#50

#50. Run The Jewels (feat Zack De La Rocha) - Close Your Eyes (And Count To F**k) (#72, 2014)

7th of 2014

Listen

I will now present my long and storied history with Rage Against the Machine. One time in the mid-2000s when I was sleeping in someone else's spare room, they had a Rage poster on the wall and I didn't know who they were. Some years later, I had a friend who would listen to music on their iPod and keep saying 'Killing in the name of'. I didn't know what it was. I actually was a little bit familiar with the band because two of their songs, "Guerrilla Radio" and "Wake Up" were both on video games I played a lot. Sometime later, I'd connect the dots.

What always sticks out to me looking back is the 2009 Hottest 100 of All Time. "Killing In The Name" finished at #2. Potentially miles behind "Smells Like Teen Spirit", but the one result said a lot about the triple j audience's general interest. This band that largely came and went in the space of a decade was a tremendously big deal, and well beyond just a phase. There's something to be said of being (close to) the utmost though, which just grants you trust and priorities well beyond the standard. Long lasting megastars stay like that because they command a big audience in a similar way. Promotional budgets can go a long way, but if people want the thing, they'll take it in any form they can get it. Suffice to say, this is not the last, or most notable example of Rage's meteoric impact.

It's one of those things that you have to attribute when you get this. Run The Jewels making it into the Hottest 100 is an anomaly, and I'm not sure we've seen anything quite like it before or since. I suppose I could compare them to other hip-hop artists who've gotten through while skirting far from the edge of the mainstream, but those are usually trendy and youthful artists. El-P & Killer Mike were both close to 40 when they started up this new chapter in their career. It's not like they were hugely popular before that either. This all feels like a successful venture in the same way Rage Against the Machine were, by going harder than anything else around them, taking up that mantle of priority.

The only evidence I can really give to support this is anecdotal. I came across Run The Jewels in 2013, when I saw a message board raving about their debut album. To go back to something I wrote a while back (#142), there's that instinctive resistance to new things that might have stopped me. It's where you start to think something along the lines of 'Nobody has told me specifically that I should listen to Run The Jewels, so it probably isn't for me'. There's an irony in it because the main sticking point for me was the album cover, which conveys the vibe of the duo pretty well. The finger gun pointed at the clenched fist gripping onto a chain with a black background. They've mimicked this with every subsequent album cover (look above for an example), but it never looked quite as threatening as the first time around. It simultaneously warded me off, but also fascinated me like good album covers do. Probably The Dismemberment Plan's "Emergency & I" is the most notable example for me. It's so idiosyncratic that eventually you have to find out what it is, and it's a worthwhile venture.

The first Run The Jewels album lives up to the image. Right from the jump (on the song "Run The Jewels" from the album "Run The Jewels") you're met with their now established style of rapid fire rap, occasionally threatening and boastful lyrics, and El-P's knack for the most sinister production. I had no idea where the energy was coming from, and I hadn't heard anything either of them had made prior to this, but I was certainly enraptured. Beyond the bravado, they had a knack for a good hook. I particularly like "Sea Legs" and "A Christmas F**king Miracle" which both have production that sounds fairly unique, and that sets the general mood for them.

An important aspect to keep in mind with all of this is that Run The Jewels released their albums for free. It probably doesn't count for much now, firmly in the streaming age, but back then it's a great way to spread the word. There's a very big audience for anything that can be acquired legally for free, although it's very hard to gauge it in the world of music. We saw the same thing with The Weeknd, who may well have been a star before he undeniably was, or any number of rappers whose free mixtapes have gained notoriety on par with, or even surpassing that of their studio albums. Mac Miller and another guy I can't name yet have built large parts of their reputations on it, which often goes missed if you only know their charting hits. I'm not saying that Run The Jewels were secretly huge all this time, just that whatever scraps of popularity they did have were difficult to account for. In saying that, I remember catching "Close Your Eyes (And Count To F**k)" climbing up the iTunes chart at the time despite also being on a free album, so I wouldn't say I was completely surprised when the song made the tilt for the Hottest 100, just that I never would have believed it before then.

So with that in mind, "Run The Jewels 2" came out a year later, this time I was ready for it on the day of release. You could say that I was perched for it because I'd thoroughly gotten into all the pre-release singles that had come out. It wasn't just hot air either because the whole project absolutely delivered. I could not stop listening to this thing. I will just say to exemplify that 2014 was the year I listened to more music than any other (particularly at the start of the year when I was averaging over 100 plays a day). "Run The Jewels 2" was my most played album that year, and it came out in late October. The album only has 11 tracks so it's not even buffed by album track bloat. To quote El-P on the opening track, "Jeopardy", 'Run The Jewels is the answer, the question is 'What's poppin?''. It's probably the greatest reference to America's favourite game show since MF DOOM rapped 'do-do-do-do-do, that's a Audio Daily Double' on "Doomsday". Once again, my standout song is the one where the production takes a completely different turn, "Early". There's a certain rock bounce to it and accompanied by a haunting hook by BOOTS. He popped up again on the next Run The Jewels album with another highlight in "2100", but he's also most famous for his extensive writing and production credits on Beyoncé's self-titled album and "Lemonade".

I feel as though I should mention the other noteworthy thing about this album, which is that in the lead up to the release Run The Jewels included numerous pre-order packages. You've got your standard variants, CD, vinyl, T-shirt, various combinations of them. After that, they just started filling out the page with increasingly novel packages. For $25,000 USD, you can have Run The Jewels fly to your town and go to your child's school and tell them to answer any questions the children might have about marijuana, rap music & global politics (you also get a Hot Wheels car). For $100,000 USD, they'll stalk and take revenge on anyone who's ever wronged you and bring shame upon their name and their children's names. For $10,000,000 USD, Run The Jewels would retire from music and just make one song a year for you personally, though all of these higher priced options also had a disclaimer that they might just take your money and not do it. The one that got the most attention was a $40,000 USD option to have Run The Jewels re-record the album using nothing but cat sounds. As far as I can tell, nobody actually went for any of these, but someone did make a Kickstarter campaign to raise the $40,000, which very quickly was met. Run The Jewels lived up to the promise, and "Meow The Jewels" is a real album that exists in their discography, always ready to pounce when my shuffle playlist goes a little rogue. I believe all the excess profits were put to charity too, so some good came from it too. I'm a big fan of the album cover that swaps out the chain for a collar, while all the song titles have been changed to reflect this as well. "Meowpurrdy" is probably my favourite one.

Now, the gap in time between subsequent Run The Jewels albums has been increasing exponentially (so I suppose we should expect the next one in 2028), but they continue to be a vital group to look out for. When your career renaissance comes so late, there's always going to be a quick expiration date on it, so I can't say I'm surprised they've never matched these heights again. They do well though, and there's something to be said of an artist that can have tracks from every single one of their albums populate their Spotify top 10. Their most popular song is actually from "Run The Jewels 3". "Close Your Eyes (And Count To F**k)" isn't far behind, but it's always gonna get a boost from triple j audiences. What better way to meet both vital voter selling points, getting Zack from Rage Against The Machine to record a new song, and voting for a song that has the f-word in the title.

It's actually a bit of a trick going on with how the feature credit comes along. Zack De La Rocha is the first person you'll hear on the song as he sings the song's hook, adding it to the long list of Run The Jewels songs that say 'Run The Jewels' or some variation on it. If you're here for the Rage connection, you might be a little let down thinking that he's just here to mostly just say 4 words and have them looped over and over again. It makes it all the more surprising when you get to the third verse and Zack starts rapping over his own voice. We'll probably never get actual new Rage music, so this might be the closest thing to it. Such is Run The Jewels' power, they even got him to come back for another round on the next album, that time as an uncredited surprise. As previously established, I wouldn't call this my favourite song on the album, but it's so obviously the hit. Much like "Killing in the Name" two decades prior, you can go a long way by standing out aggressively like this. By all accounts this should either be unthreatening dad rap or so corny as to be embarrassing, but it's neither of those things. It's just the ideal meeting of minds.

#51

#51. Röyksopp & Robyn - Do It Again (#73, 2014)

8th of 2014

Listen

Yeah there's no following that last entry up, is there? The best thing I can do is diffuse it with an observation that's just getting into the weeds of data. On all the historical records you look at for the Hottest 100, Röyksopp have two entries of their own, both Robyn collaborations in 2014, but additionally, they have a huge entry in 2003. Their remix of Coldplay's "Clocks" landed at #5 in 2003. Now, I don't know what triple j's playlist was like back then, but I can tell you that in 2002, Coldplay's second album "A Rush Of Blood To The Head" was pretty successful, but also out of the charts in November. The album's rollout was pretty slow in Australia, possibly because the band weren't coming here until the middle of 2003. That tour would see the album climb nearly all the way back to the top in Australia, with momentum that started a few months back when "Clocks" actually got pushed as a single. It polled in 2002 on the strength of eager fans (and possible triple j airplay), but the song wouldn't get especially famous until the year after. Enough so that it was voted considerably higher the second time around. There's no mention of the Röyksopp remix on the voting list at the time, so it feels like a considerable rug pull from triple j for unclear reasons when they played the remix on the day, one that's stuck because it prevents the boring outcome of the same song polling twice. What's less well known here is that it's not the only time triple j has done this. They pulled the same trick a year later with Sia's "Breathe Me", playing the Four Tet remix instead of the original. If we were being consistent, then that's what the records would show, but they've never stuck with it. The outcome we have is probably the most interesting outcome, but it's a reminder that not everything is fully as it seems.

It's a pretty strange run for Röyksopp really. Ignoring that weird technicality, they took a very long time to finally have something resembling a breakthrough. It wasn't for lack of trying. In 2005 they release their second album and it houses the song "What Else Is There?", a collaboration with Karin from The Knife. It's a classic. The Knife have a habitual tendency to go into strange places that they can't always shake, but this song in particular helped sell just how emotive Karin's voice could be. It was radio friendly enough that I became very acquainted with it despite being late to the party. They'd have a close shave later on with their 3rd album in 2009. That actually does have a Hottest 200 hit courtesy of "The Girl and the Robot", which made it to #131. Maybe not one whose title evokes much, but again, a very memorable hook from the singer on that song and oh look, it's Robyn again.

So Robyn has a very strange career. I've been thinking about how some artists can often get misattributed as one hit wonders in one sense or another. I'm not necessarily talking about what the stats say, but more that sometimes you transcend the initial audience, score another hit and the rest are none the wiser. Like the first time I heard Scorpions called a one hit wonder, and not even for their biggest song. It feels strange, but it's also not out of the realm of possibility that someone who recognises "Rock You Like A Hurricane" either doesn't remember, or doesn't realise "Wind of Change" is even the same band. You can go to great lengths to keep up to speed on everything that vaguely resembles a hit and still fail, so it's not surprising that these things slip through the cracks.

Robyn begs for the question of how much any of this really matters. What if there were essentially two different careers that happen to belong to the same person? Not entirely uncommon either. Plenty of artists like Alanis Morissette, Delta Goodrem, Katy Perry all started their careers very differently to where they ended up. They can be a little swept under the rug because they were far from the successful heights they'd reach, but they're there as a curious tidbit. Robyn had a part in this too. She started off making teen pop music when she was literally a child, and would only much later go on to be the much adored electropop musician she is now. It's just that depending on where you are, or what you focus on, one of these two parts of her career could be seen as entirely irrelevant. Robyn has only ever had two top 50 hits in Australia, and they were both taken from her 1995 debut album. By the letter of the history books, that's the height of her career, some proto Britney Spears songs written with Max Martin. It's even more drastic in the US, where those songs both became top 10 hits and she's never cracked the Hot 100 at all since then.

Now, I'm writing this at a speculative time because "Dancing On My Own" is currently seeing a revival thanks to a needle drop and it's too early to tell if it's going to just fizzle out or be everywhere soon. I do find myself thinking about a conversation I had with someone 12 years ago, where they believed in their heart that Robyn could one day crack the top 50 again. I had my doubts because nothing seemed to be trending in that direction, but maybe this is her best shot in a long time.

I want to get back to that song, but before I do, I would just like to note that I had the strangest introduction to Robyn possible. I did not remember her '90s career at all and even now it's something I only vaguely recall after the fact, so I didn't hear about her until "Konichiwa Bitches" was on the radio. Somehow I think I had a harder time following her mass acclaim that would arrive in the near future than the people who just thought of her as the "Show Me Love" girl. She also had a cover of the song "Cobrastyle" out around the same time and that didn't help matters either. She just seemed like a novelty singer and not serious at all. "Be Mine!" came out just a couple of years earlier, I just missed it. The first big moment would arrive not much later though. Next single "With Every Heartbeat" would get a bit of airplay here and I'd notice it but not really respond to it in any way. It wasn't a big deal, I thought. Inexplicably this song is a #1 hit in the UK, and depending on who you ask, might be a serious contender for one of the best songs to ever do it. At the very least I probably caught on at some point that Robyn wasn't a joke, even if she wasn't really for me.

I got considerably more online after this and was able to see more opinions and perspectives that differed from my own. Robyn was a big deal. This might have been a double-edged sword for a while though, because once you cotton onto the notion that an artist is particularly beloved in certain circles, you start to take it as a given. Like, of course they released an album to great acclaim, that happens every time, and does nothing to convince you that you should join in with them. This is to say that I was very aware of Robyn's next run of singles with her "Body Talk" albums and largely just dismissed it all as okay and not really worth my time. Like, "Dancing On My Own" was there and I was listening to Chiddy Bang instead. The ARIA Charts will tell you that I was one of many.

"Dancing On My Own" is a song whose story might not even be fully told yet. It was wildly acclaimed at the time, and a respectable hit in certain parts of the world, but largely not the world-beating song that all those people wanted it to be. It was a very long lasting fling though, because jump forward 10 years and suddenly all of the 2010s retrospectives still couldn't get over it. It started to feel like a cliche and I watched a lot of disbelief from people who couldn't fathom that this non-major hit was turning up in everyone's lists. One might even note that it's not even the most popular version of the song, as Britain's Got Talent contestant Calum Scott recorded a cover of it. The cover blew up stupendously, inexplicably becoming one of the biggest hits of the year, and likely reaching the ears of so many people who had never heard the original song. The cover also takes the original synth pop song and turns it into a dry piano ballad, completely at odds with the interests of those original fans. The irony here is that Calum Scott is gay (and Robyn isn't), but this cover which flips the gender perspective in the song was seen as a complete betrayal to the LGBTQI+ community. I don't have much to add except that the success of the cover just shocks me because I did not think there was an audience this big for something like that. Another one of those cases that makes you question what pop music really is nowadays.

I came around eventually though. I've got a lot more time for Robyn nowadays and have been pretty interested in what she's put out since. I like to think that Röyksopp are a big part of this because so many of my favourite songs she's been involved in are the ones where they're at the helm. When I heard about this collaboration, it made perfect sense and it didn't take long to get me on board. I'm a little surprised at how well it did, but I suppose when you take two artists with fringe popularity in Australia and put them together in a more pronounced sense (Robyn wasn't credited on "The Girl and the Robot"), you get to capitalise on that anticipation. You know it's like mmm, mmm, mmm. I think "Do It Again" is the perfect song for this moment. It takes Robyn's now established sound and ramps up the stakes by just making everything bigger and louder. It almost feels like a normal Robyn song that just has so much more added to it. Every moment of the song just pummels you, and then it does it again. The only song I can think of to compare it to is one that Röyksopp released later, "Never Ever" with Susanne Sundfør, which reaches equal heights in sheer excess and euphoria. I am now amused to realise that Röyksopp sit next to The Rubens in my music library and both artists have a "Never Ever" (#577) in their catalogues. This song for Röyksopp is the same as "Don't You Worry Child" was for Swedish House Mafia. The big moment to cap off their career, just ignore the part where neither of them actually stopped. 

#52

#52. Gang of Youths - Magnolia (#21, 2015)

11th of 2015

Listen

Content warning for this entry: Suicide

I'm not a big enough movie buff to back it up, but by all accounts, 1999 is just a stacked year in cinema. Iconic films like "The Phantom Menace", "The Sixth Sense", "The Matrix", "American Beauty", "Fight Club", but also other memorable and notable films like "Office Space", "The Iron Giant" and "Being John Malkovich". That's just scratching the surface. I'm looking through and I keep coming across more films that I want to see as well (I watched "Election" recently, another winner). Another big one that comes to mind is "Magnolia". Paul Thomas Anderson finally won the Best Picture & Best Director Oscars this year for "One Battle After Another" and I've generally really enjoyed the films I've seen of his. "Magnolia" is the one that I think about the most, just an enormous undertaking that I'd be tempted to re-watch if it weren't so long and I wasn't pre-occupied with this.

I don't think Gang of Youths named the song "Magnolia" after the film, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were somewhere on their mind. Specifically, the song is about Dave Le'aupepe going on a self-destructive bender for a week that culminated in a suicide attempt. He was prevented by his friends who called the police, and spoke with him near a magnolia tree at his dad's house. The day of the incident is June 3rd, 2014, and it's now been remembered as Magnolia Day. "Magnolia" is a song of triumph in response to this.

I'm often oblivious to all of this so I don't think I even knew about it at the time when "Magnolia" was first doing the rounds. Even the significance of the song itself I didn't clock as any more noteworthy than the album's other singles, "Poison Drum" and "Radioface". It certainly asserted itself by the end of the year, which is why this is the only song from Gang of Youths' debut album that winds up on this list, but even then it was somewhat reserved. "Mountain At My Gates" (#129) was a bigger song than "Magnolia". Yet, with this in mind, look at more recent triple j polls, and what you'll find is that "Magnolia" comes out on top. The band were certainly more popular on their next album, and yet when faced to meet a consensus, it's everyone going back to this song, which I bet many regret they didn't vote for at the time.

I think a big profile boost came for the song in 2017. There was a now famous segment on triple j's Breakfast slot with Ben & Liam that took place on R U OK? Day. In it, Liam talks very candidly about his experiences with mental health, specifically on the toil that's taken in his position, and the importance of reaching out to those close and distant from you. He's a young man who got the opportunity to take over the reins from one of triple j's most beloved duos and came to it with excitement, only to be met by sheer hostility. If you're familiar with the general discourse, this has been fairly common over the years. It can take a long time to warm up to something new, and you can set an unmeetable standard of the new guys based on a poorly remembered snapshot of the best moments of what came before.

Liam mentions the experience of leaving after a comedy show and getting approached by some people who told him to kill himself because they preferred the previous triple j breakfast duo, something he shrugged off in the moment but had it stay with him later on (a feeling I know all too well). He mentions the sheer emotional toll of the experience, something he was very excited about going in, and just how heartbreaking it could feel to be a disappointment to people who were just like he was. Someone who effectively wanted the same thing he did, but just wasn't able to live up to those lofty standards. It's the obvious consequence in a cynical society that not only encourages this negativity, but very rarely reins it in when it's clearly going past the line of socially acceptable. Some might shield themselves from the consequences by doing it behind a screen, but then evidently, others will be no different in person. It's a large part of why I never engage in any such behaviour on even a small scale. Saying these kinds of things even as a joke just broadens the normalisation of those extreme cases who should be so far out of line as to stand out.

The uplifting part of the story is how Liam reveals being out one night and receiving a phone call. It turns out to be the call where he finds out that he and his best friend are going to be hosting triple j's Breakfast slot next year. He turns on the radio right after this and triple j are playing "Magnolia", he calls it the happiest moment of his life, and uses it to hype up that the band were coming in for Like A Version later on, which would also bear fruit (#625). In the moment I saw a big boost for the song's sales, and there was a very nice period for a couple of months where the usual commenting cesspools would have the people who missed this segment pulled aside by those who now recognised the weight of their words. It shouldn't have to come to this, but it makes me believe that it is possible to change this shitty part of our collective mindset, where everyone, even the ones who are well past the station's youth demographic comes across as with the maturity of a spoiled child.

I will preface this all to say that I am doing okay and you don't need to worry about me right now. Back when I used to have more therapy sessions than I do now, I was always a little taken aback by the regularity of being questioned on whether or not you've had suicidal thoughts. It's always been a hard no for me, where I just have no desire to put that outcome into the world, and the joy of living always wins out. I do have my bad days though, brought on by similar feelings of self-assessment. I want nothing more than to bring joy to those around me, and often have gone to great extra-curricular lengths to accomplish that. I love creating things for the personal sense of accomplishment, but I also have really loved seeing the appreciation and enjoyment of others. It's something I remember as far back as when I was 8 or 9. I'd use the small grid paper I was supposed to be using for maths homework and I'd draw mazes in then, and get the teacher to photocopy it for the class. I made a booklet of puzzles and sold them around the school for charity. When I was in my last year of high school, I got really interested in making interactive games in PowerPoint, mostly of the 'Guide your cursor through a death trap' variety, and I'd distribute it via USB to primary school students, capitalising on the sheer lack of fun things you were allowed to do on the school computers. I like to think that was the reason I won my first ever student award at the last possible opportunity to do so. It's something that's followed me in essence into adulthood where I've continued to make trivia games of various forms, and just generally doing anything I can to spread those good vibes. I find it strangely heartening to get a bunch of upvotes or likes or whatever on social media for anything fun or informative because it feels like a logical extension of the same principle, and one that's understood by the person distributing those.

I think a lot of it just comes from my insecurity of being different, and occasionally receiving special treatment because of it. There's a general obligation to want to give back because there's a feeling of getting a leg-up that whether deserved or not, won't necessarily carry over to sentiment. The thing about equity is that it all makes sense but a lot of folks doing it tough won't love the idea that they still need to make further concessions. It's just a feeling you have when your disabilities aren't all that apparent. More than anything, you want to just fit in, be like everyone else, and enjoy life, but it can be tough at times. I try to see the world through everyone else's eyes as much as possible to do this, and also to make sure I'm generally in the clear. If you ever catch me breaking down, it might be overwhelming stress in an intangible sense, but often it's just that feeling of disappointment that my actions brought upon by my mindset have caused a stir, and I've upset or angered someone. You never feel less like you fit in than when you've had your actions called out and inevitably stop and think something along the lines of 'Whatever I did must have been something that a normal person wouldn't do'. I don't necessarily even think that this hypothetical normal person exists, and there's a wide spectrum of traits I associate with myself that are probably near universal. Rational thinking helps me step aside from this sometimes, but other times, it's just difficult to pick yourself up. As someone who loves to experience things (and in all fairness, has managed some pretty incredible ones over the years), it never leaves me how much I might be missing out because my fear of confrontation and potential dangers, as well as being low on many a social priority list, has left me not going out and seeing the world.

Nonetheless, I am undeterred. As tough as it can be, I still find the doom and gloom approach to be undesirable. It's just a mere tangent away from the same brand of cynicism I loathe, and one that does nothing but, through inaction or disinterest, perpetuate the very lamented outcomes from happening. The sheer triumph of belief, whether in yourself or others, is one of the greatest feelings you can ever experience. It's why I could never turn to self-harm. There's no catharsis in it, and I would let down everyone who ever believed in me. What would you rather hear? The musings of someone who's completely given up and has no hope for the future, or bloody "Magnolia" by Gang of Youths, one of the most life-affirming songs ever written? The last minute and a half of the song, just excellent. You're gonna be vastly outnumbered every time, but finding any small victories along the way and embracing them and you're gonna come out on top.

#53

#53. Queens of the Stone Age - I Sat By the Ocean (#72, 2013)

9th of 2013

Listen

My white whale is a 2007 Hottest 200 list. The year is so crucial to me and it pains me that it's the newest list that remains unanswered. So many of my perspectives have been formed on the definitive ins and outs of it and for all I know there are near misses that would completely change my perspective. There's that one British band I think we generally assumed were in the conversation with many songs but only got one of them in. A lot of songs that were big on requests but suddenly went missing. Also what really happened with all those Queens of the Stone Age songs?

They had the one entry that just got over the line, but I'm wondering about the rest of them and if they were remotely in the conversation. "3's & 7's" is a bit of a weird one but if the common consensus is that Muse got over the line with help from Guitar Hero III, then perhaps that was also in the periphery. The other big one for me is "Make It Wit Chu". It's not a song I was particularly interested in, but it feels like the most obvious crossover success on the album, the one that'd appeal outside of their fanbase. Admittedly I'm not 100% certain how much I heard it in 2007 or if it was more a carry over into 2008, so I could easily imagine it being either #105 or #195. There's just a lot to ponder on it. It's also another song that could easily have warped my whole perception on the band if it weren't instead just the 3rd or 4th song of theirs I heard. Maybe mid-tempo songs that don't encroach too much could be their wheelhouse.

With that prior experience, I wasn't expecting "I Sat By the Ocean" to become my favourite song on "...Like Clockwork". At the time it was a serviceable later single. In the upper echelon, but not particularly special for it. I did tend to prefer the band's louder songs after all. "I Sat By the Ocean" locks itself into one riff for pretty much the whole song, and isn't especially evocative. So how did we get here?

With the gift of having a solid 13 years to get accustomed to it all at this point, "I Sat By the Ocean" has become a monster of a grower for me. In 2013, I was listening to "My God Is the Sun" (#57) more than this one but the lead that this has, has only grown in the years since. Very few songs understand the assignment quite as clearly as this with how it just immediately locks into place. I find myself likening it a bit to "Make It Wit Chu" because it puts on a bit of a simple facade, but constantly props itself up with some tasty guitar riffs that feel like showing off. The one that leads into the first verse manages to convey so much personality that you just don't get from guitar solos usually. Everything after that, like the many spooky turns it takes, that's all gravy. I've gotten my money's worth in the first 25 seconds.

#54

#54. Vera Blue - Settle (#78, 2016)

6th of 2016

Listen

Vera Blue rose to national attention in 2013 with her audition for the second season of The Voice Australia. She brought in her own guitar, and did a rendition of Simon & Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair / Canticle". It's memorable in how she manages to win over all of the judges, especially Delta who turns for her almost immediately. It's not yet fully matured, but her voice is silky, and sticks out immediately. Towards the end she stumbles, and breaks into her very Australian accent to say that she's forgotten her words, but it serves only to make her even more endearing. This is largely the template for her appearances on the show, and she ended up finishing in 3rd place. This was followed by the standard order cash-in album, to the blatant extent that all three losing finalists released them on the same week (they conveniently charted in order of their placements the entire time).

I think it's worth bringing it up because that audition video has over 15 million views on YouTube. The biggest videos on Vera Blue's channel are just scraping around 2 million views. For a lot of people, that awkward teenager up on the stage is who she is, and her level of subsequent success is still a long way from changing that. People don't generally like to see big shifts like this because it can feel like it's interrupting a core memory, or you can just feel cheated out of the career you were expected when it's pivoted in another direction. I don't know if many people would have watched that video in 2013 and had their first thought be 'I sure hope she ends up on a Flume song (#619) someday'. That's generally been her trajectory from here, almost emphatically rejecting that initial image and experimenting with different sounds.

That's not how it always was, however. A year before adopting the Vera Blue moniker, she released an EP titled "Bodies". It was all produced by Eric J Dubowsky, which isn't stepping out too far as he'd always been producing all of The Voice Australia's releases at that point (he also won an ARIA Award later that year for engineering Chet Faker's "Built On Glass"). There's a cowriting credit with Bluejuice's Jake Stone, but she's writing her own songs now, aside from a cover of Bat For Lashes' "Laura" at the end. This EP feels more piano driven than guitar, but it feels like the kind of career she was promising in the first place.

A year later and she creates the Vera Blue project, which starts to feel like a complete career reset with debut single "Hold". It's filled with skittering programmed beats and pounding drums. The voice is still recognisable but it's under a completely different template so it might as well not be. The song wasn't a charting hit or anything, but served as a message to put her new career out there in the world, which she'd very quickly capitalise on.

"Settle" was the next single, and to me, it feels like the biggest compromise she's done to her early audience. It's the Vera Blue song that sounds the most like Celia Pavey. I get serious cabin in the woods vibes emanating off of this one. Still a very electronic song, but one that's using a guitar as its main backbone. Rather than feeling like her voice is drowning in electronica, it rises above it all to maintain its standing as her general calling card. By all accounts, it was just a very well made song that solidified her career going forward.

I took to it very quickly myself. I didn't have any strong affinity to her when she was on The Voice, and wasn't really following her career up to this point, but "Settle" was the kind of song to stop me in my tracks. I had a belated realisation a year ago when I was listening to the song "Someone Who'll Get It" by Highasakite. I suspect it was while I was writing up the entry for their song "Since Last Wednesday" (#546). That song had me completely enraptured, the way it took the band's cutesy folk styling and added serious dramatic stakes & tension to it. It was my absolute favourite song at the time, circa February 2016. "Settle" was released in March 2016, and quickly became another big favourite. The realisation now is that the two songs are operating on a very similar level. It's one where Highasakite have cranked it up to 11, but "Settle" finds success in a more modest iteration as well. The most striking moments in this song are the ones where the music is slightly stripped away and Vera Blue's voice gets to control the flow of things. Her vocal runs are captivating, and I especially enjoy it when it's running over the top of the backing vocals in the song's coda. I've never been able to figure out what they're actually saying there, so my mind drifts over to the Katy Perry-esque 'I'm a sheet of paper'. I feel that.

#55

#55. The Bennies - Party Machine (#88, 2015)

12th of 2015

Listen

There's a season 4 episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force that guest stars Andrew W.K. as himself. Frylock is unwell with what turns out to be cancer, and so Master Shake tries to cheer him but by getting Andrew W.K. to sing a cheerful song. Andrew W.K. doesn't actually have any proper voice lines in the episode, they just play a segment of a song he made for the show called "Party Party Party". It's generally funny in part because it's a real life musician's likeness in the show, but also for how abruptly the song will stop and start during the scene. Most of all though, it just sells the Andrew W.K. persona so well. This is a man whose Spotify top 10 features four different songs with the word 'Party' in the title, and three of them are from the same album. We can degrade a one trick pony but deep down there's a little bit of jealousy in their ability to carve out the niche for themselves.

I wouldn't necessarily say that The Bennies have done the same (although I wrote that opening paragraph before realising their debut album is coincidentally called "Party! Party! Party!". No songs with 'Party' in the title on that). It might just be something they've stumbled into given that "Party Machine" ended up being their most popular song. Before that, they were operating all over the shop. Their own triple j Unearthed page describes them as 'Psychedelic Reggae Ska Doom Metal Punk Rock From Hell', and I'm not sure if I'd necessarily take any of those descriptors away from them. I find myself associating them most with the punk ethos, and what's more punk than not giving a shit and just doing whatever? I can tell you what's less punk, and that's performing at an anti-vax rally hosted by One Nation, which lead singer Anty Horgan was caught doing in 2021. He apologised profusely for it and made it clear to distance himself from the racists, but it's altogether a strange piece of news. It was also not long after this that the band had a big line-up change and now Anty is the only permanent member of the band. The whole thing soured me a bit, but I'm taking some solace that we've not heard anything about this since then so maybe he's in the clear.

For me, a song like "Party Machine" is what the Hottest 100 is all about. You can take some merit in the 'objectively' more agreeable songs (and it's not like I don't vote for them either), but for me, I crave the scrappy quality that punches through good sense. I remember so clearly on the day the countdown aired, I had a bigger feeling of joy hearing this song than I did the song that played right after it, which I'd voted for. Maybe part of that is the fact that I collect these Hottest 100s and so when something like this comes along, it feels like I'm writing it off as a business expense. It's a golden opportunity to ensure I'll always remember it, and it feels like it mattered on some level. The "Somebody That I Used to Know"s and "Party Machine"s of the world both tell an equally important story and I wouldn't want it any other way than to experience both.

In saying all of this, I feel like I'm being a little unfair to "Party Machine" on the surface. It's a song that I don't believe truly works if it isn't as tightly locked as it is. It's why the ska portion of the band is so important because it gives the whole song such a well-oiled template to bounce off. Like I listen to the first verse and the whole thing feels so focused on the interest of selling the idea, and it makes it all the more powerful when the chorus comes crashing in on top of it. It's all simple, direct, and to the point from there. I would never sing along with it, but the gratuitous course language makes it all the better. Just the idea that you need to so brashly declare your partying capabilities to someone who might not believe it. The song's bridge manages to explain the equation like Lyle Lanley explaining how a monorail works. But generally outside of that, the musicianship is so tight that I can't help but give it the extra points that I'd so rarely pay to any similar novelty single. I feel like Playlunch are carving out a similar idea at the moment, and you can go even further back to Area-7, but somewhere in the middle, we had The Bennies to give us a distinctly 2010s version of it.

#56

#56. London Grammar - Strong (#10, 2013)

10th of 2013

Listen

Something always interesting in the world of popular music is how often you just can't really account for taste. You can do all the focus testing that's feasible, but it can mean nothing once a song is out in the world and you can witness just how everyone responds to it. One of the biggest overhauls we've witnessed in the 2020s is seeing so many bands and artists who you'd rightly assume would never get a foot in the door, suddenly thrive under the circumstances. The investment to open that door was often not worth the effort when there's always a more proven formula coming elsewhere. Sometimes the audience does the work for you and you can pounce, but even then, it's not always certain that it will work. It's not always as simple as seeing something perform well and then pouncing on it, because isolated and mass appeal are two very different beasts.

This is the quandary that I think London Grammar's label was facing in 2013. They were always weirdly placed, part of the Ministry of Sound lineup despite being very far removed from the brand of electronic music that's associated with. They largely were pushing out ballads and building an audience from that, something that validated itself when "Strong" became their biggest hit by far.

I find myself wondering how much it all went to plan. Perhaps it was always earmarked as the hit, but one with an odd marketing position. If you put yourself in the mindset of early 2010s radio, you wouldn't associate it much with sparse ballads unless Adele was steering the ship (ironically, "All Of Me" by John Legend was perched at #1 when "Strong" hit the charts but you can't really plan for that). You'd never think to put "Strong" on the radio next to Avicii & Pitbull. There was an ace up the sleeve however, because part of the single package that was produced for "Strong" was a remix by High Contrast. That remix turns the song into a drum & bass song with a fair amount of pomp. It has the same driving pace as Rudimental's "Feel The Love", while still capturing the core components of "Strong". I was pretty opposed to the remix initially on principle but I warmed up to it as being very good for what it is.

The remix was what got sent to the radio and played, which is probably a job done well that worked on the surface. I just can't help but wonder if it was a missed opportunity to take the risk with the original version. Rather than widening their portfolio, it feels more like they cut off the main source. It was the original version that far outsold the remix, which might be a case of SEO trust, where people are more likely to buy the more popular version without thinking too much of it, but I think it speaks to that unaccountable taste index. I listen to "Strong", a song I immediately latched onto, as a song that just immediately cuts through its surroundings. It's a song that stands out, makes you notice, and does so in a way that feels like it can be trusted as the real deal. It's felt more clear over the years, as the song seems to resonate especially strongly whenever it appears as a needle drop anywhere, coming from the clouds to re-enter the ARIA Charts multiple times. Maybe it's a bit much to expect it to go all the way when it's competing with the reign of Pharrell's "Happy", but I can't help but wonder if this admittedly very successful #4 hit could've gone a little higher if more people could've heard the original version. Maybe there was just too much focus on the seemingly winning precedent set by Lana Del Rey, another artist who got onto the radio that year with remixes. In either case, it's become clear where audiences really side on this. I should clarify in all of this that triple j were playing the original version, and I suspect that's what everyone was voting for. It capped off a very strong first appearance in the Hottest 100, leading their three appearances that year and finishing in the top 10.

"Strong" was for me, a song I adored instantly. It wasn't long after it was released, when the song very quickly made an impression and became a top 20 hit in the UK. There was every chance it'd quickly sink away, but I think it once again showed its worth when it managed to hang around for 7 weeks in the top 40 over there. I'm inclined to say that this song singlehandedly sold the album to me, as it felt like revealing the fruits of London Grammar's potential. It's all pure dramatics with loud keys & Hannah's singing, but they know to make it stand out. Unlike a lot of ballads that just rest on the emotional resonance, "Strong" manages to be surprisingly catchy, with its changing, often countering melodies, and tendency to resolve on a minor chord to maintain the tension. I've seen comparisons drawn to Coldplay's song "Trouble", mainly because both songs use the phrase 'caught in the middle' in the same way. Combine that with the A1 song literally called "Caught In The Middle", and there's something to be said of London Grammar mining a familiar, successful phrase. It's always been the line that stood out the most for me.