#80

#80. Tame Impala - Borderline (#18, 2019)

5th of 2019

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Records preserve history, but it's important for all of us to take the correct reading of it. Misinterpreted data is just as bad as incorrect data. I'm going to stop before I take this metaphor any further or apply any drastic implications to it. I'm doing the goofy dramatic interpretation of music again, that's all it is. Maybe there is justification to reach for grand statements but I find it can be undercut by this set up and just make you look silly. There's a time and a place, and it's not here.

How it applies here, is that we can have records of hit songs but they don't always tell the full story. Writing about music doesn't necessarily convey the full feel of it. Nuance can get lost, or clouded by vague recollections that sound accurate enough to go without questioning. I'll admit that sometimes it's just very inconsequential things, like wondering how certain songs were edited to get played on the radio, and how much they actually did get played when they seem to challenge one's perceptions of it in a modern era. The classic one though, is wondering what version(s) of a song are actually popular.

This is something that's generally pretty complicated. When the topic comes up, it feels like it's painted with broad strokes that I'll admit I understand the desire for, I just don't love the execution. When there's a hit song that's obviously boosted by a remix of some sort, I just tend to treat it as one big package deal. There might be a majority stake one way or the other, but I'm not in the habit of shutting the rest out as irrelevant noise. Funnily enough, I often suspect the lack of clarity in the matter is part of what causes the divide. Depending on who the listener is, they might not even mind what version they're hearing as long as the core concept is intact. I still listen to live versions of Two Door Cinema Club's "Undercover Martyn" and Jeff Buckley's "Lover, You Should've Come Over" that I downloaded so long ago and the original versions sound as wrong to me as those versions probably would to you. We're largely arriving at the same purpose; we just got it ingrained in different ways.

This is all part of a more specific point I want to get to when I talk about Röyksopp again, but generally speaking, the Hottest 100 is occasionally home to results that probably aren't quite what you remember in your head, or what you immediately assume when looking back at it historically. Wolfmother polled twice with the song "Woman". It's their second most famous song, so I'll assume you probably know it. The catch is that neither of the two versions of the song that polled are the one you probably think of. In 2006, it was the MSTRKRFT remix which takes the song in peculiar directions, but the other version of the song is from 2004 on the band's self-titled EP. It's noticeably less polished and sounds like more of a direct soundalike to the band's '70s influences. This version of the song is a bit buried, so you can't find it on the band's official channels. Maybe that's accidentally erasing history, or maybe the band's more polished sound on the debut album has become part of the identity and you wouldn't want someone to accidentally stumble on a different version that sounds noticeably 'worse', but not enough that you're always going to be completely convinced it's the wrong one. There was recently a remix of the song "Dirty Cash (Money Talks)" that now sits atop the Spotify chart for The Adventures Of Stevie V. The artwork and crediting are similar enough that it took me a very long time to question it, by which point the stream has already gone through. Keep at it for long enough and I wouldn't be surprised if it starts supplanting all the versions of the song from the '80s & '90s.

Something that might become increasingly jarring if it's ever actually discovered is that for many people, "Borderline", the Tame Impala song they know and love, did not actually poll in the Hottest 100 like that. The version of the song that many people likely know did not exist in 2019, after all. "Borderline" was released way back in April 2019, ten months before "The Slow Rush" was released. All was good with the world, until Kevin Parker decided he didn't love the final mix of it and made a new version for the album. The single version was deleted from all streaming platforms and exists only in vague remnants if you hunt specifically for it. The song was modestly popular at the time, but has done monumentally better in the years that have followed, making it probably Tame Impala's second most popular song. That's 1.2 billion streams on Spotify all for that new version. It's a surprisingly comprehensive sweep as well. A few years back when my hard drive carked itself, I needed to re-download all of my iTunes library, which I managed to do because iTunes keeps all of that stuff there somewhere, even when it's not available to purchase. The only exception in my entire library was "Borderline" which I simply was unable to acquire again, and needed to requisition it from a friend.

I might be over-reacting a little here, but it feels like the number one talking point about this song so I needed to make sure I did all the necessarily build up to get to this point. I'll continue to say it louder for the people in the back: The new version of "Borderline" is one that I'm not particularly fond of. Great to get that off the chest. It's hard to really describe the difference without instructing someone to listen to the single version on loop for a while and then switch over. You just immediately feel the difference. There's no 'ahhh', the drums seem to suffocate the melody, and the very nice subtle bass feels like it's getting a little too much attention. If I had to rank that version of the song, I'd be in a serious conundrum because the core concept of it still works obviously, but it's in this uncanny valley that feels like it's actively trying to re-write my memory when I hear it.

Completely deleting the song feels like a vast over-reaction to me anyway. The sheer fact that it's here shows that people were generally content with it as it was, and it also outperformed every other Tame Impala song released that year. As long as I can help it, I'm going to stick with this version of the song as the one I remember. At the very least, it's become something of a novelty bit to just get overly exasperated at these differences that I don't think most people even know about or would even notice. This entire entry has been the logical conclusion of this bit, spending as much possible time running it into the ground. I've said my piece, Kevin.

But yeah, "Borderline" is really good. It does feel a little bit sacrilegious to name the song as such. We're talking about an absolute classic Madonna single here. Solange also did it a few years earlier in 2016 but at least had the sense to append a parenthetical to it. This is just taking aim at pop canon with little regard. R.I.P. "Here Comes The Sun" and what not. In general, it feels cut from a similar cloth to "Patience" (#217), but refines the general idea. The keys in that song serve to leave it feeling spacious and un-grounded, but here, it's just sprinkled under the main melody, in time with the drums in a way that feels more purposeful. Might also be the best flute in this whole list outside of "Mask Off" (#276). When it comes to Tame Impala going full pop sensibility, I don't think it gets much better than this.

#81

#81. Haim - Falling (#27, 2013)

16th of 2013

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When I was young, I had a bit of trouble with live action TV. It wasn't a hard and fast rule, but I probably needed things to be inherently slapstick as a focus. The Home Alone movies started and ended with the rube goldbergs and seeing Joe Pesci receive cruel and unusual punishment. There was nothing he could do, Kevin was a made man, and he wasn't (isn't it funny that those two movies came out only a couple months apart?). I think there was a part of me that just assumed these things were for adults, otherwise they would make them a cartoon.

If you already clocked where I'm going with this, then I'm sorry that I'm so painfully predictable. If not, enjoy the confusing ride. There's an Australian children's TV show from the '90s & '00s called Round The Twist. It's about a father and his three children who move to a new small town and live in a lighthouse, where supernatural things seem to happen very regularly. I don't think there was ever an accidental poisoning and subsequent shoot out but I never saw the whole thing. I just generally found myself confused by everything going on with it because I was incapable of paying attention to story lines, something I've only gotten marginally better at. Another curious quirk of the show is that it essentially had three different runs, first in 1990, then 1993 and finally in 2000. It means that millennials across the board are likely familiar with it as part of their upbringing, but there's the quirk to it in that most of the characters had to be re-cast each time around. I think they mostly did a good job at finding new cast members, to the point where I'm not even sure which generation I'm most familiar with, just that Season 1 Bronson is unrecognisable to me.

I thought I should do my homework on this so I decided to properly watch the first episode of each iteration, and then I also watched the third episode of season 2 because I wanted to try the Glass Animals method (#901). I do not recommend taking this path because that episode has the boys doing a literal pissing contest. There's also a water spirit that looks suspiciously similar to No Face from Spirited Away, only this came out nearly a decade earlier. Also got some big Final Destination vibes from that episode. I didn't know Paul Jennings was a big creative force on the show, that's interesting. I guess I don't really know what a normal episode is supposed to look like. There's a strong pattern of children being tortured, and I've also witnessed spying on a girl in the bathroom, and the vitally important m-preg episode. I do love how passionate the bully kids are about political canvassing though. I think my favourite part was at the start of the second season where it felt like they were lampshading the conceit, wondering if they'd lived past lives as different people, Pete suggesting his twin sister might have been more attractive (I will not weigh in on this).

What on earth does this have to do with "Falling" by Haim? I mean obviously there are three Haim siblings and they get up to wacky adventures, no one's denying that. More importantly though, there's one thing about Round The Twist that has stuck with me as long as I can remember, and that's the theme song. It's performed by the original actress for Linda and stays for the whole duration, so she's arguably the only consistent part of the show. It's very extra, and it's very memorable. For my benefit, it also succinctly explains the premise of the show which is always nice. The first three words, sung on their own are 'Have you ever'. I'm led to believe that the opening line of "Falling" is 'I give a little', but I have never been able to experience anything other than this strange coincidental match up that my brain feeds to me every time the song starts. I just so badly need Danielle to follow it up with 'Ever felt like this?'. It hasn't yet, but maybe if I watch even more Round The Twist I'll start hearing it everywhere. It has proven to be a fun side adventure to get me to take a short break from watching later seasons of Lost (#142), something that I'm still doing because much like some of those characters, I simultaneously live in the past, present & future. I'm gonna edit this post months in the future, laughing at my former self who has no idea what he's in for in season 6, I imagine.

If this is all too off topic then I apologise but it's hard to muster up a whole lot for what is my third time around on the same Haim album, all with songs I have pretty similar feelings about. Haim are one of those bands that don't necessarily have iconic songs, so Jeopardy! like asking about them but it's more like 'Can you name that band that's three sisters?' and not 'What's that song about not letting your mind retire?' (#111). If you want some statistical fluff to go along with this, then I can report that "Falling" is technically their breakthrough single in this context though I say it with the cruellest of circumstances. By all accounts they should've been celebrating the victory in 2012 except they landed at #106 with "Forever" and #101 with "Don't Save Me". The worst thing about that is that "Don't Save Me" actually entered the ARIA Charts in January 2013, late in the voting period. You get the feeling they just needed a little more time to climb up the rankings. Maybe it served them better in 2013 though. It's one thing to want to make amends for an unfortunate result (one as clearly sign-posted as the #101 position at that), it's another to have it perfectly positioned as the band clearly are on the rise and release their debut album in the next year. For all I know, everyone wildly overcompensated and that's why Haim only ever had one entry outside of 2013 (#787).

If you don't look at that context, "Falling" looks like a massive breakout hit that I don't think it really is. Like "Find an Island" (#88), it's a nice choice to steady the ship, and maybe convince more people that this is an artist to look out for, it's just never felt like the prime Haim song, especially when the next single after it was so much more successful (I'm not linking "The Wire" again, but it's obviously "The Wire"). It gave the song an identity crisis for me that's taken a long time to get past.

"Falling" is a pretty great song that gives me plenty to like in it. Just on the production side of thing, the prominence of the bass makes it feel so different to every other Haim song, and the way they layer it with the percussion creates this lively feeling to it. Counter-acted by the shouted title lyric is one of the most captivating hooks they've ever written to lock the whole thing in place. That's the real gimmick of Haim, the fact they write some of the weirdest melodies and distract you enough with spectacle that you'll never question if it works or not, you've already got it stuck in your head.

#82

#82. Sampa the Great - Final Form (#89, 2019)

6th of 2019

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I have to issue a correction. Not for this blog, but one time, which I suspect was in late 2015, I was in the car with some family members with the radio on. A song was playing that someone was very much not into, exclaiming 'who is this?'. I wasn't very confident but I assumed it was that new rap upstart I was hearing about, so I said it was Little Simz. I suspect it was actually "F E M A L E" by Sampa the Great. In hindsight, I would never make that mistake again, but the differences in their flows were not quite as obvious as they are now that we have a decade of further experience to go by. I would also sooner defend both of them because they've proven to be pretty fantastic MCs.

In the case of Sampa the Great, what we've got here is one of the most unexpected breakout moments I've ever witnessed. That is a time accurate observation before, it was in 2015 that Sampa the Great first started getting played on triple j, and over the years she continued within that periphery. triple j plays so much Australian music that it's normal to become acquainted with many artists who you can be pretty certain are going to stay in their lane. Sampa the Great seemed like the most obvious one of these. She had a distinctive voice for sure, but nothing in her music screamed like it was ever primed to break through. There's never been much space for female rappers in Australia, and even less for rap that was so slow and introspective. The song I first cottoned onto was "Black Dignity", which I think is fantastic, but you can't listen to it and say that it's a future hit. Even when her music was more upbeat, it still just didn't really fit in with what the kids were listening to. I sometimes got a Macy Gray vibe except nearly two decades too late for that.

I'm not sure I even clocked any of this when "Final Form" came out. It's a bit of a different turn for her, but at the time I was already on board so I didn't consider the idea that she could convert more people. Even then, for as many people in the music industry who might talk it up, it still doesn't mean it'd convert. It's not like The Drones ever made the Hottest 100 after all. As it turns out, it was a bit of a sneak into the list, but it's rare that you get a song that so triumphantly announces its own arrival. This song's horns roll out its own red carpet and it's marvellous. Both those horns and the post-chorus vocals are sampled from "Stay Away From Me" by The Sylvers. Another song that came out a year earlier than "Final Form", "Late Night" by Space Invadas has a similar use of the sample.

I don't even think anything is compromised for it all in the end. It's certainly more pop friendly than usual for her, but it's still a song that takes nearly two minutes to get to its hook, and before that you get multiple verses of Sampa just owning the microphone. It all just feels like one of those moments when all the people who want to champion a talent like this finally have an easy avenue to win people over. Sampa the Great hasn't really had another hit or anything like this since. I thought her song "Better Days" with Baker Boy had some potential there but maybe not enough people heard it. The only other interesting observation I have to say in the aftermath is that her second album was called "As Above, So Below". That's also the name of Australian rock band Stonefield's second album from 2016. I remember hearing from Birds of Tokyo that they named their 2016 song "Above / Below" as such because they didn't want to copy Stonefield. I'm going to assume I heard that during a live show though because there's no word of it online. Jury is out on whether or not the current #1 album in Australia got the message, though that artist will eventually appear on this list. Maybe Sampa the Great could get a bigger hit in the future. She left some room for tempered expectations when she said she only 'might' final form. While I'm at it, Freeza never actually said 'This isn't even my final form', but in fairness he's had so many final forms at this point that it's hard to feel threatened by it. Well, he would be threatening if he wasn't just a cartoon, what with all the planets he's blown up.

#83

#83. Childish Gambino - Redbone (#5, 2016)

11th of 2016

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For the 2025 Hottest 100, I did something I don't normally do and I made a prediction for the whole top 20. It's common to back this up with data like the kind you could theoretically scrape from social media for sampling, but I didn't do that either. I just went with my gut feelings based on how the year had played out, and how past Hottest 100s seemed to show the state of play. This turned out to be extremely accurate in a way I have to attribute largely to luck, where most of my gut feelings shaped up correctly, and everything I had tipped for the top 20 either landed in it, or very closely outside of it.

The one major mistake I had made with it was failing to account for "Rein Me In". The song had evidently started making in-roads towards the end of the year which probably should have been the big clue (it's Sam Fender's only top 50 hit in Australia to date, and already was in November). In my mind, it was too little, too late and the song would do reasonably well but not figure much higher than #25-#30. As the countdown continued, I watched as it slid past one song after another, eventually landing at #14, so it's also Sam Fender's highest ever entry in that regard too.

I just wasn't ready for what was going to happen next. The song took its stride of momentum from the Hottest 100 and just didn't stop. It was aided by a feel good viral TikTok trend, and that was the last piece of the puzzle. By late February it was a top 10 single, and in early April, a #1 single. We're probably going to look back at that result in years to come and be flabbergasted that it didn't do better. A certain case of a song that was punished by getting popular too late, but still finished high enough that it's not entirely obvious.

This is a peculiar instance that's hard to predict but also isn't unprecedented. I think the Hottest 100 can be a proving ground that signals potential that hasn't been utilised fully yet. Whenever I find myself thinking 'Wow, that's surprisingly high', it's a sign that there's something in it, and it might reveal itself in the future. For further evidence of that, I look at another example, "Redbone" by Childish Gambino.

"Redbone" was the second single from "Awaken, My Love" (the quotation marks are part of the title this time), following the experimental "Me and Your Mama" (#184). My feelings on the two songs were fairly similar, but if pressed for it, I'd concede that "Redbone" was the bigger hit. It just wasn't by a big enough margin to really consider, or so I thought until the Hottest 100 came around and put 83 positions between the two songs. The rest of 2017 was just a matter of seeing that gap come into fruition, as "Redbone" exploded from then to become one of the biggest hits of the year. There it is at #49 for the year in Australia, and #25 for the year in America (the UK couldn't really find a place for it in the moment but it has gone triple Platinum there). I do say explode in the metaphorical sense though, as it was a rather slow burning hit that didn't chart especially high but just hung around all year. How did he achieve this chart hit in the modern era? Why, with a funk rock jam, obviously.

It's not all purely an aesthetic, the song appears to borrow elements from "I'd Rather Be With You", which gives George Clinton & Bootsy Collins a writing credit on it. I'm not sure if the main audience was the rap crowd or the rock crowd but having both on his side couldn't have hurt. The song is also a fairly long one in that sense. Most songs around the five and a half minute mark tend to struggle to hang on the charts (I guess "Rein Me In" is another exception), because you can guarantee the radio isn't really going to try. It probably doesn't help that the song's memorable hook is only 4 words and one of them certainly isn't going to get aired. The word before it probably ruffles some feathers too. I'm reminded of one of my favourite joke tweets, someone giving up on watching The Sopranos because the first word heard on the show is 'woke' (technically true).

The song unintentionally did get a dose of being what some might consider 'woke' because it famously was included on the soundtrack to Jordan Peele's directorial debut "Get Out", a film I would say is very good but I wouldn't necessarily recommend watching it for the first time on a plane like I did. The movie came out only a few months after the song did and completely suits it in one of those perfect coincidental opportunities. Peele's subsequent films "Us" and "Nope" have instead chosen to make nightmares out of "I Got 5 On It" and "Sunglasses At Night", so it makes this usage of a more modern song feel less out of obligation. In general, it's just hard to argue with the success of the song, the whole thing just sounds great, there's a sick guitar solo at the end, and Gambino is consistently pushing his voice in strange and interesting ways.

#84

#84. BROCKHAMPTON - SWEET (#11, 2017)

10th of 2017

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I don't know if anyone would willingly admit it, but the discovery that Geese were significantly boosted by people who were paid to pretend they were organically fans of the band creates a potentially interesting dilemma. How willingly would anyone accept they've been duped into one fandom over another. It feels especially dicey in the world of artists whose identity is in some way built around the way they present an alternative to the boring mainstream. You'll feel more attached and make it part of your personality, probably. The lesson is probably to only take recommendations from people you know, people you couldn't for a moment believe were paid to say it, but then maybe it's not a big deal after all. Inorganic or not, it's still an opportunity to be part of something, and build a sense of community around it. I don't want to have a go at any Geese fans. At the end of the day, they're a band where I feel all the more confident that people do go to bat for what they're hearing because they're too abrasive to just pretend to be into it. I also sometimes wonder if I fell for the same trap years ago with BROCKHAMPTON.

This isn't much to go off of, it's just something I think about often that feels increasingly strange to me. I think that what pushed me to listen to BROCKHAMPTON back in 2017 was actually comments on triple j's Facebook. It's not usually a place you expect to see hype for a new artist, but I just saw so many words of commendation about the group like it was a no-brainer. I can't prove this was all someone's paid-for scheme, but the shoe really fits in this case.

The whole history of BROCKHAMPTON is pretty rooted in that kind of internet notoriety anyway. Kevin Abstract started the group by posting on KanyeToThe, asking if anyone wants to start a band. It's a huge piece of internet history that's still available to see. It's one of those showbiz type operations that you start to associate with all the potential kinds of massive depravity in the way of plugs. The way you look at all the top YouTubers and see the shamelessness in it, because at the end of the day, it works. With just how large BROCKHAMPTON really was, including many members who didn't actually rap, it all feels like part of the strategy as well. However it happened, it's a long gambit. That Kevin Abstract post was made in 2011. BROCKHAMPTON blew up very suddenly in 2017 to deliver one of the craziest Hottest 100 performances in recent history. Sure, there's room to do better, but to see them come out of nowhere and land this high with a song that was neither a gimmick, nor a crossover hit, it doesn't seem to make much sense at all. I do lament contributing to keeping them out of the top 10 because I voted for the song that blocked them, but that's as much as you can do that when I'm also still ranking that song above this one.

"SWEET" does happen to be the song that triple j were playing the most. They weren't short of options, because by the end of 2017, BROCKHAMPTON released a whole trilogy of "SATURATION" albums. They are largely characterised by a pattern of all-caps song titles that started with four letters and went up to five on the last track (which was generally a Bearface song), increasing the letter count and then looping back around by the end of the 3rd one. As far as talking about the music, it's an interesting strategy because nothing feels like it stands out much and it's hard to remember which song is which as there's rarely any clear connection. "GOLD" & "SUMMER" actually do have the title work in their hook, but otherwise you're squinting to say things like 'yeah, "FIGHT" does sound like you could stage an AMV fight sequence over it', or 'It must be called "SWEET" because they mention liquorice'.

The thing I find most interesting about BROCKHAMPTON's eventual crossover success is that it comes about in a counterproductive way. I think for a lot of people, the appeal of the band was how genuinely out there they sounded. If your introduction is through the song "HEAT", you'll hear something intense on all accounts. The first words Joba gets on the record are him screaming 'f**k you!', which you're just not gonna get from more carefully focus tested releases (this will also become relevant again later on the list). That's the kind of thing a lot of people do want to hear, something that sounds like it was made to engage but not be a hit. BROCKHAMPTON had it in spades, a mix of different voices and ideas, with memorable and distinct beats that kept finding new things to do. It was often the thing I kept going back to the most, songs like "QUEER" and "ZIPPER" were just so interesting.

So is "SWEET" some kind of concession? I'm not really sure. It feels like one of their most unassuming songs because it's just a posse cut in its purest form. You get to see everyone's flavour and what they bring to the group. Matt spilling his emotions, Dom pertaining to flow like he's the architect, Merlyn being a complete wild card, Ameer doing his one trick and Joba putting on all his voices. Kevin doesn't actually get a verse here but you know he's always good for a good hook. My favourite moment has to be the start of Merlyn's verse, where he's already starting with an iconic line 'DON'T CALL ME STUPID' and then manages to switch up his flow in real time to the point that it feels like he's passed off the mic. The way Kevin joins up with him in the music video sells the illusion even more. It's one of so many of their songs that individually feels like they're using up everything they've got, and yet they just kept doing that over and over again. You come to BROCKHAMPTON for the boundless possibilities, more than anything.

#85

#85. British India - Summer Forgive Me (#84, 2013)

17th of 2013

I have a strong habit of going rogue with regards to my favourite songs by a lot of artists. Maybe I'm projecting a bit and everyone does it, but the beacon-like nature of popularity has a habit of exemplifying the regular reaction. I think it also gets reinforced over time because the accepted truth just tends to block everything else out as an entry point. The Rapture are the "House of Jealous Lovers" band, Fischerspooner are the "Emerge" band. It's very easy to use these as your accepted entry point and then just not go any further with it. If they had something else worth hearing about, I'd have heard about it, right? This is me going to bat for "Get Myself Into It" and "Never Win", for the likely reason that they're just the ones I heard first. Sometimes, it can feel like you're being pushed out of your nuance because it's just easier to go along with what everyone else says.

For the most part, this isn't really important. The breadth of choices is always there and I can live in my world where "Science of Fear" or "Rabbit Hole" are just as important as the usual suspects in The Temper Trap's discography. One exception to this is in the live music setting. That's one where depending on the artist and the context of the show, you likely have to take concessions to the consensus, and find out how willing you are to go along with it. That super deep cut you love just isn't going to come through but the song that got them famous absolutely will.

This all came to mind because I was recently thinking about a bunch of my favourite songs over the years and which ones I've had the opportunity to hear played live. It's a relatively small fraction, because I don't go to a great deal of shows and even if I did, you can probably imagine how often Western Australia gets left off the itinerary. What stood out to me though, is how often I had these standout picks that had basically no shot at ever coming into fruition, because I'd already seen these bands and they didn't have them in the setlist. Every new album cycle is just potentially more of them to get cycled out of rotation, very rarely will something come back.

With that in mind, one of my favourite British India songs is "Beneath The Satellites". On the whole, it's probably boilerplate British India but I have great affection for the delivery of the title, the way it's elongated but the sung note is shifted with no subtlety. I don't think I've encountered it done in such a way that called out to me like this before or since. The song was released in early 2010, as the second single to the band's 3rd album. I suspect that it was all over the setlist during that album cycle but never again, as the song wasn't really much of a hit. Sure enough, I saw them live in 2016 and it wasn't included, the window was over. My memory of that setlist is a little fuzzy but I feel like they weren't playing much of their very early material if any. Only "I Can Make You Love Me" feels safe from the passage of time because it's their biggest hit. I was in luck however, because I'm pretty sure "Summer Forgive Me" made the cut. That's not really a big hit either, but it does have a strong advantage as the direct follow up to "I Can Make You Love Me". I'd be pretty ready to accept this song being pretty forgotten but that position in their discography gave it the best kind of momentum. Instead of just being another British India song that I like a lot in particular, it split the difference to just make it over the line here and feel like a notable song in the long run.

I think the best thing it has going for it is the general production & mixing. British India are a garage rock band at heart and thrive on that kind of scrappy sound. Here, they switch things up with something that sounds remarkably crisp. I don't think it would work quite as well if it sounded like a 128 bit rate mp3 that was nicked off Limewire. It makes the band feel more primed for the big time, and just in general feels like one of their most instantly clicking songs.

#86

#86. Drake - Passionfruit (#35, 2017)

11th of 2017

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One of the more mundane coincidences I've come across relates to Australian soft drinks. When you think of passionfruit drinks, the two that come to mind are Asahi's Passiona, and Kirk's Pasito. In a very quick space of time in early 2017, we managed to have two notable songs that recalled them to mind. The Smith Street Band's "Passiona" (#366) of course, and who could leave out "Despacito", which is of course French for 'Some Pasito' [citation needed]. Also at the very same time, Drake joined in with "Passionfruit", and these were the only three songs I could ever think of that managed to fit this idea, until The Rions had their own "Passionfruit" many years later.

If you're reading this post as it came out, you might be aware that Drake recently released 3 albums on the same day. If you're reading this further in the future, it's not too late, but who even knows what gimmicks he's resorted to since then. It's been a peculiar thing to witness, as I've watched the general perception of Drake change over the years. Maybe it all happened the moment he first had a #1 single and he was no longer the curious underdog to root for, and became the very establishment propped up solely on pure hubris and persistence. It was something that became very clear around when he released "For All The Dogs" in 2023. I just remember seeing a comment that was dismissive of the potential sales on Drake's album when physical formats were released, as it's hard to imagine someone spending actual money for a CD or vinyl over just streaming the latest disposable offering. I almost didn't question it but then I remembered back in the early 2010s, how different things were back then.

In a time when many artists were having trouble with that aspect of fandom, Drake was a glaring exception. It was mainly just in the US, but suffice to say, he was an absolute monster in terms of getting fans to buy his albums. His first four albums coincided with his own growing popularity and a slide in pure sales across the board, but it was he who was actually winning that battle. He'd consistently sell close to half a million copies in his first week, peaking with "Views" in 2016 which managed over 850,000 sales to go with record breaking streaming numbers. Almost nobody but Adele or Taylor Swift was doing Drake numbers. This is evidently not the case anymore. Drake is still a very bankable star, obviously, but that album-buying audience he once had has all but disappeared. Most recently, "ICEMAN" managed just 13,000 pure sales in its first week in America, and that was the big one of the three. Just a decade ago, Drake nearly moved half a million digital sales in a week with a barely announced mixtape.

You can make a lot of brash judgements on this. I do think the easiest is just to say that Drake eventually neglected the artistry of the album format. He's become one of the more infamous artists of late whose every action with regard to his discography seems to preference keeping the ship running with excess, rather than quality control. There's a need to seemingly always have something out around the corner, and to buff the streaming numbers by making as many songs as possible. It's begrudgingly working, but it feels like the disappearance of a once vital performance metric for Drake in pure sales has been the cost of doing business this way. You can't expect your fans to value your art if you treat it so frivolously.

My gut feeling is that this all set in when Drake released "More Life" in 2017. This was just under a year after he'd released his 20 track album "Views". "More Life" had 22 tracks, and then just a year later came "Scorpion" with 25 tracks. I hate to reference the TERF wizard franchise but I just can't not think of Harry Potter's cousin Dudley lamenting getting one less birthday present than last year and getting his parents to cave and buy two more presents when they go out. That feels like the mindset Drake is satiating, the idea that to slow down, is to signal to shareholders that it's all downhill from here. The aspect that I've left out here is that Drake marketed "More Life" as a playlist, as opposed to a mixtape. It feels like an attempt to modernise the nomenclature to something a younger generation is more familiar with, but you can't help but be cynical about just how banal it comes across. It changes the dynamic from 'Here's a fun sequence of songs I put together' into 'Here are some songs, do what you want with it'. I'll also admit that when it comes to his sheer excess of productivity, the line between studio album Drake & mixtape Drake has never felt less clear to me.

I'll be fair though. Regardless of how I might feel about where Drake's output has been heading lately, I didn't feel quite as uninterested back in 2017. I thought there was some potential in this project, and by all accounts, it had its moments. I have to give big props to "Get It Together", for introducing me to Black Coffee and also giving Jorja Smith a starring role. The two of them provide good balance so it's not just 4 straight minutes of Drake, in a way that seems increasingly common. His later Hottest 100 hits, "Rich Baby Daddy" and "NOKIA" feel more like bops that Drake happens to be on, rather than Drake songs in their entirety. Alongside this, "Passionfruit" is just a really good song too.

It's a song that's surprised me a little lately by just how well it's endured. Certainly it was a popular song in its time, but if any Drake songs are going to fade into the background after they have their moment, it's gonna be the more unassuming ones that aren't attached to a major project. It was a little hard to get a read on "Passionfruit" at the time because a lot of its momentum could just be owed by being the 'single' from the latest Drake project, but also being one that didn't feel entirely tuned to be a pop hit. "Passionfruit" is 5 minutes long. It takes about a minute to get going and then it resets itself. Drake's first verse starts at the 1:16 mark, and his last chorus ends at 3:46, meaning it's really a two and a half minute Drake song that's been stretched to double time. Unless you want to shut out other artists by being a time thief, there's no commercial benefit to making the song this long.

For that, I think Drake is just lucky that he landed on a brilliant instrumental. It's a very simple loop that doesn't really change much for the whole song, but in this simplicity, it just manages to land on something incredibly soothing. Sometimes he'll land a bullseye, but I often think much of Drake's negative perception of late is on how often he tries to make much harder raps that can't invite as many people in. "Passionfruit" is a big invitation for all the non-Drake fans and continues to be one of his absolute most popular songs to this day. As I write this, aside from tracks on his new albums, only "One Dance" (#796) is outstreaming "Passionfruit" daily on Spotify, so it's become an unexpected but welcome classic.