, 'You don't understand what it's like to be a man' is reportedly a real thing said to Ali by an ex-boyfriend. I think about how Ali Barter is another musician who had their big moment of stardom a little bit later than life than usual (she was about to turn 31 when this song was released) and how it adds to the lived-in weariness of it all.

It's a very easy song to like anyway. Maybe despite what I've said before, pop-punk is the universal language. The main points of reference here were The Offspring & Veruca Salt circa 1994, though Ali sounds a bit different with her higher vocal register. That's another part of the process that was important to her, as it felt truer to herself than previous times when she was deliberately trying to escape her choir girl past. An appropriate conclusion to be reached in a song about being yourself against the grain of ridiculous societal expectations.

#134. Lorde - Royals (#2, 2013)

27th of 2013

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There aren't many songs that feel so omnipresent, so well worn out that it leaves me at a bit of a loss to try and start a new dialogue on them. "Royals" is absolutely one of those songs. There are songs that were maybe technically bigger hits on raw numbers, but they rarely feel as complete a story as "Royals". It's a song we've all encountered and accepted as part of our lives. Whenever I do Sporcle quizzes relating to music in the 21st century, I can almost guarantee "Royals" will be the most correctly guessed song. It's so instantly recognisable and unmistakeable like that.

Funnily enough, "Royals" didn't even get to #1 in Australia. If you're willing to be extremely pedantic, it didn't even chart in Australia. Potentially as a holdover from when it wasn't quite obviously a big deal, it always charted as part of Lorde's "The Love Club" EP (although ARIA eventually re-credited it as "The Love Club EP Feat. Royals" which is very funny). We don't have a very good picture of how "Royals" actually performed in Australia because the EP was boosting it every single week. There's a week in July where it bolts up to a new peak of #32 before really taking off, but in actual fact, "Tennis Court" (#496) was at #35 and was the most downloaded Lorde single that week. The double-edged sword in all of this is that it's probably Australia's early curiosity that cost Lorde a chance at a #1 single. "Royals" had just done the rounds for so long that by the time it became a global sensation, it didn't have as much juice to give out. 2013 as a chart year felt especially prominent for this because sales were so high that it felt like a genuine struggle to hang around on the charts for particularly long. In any case, "The Love Club" wound up as the 5th biggest hit of the year in Australia, effectively a bigger hit here than in all of those countries that it got to #1 in, apart from New Zealand of course (it was the 2nd biggest hit of the year there).

The main unique insight I have with all of this is just how strange it's all been to watch this unfold. I have to think back to March 2013 when none of the pretence or discourse really existed. It was just a song that was getting played on triple j. If you're of the belief that all hits are destined and they just need the audience, then you have to spend a long time watching this song twiddling its thumbs because it clearly wasn't getting anything more than a glimmer of attention that might see it pop up in the top half of the Hottest 100 if it isn't forgotten about. I liked the song but I saw no aspirations from it, it just sounded like a new triple j Unearthed band getting their moment in the sun. I accept that it's a big part of the music landscape now, but a lot of that reputation has been earned retrospectively as a reaction to its popularity. "Royals", the enormous hit song, says a lot of things that "Royals", the quirky niche indie hit, could never have managed. Even if by all accounts, it's the same song it always was.

The interesting thing about great success is that it brings scrutiny along the way that might never have been anticipated. Relative obscurity allows you a blanket of a shrug for a lot of criticism because the stakes are low and it affects nothing. Nobody is firing up a major think piece because one anonymous internet comment said that rap music is all about parties & bling. If that person was ever taken to task for it, it'd probably be very easy to make them back down. Write it in a hit song though, and all of a sudden it's seen as your primary mantra, and dunking on it with a more sophisticated second opinion is a very lucrative option.

Something that has become abundantly clear to me over the years is how often this batch of discourse is just completely separate to the driving force that makes the songs popular in the first place. The internet becomes a bunch of witless Waldorfs & Statlers who insist on peering over from the balcony to see what's been put on offer, pretending they're the tastemakers even as it's all decided what's going on stage before they've had any input. From this same era, I think of the song "Blurred Lines". You probably remember that one. It was very controversial, because of its music video, its lyrics, its copyright lawsuit and the record pace Robin Thicke set in making sure no one wanted to root for him. You might not remember there was a solid couple of months before any of that was true. "Blurred Lines" was just one of those songs that stood out because people liked it, they quickly made it a hit and it went to #1 everywhere. This song that sounded like nothing else around at the time was so big that it still holds the record for the highest one week audience impressions in America according to Mediabase. The discourse was just so late to the party that the fact feels like an artefact. If they had a chance to do it over, I'd think radio would be just a little bit more hesitant to put all their chips in for the ultimate 'no means yes' anthem.

"Royals" had a similar, if less dramatic fate. It spent a long time as 'cool indie tune, this Lorde might be one to watch'. One of the big musical moments of the year in Australia was when Frank Ocean cancelled his appearance at Splendour in the Grass, and with very little advance warning, Lorde stepped in to take his place, crushed it, and endeared herself to so many people overnight. I don't think anyone was really accusing Lorde of being racist at the time. But anyway, as is often the case, America came late to the party and brought all their baggage with them.

I do not want to diminish the attention of potential racism in the music industry and its fans. There's a storied history going way back of white artists being gifted opportunities over people of colour. These things don't even have to come from racism itself, but from people going about their regular business that through a group summation of activity, produces a gentrified result. 2013 was also the year when the Hip-Hop & R&B charts were dominated by Macklemore, Robin Thicke, Eminem & Justin Timberlake. It's not that these artists don't have their place, but when they're taking it all for themselves, you have to wonder if some of the common rhetoric needs to be challenged in some way.

For many, "Royals" was part of this rhetoric. She doesn't say it out loud, but she does spend the song's pre-chorus listing off cliches she's grown weary of that seem to be exclusively targeting the world of hip-hop. One of those moments of lucidity where I don't think she intended this in her head or heart but subconsciously brought it out, unfettered until an external audience had a reflexive response. Then we got a response to the response where some people did manage to dial it back and remind everyone that we're talking about a teenage girl from New Zealand who wasn't raised on the American way of thinking (just their music videos). There's always more nuance involved and you need to slow down lest you become both a caricature and a net negative on your own activism. There's absolutely a conversation to be had, and I suspect Lorde learnt a lot from the experience, but generally just slamming someone as a racist for potentially unwittingly perpetuating systemic racism won't do any good for anyone.

All this in mind, I don't think that aspect of the song is what made it big. It's just a song that sounds fresh and engaging on the radio. It came out at just about the right time, when there were diminishing returns on club beats, and something this minimal could have a place in the world (something to be said about Adele and/or Gotye setting the stage). The most memorable thing in the song for me are the backing vocals in the chorus. It's giving off a capella harmony group but managing to make it sound like a pop hit instead of a weird gimmick that feels like it's positioning itself above the pop world. Mostly though, the success of this song always felt like a reminder to me that there's a big audience for quirky alternative hits and it's only stifled by reach. I've spent many a time grappling with my own self-assured confidence that this song I like could absolutely be big, but first needs everyone to think that it's big enough that it's worth caring about. Just that bit of hope that in amongst all the astroturfing and payola equivalents, the sway of an undeniably likeable song can always come out on top given the right circumstances. Lorde didn't need to go #1 in Australia or on the Hottest 100 though, that kind of luxe just isn't for her.

#133. The Amity Affliction - Pittsburgh (#22, 2014)

17th of 2014

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This song is called "Pittsburgh" because it's about Joel's experience at the Vans Warped Tour in Pittsburgh where he had a near death experience following a seizure. It did have me thinking about what I knew about Pittsburgh. I know it's the home of the Penguins, Pirates & Steelers. It's got three rivers though I can only name one of them (and I can't spell it). People who live there call themselves yinzers. This one time I pulled off a miracle solo get in a mock-up Jeopardy! game in the improbable Final category of Colleges & Universities against two North Americans, because I pulled out my relatively arcane knowledge book for Carnegie Mellon University being in Pittsburgh. The crowd were stunned.

Jeopardy! also taught me about a TV show set in Pittsburgh, in a manner so irregular that it felt like it was paid advertisement. If that's the case, congrats HBO, you got me to watch so many ads for Euphoria in the past 3 weeks on your streaming service. But yes, I'm talking about The Pitt, the medical drama with the gimmick of taking place roughly in real time, with each season taking place across an entire shift in the emergency department. It's very good. It paints a very sympathetic light to the plights of emergency doctors in a way that's been sorely needed in the 2020s. They don't really talk about it but it'll make you think twice before you start saying any amount of positive COVID-19 cases is not a big deal. The big surprise in it all for me though was that it probably has my favourite representation of a neurodivergent character I've ever encountered in media. I spoke about it before I'd known about this (#186). Usually if there's a problem to be had, it's with the way they're treated as a piece of the story. A neurodivergent person is always either a burden, or a burden that turns into a savant, but very rarely a character with their own agency. When I watch The Pitt, I see a character that's just treated and respected like a person and you have no idea how much it means to me. Thank you, Bryan Cranston's daughter.

"Pittsburgh" was an event single. We'd had brief instances of metalcore singles making small splashes on the bottom end of the chart, but I don't think anyone was ready in April 2014 to look at the iTunes chart and see The Amity Affliction up at #3 on downloads. This was before streaming was part of the charts too so it was a freak incident that couldn't be ignored. The only problem was that the song was released on a Monday, so it only had half a week to amass sales. Still, it managed to land at #28 on the ARIA Chart which was unprecedented. Given my current unshakeable association of Pittsburgh with Euphoria, it's appropriate that this was also the single week in history that Zendaya had a top 10 single, with "Replay". The Amity Affliction would course correct a year later when "Shine On" (#935) was released on a Friday and managed to chart at #19 in Australia.

Often times when bands are playing outside of the usual audience of the pop charts, there's a desire to measure it in the same terms. It'll probably be disappointing because the overarching circumstances tend to outweigh the practical reality of 'They're charting high because they've made their big crossover single'. Did you know that Iron Maiden had a #1 single in the UK? It even lasted two weeks at the top. Unless you're very invested in these stats then there's no way you'd be able to name it as it's not remotely one of the band's most famous songs. It's just a random quirk of a 'hit' at the right place and right time. It's possible that by the same token, any song by The Amity Affliction released as a lead single at this point would do something similar to "Pittsburgh".

In spite of this though, I think they absolutely rose to the occasion for this one. I tend to be fascinated by novelties of all sorts in the charts, and The Amity Affliction sitting in the top 30 between "Say Something" and "Free" (#858) is a novelty. I bought into it though. I wasn't opposed to The Amity Affliction on any principle, but if they were to make a crossover single, then it had to be this one. Every time that drum fill comes back in and Ahren belts out that idiosyncratic but memorable hook, it's just that exact release of energy you want from something like this. I wasn't alone in my feeling and the song has absolutely stuck the landing, becoming arguably the band's signature song. The fact that the song also inadvertently got me to discover a new TV show to enjoy over a decade later, it's just the gift that keeps on giving.

#132. Angie McMahon - Missing Me (#49, 2018)

12th of 2018

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We don't really get blues music in the Hottest 100 very much anymore, I don't think it's especially hip with the kids. It used to be, or at least there was a large enough contingent of older voters seeing it through. Gone are the days when we'd get a song called "Blues Music". Actually it's always worth noting that John Lee Hooker had the first ever Hottest 100 entry, so there was a brief, pre-Shamen period where the annual Hottest 100 was nothing but blues music. I guess I can't put it past a random resurgence in some capacity, it probably just needs the right song to do it. Given that Hozier recently had a #1 hit with a somewhat bluesy number, I don't think it's impossible.

I don't know if "Missing Me" necessarily meets all the qualifications to be considered blues music, but when I think about the song, it's always that stuttering guitar riff that I think of first. It sounds staggered and haggard. Once Angie chimes in, there's an extra layer of heft behind it all as well. The emphasis she puts on the word 'thrown', like she's heaving it right at us. It's all exemplified in the first minutes of the song where it feels like a series of false starts and half-commitments. It's right around the minute mark where the powder keg finally goes off, that's the moment that might have singlehandedly pushed this song so high up on this list.

Something that's easy to forget with this is that we're literally looking at Angie McMahon's second single. Only "Slow Mover" (#260) comes before this one. I wouldn't say that she sounds obviously unready on that single, but what little naïveté was there is replaced by world-weariness here. It's something I've come to appreciate getting older while following the world of music where it's not part of the agenda. In more ways than one, Angie McMahon is providing some much appreciated variety in this countdown dictated by the nation's youth.

#131. Lorde - Team (#15, 2013)

26th of 2013

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I don't know if this proves that a hit song need not be a think-piece magnet in order to be a hit song or not. Realistically, I don't think I've ever heard any discussion that breaks down anything substantial about the song "Team". I've never read a headline on it beyond 'Hey, Lorde's just released a new single called "Team"'. It's a big hit all the same, though obviously not on the same stature as "Royals" (#134). On some level you can consider that not having anyone talking about the song like that will get it less attention, but surely a lot of it is down to the fact that some songs just don't have that ceiling in general. I like "Team" slightly more, but I'm not about to call it some sort of injustice that "Royals" was a bigger hit.

I look now though and "Team" is actually getting more daily listeners on Spotify than "Royals". Perhaps the reverse is true now and it's easier to coast on by if a song doesn't generate attention like that. You hear the start of "Royals", immediately know what it is, and maybe have second thoughts on if you want to go through that all. "Team" just has no baggage attached to it, so it's hard to imagine anyone getting worn down by it. Maybe only back when it was fairly popular and there's a good chance you heard it too often.

It feels weird to say this, but from an American perspective, "Team" has one valuable role in that it definitively locks Lorde out of any consideration from being a one hit wonder. She's obviously had many hits, but when you look at the charts, it's just this and "Royals" that ever felt like they stuck the landing. Everything else tended to debut high and crash out quickly, even if they did well in the long run ("Ribs" is 4xPlatinum in America despite peaking at #99). Its success in America felt inexplicable at the time, like it was running on its own fumes and being overrepresented as a result. This is partially correct in that it was all the radio. "Team" was never a song that song particularly well and most of its global stats were pretty unremarkable. The power of an aggressive radio airplay push meant that it spent over 3 months in the Billboard top 10 where it could have just as easily spent zero weeks there. I suppose it was momentum earned from a recent #1 hit (Iggy Azalea did the same with "Black Widow" less than a year later), but I find myself thinking of all the popular songs that can't chart because of songs like "Team" taking up space by default. Like the rest of Lorde's discography for instance. "Tennis Court" (#496) was going around at the same time and got a half-hearted radio push almost a year late to the party, so it only peaked at #71 in America. In Australia, these were roughly similar sized hits at the time. In any case, it gave the song a rather inflated result of being one of the top 20 biggest hits of 2014 in America, which is another sign of how "Royals" opened up doors because that's just an outlandish result for a song like this.

"Team" is entirely pleasant radio affair. Maybe they'd consider cutting the first 30 seconds because it takes a little while to get going. I want to say in hindsight that it fits perfectly in place but I think it's another step in the way Lorde absolutely changed the pop scene going forward. In the years coming, you'd see artists like Halsey & Alessia Cara who'd owe a lot to Lorde for making their moody pop feel more in vogue. "Team" isn't really a moody song. It does everything it can be sound anthemic. I just think that there's a limit when you've got Joel Little's production that's saturated in drums, claps & discordant synths. It's songs like this that probably phased on the default mood on the radio about throwing your hands up in the air, so yeah.

#140-#136

#140. YUNGBLUD - I Love You, Will You Marry Me (#69, 2017)

18th of 2017

In the time since I started writing this blog, I feel like the conversation around YUNGBLUD has changed significantly. I feel as though he's tapped into a completely different audience with a combination of the right change in presentation and buffer in the marketing department. It didn't really seem like a potential outcome years ago, but YUNGBLUD has secured the lucrative niche as one of the modern artists with a big baby boomer contingent in his audience. He toured Australia earlier in 2026 and it tipped the scales so far with an audience who still buy albums that he's gotten a second #1 album for his troubles. I don't think there's a big overlap between the people who bought those two albums on those particular weeks. His cover of "Changes" has made big waves and he might be setting up to be rock's saviour again.

I can't necessarily begrudge it; he's clearly come a long way. I wouldn't say he's the future, but for the time being, he's doing a very good job of emulating styles that were more in fashion decades ago. It's mostly Oasis and The Beatles which is distinctly different I promise. The one thing that stuck with me months ago and I've been waiting to point out is how much "The Greatest Parade" sounds like a ringer for "Empty Souls" by Manic Street Preachers. Potentially a recommendation whatever side of the fence you're coming from.

But then we flash back to 2017 and it's not entirely clear what we're going to get going forward. The comparison that stuck with me at the time was calling him a one man Arctic Monkeys, which after a little initial confusion, stuck with me for this song. That whole vibe of reckless abandon in the night, and incredibly British accents that slip in and out of rapping. "I Love You, Will You Marry Me" is just a song that you have to ride on the wave of, because it's too fast to stop and correctly process. It's a series of sucker punches every time it kicks into gear and it's all very effective.

#139. Cloud Control - Scar (#52, 2013)

28th of 2013

It's a good chance for a stock check update. Last time when I was talking about Cloud Control (#727), I was looking at the number of artists who had their last hurrah in 2013, compared to other years, which I felt was uncharacteristically high. 2021 had already lodged a smaller number without full album cycles having gone through. Now a year later, Lorde has had that album cycle and so the number has gotten smaller by one. There might be something in this still though because now I've jumped another year ahead to 2023 and we're still getting a similar number to 2013 and that's with far fewer proper returns, the nebulous inclusion of Peking Duk, and the extremely out of season appearances for blink-182 & Kylie Minogue. It might just be that there are less artists making the list now but I suspect something clearer will come out with this data once we've really settled into the current standard. It's a bit like when an artist returns from hibernation in a new era. They'll probably settle with something resembling their past success but the cracks will show. I am pointing to the example of Vampire Weekend getting two US #1 albums in their early days, coming back from a break in 2019 and getting another one, and then following it up by only reaching #27. I guess the past tense in "Only God Was Above Us" is important (but yes, I'm aware the title comes from a New York Daily News headline from 1988, I watch Pop Culture Jeopardy!).

Does any of this have much to do with Cloud Control? Well, not any more than it did before. I suppose Cloud Control did have the big sales collapse as well, scoring their highest charting album here in 2013, falling into 'Maybe you didn't even realise they had an album out' in 2017 but with weirdly decent streaming numbers. I suspect if they were to release another album, they might slip even further. We're really just looking at the last hurrah of when triple j both sounded like this, and was recognised for sounding like this. An extremely pleasant song like "Scar" could absolutely be found on the airwaves nowadays, but I don't think anyone would be talking about it.

To me, "Scar" is the band finding the best outlet for their brand of whimsy. It starts off with a cute keyboard riff but counters it with much slower drum hits. It's what I always remember most fondly about the song, as it manages to unlock something in the song's chorus that I'd describe as a bliss release if it weren't the wrong album. I've said before that I think Cloud Control can, if you pardon the pun, be a bit too light and airy, and I tend to like a more grounded rhythm to nod along to. It does enough that the band have probably even gotten away with the usual cardinal sin of taking a song title from the great Australian songbook.

#138. Childish Gambino - This Is America (#4, 2018)

13th of 2018

You can generally boil down hit songs into three categories. You've got the gimmicky songs of the moment that seem to create the biggest splash, whether or not they're appealing to the usual markets. They can be outwardly aware of this or it might just be a song that has some memetic component to it that starts a conversation. They tend to either fizzle out very quickly or become the biggest thing ever, or maybe even both. Then you've just got the standard hits that don't stand out particularly strongly but just seem to resonate with the moment, which isn't necessarily an insult. Finally you've got songs that are made by big stars that generally get their foot in the door through the privilege that entails, although it's not impossible for them to fit somewhere in the other two categories. Again, it's not necessarily an insult, I just think it's a worthy distinction because it's another thing that can be acknowledged about the era regarding who has that unceasing stranglehold on the public. A lot of discourse comes in the form of someone who probably prefers one side of the triangle being dismissive towards one or both of the other sides.

There are merits to all sides but I mainly want to focus on the first one because it's clearly the most unique option. The beauty of the charts in all their forms is that when they're working correctly and the options are available, they're open to pretty much anything happening as long as the greater public wills it. Three months before he died, Allen Ginsberg landed at #8 in the Hottest 100. That's chart space that generally belongs to Powderfinger or The Smashing Pumpkins but enough people decided they wanted the author of "Howl" there more. Something like this is probably not going to actually affect the world of music once it has its moment, and generally we'll see it as an accepted anomaly. Maybe it can point some people in the direction of a new niche to explore, but that's usually as far as it goes. Whoever it may be, is likely not going to get a major uptick in their career going forward apart from having a new thing to be remembered by.

This is my way of reckoning with what happened in 2018. "This Is America" was released in May 2018, and after a career of making music that skirted largely between the second and third categories, Childish Gambino landed firmly with a song in the first category. Maybe the potential was always there. He'd just had a big hit song that was a major slow burner (and will eventually turn up in front of my keyboard), so it follows that another big single could get everyone congregating at the same time and maybe have a big splash. This would track but I don't think it's what happened. "This Is America" opened up Childish Gambino to a much wider audience of people who'd never paid strong attention to his music before. Trap music was always struggling in the digital market in Australia. In that same week, "God's Plan" (#507) was #34 digitally and #8 on streaming, "Better Now" (#346) was #33 digitally and #2 on streaming. Yet there was "This Is America", the second best selling digital download in Australia for two straight weeks. He'd tapped into a conversation, or rather, made sure we were all paying attention to the one he started.

I'll drop the pretence, it's the video. I'll give consideration that maybe not everyone was around to see it unfold, but you probably know the video is why we're talking about this song. It might just be another category 2 or 3 song, but the video single-handedly transforms everything about it. It's to the point that you'll hear many people (I am one of these people) say that the actual song is a worse listening experience on its own. There are two moments in the video where Childish Gambino opens fire with a weapon and the raw shock value of seeing and hearing it greatly elevates the experience. Hearing it without them is an incomplete experience. It gives some purpose to an otherwise somewhat directionless song.

I mainly just say this because I feel like the song gestures towards a greater meaning that it doesn't really stick with. One of those songs that might have you thinking 'This is clearly a political statement' but not necessarily being able to clarify the statement it's trying to make. America is violent and dangerous? That's probably the core of it, but then you have to ask yourself why the song jumps between dark trap and campfire music on a whim. The contrast between the facade and the reality, I guess. Now you ask why four huge rap stars (and BlocBoy JB) are part of the song as background vocals. It all just seems so scattershot with the primary intent of overwhelming our understanding for long enough to stop us from questioning how worthwhile the song really is.

It's made the song into something that's aged in a peculiar way. As far as big hits of its stature go, it has some of the lowest listener retention numbers going around. Just way down in the pits behind most of his other noteworthy songs. There's always the possibility this turns around of course. The interesting thing about those category 1 songs is the way they do stick with us. You might not have willingly put on Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5" in a long time or ever, but you could go a decade without hearing it and not forget a single word. Future generations could see this as a song that went to #1, with big accolades at the time and start to install a greater reverence onto it than it has now. That in itself is an interesting thing to look at.

#137. Courtney Barnett - Pedestrian at Best (#43, 2015)

20th of 2015

Any artist who skirts a little outside of the usually accepted sounds is inevitably going to have to make some form of concession to hit the big time. It might not even be apparent really; they'll keep doing what they're doing. There's just a funny habit in it all where they'll have that one hit that stands out above the rest, and you'll start to re-analyse it in a pop context. The one song where people who might otherwise ignore or be repulsed by the artist will concede has some merit to it.

I don't think I'd actually pin down "Pedestrian at Best" as that one shining example in Courtney Barnett's discography. There's a lot to like beyond it as well, it just seems like there was a lot less attention given to her after this album. Personally I find the lack of a title lyric in this one has me often mixing it up with her later single "Nameless, Faceless". They're both highly volatile sounding songs that might get some detractors past the often lackadaisical aesthetic of her music.

"Pedestrian at Best" has everything at full force though. For an artist whose bread & butter is quotable lyrics, it's easy to believe that she might not focus as much on it for this one, but if anything it might be her most sharply written song to date. It's written deliberately with the intent of shoving in as many rhymes & syllables as possible, all while retaining her usual self-deprecating wit. Take your pick really but it's rare to get a conventionally structured song that has 3 different verses that all justify their inclusion without padding the song. When it comes to this sort of humour, I find that picking apart the conception of the joke can heighten it, or even be the best part. So I'm just imagining the flash of inspiration at throwing daylight savings under the bus and it's so funny to me as a low stakes form of playing along with the strange systems we live in.

#136. Banks - Gemini Feed (#80, 2016)

17th of 2016

I think I could probably do a pretty good career summary for Banks in the space of one entry. A nice, clean chronological affair that covers all the essentials. Unfortunately for that, she actually has two entries here and we're again going in reverse order so it's all a little messy. It's one of the best outcomes for me though because she genuinely got in fast with my two favourite songs of hers from this time frame. Recently I've found a great amount of fondness for her collaboration with Jai Wolf, "Don't Look Down", which is a big shout if you're ever in the mood for another "Run Away With Me".

I suppose the lesson here is that there's yet another hit song by a Gemini about being a Gemini. I don't know who the song is about, so it's possible that they're a Gemini as well. No shot it's Steve Lacy (#250) though, the age gap is just far too big. I remember thinking at the time that Banks was surprisingly old for a new artist. Plenty of artists have fizzled out completely by age 26, but that's how old she was when her debut album came out. Depending on how you look at it though, we might already be at the end of that story anyway just two years later. It's a relatively brief time in the spotlight that naturally correlates with her time spent on a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a major label. She put out her third album a few years later in 2019 and it did reasonably well despite not having much in the way of crossover hits. Ever since then, her next two albums have been released independently and made very little impact. The biggest stroke of luck she's had is teaming up with Doechii right when her career was blowing up, but it hasn't moved the needle much outside of that song. I'm not sure if the future holds much for her career but she just had her first child so there might be different priorities going forward.

I have to assume in hindsight that her label did an excellent job of promoting her music while they were though. It'll be a topic of discussion another time because I found the whole situation a little strange at the time. As a singer, Banks has an unusual intonation that feels scratchy or not quite right. I'm not sure I could even say that she gets over the line with undeniable songwriting either, because her brand of downtempo electronica just feels a little directionless at times.

If there's an exception to all of this, it's probably "Gemini Feed", which feels like her most evident push for some kind of crossover success. She's still serving those scratchy vocals, but for once she resolves it with a big chorus. One where she sings clearly, directly, and with genuine scorn to overpower everything. It's so clearly the focal point that she named the album "The Altar", from this song's chorus. She even uses the same lyrics for the song's bridge, meaning that it effectively plays three times in a row. That's putting all the focus on your money shot. A big part of this can be credited to SOHN who produced this song, and has been a regular collaborator across Banks' entire career. I feel he has a knack for moody electronica that wraps its way around you with interesting progressions and switch ups. I don't want to make it sound like Banks isn't an auteur, and in fact she's had producer credits all across her last two albums. She has a bachelor's degree in psychology, so she's not just the pretty face behind it all. I don't think the song would work as well if it wasn't so relentlessly scornful in the lyrics.

#145-#141

#145. Flume & Chet Faker - Drop the Game (#5, 2013)

29th of 2013

They're calling it the most obvious collaboration ever. It's a collaboration that's so obvious, it had already happened before this, and depending on how you measure these things, was certainly a success. Chet Faker appeared on Flume's debut album, on one of the more popular cuts, "Left Alone". This was around the time that Chet Faker's debut EP was getting some strong traction, and the song "I'm Into You" landed at a pointy #24 in the 2012 Hottest 100. Chet Faker started releasing music with Future Classic, the independent label strongly associated with Flume. A few months after "Melt" (#621), he's interrupting his own album campaign to release a collaborative EP with Flume. Flume had been operating on a huge, gradual word of mouth campaign for much of 2012 and 2013, and this was the first new material he'd put out since his album. It was primed to do fairly well, and it did fairly well. It was something of a stopgap for both artists who'd go onto much bigger things in the near future. This is a rookie collaboration between two artists who'd eventually top the countdown individually (#862), (#472), (#400). For Chet Faker though, this was new ground, and a taste of how his moody electronica could actually work in a top 40 context.

"Drop The Game" was thusly one of those funny chart runs. A new release designed to break Australian broadband that was able to debut reasonably high on the charts (at #21), before settling into a steady baseline as it grapples with the competing concepts of 'It's actually worth the hype' and 'It's serving a pretty niche audience'. With a mid-November release date, it almost feels purposely planned to fit this success model, because like many before and after it, the song reached its final peak position (#18) after it became one of the least surprising Hottest 100 hits of all time. Maybe it's a little surprising to see it so high, just because very new releases do slip in the margins, and 2013 is not short of very potent contenders. I look at that list and it's odd to think an even better timed "Drop The Game" drop could have slid up the rankings even more. Rubbing shoulders with the giants.

"Drop The Game" is mostly just two hooks, one sung by Chet Faker and the other hummed by Chet Faker and matched behind it by Flume. These two hooks are played over and over again just in case you somehow missed them, and layered on top of each other, played in counter, whatever's on the menu for the moment. There's only a brief reprieve during the song's one regular verse, because the second verse is just the chorus again, and then the bridge is the chorus again. I've been seeing 'ooh ooh ooh', I've been seeing your 'ohoh, ohoh, oh, oh, oh'. Still, repetition can beat you down in a good way, and I can't help but leave it thinking that it's the most compelling and engaging that Chet Faker has ever managed to sound. For Flume, it's another day in the park of generally having an ear for what works. For me, the best moment is when he pitches it up in the middle of the song in a way that just sounds unnerving, but also doubles as a satisfying transition when he brings it back. This one weird trick to play the same thing back to back and make it work.

#144. Hockey Dad - Join the Club (#18, 2018)

15th of 2018

In the pop music world, there's a meme that developed in the mid-2010s that as far as I can tell is still going around now. I'm just interrupting this paragraph here to provide more space for reading so you don't catch where I'm going with this and get some time to ponder 'How on earth is this going to make it back to Hockey Dad?'. Honestly I try to do this whenever I can but the medium doesn't always allow us to control the way someone else's eyes might dart towards things that stand out. Anyway, the term 'skinny legend' took hold as a way to compliment someone's favourite artist. It's most associated with Mariah Carey thanks to one tweet that succinctly expresses their thoughts on both her, and the police. It's a knowingly silly term of endearment that makes for some funny looking photoshops, and I'll admit that I get a chuckle out of someone throwing shade on someone's toddler to say that Mariah is skinnier. I'd probably have largely forgotten about it all if not for "Join the Club", which in all of its aspirational goals set in the song's chorus, has the most memorable one being 'You better be skinny'. I don't think Hockey Dad were trying to evoke that side of Twitter, but it's all I think about.

That's the core tangent for "Join the Club", a song about living with unrealistic expectations mounted on you on all sides. It's enough to make you feel particularly inadequate especially if you think someone else is getting through it all more effectively, as if we're all fighting to get an A+ evaluation on our death bed. I think about a TV show I've been watching lately. I won't say the name of it for just a little while longer but if you scroll down about 2 entries from here you might see what I'm putting down. It's a TV show with a lot of different people from different backgrounds forced to face adversity together and coming at odds with their different perspectives & skill sets. Yet ironically, in all of this, it's those very differences that keep them operating, because it's just not feasible to do it all. You need someone who specialises in a different area because you just can't do it all yourself. Every time a problem emerges and there's one person who knows what to do, maybe it feels contrived, but I think finding those key specialties that everyone has, even the seemingly useless, that's just a core tenant of life, getting along, loving thy neighbour and so forth. It's not a competition, it's a collaboration.

As far as the Hottest 100 goes, this is as big as it gets for Hockey Dad. I don't know if I'd call it their biggest hit (one of their earlier songs, "Seaweed", has it beaten on Spotify). It does feel like the song that came out at the right time for them though. They'd just properly put themselves on the map with another song, and here's the nice, shiny follow up in the new year. It's not too hard to like this one because it gives you all the fun energy you expect from the band (though it's surprising just how many of their hits have been more slow burns). Just a sign that they received momentum and capitalised on it thusly by putting out a very agreeable, and likeable song.

#143. Billie Eilish & Khalid - lovely (#17, 2018)

14th of 2018

When I was in Year 7, we'd get weekly quizzes to do for homework each week. A lot of it was straight-forward and I did pretty well, but the one question that's stuck with me over two decades later was something like 'An egg is hatched by an i_______'. I might have the wording a little wrong, but I was so confused by this. It felt like it should be something simple like 'bird', and that the initial letter 'I' was an error. It turned out to not be an error at all, but the word they were looking for was 'incubator', a word I was pretty certain I'd never encountered in my life. Maybe not a big deal, but I felt that common feeling many people have in these situations, 'How was I supposed to know that?'. A couple of years later, I also mixed up a quiz that was looking to match words to definitions. There was 'low ranking army officer' and 'high ranking army officer', and that was the day I learnt that colonels considerably outrank sergeants, despite every vibe I'd encountered previously seeming to indicate the opposite. Again, it wasn't something I'd been formally taught, so it felt like I was just shooting into the breeze.

Despite not being especially attuned for it, I developed an interest in trivia growing up. I don't know if I could be considered especially good at it but that's because I'm so often surrounded by the best of the best, people who'd potentially go on very long winning streaks if they got onto Jeopardy!, and people who have done just that (a couple of weeks ago, three people I've known for a good while were all on Jeopardy! on the same week by coincidence, I haven't seen their episodes yet so I don't know how they went). Generally though, it's hard to properly weigh my own knowledge against others because so often, trivia falls into a range of regional bias, where one person's obscurity is another's day to day life. American bias is the most common instance.

Getting more actively involved with the trivia scene has taught me a lot about the craft of trivia itself in ways that weren't remotely clear to me for a long time. Initially, I might have seen all trivia equally as a collection of knowledge that you may or may not have acquired at some point in your life. Maybe some things (world capitals, famous wars, definitions) might come to mind as something worth studying. Once I was out of school, it felt like everything was fair game. As long as the information is accurate, the quiz master is free to ask anything they want.

This is not how the trivia world sees things. I was having a discussion the other day about the use of the term 'canon'. It's a shorthand for trivia's Overton window, the broad, but ultimately shallow reach of what could be expected to get asked about. It'll vary in different institutions, but it basically turns into a game of trust between both parties. One of the most satisfying things a player can do is to correctly interpret the difficulty of a question, and start using contextual deduction to pull out an answer that they don't actually know. Which composer conducted the Karelia Suite at the Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki in 1893? Well I didn't know that piece but Jean Sibelius is the only Finnish composer I've ever encountered in trivia so it's probably him, and now I've learnt something new about him. Once you understand this concept, studying can be a breeze and suddenly you'll look like a bottomless pit of information through your A to B associations. I memorised all the US state capitals in a few hours (some with very specific links & mnemonics) and to anyone who knows I'm not American, it looks impressive.

For the same reason I cried foul as a child, this is a subject of great scrutiny and controversy. People like to know what they're getting into, and if you stray too far out of that as a quiz master, you can be derided for your deeply unserious trivia. Pop culture for instance is an endless well of threads that is a struggle to keep up with on even the most famous examples. It'll be derided as trash by people who do not have the desire to learn more about someone else's obscure favourites, or the obscure details of any favourites. You'll learn everything there is to know about the Roman empire only to stumble on not knowing which Paul brother is which. I'll admit that I lost on a trivia night because I lacked enough knowledge on Jersey Shore, but I'm content with that result, and I've never forgotten 'gym, tan, laundry' ever since.

Music trivia specifically is a huge net that can go in any direction. Even the most avid music fans I know always have big gaps somewhere because the wide range of genres, eras and ranges of measurable popularity just make it all completely impossible to cover. You might need information that can only come to you if you're actively listening to the music multiple times in order to get it to stick, and even then, you don't know what you're gonna get and you'll miss it still. I like doing music quizzes on Sporcle but I'll almost never get a perfect score because it's largely potluck. There are many ways to keep up to date with music. You can just experience it in your life, maybe actively listen to a relevant radio format. Maybe you'll do what I've done in the past and listen to literally everything that spends even a single week on the charts, or otherwise just keep up with what everyone else is talking about. Everyone goes down their own rabbit holes so the realistic result is a mix of multiple ideas.

I've said all of this not to actually talk about music trivia, but about the way I've seen music fans talk about music that falls out of their own periphery. It's very common to see people hole up, the same way hardcore trivia fans do so, even without the same intent. On the most basic level, it's a 'Who??', but it can manifest more rationally as someone who disregards any evidence of importance just simply because it hasn't met their arbitrary standards. This can happen across international lines, where not everything is on an equal level, but the most common case I've seen is one where top 40 is literally the word of God, and nothing that hasn't done the little dance there for at least a few months is ever worth considering. Certifications can offer an accurate weighting over time, but without that communal feeling of everyone learning about the song at the same time, it feels like it's extra-curricular.

"lovely" is one of the biggest hits of Billie Eilish's career, and possibly the biggest of Khalid's. It might not feel like this, given that it's competing with some monster hits from both discographies, but if you look at the raw figures, it's absolutely in elite territory. By the time this post goes live, it might get overtaken, but as I'm writing it, this is Billie Eilish's most played song of all time on Spotify. It did very well in Australia at the time, but wasn't a top 40 hit in the US or UK. It's just been accumulating popularity for 8 years now with no decline in momentum. It's strange to be glued to the complex deductions of what's a hit, when in reality, it's largely being decided in closed spaces that you're not privy to. You might not have any reason to know which songs have fallen out of favour, and which other ones have just been continually discovered by complete strangers you'll never meet. Technically this is what we're supposed to be interested in, but it so quickly derails, like trying to walk in a straight line with your eyes closed. It's not going to resemble your version of events at all.

Like most of the long screeds I go on here, this all comes from witnessing it first-hand. Seeing "lovely" be brought up as one of the biggest songs of the past decade, and seeing UK music fans be dismissive of the facts. Disregarding it completely (and probably liking the song less) just because the song wasn't a major part of their life in 2018, regardless of the strong reality that this early hit was a foundational moment for her growing popularity. It'd be like disregarding Cold Chisel's "Khe Sanh" because it's not one of the band's multiple top 10 hits. It's a lot easier for me to buy into all of this just because "lovely" was a big hit right away in Australia. I'd like to believe I could do the same even if it wasn't, but then I suppose I don't ever have strong feelings about her even earlier song "ocean eyes". I know it's a big deal, but I wasn't part of the moment and it means very little to me.

As for "lovely" though, it's always been a song I've liked a lot. I was pretty on board with most of what I'd heard from Billie Eilish at this point and found her approach so refreshing, possibly something to tackle more with another entry. "lovely" is a little more conventional in the way that it needs to be. I still find it very interesting though, the way the song builds up only to completely drop it all for the hook. It feels like it's playing for the big sweeping dramatics, but wants to have a second calling card that's completely detached from it. I've no idea why it has endured as strongly as it has, other than the fact that big collaborations like this can help land you in two artists' Spotify top 10s, giving you two fanbases to pool streams from. It can be the kind of thing that just grabs a lot of people at the same time without them realising it. That 'accidentally on everyone's playlist' vibe. I consider it to be very important in the long term.

#142. Camp Cope - Lost (Season One) (#74, 2016)

18th of 2016

Depending on who's reading this, this is either my secret, not-so-secret, or blatantly-obviously-at-this-point-mission. There's a song here called "Lost (Season One)", of course I'm going to watch season one of Lost. You know, that TV show from the 2000s about a bunch of people trapped on an island after a plane crash. I've told several people that I'm explicitly going to do this, just that I never wanted to say when I would, lest I make it too obvious when this entry is coming. I've been spending the last couple of weeks dipping out of voice calls for exactly 42 minutes at a time, the perfect crime. How else am I meant to contextualise that title? It's one thing to just say you're watching the popular media property (#224), but the specificity brings all new questions. Namely, why would you specify the season like that? Well, if you didn't have your head in the sand in the late 2000s, maybe you can figure that out yourself. But I like challenging perspectives.

I am a strong believer in the regularity of coincidences. There are just too many things happening at once and too many ways to observe them that sometimes, we're going to find some strange commonality that sounds like fate. This sounds like I'm riffing on the events of Lost but I'm not, rather, it's the events of me starting to watch Lost. I sat down at my desk and started to watch the pilot, which is named "Pilot", and is possibly a pun on the fact that the plane's pilot makes a brief appearance. As I'm doing this, I get a DM from a friend who hasn't messaged me in months, but someone I know is a big fan of Lost and perhaps in some small part has indirectly convinced me to give the show a proper chance. There's no way they could possibly know I'm doing this but in the brief moment before I checked, I got a little paranoid about it. That's not much, but then later that same night I end up watching an episode of The Simpsons. I've very slowly been going through the show from start to finish, well entrenched into episodes I've mostly never seen before. I'm pretty irregular about watching the show at the moment, what with all the secret Lost watching I'm doing, as well as various other things on my plate, but I decide to watch an episode that night. Little did I know that it ended up being an episode in which Homer gets deeply obsessed with watching (a thinly veiled reference to) Lost on demand, years after the show has finished. I'm watching this in a group and I have to stay completely silent about the fact this has happened, and all the minor details I'm now familiar with, while also hoping I'm not inadvertently spoiled of something major. I got out of it okay, but this is exactly the kind of strange, quirky thing that would turn up in a flashback on the show, raising more questions than it answers as Homer might say.

I find it all interesting to look back at 20 years later because Lost really was one of those huge TV phenomena. An early incarnation for global theory crafting in the online world as the show would continue to unravel little threads that get more unusual as they went. What starts as a simple premise of a plane crash leaving people deserted on an island, left to put aside their differences and work together, becomes this truly bizarre tour de force of science fiction & fantasy. It felt like pretty much the most important thing to watch, and I did watch it at the time. I don't remember very much aside from a handful of characters and plot devices with only the broad strokes of a modestly invested teenager who was likely second monitoring the show to play video games.

It's been fascinating to go back to season 1 of Lost, in part because I know some of the things that are going to happen, but also just to put myself in the mindset of someone watching it for the first time, without being bogged down by how supposedly complicated and unfulfilling it may end up getting. It's a very watchable show. Somewhat slow paced because what 25 episode season wouldn't be, but also because they have to go to great lengths to develop so many different characters at once. Most of it is done through relatively self-contained episodes showing flashbacks to that particular episode's character in focus, revealing their greater motivations, things they might be hiding, and how they ended up on a plane from Sydney to Los Angeles. That's another thing I hadn't remembered about the show actually, just how Australian it is. Not in terms of authorship, all the creators and most of the actors aren't, but so much of the show takes place in Australia, going lengths to include that characterisation, rather than just be America with different accents. If someone told me that the show was disproportionately popular in Australia, partly because of this, I might believe them. likewise I could probably believe that Camp Cope's affinity comes from this as well. In general though, I do find the cast of characters to be fairly likeable, even when they're clearly doing bad or selfish things. That complex code of ethics that we all have, and how it doesn't necessarily undermine us, that's one of the main things I've taken away from the show.

Recently, I've been watching the Dropout series Game Changer a lot. It's built on the premise of being a game show where the rules are fluid and the contestants are thrown into the deep end without a paddle every episode. A lot of fun to be had, but the thing I've taken away the most from it is the show's ability to always go one step further than expected. Playing a game with both the contestants and the audience by having them potentially expect a twist, only for that to be exactly part of the plan to distract you from the even bigger twist. I don't think it's a coincidence that the host also habitually does magic tricks.

I don't necessarily have that level of showmanship in me, but I do find the process to be very fascinating, and something I'd love to emulate if I too had those kinds of resources. If I've succeeded on one level, it's that if you go back and look at the earlier entries on this blog, I'm shocked at how quaint they are. Where I started and where I ended up are two very different places. What I'm really trying to say is that if anyone ever caught me saying that I was planning to, or had already watched Season 1 of Lost for the purposes of writing this entry, I was not being entirely truthful. No, no, I didn't just lie about it and get a bot to write all that previous stuff (gross), I did the only thing that felt right which is going an extra step further. I watched all of Lost over the past three months. The first four paragraphs of this entry were written right after I finished Season 1, on my normal posting schedule. I spent the next two months going about my usual business but also watching Lost almost every single day, because I needed to fit in 5 more seasons of the show in that time. The show has 121 episodes, it's a lot. I was able to use the time lag effectively though because it allowed me to get it done in time, and write more of this closer to the date it goes live. You are normally reading my thoughts from months ago, but this is me on a Monday night mere days before I hit publish.

The reason I went to such lengths is mostly pretty simple. I do not trust popular consensus when it isn't positive. I'm often times pretty easy to win over, because if a movie is widely acclaimed, I'll probably like it. All those old comedy movies that are extremely dated? I love them. It's so interesting to look back at such a long time ago and seeing the way it's approached, the similarities and differences to now. Whoever decided that the movie Arsenic and Old Lace needed a man who's convinced he's actually Teddy Roosevelt probably thought it was hilarious at the time, and it is to me as well, if only because I've never seen anything like it. Jack Lemmon mentions offhand in The Apartment that he keeps a tennis racquet around so he can strain pasta, and then later in the movie he's casually doing just that and I can't stop thinking about it. I think a big part of this all is trust. If you get yourself in that headspace of being above the media property, or above the people who are hyping it up, you can quickly fall into cynicism, which is something I'm just not interested in. My perspective of Lost was that of a show that was once must-see television that slowly descended into its own head with sprawling plotlines and mysteries that were never resolved. I heard enough in the defence of the show that challenged this that I just felt unsatisfied to let myself remain perpetuating a consensus without actually forming my own. I want to think for myself, don't tell me what I can't do.

If there's a lesson to take away from all of this, it's that short form content really does rot the brain. I don't mean that in the way that it tends to be seen with things like Skibidi Toilet or other nonsensical dystopian children's content that doesn't feel like a human has made it. I mean the normal stuff. The way longer videos are cut down for viral clips designed to shock, entertain, or outrage. There's a certain necessary calm that's being cut out for us when we jump from highlight to highlight. It spikes emotional reactions and has us acting up irrationally because everything just has these large stakes. I can't really say that it's shaped these perceptions of media or Lost in particular because these things go back further, but I do find it hard to broach these kinds of topics without feeling like I'm just doing the same thing, loudly proclaiming an opinion to get a reaction, or just get people looking at me.

This is all to say that rumours of Lost's decline are a bit exaggerated. I will be frank with this and say that I can understand a rational reason for declining interest in the show. The show's pilot and much of the first season sets up an expectation for what the show is about that is largely not where they end up going in the long term. You're initially gripped because these people have been put in a difficult survival situation and have to deal with all sorts of challenges that the setting provides. You might even consider what you would do if you were in their situation that isn't too unrealistic a scenario in the first place. It's just that the further you go, the more threads unravel and it stops feeling like random people who were in a plane crash, and more like a decades, centuries long planned out sequence of events all for the purpose of fulfilling destiny. Those strangers on a plane that had to come together to survive start to seem less and less like regular, everyday people as it turns out pretty much everyone has something to hide, and also maybe they all crossed paths at some point or another. What was once a show squarely focused on a specific, principal cast, seems to keep finding new ways to bring in more groups of people (often times ones who were already on the island), who inevitably are also always keeping their cards to their chest. You've got multiple characters who act as an agent of chaos, including one who is nonchalantly introduced in season 2 and just seems to stick around forever. They finally manage to leave the island but there are still several seasons to go, so now they need to go back to the island. There's time travel, bootstrap paradoxes arrive, and it's been a long time since survival from the elements of the island has ever been a going concern.

I just don't really see this as the issue that's put forth when the show gets brought up. It just feels like an increasingly disinterested audience gave up, came back to the show for the finale, and got mad at that for either its hokey ending or that it didn't give us a scientifically plausible answer for why any of this stuff ever happened. One of the more specific memories I had when the show was still airing was hearing someone spill the beans that the show had been figured out online. The island was purgatory. That's why all the children disappeared early on, and why all the main characters seem to be harbouring dark secrets all the time. You're constantly seeing religious imagery, and it's a perfect fit. It's something I kept in my mind the entire time I was watching the show because I had my doubts. As such, I kept running into problems with it that just didn't work out. All those kids do come back at one point or another, after all. It's another thing that might trip you up too if you just watch the finale. The purgatory thread is canon...just not in the way you think. Rather, it's relevant for a parallel storyline that runs separately to everything on the island. All those characters are in fact dead, and the last season gives them an opportunity to find closure in limbo. In the timeline where the island is real, all these things happened.

I just feel like an inattentive audience has done the whole show a disservice by spreading a poorly formed understanding of the whole thing. It feels clever to reveal that the show that felt like it was too smart for you actually didn't, or that you were justified to lose interest because the end result wasn't rewarding. I just found the whole thing compelling. The way they could continue to introduce new things and not have them feel tacked on. The more you learn about the characters, the more compelling they can be, and they don't even have to be plot important or anything like that. Hurley probably is one of the most important characters but at the heart of it, he's just a chill guy who wants everyone to be happy, and has multiple episodes dedicated to fulfilling that role, plot be damned. Desmond is an ostensibly normal guy who keeps getting thrown into ridiculous circumstances that fry his brain and then some, but he's believably motivated by the woman he loves. The same could be said of Locke who is probably insane all for it, but he remains steadfast in his convictions. I just love being along for the ride with these people as the universe seemingly is out to get them, but seeing the humanity shine through overall. I think there's a lot to like about the show from start to finish, and I wouldn't say it drops off much either (although Season 5 is a little harder to follow).

This is also core to my experience of watching the show, which was not one of constant joy and wonder, but isolation and despair. As time went on, I felt like I was experimenting on myself. Finding out what would happen if you forced someone to spend an incredibly long time watching a show like Lost, which is meant to provoke discussion and intrigue, but introduce the notion that they can't talk about it. It was maddening. So often I'd have to hold myself back from my autistic need to talk about the tangential thread that I just picked up, filling the void with nothing. My attempts to keep it all secret meant that there were necessary steps to cover as well. My trivia well of 'Oh actually I saw that actor on another show' just being barricaded over and over again. A couple of times I actually broke, responding to a very specific trivia question I saw, and then also writing and sharing one I'd thought of (because it was pertinent to current events). I think I got away with it, in part because as far as secrets go, secretly watching a popular TV show is pretty limp, but these past two months, where I've also been at home alone far more often than usual, have been strangely oppressive. Obviously I've known the finish line is around the corner, but sometimes it just makes you want to will it a little closer. It's like walking home and just wishing you were the first house on the street because then you'd be home already. I feel a little like this with this whole list in general, but the sheer amount of time I spent going through this entire TV show just upped the stakes tremendously. I've never been more relieved to hit the publish button.

As for Camp Cope, my story begins in 2015. I'm not certain the band had actually formed at this point. I just distinctly remember someone retweeting the triple j airplay account because they'd just played a new song called "New Phone, Who's This?" by Georgia Maq (it's not on YouTube for free, I can't link it). It stood out to me just because a version of that particular phrase had just caught on (or at least, I'd just become aware of it) and it seemed novel that triple j were playing a song that leaned into this. I probably didn't think much of it again until I was counting Hottest 100 votes and saw it come up again. I'd later learn that Georgia was the daughter of Hugh McDonald from Redgum of "I Was Only 19" fame, and that same year that she'd started the band Camp Cope, who'd very quickly rise to prominence next year.

I was a little late to getting properly on board so I often forget how quickly Camp Cope released their self-titled debut album. This particular single was released in January 2016, and the album in April, which set the stage for the band being all over the airwaves for the whole year. It was once again memetic phrases that caught my eye, because I first noticed them via the curiously named "Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams". I can't fully recall my former mindset. I tend to do a small write-up on the weekly album chart but the week "Camp Cope" entered at #36 was the same week Beyoncé released "Lemonade" and Prince died, so I was a little pre-occupied. I am fully imagining that I saw the title again as a joke and didn't really take the band seriously for a while. I don't know if anyone else gets it, but there's this strange, intangible instinct that sometimes tells me not to pursue interest in something. Whether it's for good or otherwise, it's difficult to shake that feeling that I should stay within the walls I've constructed for myself. It can ease the mental overload of focusing on everything.

It's for this reason that I wouldn't get invested until November. By that point I'd just had a moment that clicked for me with Georgia's singing style. It's hard to describe but difficult to forget. In particular, I cottoned onto the song "Done", which felt like the easiest one to get into. No funny, distracting song title, absolutely killer bass, and a big, cathartic rush of a hook. It wasn't a big thing for me, and I nearly moved on from it by the end of December, until it clicked for me again. Riding that second wind, it became a big favourite of mine, and I ended up buying the album and getting pretty obsessed with it, including all those previous singles that had just mostly passed me by previously. It's very tough to match the first five tracks on it, although it's a tale that continues when I get to their second album on a later entry. As far as triple j airplay goes, "Done" and "Lost (Season One)" got similar shares of airplay and "Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams" was a bit more sparing. It probably reflects the result of the poll, where "Done" got pretty close to making the cut, but I guess people just liked the first single the most. The first single tends to get the most buzz, the most attention. When people look back on the thing, they probably think most fondly of the first single.

"Lost (Season One)" is very good, nonetheless. For all I said about "Done", this is probably the one that gets the point across most conventionally. It's played up a little as a lyrical trick, which they do on both songs, where the title lends itself to being read in different ways. "Lost (Season One)" has it both ways, where it's used as both an adjective and a proper noun. If you haven't been spoiled by meta data, it might come as a surprise when she uses the TV show as comfort food post-breakup. It's good, it works, and it makes for a satisfying bow on what's otherwise just a sensibly enjoyable song.

#141. Doja Cat - Boss Bitch (#67, 2020)

18th of 2016

It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but I can't help but focus on the way the TikTok machine has been weaponised by major labels in an attempt to forge the appearance of organic discovery and artist development. I'll always raise suspicion at the way it all seems to work in the favour of already thriving major label artists, as if there's a theoretical risk that these artists would be out of a career if they don't get a viral hit that always just seems to accidentally happen. Doja Cat was probably the most flagrant example of all of this. At a time when the transition was still coming along, she was the artist who seemed to just always go viral on TikTok, every few months. It appeared as though her charisma and evident stardom was either just speeding along an inevitable process, or it was uncovering a new breed of pop star that we weren't getting via the original channels.

The clue to me is usually just how quickly it's all acted upon. Music release and promotion is a step by step process that takes months if not years, with rollouts carefully planned. A genuine fluke of a crossover is not something that can be prepared for, and it'd be foolish to plan around it. Like, can you guess how long after Doja Cat's previous single "Say So" blew up that this new single was ready to capitalise on it, and also promote the big budget Hollywood film "Birds of Prey"? It's a trick question; this came out at pretty much the same time. Maybe that can be a haphazard strategy juggling multiple hits at once but it turned out fine when this one took a little longer to get going, and wasn't really a major force anyway. It's just that the funny thing about this delayed gratification means that while she'd get major flowers the next year, this was Doja Cat's only Hottest 100 entry, for a time.

I could potentially have decided to watch Birds of Prey for this entry but it has come in at an inopportune time re: the previous entry. It would also be an act of betrayal for me, the person who has been watching a Marvel movie just about every week for nearly 2 years now to suddenly jump ship to the DC Extended Universe. I've probably just blown my shot with Margot Robbie by saying this, alas. Amusingly, Doja Cat actually mentions Barbie in this song a few years before Margot also got that role. My affinity for this film only goes as far as the brief bites of soundtrack that I got around to. I'm obsessed with that one other song that I will needlessly hold onto for a later entry even though it's not actually one that'll appear on this list.

This song can also share those flowers though. The fact that "Boss Bitch" became a top 40 hit in Australia, and an entry here, feels like delayed gratification for Azealia Banks' "212", which did neither of those things. It has the belated bonus feeling that no matter what you feel about Doja Cat, I'd rather her have the success even if the song isn't quite as potent. It's all pure cacophony though. Maybe I'm too easy to please but once she switches up her flow, I'm just all over it. Maybe that's the real reason she had those two hit songs at the same time. It's one thing to have a hit song that's riding on its catchy pop hook, but if you want people to stick with it, you need to do something that shows what sets you apart from everyone else who could've recorded it.

#150-#146

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

6th of 2021

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

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

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

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

11th of 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

17th of 2018

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

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

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

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

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

16th of 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

30th of 2013

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

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

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