#51

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

8th of 2014

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

#57

#57. Queens of the Stone Age - My God Is the Sun (#97, 2013)

11th of 2013

Listen

Because I'm sometimes in the interest of questioning my own mindset, I'm always fascinated by that adage that your favourite in a big series is often the one you encountered first. I've got loads of these. The first Final Fantasy game I ever played was FFX, and I have a lot of fondness for it, but struggle to find the enthusiasm for the rest of the series which doesn't seem to have that same spark that appeals to me. I can rationally recognise the improvements that have come along with newer Pokémon games, in terms of balance, design, general quality of life, but it's far easier for me to pick up the Kanto region games than anything else because it came first.

The obvious aspect at work here is that your first one is inevitably going to be more special. Anything that comes after it is going to feel like it's changing some of the winning aspects, but even if they're still there, then they're running on those previous fumes and won't feel as special. The moment of discovery and joy becomes immortalised and creates a near-impenetrable wall that gets in the way of rationality. There's nothing wrong with that either. Despite what we might sometimes say to ourselves and others, we're not really looking out for what is scientifically the best product or experience, but rather the effect that they have on us, and that can be perfectly irrational.

The second part of this though is one that I don't think often gets considered. It's something akin to the anthropic principle where our ability to perceive the wonder of the universe is built on the foundation that we're even able to do that. The universe supports life and it's a miracle, but if you changed the parameters around a little, it'd perhaps support a different kind of life, or something entirely different altogether, we just wouldn't know it because we wouldn't be part of it. The way I apply this is the way that often times, that supposedly magic appeal that existed to be a towering force was the very thing that put us onto it in the first place. If you swap things around, it's entirely possible that you just never tune into it in the first place. Rather than consider all the examples where your favourite came first, and wondering if it's rational, I find myself pondering all the potential missed opportunities. Anything that I have no affinity for because they missed on the first attempt and I couldn't convince myself in the future that it was worth buying into.

Music is a little bit different than other properties because you're more likely to still come across and acknowledge these stories as they're happening, and as they've happened in the past. A few times before this, I've mentioned how strongly I feel about artists' output around 2007 when I first heard of them, but I can also be rational. The nature of things like the Hottest 100 is that they set the record, and can be a barometer of significance. No matter what I feel about them, the consensus may have been set before I even entered the conversation.

Queens of the Stone Age are the most interesting example for me because I certainly had not heard of them before 2007. I would later learn that they weren't just an established band, but one with a very notable triple j history as they managed to score 5 entries in 2002 including the #1 song "No One Knows". That's a strong contender as one of the most beloved winning songs in the poll, and I'll admit that even in a year that is just wall to wall rock music, it's surprising to see a band that weren't really scoring crossover success take the title with such a potent entry, as if the song was just too good to be denied. That whole album, "Songs For The Deaf" is a landmark release and will likely always be the quintessential QOTSA album for probably the same reason I outlined before, it just has an unshakeable grip on a certain age group who were there for it when it happened. For me though, we go five years and two albums later to 2007. The band haven't fallen off but have settled into their niche to an extent (ironically, they'd finally score a #1 album with their next one in 2013). All I know is that there's a bit of hype for their return and that's in the form of the song "Sick, Sick, Sick". I catch it a lot because it's on the radio and does well on the jtv Saturday chart with its unnerving music video that depicts the band members being cooked and eaten one-by-one. I hear the song's blocky opening guitar riff and I just see an oven timer. Still, the song is immense. Enormous guitar riffs that are tuned to a filthy tone that makes it sound like the toughest thing on the radio at the time. There's also a guest spot from Julian Casablancas on the song but I didn't pick up on it for a long time because he's not credited and I didn't really know who he was, and because Josh lip syncs his vocals in the music video, so I just assumed it was him. It's very obvious now.

I still love "Sick, Sick, Sick". I voted for it in the Hottest 100 that year, and I think it's still my favourite QOTSA song. Regardless of this, it only just snuck onto the list at #89. The band's Hottest 100 polling entries span 5 albums, and 2007's "Era Vulgaris" is the one that fared the worst out of all of them. I don't know if that's a symptom of the album's general reputation which isn't beloved, though a strong single would be expected to overcome that anyway. The conclusion I draw is that the song just isn't very important to that many people. Why would it anyway? To arrive in the world of QOTSA in 2007 is a very specific and uncommon experience, one that only comes about through my rapid shift from following nothing in music two years prior to suddenly following it much closer than the average person. This doesn't justify on its own that they would just so happen to put out my favourite song in that very moment, but if we operate on the idea that any other release would just find me disinterested in the band and not feel any affinity, it begins to make more sense. Either that, or I just greatly admired the juxtaposition in the gritty video where Troy just looks cool as hell in his dapper suit.

This sort of introduction can have flow on effects. I suspect my feelings about QOTSA are shaped by my first impression of the band, and I perceive everything through the lens of how closely it runs to that. Possibly I disregard the band's softer songs as exceptions, but another person might take them as a (perhaps tenuous) rule. So we go forward to 2013 and the band have a very successful album in "...Like Clockwork", enough so that we get a good spread of representation on this list. If you ask me at the time, I'll find that the quintessential inclusion was the album's lead single "My God Is the Sun". As far as the album goes, it's the one that comes closest to matching that "Sick, Sick, Sick" feeling. I don't think it's actually the heaviest song on the album ("Kalopsia" has too much weight to it), but it matches the frenetic pace. As a bonus, Josh brings back his ominous sigh on the song's pre-chorus. This also brings me back to 2007 because I'm stuck thinking about The Getaway Plan's "Streetlight", and how a similar moment seems to signal the song's eventual darker turn. "My God Is the Sun" doesn't really reach that conclusion in the same sense but there is a spooky outro. It also ended up fully matching the "Sick, Sick, Sick" cosplay because it too would barely sneak into the Hottest 100. The big plot twist in all of this is that it's no longer my favourite single from this album, and so there's still more to tap into with this album.