#32

#32. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Multi-Love (#55, 2015)

8th of 2015

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Earlier this year, Radio New Zealand has their own version of the Hottest 100. It was a big voted list of the 100 best songs from their country. You can take a look at the list here if you want. It was pretty interesting to me in the way that I get to experience something akin to being a non-Australian peering into the Hottest 100 without context. I have a totally skewed version of what music matters the most over there that completely differs from the experience of actually living there. Very easy to stereotype things in a way that only highlights the absolute biggest icons that just happen to count, or otherwise just the ones that most outwardly represent what I know about them. So you would expect Lorde and Crowded House/Split Enz to be the main characters just based on that. They do well for sure, but the poll makes it clear that there's so much more in the world of music across the Tasman than we give it credit. They don't even have room to fit Mi-Sex or Flight of the Conchords into the list.

I was going through the list with a Kiwi friend and getting to experience both sides of the coin. It felt like I had flipped my role in the usual conversation where I might be enthusiastically preaching the importance of some forgotten rock band of the 2000s, and instead I'm the one being told that this song I've never even heard of is just an absolute staple known all across North & South Island. They have their own pub sing-alongs in place of your "Khe Sanh" and "Eagle Rock". Songs like "Bliss" by Th' Dudes, an early project by Dave Dobbyn. Or also "Why Does Love Do This To Me" by The Exponents. It's an interesting cultural shock that if nothing else, reminds you that there's so much more to music than the bubble we exist in, and it's worth giving it a go. Massive popularity even in a smaller area is generally proof positive to some more universal appeal in that unexplainable way that we all ascribe significance to a lot of overlapping music.

I used this as an excuse to make a slight dip into that world and explore some more obvious sides. I found myself really enjoying Fat Freddy's Drop's album "Based on a True Story", despite not normally gravitating to the music I've heard from them since. It just taps into a nice, warm feeling and never feels like it's dragging on even when the songs are about 7 minutes long on average. It's really good stuff. I also checked out The Mint Chicks' album "Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!" which seems to pop up in conversation a bit. If you put its popularity into consideration, it's a very peculiar listen. Just a very energetic sound, which I would best compare to Regurgitator though it's not a perfect fit. A very big deal in their home country but relatively unknown elsewhere. The big legacy that remains with The Mint Chicks is that it's a starting chapter in the world of Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

Ruban & Kody Nielson are two members of The Mint Chicks who went on to form Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Technically it was just Ruban on his own initially in 2009, but Kody joined the band in 2013. If you're familiar with both bands, there aren't a lot of commonalities between them musically. Maybe going back to UMO's first single "Ffunny Ffrends", you can scarcely hear a trace of The Mint Chicks' expressive energy, but as the years went on, they'd get mellower in their now distinctive sound. It's interesting to see how well the band ended up doing, because you can imagine a perspective where they're resting on prior laurels, only internationally they didn't count for much. The rest of the world had to be won over just on what they were offering now, and they weren't exactly doing everything they could to stand out. When the second album came out, I really liked "So Good At Being In Trouble", perhaps just beaten down by radio play.

The third album came out a couple of years later titled "Multi-Love" and it was a big one for me. I don't think I'd necessarily rush out to hear one of their albums, but the title track really clicked with me and invited my curiosity. It's one of the most tightly and well-packed albums I know. Just 9 tracks, but not really any I'd consider filler, and most of the songs standing out in their own way. You've got fun and upbeat songs like "Ur Life One Night" and "Can't Keep Checking My Phone", but also big, delayed gratification on "Extreme Wealth and Casual Cruelty" and "Puzzles". I'll admit though that it's so good that the band have fallen into the Neutral Milk Hotel or Death Grips trap for me, where I don't really check out any of their other albums because the one I suspect will always be my favourite is already right in front of me.

As for that title track, "Multi-Love" was immediately something special to me. This isn't me hard launching a polycule or intention for a polycule, though that is what the song is about, struggling with the machinations of it, as well as the apparent gender roles that can be brought on from it. Evidently not my area of specialty. I find regardless though, it's evoked in such a powerful way that escapes the cage of incredibly specific lyricism. If ever was there a song to introduce a concept and make it feel like the most monumental thing going around, a few long drawn out 'muulllllti-looooove's will do it. Otherwise the song is characterised by some plinking keys and surprisingly robust drums that just combine to give it a unique feel. If anything, what drew me into the song the most was this feeling of singularity. I'd never heard anything like this song, and never have since (well, until Heleina Zara released "Boundaries" in 2024 which has a very similar lyric about trashing a heart like a motel'). I guess this is what I mean when I say I like quirky music.

#33

#33. Gang of Youths - What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out? (#10, 2017)

7th of 2017

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It's probably just because it's what I grew up with, but I have a specific fondness for post-punk revival music. It largely gets that name from comparisons to post-punk bands from about 20 years prior, but I've never been able to scratch that same itch from it. Do Interpol really sound like Joy Division? Maybe a little bit, but the appeal of those two bands feels so distinct to me. It's just that specific tone that a lot of those 2000s bands hit, that I really like. Bloc Party's guitar & drums are so locked in that they create this magical spark that sounds brilliant. Interpol introduce a rigidity that could sound stiff but ends up making every chord shift collide with you in a way that stands out. Yeah Yeah Yeahs often do the opposite but nonetheless find order in their brand of chaos.

The one song that I think best exemplifies this is "The Rat" by The Walkmen. Right from the opening chord, it demands urgency, and then lives up to it by firing on all cylinders. Once Hamilton Leithauser starts singing, the first thing he says is 'You've got a nerve' and it feels like another perfectly considered layer on the song's tension. For the whole song's run time, you rarely get a respite, perhaps just during the bridge when the drums cut off, but it's still just amping you up for the final build. I just love the guitar tone here though, sounding extra light in a way that sounds a little dangerous (I'm weirdly drawn to that high pitched alarm sound in Pokémon when you're close to fainting as a comparison), but also because it just lets you hear every exciting moment with the drumming. Pretty much a perfect song, I wouldn't change anything.

It's not something you really get anymore, however. It's largely a scene of the early 2000s, and while many of those bands are still around, they're either not really making waves anymore, or just doing different things. It's not mainstream enough to warrant a revival, and then what would you even call it? Post-punk revival revival? It's largely just something that a certain demographic of music nerds are going to have to keep for themselves.

That's all to say that I was particularly excited when I heard the lead single from Gang of Youths' second album. I can only guess that the band also grew up with these same sounds as I did and drew some inspiration from them. It's just that this feels like one last thrilling gasp of a by-gone era. It's taking those same instrumental ideas from The Walkmen and bringing it into the 2010s with gusto. I'm reminded of Olivia Rodrigo's very clear fascination with '80s & '90s alt rock, and moreover how if you're in good standing with your audience, you're very capable of taking them along with your self-indulgent ride. Very few bands would be able to convince the world that this kind of incredibly locked-in guitar & drum sound can still work. Voting in 2017 went all the way of Gang of Youths, but it's still incredible that a song that sounds like this made the top 10. Admittedly it felt a little weird with the final positions, as I have to contend with the fact that I voted for this song, and thus contributed directly to keeping BROCKHAMPTON (#84) out of the top 10. Nice moment for Gang of Youths to get three in the top 10, but have they ever heard about sharing?

In fairness, it helps that it also comes with the band's now trademark brand of gusto. The sound I described is mostly just the prelude to what ends up being a big, loud march of triumph. It is of course worth noting that the members of Gang of Youths met up as part of the Hillsong church, and that this is one of their more expressly religious themed songs. A song where Dave calls to question if the God he serves is really there, and how he can go on living without that particular spark of motivation. It's not a song that comes with any particular answers or even a real conclusion, just ending on that extended quandary. In that sense, it's the sheer drive and passion of delivery that really sells it. When you make it into a big song and dance like this, you can tell how important it really all is to him.

I'm not an overly religious person but I do understand the need for drive to fight against nihilism. It can almost be reassuring to see even the most devout among us to have moments of doubt and struggle with their faith. Much easier to see yourself in that position, than that of the happy-go-luck type whose enlightenment can feel alienating (which is probably how you get to the position of writing "What Can I Do If The Fire Goes Out?"). If you're willing though, you can expand the song's purpose beyond its literal intention. It goes great with the feeling of burnout, I can attest. I feel a little odd calling this my favourite Gang of Youths song when "Magnolia" (#52) is just sitting there and has a mantra I can more easily get behind. It's just really hard to deny a song that musically feels like it's served to me on a silver platter.

#34

#34. Baker Boy (feat Yirrmal) - Marryuna (#17, 2017)

8th of 2017

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This is some boring statistical stuff, but I always feel compelled to note that data is always far more complicated than it appears on the surface. Part of the difficulty in analysing trends and identifying sources is that you have to contend with multiple distractions tugging in every which way at every moment which serve only to distract you from the other ones. Music charts of late feel boring because it appears that people are content to listen to the same songs, week in week out, but in reality, they're always jumping around and it's just the songs that have the most possible people to pool from that do the best. You could say that such and such is benefitting from a playlist or an algorithm, but when it boils down to it, everything is, and it's just a matter of the difference in severity of it that claims the difference. If you could tangibly break it all down and look at it from day to day and week to week, it might start to look more interesting.

I bring this up because Hottest 100 predicting tended to happen in a single fashion: collate all available data and then infer from past behaviour how to extrapolate it to a full voter set. You'd learn things, like Bring Me The Horizon fans being very eager to post their votes online, Drake fans not as much. Carefully putting together those gut feelings along with hard evidence of what has been voted for will allow you to pretty accurately predict what the whole list ends up looking like, even if there are some two million votes you aren't privy to.

The main thing this has also done is that it's occasionally turned the mystery of the top spot into a foregone conclusion long before it's aired. Artists will have multiple entries and you'll be inclined to extrapolate all their entries just based on how their first song goes. If it's higher than you expect, then that's probably true of the rest of their songs. Ocean Alley possibly had the whole thing sewn up in record time when they surpassed expectations right away with "Happy Sad" (#784) starting at #100. Seems safe to think that their already predicted #1 "Confidence" (#521) had it in the bag.

It doesn't always work like that. Sample data largely works best when there isn't any good reason for the full data to differ too much from what you have. Given a large enough amount and a decent percentage, there's a case to be made that any 1% sample will end up looking pretty similar to another one. The main problem is that it's far too simple to extrapolate on the most basic of terms, you're going to inevitably simplify a far more complicated system and come up short. Case in point, Baker Boy landed early in the countdown with "Cloud 9" (#384). The appearance of that song was considerably higher than I had projected it on my own stats (although I see that Warm Tunas had it spot on). From that, I'd reasonably infer that "Marryuna" would also outpace its expected position, except that it didn't. Both my stats and Warm Tunas have it landing quite a few spaces above where it ended up, which is odd I suppose. I think at the end of the day, you just have to conclude that the supposedly shared effect where an artist's songs move away from the projection in the same direction does exist, but once you get to the pointy end, it gets drowned out by so much similar noise that you might not notice it. The offline majority support Baker Boy a lot, but just not quite as much as those big hits that landed higher up.

I'm sorry, that's a lot to lead into the entry for "Marryuna". The truth is that I've found it hard to find much to say about this song. It's fantastic, of course, but at the end of the day, it's a song that doesn't require much to be said about it. The title translates to 'Let's Dance' in English, and it's yet another feel good Baker Boy song that absolutely thrives on its permeating vibes. It's pretty much the song that made him a star because one listen is all it takes to immediately get on board. I understand the desire to want to release more music, but it's really a mission statement that sums everything up right away. Baker Boy swaps between English and Yolŋu and never skips a beat. He's aided by Yirrmal who has lineage in Yothu Yindi (Dr Yunupingu is his grandfather). He's the one who provides the pre-chorus, the title lyric, and the most universal lyric of all, with his healthy dosage of la's.

#35

#35. Drake - Hotline Bling (#14, 2015)

9th of 2015

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A lot of media, particularly in the realm of science fiction will set their stories in the distant or not-so-distant future. The only problem is that time inevitably swings forward. It may have been such a long time spent that anyone and everyone involved in the original story is long passed, but they get one more chance to be derided from beyond the grave once everyone finds out how badly they predicted the future. It's now 2026, what were they thinking in 1927 when "Metropolis" depicted a dystopian world run by wealthy industrialists...okay maybe they had something there. Generally everything just oversteps itself and reality is a little more mundane. One of the key components in "Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie" is how mostly unchanged things have been from 2008 to present. Things like fashion, cars & technology don't all blatantly sign-post that you're decades in the past the way it does in a movie like "Back To The Future". A lot of people are probably still listening to the same Coldplay songs they were back in 2008.

Speaking of that movie, I want to talk about "Back To The Future Pt. II", because that's the film in the franchise that has to take a swing at the future, rather than replicating the past. Marty goes 30 years forward in time and is bewildered by all the flying cars, hoverboards, and self-lacing shoes. Most of the film's swings are done for comedic effect and largely don't match reality. The funniest part of probably the absurd prediction that the Cubs would win the World Series. Just an outlandish notion except then in real life they won it in 2016, so close.

Still, I awaited the day that we finally reached the future date (I probably first watched the movie around 2005-2006), a great opportunity to see what they really could have done with pitching this future timeline. It's mostly mundane, but now the main thing I remember about it is that the date Marty arrives at in the future is amidst the cultural moment that "Hotline Bling" was having. He should be in a world where people are looking at their handheld mobile phones, looking at clips where someone has edited Drake's music video to make it look like he's playing Wii Tennis. Gen X Marty would be even more confused about all of it than the average Gen Xer who lived through those 30 years in the first place. An unintentional coincidence I imagine is that Drake sports a similar vest to Marty in the music video, despite no evidence that he might possibly drown.

How did we get here? The answer should be that it's obvious, it's Drake, but in the moment it was a little peculiar. For instance, up to this point, Drake had only scarcely been played on triple j ever as a lead artist. He was certainly very popular in Australia by this point, but fell a little out of the station's interests. There's a case to be made for "Hold On, We're Going Home" fitting just fine on the station, but there wasn't enough clear demand for it. That could be interpreted both ways too, because in the early stages of his career, Drake never came down to Australia at all.

This finally changed in early 2015. Drake was booked for Future Music Festival and played all the mainland capitals. This also coincided with the release of his mixtape "If You're Reading This It's Too Late", which gave triple j the excuse to finally get on board and play one of his songs. The first Drake song to ever go on rotation for triple j was "Jungle", if you remember that one. I still think the whole mixtape is really good but in terms of Drake's super stardom, probably largely a footnote. Drake had a habit of just releasing so much music that it was hard to keep up.

Case in point, on the Billboard Hot 100 dated August 22, 2015, Drake debuted 4 songs at once. This wasn't part of any project, they were all singles, three of them released pretty much at the same time. Very typical behaviour of someone who'd go on to have over 400 chart entries, basically one every fortnight on average. One of those songs was clearly important though, and debuted way ahead of the rest of them. I'm of course referring to "Back To Back". It's his memorable diss track to Meek Mill that Kendrick Lamar is on the record mid-beef for saying he likes that record. Way behind it was another quick loose single, "Hotline Bling". In the weeks that followed, all those Drake songs dropped down the charts, but "Hotline Bling" started climbing. It was a slow realisation that Drake had tapped into something with this one, and was about to make another ascent towards the top of the charts (at this point, he'd never had a #1 hit of his own, just a feature on Rihanna's "What's My Name?").

The song didn't even have a music video, but it had the world hooked. It was a very crossover friendly sound for Drake where he wasn't really rapping on it. I have no idea if this was all intended to happen or if it's just a consequence of chucking out everything to find out what sticks. The moment was seized though, and the song bolted up the charts, becoming his highest charting solo single to date. The music video should've been the coup de grace that finally took Drake to the top. Looking back at it, it feels like a slam dunk because the video is so iconic. Drake being left to his devices in various empty but distinctly lit spaces, giving everyone fodder to let him continue being the butt of their jokes as he takes his music releasing approach to all the moves he makes in the video. In the moment, it was very successful, and the two closely spaced frames of Drake approving and disapproving has stuck around as an evergreen meme. You probably know exactly which two frames I'm talking about.

In this particular case, the bag was severely fumbled. "Hotline Bling" didn't go to #1 anywhere. Admittedly the timing wasn't great because very soon after the song's peak, it had any hope of climbing further quickly thrust away from it with the simultaneous release of "Hello" by Adele and "Sorry" by Justin Bieber, both taking up residency for the rest of the year. The big problem is that the week before this happened, the music video did come out, but it was temporarily exclusive to Apple Music. Apple declined to share their video streaming numbers at the time and so Drake fell a little short of the top spot, a gap those unreported streams would probably fill in. Australia didn't count music video streams at the time but it feels especially unlucky here, where it was only kept off the top by Australia's out of the ordinary fixation on Macklemore's "Downtown" (#945). I can only ponder how big the song really was in New Zealand also. As best as I can tell, it fell victim to a different goof where it looks as though none of the song's streams ever counted to the chart. It peaked at a modest #14 and only spent 5 weeks on the chart. One of the dumbest chart errors I've ever witnessed that largely has gone unnoticed and forgotten. In any case, this is Drake we're talking about so it wouldn't even take a year before he'd win back his lost moment, with "One Dance" (#796) becoming one of the biggest hits of 2016. For how badly Drake craved the opportunity to have a #1 hit, it really feels like the tipping point where Drake fully shifts from plucky underdog to immovable corporate magnate. It's been so long that it's easy to forget how many people were rooting for Drake to shake things up with his likeable and relatable music.

I'll admit though that as I say this, "Hotline Bling" is probably a contentious inclusion in that qualifier. I'm a big fan of it, but if someone told me that they really don't like the optics of what Drake is saying in the song, I'd have a hard time really disputing it. You can boil down the whole thing to Drake being an incredibly controlling and paranoid boyfriend who refuses to believe that someone has a life outside of himself, with a hint of slut shaming as well. My take on this has just generally been that Drake is self-aware of his clownish behaviour here, which the music video helps sell as well. What's always gotten me is the sorrowful expression that Drake ends some of the verses with ('...some girls I've never seen before'). In this brief moment, he sounds genuinely miserable and I connect with it. At my lowest moments, I lament my own poor decisions and unrealistic desires, and I like to think that's what Drake's doing right there.

Otherwise I think "Hotline Bling" just works because it's a Drake song that genuinely pops out. I alluded to it a while back, but I always think of Lorde randomly tweeting about Drake at the time. She praises his approach to songwriting where he focuses on sticky turns of phrase that turn an otherwise mundane idea into something memorable. This is a song where Drake is excited that his girlfriend is calling him, but there's just nothing in that, so he instead comes up with the phrase 'Hotline bling', an anachronistic mash-up that adds some weight and personality to it. It feels undeniable that it's a huge part of what turned 'You used to call me on my cell phone' into one of Drake's most iconic songs, one that still holds up despite his perpetual 'onto the next one' approach to releasing music. Either that or it's that interpolation of "Why Can't We Live Together" by Timmy Thomas that has it sounding like the Wii Shop channel. A tragedy I haven't been able to post this on Wii Shop Wednesday but we've come full circle if I'm referencing Nirvanna The Band again. Two sets of Toronto icons doing their part to make the CN Tower feel iconic. Been thinking a lot today.

#36

#36. Busta Rhymes (feat Q-Tip, Kanye West & Lil Wayne) - Thank You (#73, 2013)

5th of 2013

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When you look back at my journey of becoming a music obsessive, Q-Tip is a figure that arrives very early in the story. Before almost anyone else in fact. The first time I ever watched jtv Saturday, there he was on the song "Enuff" by DJ Shadow. I might not have actually paid that particular song a lot of attention, but I made note of his memorable name (I didn't know which performer on the song he was though). I actually had heard from him before though. I think most people would have because he's tended to appear on a hit song every 5-10 years. The big one is Deee-Lite's "Groove Is In The Heart" (if his verse isn't cut out), but more recently than that, you'll get "Galvanize" by The Chemical Brothers. This pattern is basically still continuing, most recently on Dom Dolla's "Rhyme Dust" which samples a Q-Tip song, and very recently, the revived "Go" (#203) which is now The Chemical Brothers' highest charting single in Australia. Since that post went live, he's now officially credited on it. The main factor for me once again turns to Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2 for the PlayStation 2. I wouldn't realise it for a long time, but one of the most memorable songs on the soundtrack was "Buggin' Out" by A Tribe Called Quest.

This was enough for me to take the dive and check out one of the group's most acclaimed albums, "The Low End Theory". I put it on while playing Team Fortress 2 which is generally what I did in 2014 and was pretty much floored. I made a declaration on Twitter and said something akin to it being the most I'd ever enjoyed an album on first listen. It's one of those experiences that can relay the notion that a lot of people like old school hip-hop and nothing else. The album is literally older than me so it should be hard to relate to it, and yet there's something wholesome about the generally low stakes of it all. Short of maybe The Beastie Boys, it's hard to think of a rap group with more camaraderie. Q-Tip & Phife Dawg are always hyping each other up, making note of how often they're on point (all the time). Maybe in hindsight, it's a bit like when Kendrick Lamar teams up with Baby Keem (#126). There's the clearly more professional and sorted out guy, but you can't help but love the young upstart for his enthusiasm. This album is the one that fully codifies the partnership. You might note their most famous song "Can I Kick It?" which is basically Phife making the shift from studio conveyer to rhyme sayer. The production on the album is amazing too, which is where I shout out Ali Shaheed Muhammad (and note that Ron Carter is on the bass). It's pretty much where the album title comes from, as the beats largely stay on the low end outside of when they've got the jazz. Not all of the bars have aged amazingly (and we can thank our lucky stars that they were talked out of putting a pretty offensive song on the album), but otherwise it's a pretty timeless album. I can say similar things about the follow up album "Midnight Marauders" which is probably an improved product on the whole, I just find myself leaning more to this one because it has more of my favourite songs. I won't pretend "Award Tour" isn't one of the most life affirming songs out there though.

So I was pretty obsessed with A Tribe Called Quest at that point. There was a single month where I listened to both of those albums at least 6 times in full each. Things took a sad turn about 18 months later when Phife passed away. It wasn't very long after I'd watched the Tribe documentary and it felt like a death in the family. This was around the same time that David Bowie & Prince also passed away and this is the one that bummed me out the most. We'd learn that this happened in the midst of them working on a comeback with their first album in nearly two decades. It arrived later that year and I thought it was another classic. They'd managed to successfully update their sound into the 21st century and take their vaguely socially conscious lyrics into something more pertinent to the times (it's probably not a coincidence that it was released on the same week as the US presidential election). Despite being so far removed from their commercial peak, it managed to take them back to #1 in America and is actually their only top 50 album at all in Australia.

There's another step that comes before this discovery, and it's the song "Thank You". It was hard to avoid this one being part of my experience because it was a moderate hit at the time and wound up here. I was fascinated by it because I was generally interested in Q-Tip whenever he turned up anywhere, but Busta Rhymes was a curious by-product. I hadn't really ever given him flowers because to me, he was just a rent-a-rapper who turned up on other people's songs. The most famous of these is "Don't Cha" by The Pussycat Dolls from which I might have unfairly dragged down my perception of him. I might have had a soft spot for when he turned up on Chris Brown's song "Look At Me Now" and absolutely annihilated it, as he's prone to do, but I still didn't take him very seriously. As I think about it, I start to wonder if I really knew any raps of his at all. It probably wouldn't have mattered if I'd already decided I don't care about him, but I was probably being unfairly dismissive. The irony here is that he's probably not even the most blatant victim of this that's on this song. I'll keep it brief because he's barely on the song, but Lil Wayne is one of the most unfairly dismissed artists going around, a victim of his colossal commercial success in the latter part of his career, and the confused onlooking by those who never even tried to figure out why he was so popular. The early part of his career, particularly on his mixtapes has him showing off an incredible display of rapping and wordplay that hardly anyone's matching. Don't fall for the 'I rhymed the n-word with the n-word, how clever' and 'If 2Pac was alive, he'd be working McDonalds' adages unless you want to show your own ignorance (I'm guilty of this, admittedly). Lil Wayne is on this song's intro for about 15 seconds which is surprisingly still a longer contribution than his only other Hottest 100 entry, when he has an even shorter verse on Tyler, The Creator's "Sticky". It's such a brief role that I actually mucked up this blog earlier on. You won't find it now because I edited it, but I accidentally mentioned Lil Wayne by name once over a year ago, forgetting that I wasn't supposed to do that yet.

Busta Rhymes is a similar story. I think because of Australia's limited chart history with him, I associate him with the 2000s, but in reality he made his name in the '90s. Many of his most famous songs are from back then, and it's where he established his two primary specialties, rapping incredibly fast, and also injecting a lot of unique personality into the flow. It's hard to organically set up the experience, but I had a very amusing time watching "Psycho" for the first time having been very familiar with the same string loop when it got sampled in "Gimme Some More" (though it took me a moment to figure out why it was so familiar). Busta doesn't always rise to the occasion, but when he does, it's an absolute party.

It's also worth noting when he really made his name because it relates back to A Tribe Called Quest. One of the more striking things I noticed when I first listened to it was how two of the most familiar lines came right at the start and end of the album. You start with a solo Q-Tip cut "Excursions" which if you haven't heard, might just answer the question of where those vocals in Hilltop Hoods' "Clown Prince" come from (Hilltop Hoods have sampled Tribe so many times). At the end of the album, you get the big posse cut "Scenario" which sounds a little out of place compared to the rest of the album, much more boisterous and aggressive. The big crowning moment in the whole song is the surprise appearance from a young Busta Rhymes who pretty much owns the whole song with his verse. I was sparingly familiar with his verse, as the 'rawr, rawr, like a dungeon dragon' had been lifted elsewhere, but the whole thing is just great. It's witnessing the emergence of both a star, and a great partnership, as it's Q-Tip hyping him up during the song. You have to imagine that it's the origin story of "Thank You" and also why it'd be a big deal in the moment. Funnily enough, Busta Rhymes & Q-Tip released a collaborative mixtape a month after this, and "Thank You" isn't on it.

In theory, the two of them together on the same song shouldn't work as well as it does. Maybe you can appreciate the contrast between their two tones but I don't know how often that recipe actually applies. The main success here is that they can match each other's tempo and have it switch back and forth naturally. The song has a relentless beat that gets stuck on a loop so you focus more on the flows, and Q-Tip in particular is stellar here. His third verse literally never skips a beat as he rides it syllable by syllable the entire way. 'Bite like Rin Tin Tin, my chagrin' lives rent free in my head also. It's just a very unique song in the catalogue of Hottest 100 hits. It's not often you get to see the youth crowd giving kudos to rap veterans (in exchange for medicine) who are just in their element. It's not so much 'How do you do, fellow kids?' and more 'Why wouldn't you give them the time of day? Unc still got it'.

#37

#37. SAFIA - Paranoia, Ghosts & Other Sounds (#96, 2014)

4th of 2014

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There's a peculiar individual that exists in the depths of Wikipedia. A mysterious user with no clear background or motivation but a simple goal to perpetually edit a couple of Hottest 100 articles with a false version of events. They are nothing if not consistent and persistent, coming back roughly once a month to reinstate their ideal order, which consists of various songs shifted around, often swapped for some songs that didn't quite make the list. They've been doing this for about 7 years now, and the only word of motivation I've ever seen from them is when one of the articles was semi-protected and they (someone who doesn't actually have an account) urged for editors to do their work for them. It is something to look out for, of course. Very often I've seen Wikipedia articles that just have flagrantly made up information on them that's survived for years. My only fear is that this person who often makes edits on new IP addresses has perhaps done something somewhere that went unnoticed. I say this because I spotted it once on the article for this very song, where they'd changed the song's blurb to match their incorrect report of its placing. Maybe that's harmless to some, but I feel like in the age of generative AI, it's gotten easier than ever for incorrect information to propagate, and we can't just sit back and watch lies become the truth. Vigilance is so important.

"Paranoia, Ghosts & Other Sounds" is just SAFIA's second single. At this point in time there's so little to go by with the group, with barely anything written and nothing but the small tropes we've picked up between the two songs to make sense of how the band tick. A year later, when "Counting Sheep" (#69) was released, the band considered it the evil sibling to this song. There's probably something in that. The two songs don't sound particularly similar, but both carry similar themes of paranoia (go figure). "Counting Sheep" prioritises sounding as menacing as possible, while there's a hint of hope to this one, like a story that goes through its conflict until eventually reaching a happy ending.

That darkness is the thing I remember the most about this song. If it established anything in the moment, it's that SAFIA had a penchant for making major pivots in their songs. "Listen To Soul, Listen To Blues" (#220) started it, this song continued it, but then they didn't really keep it up after that. They made more of a pivot to typical song structures, and so the big switch ups were more reserved for verse-chorus transitions. "You Are The One" and "Embracing Me" (#788) turn it into something more like a fake out intro, as they end up in very different places from where they start. When this song came out though, all there was to conclude is that SAFIA were going to shift the mood of all of their songs at around the two minute mark.

In fairness, it's not exactly a bad move either. It'd be wrong for me to discredit it when I've spent the last 2 years doing the exact same thing with this blog, but just generally as a trope, it hits more effectively to jump into the deep end after establishing the prior calm. It can be the juxtaposition that becomes more important than what's actually going on, making you pay more attention to the additions & differences. For instance here, the main driving factor is some muffled vocals that appear at the very start of the song. Once the song shifts gear, you can start to make out actual words from it, like it's finally able to break free of the spell. Ben's main vocals even follow the same cadence as if to say it's all one in the same. This is the part where I reference the recent hit film "Obsession" and make everyone who's seen it nod their head and go 'ah yes, I too have seen that particular film and understand this laboured comparison'.

Beyond that though, the song descends into pure chaos and I love it for it. The drums start to really pound their way into focus, and the vibrating, howling background vocals express the mood better than anything else. It's a lengthy period where you're largely short of words to sing along with, and yet it's evocative all the same. It would feel harsh to SAFIA to say they never made a song better than this but it really felt like the sky was the limit when this was only the second song they put out. Polling here just showing that they didn't have to play by the rules, they were too busy establishing their own order of business.

#38

#38. Radiohead - Burn the Witch (#79, 2016)

(3rd of 2016)

Listen

Radiohead have a distinct history with triple j's Hottest 100. Across their entire lengthy career, they've had at least one song from every one of their albums make the poll (You have to cheat a little with "The Bends", as "Fake Plastic Trees" only made an all-time countdown, but I still think that's noteworthy). I don't believe any else has had a career so long that can make this claim. In fairness, Radiohead have also refused to defend their title, as we're well into the longest span of time between album releases for them. You'd have to think with the turning tides that they'd be hard pressed to find their way into the youth market again, although with that in mind, recent viral success for their back catalogue may have them more popular as they've been in decades lately.

I've been at two minds of how to approach this entry for a while. On one hand, it's hard to overlook the fact that Radiohead are one of the most significant bands of my lifetime, whose influence and longevity speak for themselves, to say nothing of just how many critically acclaimed albums they have as well. If you're a young, impressionable music fan, it's very easy to buy into the cult of Radiohead. They've got such a wide and varying catalogue that you'll probably find something that resonates with you, and you may well be surrounded by enough positive reinforcement that you'll be permanently set on that path.

That's kind of the problem though, isn't it? To love Radiohead is to choose one particular path in music fandom and follow it to its most predictable end point. I find myself hesitant to profess my interest in this band because it's just so boring an answer, as well as one that will probably auto-fill personality traits for you whether or not they're true. It doesn't help that I've had a history of being a very annoying Radiohead fan in the past, so convinced of their greatness as to be dismissive to anyone who sees otherwise. My appreciation of Radiohead has led to some of the more embarrassing and unfortunate experiences I've had.

I don't think I have a particularly interesting back story here. I think my earliest memory of Radiohead is through the one time they had a guest appearance on South Park, which might not be much but it just so happens to be on what is arguably the show's most famous episode (though, not really due to Radiohead). I don't know if the episode holds up two decades later and if you go in knowing the reputation, but seeing it on TV for the first time and not expecting anything meant that it left a major impression. Over the years, I'd hear more about Radiohead conceptually but I doubt I really encountered their music. "Creep" would be the exception of course but I don't know when I first became properly aware of it, or aware of it being a Radiohead song.

With that in mind, my recollection is that in 2007, when the band released "In Rainbows" under unique circumstances, I was very aware that the band were very important. On the other hand, I didn't really know what their music sounded like, so for me, it was an opportunity to see what the big deal was. It amounted to a summer of hearing "Bodysnatchers" and "15 Step" on the radio a lot and not really being fully sold on the whole package, but trusting the word of those around me that it was something special. The song that really convinced me came not much longer though, when "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" unexpectedly made the Hottest 100 that year. I didn't really know the song at all, but the song with its big, explosive build up made an impression (also I liked jigsaw puzzles). For the next while, I still wasn't really hearing any music of my own accord unless it was on the radio, so I didn't really explore anything more from the band.

In 2009, triple j announced another Hottest 100 of All Time, which was very exciting for me, a person who wanted to know more about music but had to make up for a lot of lost time. I remember reading discussions about it, and what songs might make a run for the top. One of the songs mentioned was "Paranoid Android" by Radiohead, a song I'd never heard of. I suspect I listened to it shortly after and had a revelation. Certainly I was egged on by the reputation, but I very quickly decided that it was my favourite song I'd ever heard. Not soon enough to make my vote of course, because I'd already done it and voted for "Creep". Still, the stage was set, and I very soon would download "OK Computer" and "Kid A", very convinced that Radiohead were the best band in the world that weren't named Muse.

When it comes to Radiohead being a massive commercial giant and oft talked about band, things pretty much tail off after that. They've had two more album releases since then, but I don't think they've captured the public's attention in quite the same way. They'd be in danger of becoming the "Creep" band again full time if not for some viral success that's seen "Let Down" belatedly become a Billboard Hot 100 hit recently. I should also note Radiohead's dubious commercial performance in Australia. Every single album they've released since "Kid A" has peaked at #2 in Australia, and so they comfortably hold the record for the most #2 albums and have never hit the top spot. Even Thom Yorke's first solo album peaked at #2. I hold out hope for the band to release a new album some day and see what the next chapter is in this story, because I believe they could just as easily continue or end the streak, depending on the week by week competition.

One thing that works in their favour is that their latest album, "A Moon Shaped Pool", had a surprisingly solid chart run. You might expect that a band like Radiohead who haven't had a discernible 'hit' in a long time are just going to put out albums that quickly fall out of the charts without a fuss, but this one did surprisingly well. It even got the indignity of peaking at #2 twice because it had a physical release in its 7th week. Maybe it helps that it had a more conventional release by Radiohead standards, or also that after the band's more polarising previous album, this one was seen as a return to form. A very well rounded album that might not necessarily have many standout singalong moments, but the overall collection of songs just feels very strong to me.

Something one must reckon with, with regards to Radiohead is that they're a pretty moody band. If you don't like them, it's probably a pretty valid reason for it. They don't really do happy songs, more in the realm of anger & sadness. I think in that sense, there's a lot to be said of why someone like me might gravitate to them. When you're growing up in a mixed up world filled with uncertainty and a whole lot of bad actors who don't seem interested in appeasing your comfort & safety, then songs of isolation & paranoia are going to resonate. I'm inclined to say that they're a neurodivergent-coded band, surprisingly efficient at pushing stimulating buttons without getting bogged down in unnecessary clutter. That's my way of saying that they're equally important for setting an important mood for me as they are for all the memorable and addictive riffs and melodies they pull out. Songs like "There There" or "2+2=5" that seem to reward your patience and just hit on a level that you weren't generally getting with other rock bands on the radio. I'm still hesitant to say it very much in public, but Radiohead will always be a very important band to me.

As for "A Moon Shaped Pool", we're largely in sad territory. The album comes in the wake of Thom Yorke's divorce from his partner Rachel Owen who'd been with him for pretty much his entire music career and half of his life. The outro to "Daydreaming" has backwards lyrics that say 'Half of my life' repeatedly, in case you needed confirmation. It's not the whole album of course, some of the songs were written far too long ago for it to be the case, including "Burn The Witch", and notably "True Love Waits". That's a song that was very well known among Radiohead fans as it was first performed back in 1995, and would appear on various collections over the years. It was a surprise to see the song finally receive the studio treatment after all this time, but it makes for a very emotional finish to the album. As a side note, the entire track list on the album is in alphabetical order. Despite the general mood, the album does have some upbeat songs that work to those previous strengths. I often have trouble remembering how they go, but "Decks Dark" and "Identikit" are definitely worthwhile, and the same could be said of the album's pseudo hit "Burn the Witch".

Part of why I suspect Radiohead might have trouble making the Hottest 100 again is because they're fighting heavily against momentum. In 2016, it felt like all the chips were in for one last push, and they only narrowly got over the line with the band's most obvious single contribution for voting they'd had in many years. Admittedly I voted for "Daydreaming" myself but I knew "Burn the Witch" was the most likely hit. Just from the opening strings, it just feels like the band are back in business, creating something evocative that doesn't sacrifice commercial appeal. In fact it became the band's first charting single in many, many years, though that might have also been an answer to the question of what the hype is like if Radiohead just release an album normally. Aside from that, you just get to the song's chorus and it feels like a reminder of why I've loved this band for so long. Thom Yorke's falsetto just cuts through so strongly in this beautiful arrangement that feels carefully considered to not be too overstuffed or undercooked. If the band never release another album, it's a pretty great swan song to go out on.