#930-#926

 #930. Amy Shark - Everybody Rise (#34, 2020)

93rd of 2020

I can't stress enough how difficult it is to be satisfied when you're ranking in this region. It continues to be a whole lot of songs that largely don't raise any sort of reaction out of me. This also continues to be Amy Shark chugging along with flashes of success.

We're deep in that period of chart history where there was a clear divide for Australian artists. Those who had enough of a fanbase to light a spark that would get the industry behind them, and those who were a million miles away from that ever happening. Despite the aforementioned hiccup on "Weekends", Amy Shark did slot into that former group pretty nicely for quite a while. This is actually her last major solo hit. She'd do alright teaming up with Keith Urban & R3HAB afterwards, but short of a gimmick, she's been short of the hits since this one.

It's fine really. It might just depend on my mood as it's not quite as content to be easily ignored as many of her other singles are. The production is immediately plucky, and the hook is rammed down pretty hard. I'm not really sure what the best way to tackle it would be, but the pitch-shifting is certainly distracting.

#929. Drake (feat Rihanna) - Too Good (#99, 2016)

95th of 2016

It's been a long time since I listened to it, but "Views" is possibly my least favourite Drake album I've heard. I say possibly because I don't think listening to both it and "For All The Dogs" to remove one word from the first sentence is a valuable use of my time. 80+ minute albums are the death of me. Skipping over the one that will appear later on this list, the hits are pretty indicative of it. Drake nesting in with a stream friendly sound that doesn't play to his strengths and coasting by.

This song is in a somewhat similar camp to Halsey's "Without Me". It was slightly more interesting just because while this was climbing up the charts, it wasn't technically a single, and it was novel at the time to see an album cut go as high as it did. At the same time though, I did find myself a little bored of the inevitability of it. It's a flex of Drake's command over the charts, but that's skipping ahead also to be fair.

Not long before this song came out, Drake had teamed up with Rihanna already in 2016. They had a big US #1 hit in "Work", which thanks to her relative lack of output since, is Rihanna's last US #1 hit to date. Maybe for a lot of people, that's the song that fits this description better, but I get a lot of character and brashness out of that one. Also a nice bonus is that it actually has the Caribbean-born artist as the one doing the patois. The 2:30 mark in "Too Good" sets off some bad shivers in me just thinking about it. At least Popcaan does get to do it himself on the outro. Plenty more Drake to come on this list though, so strap in.

#928. Amy Shark (feat Travis Barker) - C'MON (#65, 2020)

92nd of 2020

This song became slightly more notable recently. It sits in the middle of what is now a complete set of Amy Shark individually collaborating with every member in the most famous lineup of...a band who will eventually appear in this list. That's not totally out of nowhere either. Tom DeLonge tweeted in high praise of her as far back as 2017. In the case of "C'MON" which is the only one that'll come up here, it probably doesn't seem as special. Travis Barker has been handing out these collaborations like free bread at a restaurant.

The feature credit and the all caps title give off the impression that it's gonna be a huge pop punk belter. Where are my fans of "Come On" by Numbers Radio at? Instead we slow things right down, even by Amy Shark standards. The best way to appreciate it is sitting it next to "Weekends", where you can notice the more detailed drumming, and also I think Amy puts in a better vocal performance. Otherwise though, I just feel a bit bored by it all, and it's unfortunate that we're halfway through Amy Shark's Hottest 100 entries and I'm still saying this.

#927. Juice WRLD - Wishing Well (#49, 2020)

91st of 2020

I did not have the best of early impressions with Juice WRLD. A lot of his earlier material straddled with an immature perspective on women while also constantly finding unique ways to be grating. I grew up with Craig David's "Rise & Fall" on the radio constantly, I didn't need to hear another take on the exact same Sting sample.

By the time I had started to slowly warm up to his music, he died suddenly. No chance for him to expand upon his artistry & philosophy beyond having barely turned 21. But as is often the case, that did not slow his output in any way.

Posthumous releases are rough to put it bluntly. There's a certain cynicism attached to it when the statistical metrics advise against pacing things slowly. Just a year and a half prior we had the same situation with XXXTENTACION, where the fight to cash in on him resulted in a lot of hastily cobbled releases that were not well received. This album was also released fairly quickly (7 months after his death) but was received a little bit better. I'll have more to say on it with another entry.

I've always found "Wishing Well" a little bit uncomfortable to listen to. It just feels a bit wrong to promote a song by a dead man that is constantly reminding me of the very thing that killed him. Even the first line (which is repeated many times), 'I can't breathe', is just a strange thing to push for a radio single. For some reason also this is a Dr. Luke production. Once again you get sloppy loops. It's quirky to me that it seems to sample a soundbite from Dragonball Z, but it feels cut & pasted with no real purpose other than to fill space.

#926. Peking Duk - Wasted (#55, 2018)

89th of 2018

Peking Duk managed a pretty incredible 8 year streak in the Hottest 100. They didn't even do it through a gradual come up like Illy. In fact, despite the 5 year delay, Peking Duk managed their peaking in their very first year, 2 years before Illy had his highest entry. They tapped into something pretty special, and had everyone pining for more.

Things like this have a nature of petering out though. You might be in the position to wonder if they were deliberately manufacturing their streak with the slow drip feed of singles. If so, at what point does the passion slip, and it just becomes an obligation rather than a desire to create?

That's not really a fair thing to say, but on the other hand, it's easy to point at this single as a tipping point for a lot of people. Peking Duk had managed to consistently push their new singles into the ARIA top 50 for 4 years straight, often with healthy chart runs to boot. The single that broke that streak was this one, which lagged around a #63 peak for a couple of months and slipped away. Their next release did a lot better so it's not as if they'd lost their time in the spotlight, this one song just didn't get the job done.

It's hard to entirely point out what the problem is. In some regard, it's not really a departure from what they were already doing. The guitar and synth still pop nicely. I guess it just comes down to the lyrics & vocals, which aren't nearly anthemic enough. The elephant in the room here is that it's the only Peking Duk song that doesn't have a guest vocalist on it. Well, it's probably Styalz Fuego singing the hook, but Adam from Peking Duk is in front of the microphone for most of it. He's fine, but it'd be a discredit to anyone else they've worked with if I said he was much more than that.

#935-#931

 #935. The Amity Affliction - Shine On (#25, 2015)

94th of 2015

From one big album capitalisation to another. This single followed "Let The Ocean Take Me", The Amity Affliction's big commercial breakthrough that netted it several Hottest 100 entries I'll eventually talk about. As a result, this song briefly reached the ARIA top 20 making it their highest ever charting single. In that moment it may have been helped by being a stand-alone single but now the opposite is true. This song is stranded without an album and as I write this, slips down to being their 31st most popular song on last.fm this week. That makes it the lowest of all the 12 Amity Affliction songs I get to talk about on this list.

If I'll have much to say about them that many times remains to be seen. There's a certain formula to a lot of their entries we'll see time and time again. A back & forth on the vocal duty where Joel might chime in on what Ahren's doing and vice versa, but usually Ahren comes in for the hook like a pound of bricks. Oh and you gotta stick a breakdown in there somewhere. I'm not saying it's a bad formula. If I were more critical of it, we'd have seen a lot more of them already on this list by this point. "Shine On" just feels the most like it's strapping itself to the formula without much to offer.

I will give credit at the very least. I used to come down a lot more harshly on this song. As we continue to jump through all of the 'this chorus just sounds annoying to me songs', this was one of the worst. I'm not always the biggest fan of what Ahren's doing with his voice but he can distract me with a catchy melody. This one just sounds flat and bad. I can't say for sure if it loses points for using the same title as Jet and The Kooks, but I'd probably go out of my way to listen to one of those instead of this. You wouldn't put this on your Fred Hollows Foundation ad.

#934. Dean Lewis - Stay Awake (#79, 2019)

93rd of 2019

I remember when I first started following music charts super closely, I was getting a better grip on what does and doesn't sound like a chart hit. Furthermore, the way that window would seem to shift super quickly. The transitions in popular formats tended to do this. Digital killed the physical star and so on. You could argue that it's just the increased audience size revealing some to be more niche than they previously seemed.

I am comparing Dean Lewis to Pete Murray again but for a different reason. Namely that he came across as fairly affable but when it came to releasing his singles, especially from 2008 onwards, he just wasn't really soaring to great chart heights. I would think, surely there are worse songs charting higher than this, that's not fair. But then at the end of the day, he was just making light, inoffensive music. Nothing wrong with that, it just doesn't aspire to too much.

So I guess this is Dean Lewis reaching the "You Pick Me Up" phase of his career in record time. I guess credit to him all the same. This easily could've been forgotten given how early it came out in the year but still managed to find the required votes to be here. There is nothing offensive about this song, but nothing for me to really latch onto either. Just the general feeling that I've heard it before.

#933. Tuka - Big Jet Plane - Like A Version (#81, 2015)

93rd of 2015

On a technicality, Tuka is in rare air as an artist whose only Hottest 100 entry is a Like A Version. He is going to appear in this list many times as part of a highly successful hip-hop group, but this was his only successful solo venture. He had a close miss in 2012 when his cross Australian hip-hop group collaboration with The Herd's Jane Tyrrell, "Die A Happy Man" landed at #116. Another member of The Herd will eventually appear on this list. For that matter, we'll also see a further two entries and three artists that satisfy the previous notion to greater extents. One is still a technicality, how exciting.

Maybe I could add to my previous comment about DOPE LEMON that the original Lady Of The Sunshine version of "Big Jet Plane" would surely have to have been a hit if anyone heard it. We just can't get away from any version of the song we come across. It's some good obscure trivia to know that the song was a top 10 hit in Australia but only the further cover version by Lakyn Heperi on The Voice Australia. Tuka was beaten to the punch on this by 3 years, although to his credit, he put his own spin on it.

Tuka adds some rap verses to the song and they're fine. The most notable thing about it is that he manages to name-drop a Lana Del Rey song that had played on the countdown less than an hour before this did. Nothing quite so audacious has ever happened before or since. I can't promise it'll be as close but that Lana Del Rey song will eventually appear on this list.

I fall on it in a similar way I do to many Like A Versions where I don't have much of a desire to make this the version I seek out. The production and mixing shortcomings make it just lose out every time. Thelma Plum and another artist who will eventually appear in this list also show up here. There aren't many AFL references in the history of the Hottest 100 outside of TISM & Drapht namedropping James Hird & David Wirrpanda respectively. This cover came out just a couple of months after Adam Goodes retired and Thelma Plum is wearing a Goodes shirt in the video for this cover, in case you didn't know.

#932. Two Door Cinema Club - Changing of the Seasons (#71, 2013)

96th of 2013

It's hard to say whether or not Two Door Cinema Club ended up being a big deal in the long run. The main factor swaying this conversation is the song "What You Know" which has endured exceedingly well. Not many bands get to just have that one big song. Repeating the success of that first album has been the problem.

The lyrics of this song make it feel a bit too on the nose to rag on it. It's never sat quite right with me in general though. On some level it's not a departure from their usual sound, but it just feels like there's an extra layer of sheen coated over it. It sounds synthetic without fully committing to it. Just a lukewarm note to go out on.

#931. Halsey - Without Me (#56, 2018)

90th of 2018

We're several years removed from the peak commercial powers of Halsey at this point which makes it feel like more of a curiosity than an inevitability. The last time Halsey was on this list, we were just on the precipice of it. Then later in that year they teamed up with The Chainsmokers and had the biggest hit of 2016 (according to ARIA at least). If there was any doubt of Halsey's potential after that, then "Without Me" came along to be nearly just as big.

Over the years I've been at odds trying to grapple with what feel like perfunctory hit songs. Songs where all the stars have lined up for success but the end product feels like they're just casually walking through the door. That's always been this song for me. Nothing to point at and observe, just a song that's doing its job as a success vehicle.

#940-#936

 #940. Eves Karydas - Complicated (#22, 2020)

95th of 2020

Something that rears its head in when making a list like this is that I did not curate the list. On an individual artist level, you've got an incidental subset of their discography that might not always be the most interesting way to break it down. Or more bluntly, you can have artists I otherwise quite like only be represented by singles I don't really like.

The Eves Karydas story goes way back for me. I was first put onto her with the 2013 single "Zen". It's probably still my favourite song she's made. Pop with an undercurrent of darkness in the lyrics & music. It gives her, her own Regurgitator moment for me as the song contains the lyric 'you don't spin my head like you used to'.

Around this time she got signed to a major label and put out more singles in that vein, under the name Eves The Behavior (American spelling, yes). I was also on board with this, and many others were too, as she started showing solid positions on the iTunes chart, and snuck into the Hottest 200. This is an era of her career that's largely gone forgotten. A couple of years later she'd rebrand again with her actual surname, leaving all of the earlier material stranded as it's not even on the same artist page on Spotify anymore. As I write this, Eves Karydas has about 100,000 monthly listeners, and Eves The Behavior has barely 2,000.

I'm not the first to say that I wasn't fully on board with the rebrand. Not just because artists changing their name is highly bothersome for anyone who uses last.fm, but because the music just seemed to get worse. Gone was the mystery and intrigue, replaced by samey production and weaker, ham-fisted hooks. Catch me on the right day and I might be a little into "Further Than The Planes Fly", which is arguably her biggest hit now (it went Platinum in 2022), but it's a shell of what she was previously doing.

That song was unlucky to miss the Hottest 100 as a bit of a late bloomer, and maybe helped this song get in there instead as a consolation. At least I'd say that if this didn't land really, really high on the 2020 list. You look at the rest of the songs around it and it sticks out quite a bit. Feel free to draw the classic conclusion that it's probably helped by her saying a rude word to cut the tension in an otherwise run-of-the-mill chorus.

"Complicated" is probably my least favourite song she's made though. It feels like anyone could've made the song, and I still wouldn't like it. Whatever I can say about her 2018 album, there's more for me to dig into than this. Even when the hooks aren't great, they're not hammered in quite as insistently as this does. It's not complicated as much as it's just filling space. This song never actually ended up on an album. It's for an EP she put out in 2021, which was followed by another one in 2022. This is all a minor footnote in this chapter of her career though.

Just before the release of that second EP, she put out a lengthy statement on Instagram. In it, she details her experience as an artist and a person. It's about how as a woman, she's obligated to constantly post thirst trap content to drive engagement. Furthermore, that it had gotten to the point that she tended to spend more time taking photos for social media than she was writing music.

It's something I think about a lot. Following the music charts, it's hard to escape the fact that for a lot of people, it's second nature to veer towards listening to women that you want to have sex with. If you've seen any posts online, you'll also notice that a lot of people aren't even shy about it. Being horny on main seems like the most embarrassing thing you can do and yet people do it so openly, often with their real names & photos attached! For a lot of women who age out of being seen as a sex symbol, they're often derided as embarrassing has-beens but the truth is probably tinged with a layer of them not being seen as attractive anymore. Any time I see a critically judged list of the greatest music and it's overwhelmingly made by men, I can't help but feel like an industry and audience that pushes women to be objectified is just not going to take their artistry seriously in the long run.

The last part of her post quickly announces that she's jumped ship from her label and manager. Two years later that is in fact what she's done. She released her second album in 2024 independently and actually managed to reach the ARIA top 50, which her first album did not. As far as I can tell, Eves Karydas has never publicly disowned her previous music, or the creative process behind it (her most recent setlist at a festival has a mix of new and old). I do think though that she's turned a new leaf with it. The new album isn't wildly different to her previous album but it feels more natural. The sad reality is that a lot of artists who go independent immediately lose those behind the scenes forces that push them to the front (on the other hand, one artist will eventually appear on this list having only polled as a lead artist with their independent middle finger to their former label), but I wish her the best in her future endeavours. I feel like I'm back on board at least.

#939. Ruel - Free Time (#49, 2019)

94th of 2019

I can't help but still want to make jokes about Ruel being just a kid when he just serves them up like this. I mean of course he made a song called "Free Time"; he probably wrote this song during his free time in high school. It should be noted though that he quit school to focus on his music career before this song came out.

The song's general sentiment is pretty standard regarding a breakup. Maybe the greatest strength is that it accurately depicts his malaise as the song spends much of its run time trying to think of things for him to do now that he's alone, and failing to be particularly compelling. The song ends with a voice mail message which I find just a little too cloying and frames the whole song as him trying to make her feel bad for leaving him. The whole thing is set to a forgettable waltz making it the undesired sequel to Ed Sheeran's "Perfect".

#938. Tones And I - Fly Away (#58, 2020)

94th of 2020

Tones And I is an anomaly. Something about her turns otherwise normal people into immeasurable levels of derangement. I'm not necessarily excluding myself from that set but for different reasons. In any case, there's probably a better time to tackle that stuff, I think she's had a few more songs make the Hottest 100 other than this one.

The most interesting thing about this song is that seems to exist solely so British people can't call her a one hit wonder. For seemingly random reasons, late into 2021, nearly a year after this song came out, it came within an inch of the UK top 10. It had a steady up and down chart run that makes it undeniably a hit in the books. She's never made the charts there again after that, but she did what she needed to do.

The fact that I'm this high up the list without having exhausted all of Tones And I's entries means that I'm probably more charitable to her than most people. I can't especially extend that charity to this song though. The sentiment is nice, but it sounds like it's been made as a cheap sting at the end of TV commercials. For better or for worse, Tones And I has had a relatively distinctive approach to music, which we'll see on this list, but this feels like the boilerplate template that her music has followed since.

#937. The Rubens - God Forgot (#32, 2018)

91st of 2018

Out of all of The Rubens' Hottest 100 entries over the years, this is the one that feels the most bizarrely high ranked (yes, including that one). In some regards it's a throwback. It was a popular notion in the 1990s & 2000s that there was a release date sweet spot around September to October. Old enough to get exposure, but not so old that it becomes forgotten or tired. I don't think this voter bias is quite as strong these days, but this song that reached max rotation in the last 3 months of the year is a late holdout from this tradition.

This song has never fully sat right for my ears. It's not embarrassing like "Million Man", but just feels like a strange idea to go for. It feels like it's going for a campfire sing-along vibe, but who wants to sing it? All the lyrics just feel disjointed and unsatisfying.

#936. alt-J - Left Hand Free (#16, 2014)

94th of 2014

Recently we've come full circle with this song. When it came out, it was seen as a strange pivot for alt-J in not the usual way they do that with most of their songs. Like it was playing for American radio or to be in a car commercial. Mission accomplished because it lives on now for the latter, while the former has assured that it's one of alt-J's most popular songs. It's never been one I want to seek out.

We're starting alt-J from chapter 2. Their first album produced several Hottest 100 entries just prior to this cut off, notably "Breezeblocks" which finished up at #3. They felt a little bit quirky for the sake of quirky for me but could back it up with a solid tune so I didn't mind it too much.

They capitalised well on this with their second album, which brought together all the building hype to nearly score them a #1 album in Australia. It wasn't just empty hype though, as they followed through with a very tidy performance in the 2014 Hottest 100, where all 3 of their big singles landed at the pointy end of the list.

For me, that album is alt-J at their best. It's a little sparser than their debut but the instrumentation is tidy and well considered. Their next album would end up being called "RELAXER" (and will feature a song on this list) but "This Is All Yours" is my version of that vibe. Anyway, this song sticks out on it like a sore thumb.

I just can't take anything Joe Newman says seriously on this song from the instant it starts. His accent sounds especially forced and put-upon. I'm aware it's not the real lyric but it feels like he's trying really hard to make me think that the first three words are 'hey shitty baby' and I'm just so quickly put off. It's still not the worst sounding lyric though, not when you get to endure 'N-E-O, O-M-G gee whiz, girl'. That line comes after the drop in the second chorus and is the least satisfying pay off. That instrumental rollick makes it sound a bit more upbeat than usual from alt-J, but then it just lands in an unsatisfying middle ground where it doesn't go hard enough. There's no excitement to the novelty factor that ever makes me want to listen to this song.

#945-#941

 #945. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (feat Eric Nally, Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee & Grandmaster Caz) - Downtown (#18, 2015)

95th of 2015

2015 is a really strange year on the ARIA Chart. In some ways it's the last hurrah for it having its own identity separate from the US & UK charts, as well as being one of the last hurrahs for a time when sales, rather than streams had the dominant slice of the pie graph. There are just so many weird things that happened. Nelly had another top 3 hit, Nico & Vinz had another top 2 hit, Meghan Trainor had a second #1 hit. There are some more enduring hits, some of which will even show up on this list eventually, but it just feels like two audiences fighting over their idea of what popular music should sound like, and the more antiquated one tending to win out.

In many ways this song might be the true poster child for the phenomenon. Here, Macklemore makes the unusual decision to go as far back as possible for hip-hop co-signs. You've got guys behind songs like "Rapper's Delight" and "The Message" on here. In America, this didn't gel quite right and swiftly ended Macklemore & Ryan Lewis's hitmaking run. Australia on the other hand was the only country in the world to take this song to #1, and it stayed there for 4 whole absurd weeks. We really couldn't get enough Macklemore in the 2010s. It produces some irony because I sometimes see more favourable opinions on this song internationally. Underrated, deserved better, what have you. Here it just felt like a nuisance that far overstepped any expected performance.

Is it all that bad though? Not really. The biggest crime it has is being so incredibly dorky that I wince every time it comes on. Both on this list and in my mind it occupies a similar space to "The Trouble With Us". The other thing about this song is that it only feels more stranded in the current pop landscape. It stretches to nearly 5 minutes but somehow only has space for 2 choruses, not just because of all the verses but because Eric Nally really stretches out that chorus for all its worth.

This is also the last time Macklemore shows up here. It's pretty unlucky because I'm generally more willing than most to defend him, I just don't have much to work with in this case. Actually my favourite Macklemore song caught me off guard because it's on the same album as this song. That being "Need To Know" which is admittedly strongly carried by a rapper who will eventually appear on this list.

#944. Machine Gun Kelly (feat Kellin Quinn) - love race (#59, 2021)

95th of 2021

I've spent so long putting this list together that he still went by Machine Gun Kelly when I was doing it. I'll continue to use that name on the headers but will probably just call him mgk in the blurbs. Maybe he'll change back at some point.

It's so strange to me that triple j got onto this bandwagon. Not just because it feels archaic to say that triple j were waiting for a rapper to make more playlist friendly pop punk, but it's like reading the room where mgk is increasingly clowned upon and considered uncool and thinking 'now's the time to play him'.

How could I have known when I first started collecting Hottest 100 entries that I'd have to make it an annual tradition for a while to collect a new mgk song? I'm not disgusted on principle but I'd hope for something better than this. All I think of with this song is its dumb and repetitive hook. If you or someone you know has ever been on the run, then I've got a song for you.

Sleeping With Sirens also falls far astray from the kind of music I tend to listen to. Listening to some of their stuff now, I do think Kellin Quinn's style of singing is not generally to my taste, although he can occasionally command a strong presence. I don't think mgk gets the best out of him here though, the harmonies are a bit flat too.

#943. Amy Shark - I Said Hi (#5, 2018)

92nd of 2018

If "Weekends" was a pretty solid success for Amy Shark then this is an astounding one. Comfortably her second biggest hit to date and especially huge in a time when not many Australian artists were cracking the ARIA top 10. On the other hand, like Dean Lewis before her, this proved to be a big miss down the track, as I believe it's the highest ranking song in an annual list to miss triple j's Hottest 100 of the Decade. That might come down to a slight bit of recency disadvantage as well as being overshadowed by that elephant hit in the room I'll eventually talk about.

Amy Shark is subject to a lot of dumb jokes. It doesn't take a genius to realise that her name rhymes with "Baby Shark" and that her rise to popularity happened around the same time as that. This song gets a bit of it too, whether you want to make a mole joke or a Rove McManus joke. It's a bit worn out, but I always wondered if she was partly in on this, the most striking thing about this song to me is the memorably mundane title.

I've never really found an in for it myself. It's just a bit too overproduced and a bit not very catchy. That's especially important for a song like this because it's one that breezes through the verses as quickly as it can to get to the hook. She's still utilising the detail-ridden writing that stood out for her in the first place, but it just doesn't feel like it amounts to anything.

#942. Alex the Astronaut - Not Worth Hiding (#23, 2017)

94th of 2017

I tend to root for Alex the Astronaut because for the most part, there really isn't a lot of representation in the music world for people who like me, are on the autism spectrum. Looking into it, I'm finding some higher profile examples like Dave & Martin from Depeche Mode, as well as Diane Warren. Growing up, I only really knew of Ladyhawke and Craig Nicholls. The latter is a particularly rough example because his struggles in keeping composure under high scrutiny are probably part of why a lot of people looking back feel completely validated in seeing The Vines as a joke in hindsight. But then from what I've seen, it's unfortunately still socially acceptable to make fun of people for exhibiting neurodivergent behaviour, so it's not even necessarily incidental.

Alex was only diagnosed as an adult so their story is not the same as mine but I appreciate the perspective. Part of why so many people aren't diagnosed sooner, or at all, is because of the stigma attached to it. In turn we can't help but feel more distant and alone with no one to relate to. You go through life with so many cases of things that are tailor made for neurotypical folk and feel like there's something wrong with you, or you're a bad person when you can't comply. Or you don't need to because someone else will just tell that to you instead.

I wish I could get more behind this song. If you haven't heard it in a while, don't let my previous paragraphs distract you because it's about being gay rather than autistic. I think the heart's in the right place and it's not anywhere near as cynical as the Logic song. I'd say it's a song that oversimplifies the narrative except the last verse covers that base as well. I don't doubt at all that Alex knows coming out isn't just a simple problem that can be solved by telling people to cheer up and that everything will be fine. If this song has managed to help anyone with the process and had a positive impact on their life, that's awesome. I just don't really enjoy listening to it.

#941. Lorde - Stoned at the Nail Salon (#81, 2021)

94th of 2021

Online consensus has a habit of sandpapering over all of the nuance into very broad and simple takes. They're the kind that become so generic that when I do see them parroted outright, it's hard to tell if someone really does think that way or they're just following convention to a tee. The most common way this manifests itself is in a simple system: Artist X is good, all their music is good. Artist Y is bad, all their music is bad. To suggest otherwise is sacrilege. There are of course exceptions to this, where the strokes get just a little less broad. For Lorde, the first two albums are near untouchable, but this one's a terrible mistake that we're waiting to be made redundant when the next one comes out.

I'll be entirely honest, I never actually listened to the album. There are two more songs from it on this list so I'll probably get to it when I get to one of those. I'm kind of fascinated to see if the rest of it does fall in line with any of the singles. I'd hope it's not like this one, too many gentle ballads can get exhausting.

The most interesting thing about this song for me is the one lyric about growing out of the music you loved at 16. That's prime rage bait if there ever was such a thing. People are so proud of still liking the first thing they were introduced to as a kid and so damning of anyone of a different age group for doing the same. It is a little funny to hear such a thing from Lorde at the ripe age of 24, but I trust her for introspection more than most. Still find the song fairly boring though.

#950-#946

#950. A$AP Rocky - L$D (#64, 2015)

97th of 2015

It's hard for me to really justify this with any authority. This psychedelic pivot is probably A$AP Rocky's most unique and unconventional single he's ever released. For many it's his best song, or at least the one that explores the most potential in his artistry. I've just never been able to shake off the feeling that it's just kind of boring to me.

A$AP Rocky is going to appear in this list six times. Largely with a helping of eclectic sample choices and his prime brand of hedonistic party raps. When this song came out I was far more into some of those especially hedonistic songs, like "Multiply" and "Electric Body". In some respects this song could probably fit in with those other ones if it didn't sound the way it did. The slow, mellow pace turns lyrics that could sound braggadocious into melancholic laments. It's definitely an idea worth exploring, just not one I really ever enjoy listening to.

#949. Catfish and the Bottlemen - Soundcheck (#77, 2016)

96th of 2016

Catfish and the Bottlemen are an incredibly anachronistic band. Or at least they are for when they got popular. 2006-2008 were highly formative years for me in music and it just so happened to be a time when the British indie scene was inundated with bands of their ilk, and songs about whether or not a monster is coming over the hill. I know far more Pigeon Detectives songs than the average person. It just seemed to be the gold standard going forward, until suddenly due to lack of interest, their tomorrows were all cancelled, with the striking exception of a band that will appear several times in this list. But there must have still been an audience who wanted more, and it seems like this is the band that re-captured the zeitgeist.

The twist in this tale is that the band actually did form in 2007. Probably a lot of bands did in the wake of it that never got their name out in time while they were still the hip thing. They released their first album in 2014 and later on I'd find out about them when they were performing curiously well in Hottest 100 voting projections. They didn't quite make it that year (although depending on what day you look at the Wikipedia article, maybe they did), but it was the prologue to them capitalising on the next album, sometimes you can do that without the preview entry.

It pains me to say that in many such cases, I just can't fully get on board with what they're doing. I don't know if I've seen anyone else report the same feeling, but so frequently in Catfish and the Bottlemen songs, there's this tendency to just not resolve their melodic ideas in a way that sticks the landing. Or if not that, they'll chuck something in there that throws it off even earlier. As far as their entries here go, this is the one that always sticks out to me. You've got a chorus that feels like it's building to something and then it just pulls out halfway through. It ends up being aggressively uncatchy.

#948. Amy Shark - Weekends (#25, 2017)

95th of 2017

I feel like in her position in 2017 it would be hard to mess this up. Truth be told, #25 is a very strong finish in the Hottest 100, and Amy Shark has gone on to have a scarcely rivalled hitmaking career in Australia. There really aren't many women who've had as many hits as her over the same span of time without being internationally famous.

On the other hand, this is one that totally did get messed up. Amy Shark was signed to Sony Music Australia by this point in time and yet despite this, they weren't able to secure a placement on Australia's most important hitmaking Spotify playlist, at a time when it had full control over what did and didn't become a hit. It's enough to say that the song lost a top 50 peak in Australia because of this fumble.

At the time I was fairly indifferent to the song. You get the feeling that she's still figuring out what her sound is. Rather than step out and be bold though, it feels like it's holding onto the hand of Amy Shark's previous hit, not wanting to go too far on its own. I'm still not totally sure she's found out what her sound is but at the very least, she's branched out quite a bit more since.

As a result, this song never gets out of that previous hit's shadow, and I find myself feeling less from it as a result. I'm comparing the impact of the lyrics and it's coming up short. I'm comparing the quality of the mixing on the different elements and it's coming up very short, even on weekends.

#947. The 1975 - I'm In Love With You (#58, 2022)

96th of 2022

I think the most interesting thing here is the fact that The 1975 are here at all. They're a band that triple j pretty much ignored from the start, and probably weren't banking on them having quite the staying power they ended up with. There are probably people growing up now who'll look at the past Hottest 100 lists shocked to see that they had no entries before 2022, much like I remember trying to find My Chemical Romance's entries prior to 2006, to no avail.

At some point in you have to just accept the L and admit defeat, except what ended up happening was Matty Healy invoking a bizarre personal tirade against the station itself, giving them all the more reason not to start playing the band. Instead they very quickly put them into regular rotation. There's probably some justification for it all behind the scenes, mainly I think it's funny to imagine that even people from the UK are blaming triple j's woes on Richard Kingsmill beyond his tenure as Music Director.

It's hard to tell without further data as to whether or not this animosity, or even just the sheer novelty of appearing on the voting list helped The 1975 for 2022's countdown (it is strange to put this band name so close to an actual year). It could very well be that many people have been champing at the bit to vote for them.

I think The 1975 can be a very interesting band. They're definitely not afraid to try different things. Even in their most obvious radio singles they're usually doing something out of left field. They usually come with some of the weirder titles for that matter.

This probably fits into that camp too. I don't think it's one of their stronger efforts though. For the most part it feels like safe treading and the only thing that stands out is the hook whose repeated 'I's can get a little bit irritating. Makes me wish I was listening to "If You're Too Shy (Let Me Know)" or something.

#946. Marcus Marr & Chet Faker - The Trouble with Us (#6, 2015)

96th of 2015

When this song first came out I was not at all shy about expressing my feelings about it. Most of those feelings amounted to some variation on 'no, I do not need to hear Chet Faker's attempt at being funky' and 'ooh, gah, turn it off'. Such were my feelings that I even used my very recently opened sports gambling account (note: gamble responsibly, or better yet, don't), to put down an emotional insurance bet on this winning the whole thing. Given that Australia was recently put under a spell by Chet Faker, and this had the bonus of actually being a crossover top 10 ARIA hit BEFORE the countdown aired, it seemed a realistic outcome. Maybe in the end it was just a little too far off what the Chet Faker audience really wanted.

I think with that crisis averted, it was harder to get especially mad at this song and so I've definitely mellowed out on it at least a little bit. Still a little bit of ominous dread when I hear those opening guitar notes though. It also still has a strange idea for a chorus, a bit of a Mad Lib situation on what to finish each line with. There have got to be better ways to dwell on relationship conflict than 'I need the trouble with trust'. It's like there's an idea to call for a resolution or understanding, but it's stuck within the lyrical motif and can't make enough sense.

I haven't really heard much from Marcus Marr outside of this collaboration. I thought "Learning For Your Love" was a bit more to my taste. This is definitely a symbiotic collaboration but it's fascinating that he's never really capitalised further on it. This UK producer who doesn't even have a Wikipedia page ends up being one of the most random people to have a Hottest 100 top 10 entry, alongside luminaries like The Tenants and Allen Ginsberg.

#955-#951

 #955. Lorde - Tennis Court (Flume Remix) (#47, 2014)

95th of 2014

The phrase '(Flume Remix)' is one of the more common ones to turn up on this list. There's three of them really but that's one more than it usually takes to do the Phineas and Ferb joke so it must be super weird at this point. It sure is a curious bunch of songs that few people have ever thought about in quick succession until this happened. This one sticks out a little bit as well since it's a remix of a song that already polled in the Hottest 100 the year before. Eventually I'll talk about the real thing.

 

Pseudo back to back entries like that are actually fairly common in the Hottest 100. It doesn't even need to be the natural progression of a recent Like A Version. Sometimes the new version just is transformative enough to get people interested in it a second time. I imagine it doesn't hold up very much to anyone going through the archive to discover it, but the live version of "Ice Cream" by Muscles stood out quite a bit at the time. The year before, a certain hip-hop trio who will absolutely be in this list re-vamped one of their entries with a string section, and it was quite a lively re-interpretation. That one actually improved its performance. I won't say that this doesn't also significantly alter its source material, but it still does leave me a little bit cold.

 

In general I just get the feeling that this is a Flume song that wants to be its own thing but it's trapped in the confines of this Lorde song. It doesn't want to break the conventions of that either so it ends up being about 6 minutes long which is more than enough to overstay its welcome. There's a little bit of variation in the drops, even one that fakes you out for a moment, but like I said with his last entry, not his greatest. I'll try not to keep using that line because I could be using it for a long time.

 

This also slightly lets me down because while I'm not an extensive remix hunter, it's a rare enough coincidence to say that it's not even the only remix I know of this Lorde song. Just from listening to triple j in the morning at the time is how I learnt about the Mushin remix of the song. I'm not going to say that it's technically better than this, but it has a great entertainment value for me that can't be beat. The sheer audacity to play the song almost completely straight until it doesn't, it feels like a parody of this remix, except it came out way earlier, when the song was still pretty new. I wish I could feel something like that from this, rather than just waiting for it to end.

 

#954. The Rubens - Million Man (#77, 2017)

97th of 2017

I feel a little bad for The Rubens. Over one summer, they managed to become a pariah for absolute mockery all because they had the audacity of getting a handful more votes than someone else. It wasn't their fault they won. It's just like when Macklemore won that GRAMMY Award...I feel like there's another common link between these two things but I suspect I can't say what it is just yet. I'll have more to say on that eventually, but in the years that followed, they went from huge vote-getters to struggling to even reliably poll. They could easily have loads of entries here but I'm only going to talk about them 5 times. Suffice to say, they lost any sort of underdog spirit that would make people want to vote for them.

 

"Million Man" was their first time back after the fact. It's track 1 on their 3rd album yet also feels tacked on since it came out 9 months prior. The only thing I can really say about it is that it sounds like a worse version of their most popular song. So many of the distinctive hallmarks of that song are back, in goofball form! The drums might sound a little better but maybe they're just less distractingly in the way. The backing vocals are much worse, and the fuzzy guitar brought in on the chorus is just the worst kind of pay off. It all just sounds pretty amateurish.

 

#953. venbee & goddard. - messy in heaven (#61, 2022)

97th of 2022

The adage of Hottest 100 voters liking a swear is honestly a pretty universal fact. Maybe in the past it could be handicapped by the radio being the main point of entry, and in many such cases preventing the words from being heard. Maybe it adds to the intrigue. How many people in 2004 were influenced in purchasing hit songs by Frankee and that associated guy I miraculously can't name yet because he'll be on this list, just for the thrill of hearing that word so many times in a pop song?

 

"messy in heaven" doesn't technically have explicit language, and gets off scot-free without a tag, despite how provocative its lyrics are, combining religious imagery with narcotics. It ends up working the same way as swearing though because the chorus proves to be highly memorable in a 'did I just hear what I think I did?' kind of way. I guess nowadays you can rap about anything, including Jesus.

 

If the lyrics aren't enough of a clash, it comes in the form of a drum & bass tune. goddard. had previously had a hand in a big hit not long before this, with his drum & bass remix of Cat Burns' "Go" helping propel that to #2 in the UK. It would be reasonable to think that this itself is another remix. In some ways it is, the song was composed originally without goddard.'s involvement. venbee has not come close to matching the success of this since, but it wasn't a one-off genre experiment for her. All the songs I've heard from her since also inhabit a similar space, including one song where she collaborated with a notable drum & bass group that will eventually appear on this list.

 

This song has never especially clicked with me. I don't take issue with the lyrics but rather it's the production. When I first heard this song I was taken back to 2014 and the rise of another drum & bass group, Sigma. Their first big hit "Nobody To Love" has source material that's going to be familiar to this list eventually, so I'll probably bring it up again. The issue I've always had in that song is that while it comes out the gate with a lot of energy, the piano melody overpowers it. It turns the rest of the song into background noise. I can't help but think of it every time the piano comes into this song. It's a very familiar, but worn out sound.

 

#952. Eiffel 65 & Flume - Blue (Flume Remix) (#54, 2020)

96th of 2020

YouTube has been around for nearly 20 years at this point. I'm old enough to remember a time before YouTube but for many adults now, there's never been a time without it. One of my favourite things to do is to look at YouTube comments for songs that were uploaded to YouTube pretty early on, but also pre-date the platform. You'll see a lot of people take the upload date as gospel, and it's not even totally unreasonable sometimes. If you weren't around for it, why wouldn't you believe that "Mr. Brightside" came out in 2009? Maybe some people think that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a classic oldie from 2008 now.

 

It's a side effect of being a chart nerd that I have a lot of release years stored for instant recall. You end up making quick, spurious mental links alongside other songs that were charting simultaneously, or even the nature of chart rules circa that year and how that potentially affected the song's performance. So the funniest thing about this release to me is that when Flume said in an interview that the Eiffel 65 song reminded him of 1998. That's the song's release date on Wikipedia after all, but I'm pretty sure he's really remembering the summer of '99/'00 when "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" was dominating the ARIA Charts.

 

I know I remember it. It's one of my earliest memories of pop music. In fact it's one of the earliest songs I ever declared to be my favourite song ever. This would be quickly surpassed in the next year, basically whenever a new Bomfunk MC's song got added to radio rotation, but I am both just about the same age as Flume and also one of the prime demographics that made it such a monster hit.

 

With that in mind, I can't really get mad at the song, or anyone who likes it. I can't say I still have the same fondness for it anymore. Too knowingly dumb & annoying to really hold any strong feelings about. Overexposure makes me just prefer hearing the other "Europop" singles. I'm way more fascinated at the creative process and vision going into the anti-capitalist anthem "Too Much Of Heaven" than I am "Blue (Da Ba Dee)".

 

So I wasn't too thrilled going into this. I think something that also happens when you get older is that a lot of these novelties upon novelties lose their intrigue. You see the reference points getting increasingly obvious and un-adventurous and it just feels boring. Or at least this is a song that is too big and omnipresent to ever generate that 'oh yeah, I forgot about that song' feeling. Maybe if Flume remixed "Tasty" by Ilanda instead it'd work. It was the right time for Flume to do it though. A decade removed from Flo Rida re-working it, and also getting in a little before the mass resurgence of David Guetta's interpolation a couple of years later (side note: David Guetta got unbelievably close to actually appearing in this list, with his remix of Shouse's "Love Tonight" placing at #115 in 2021). The best I can say for this is that I find the idea of re-writing chapters of music history interesting. So it's fascinating to me to think of Eiffel 65 as a group locked at the turn of the millennium in music history, and yet 20 years later they made it into triple j's Hottest 100. You just never know how long these stories will last.

 

#951. Tash Sultana - Electric Feel - Like A Version (#78, 2017)

96th of 2017

 

As far as Like A Versions that are popular enough to actually poll go, this is probably the one that generates the most groans, ire & eye rolls. They will appear many times on this list, but it's not everyone's cup of tea. If you do fall into that camp, then this probably more than any of their other entries is the epitome of it. Going so far into self-indulgence that the end product feels like it's actively wasting your time, spending less time resembling the song it's supposed to be a cover of than I spend actually writing about the song I'm supposed to be writing about in these blurbs.

 

This is not the longest song to ever appear in the Hottest 100 but it is the longest for the date range that I'm concerned about here. The closest contemporary in length is Death Cab For Cutie's 2008 entry "I Will Possess Your Heart", which also spends a particularly long time before getting to the radio ready point.

 

One of the Hottest 100's most isolated moments is the list history of MGMT. They had three top 20 finishes in 2008, a year later was another guest appearance with a rapper and electronic duo who will both eventually appear on this list, then nothing. What's especially unlucky is that it didn't have to be like this in the long run. The same year this cover came out, MGMT released the title track to their 4th album "Little Dark Age", a song that eventually found an audience but not in a rapid enough capacity to bear fruit on any notable charts. As I write this, it's actually their most successful song in America, with a double platinum certification that is still eluding the big three from "Oracular Spectacular".

 

It might honestly help the case for this cover that "Electric Feel" has always been my least favourite of the three big singles. I don't feel especially robbed of anything when they decide to take it in a different direction. The loop pedals make for a fun novelty, it's pretty crazy when you think that this is largely the creation of one person on the fly. No doubt it's a cool live experience but on record it's not something that necessarily holds up to repeated listens. Every time it comes on shuffle, I'm immediately casting my mind to the near 9 minute run time, at which point it's 'ah shit, here we go again'.

2023 Hottest 100 Stream

 

Loud microphone warning. Anyway, this was just a fun thing I thought to do in tandem with this blog. It's all very rough and I don't spend the entire time talking about the music, but if you need a fix of more content while also getting to find out how many times I miss a jump and fall down, then enjoy. Thanks to everyone who came along to hang out, and everyone who's wished me a happy birthday this week, it's all very appreciated even if I don't always work myself up properly to respond.

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 #960. Odd Mob - Is It A Banger? (#70, 2014)

96th of 2014

I went into this list thinking that I would on occasion dig into certain relevant pieces of media in order to better fill out some entries. I still intend to do that, but it's more important that I actually show some sign of ever finishing this list. With that in mind, I did not watch all 126 episodes of Parks and Recreation for this, but I did jump straight to the middle of Season 6 just to watch the episode that is sampled in this song. I quite like the show when I have seen it, but that's a heck of a lot of work for "Is It A Banger?"

If you need the context for this, all of the spoken word in this song is from Aziz Ansari's character Tom Haverford, in a brief aside where he elaborates on his scientific method for finding the best songs to listen to. This is all for the purpose of DJing a high school prom which blows up in his face when he realises that he's out of touch with the kids who would prefer to listen to alternative rock instead of trap & southern hip-hop. It ends with a quick acceptance of the fact that adults have better things to do than keep in touch with youth culture. I'm older than Aziz was when this episode came out and the irony isn't lost on me.

There are quite a lot of musical references in the episode that make me feel like the writers know what they're talking about. While he's delivering this monologue, you can see a chart of various songs being graded as potential bangers and it's an interesting time capsule. A certain Atlanta trio who had just barely cracked the mainstream thus far gets the nod of approval, several years before they'd make it onto this list, and there's the interesting distinction that Rocko's "U.O.E.N.O." is not a banger, but the remix with Rick Ross's infamous lyric is. The main dig though is at Mumford & Sons' "I Will Wait", that of course fails the test due to its acoustic instruments. I admire that he's out there giving it a try even though it's clearly out of his wheelhouse.

It does start to get a little bit off when we get to the prom though, as the buzz kill song he's playing is "We Own It" by Wiz Khalifa and another rapper who will eventually appear in this list. Admittedly it wasn't nearly as big a hit in America as it was in Australia, but it's strange to hear kids who will eventually jam out to "Song 2" by Blur complaining that this song from 6 months ago is too old. It feels like an underdeveloped way to signal being out of touch, although if the show was secretly set 10 years in the future, it's perfect.

Now that's out of the way, I'll dispense the important facts: Odd Mob was originally a duo but since 2017 is just one person, and there is a question mark in the title but not on the artwork. Though this was his one viral turn, he's remained active and this track is only his 25th most popular song right now according to last.fm. It's a cute novelty but doesn't really hold up to return listens. Then again, a few years ago I intentionally downloaded a Lumineers song so you might want to discard my opinion on this sort of thing.

#959. Thelma Plum - These Days (#92, 2020)

97th of 2020

I don't approach this list with the purpose of dumping all over beloved classic songs outside of the aforementioned time window. Fate sometimes forces my hand though. I liked "These Days" by Powderfinger a lot more when I was a teenager. I think it had some fun note charts that were within my range on SingStar. I don't have any real emotional connection to it though, so it can't help but feel a little bit turgid to me.

There is a modicum of enjoyment and excitement to be had from it though, which is more than I can say for this cover version. This time it's not actually a Like A Version, but the song choice and vibe are all still there. The best I can say about it is that it's considerably shorter, and doesn't adhere to all the same musical choices of the original. Thelma Plum has accumulated quite a handful of entries over the years now, and it's probably not a surprise at this point that the cover is the one I'm least fond of.

#958. Doja Cat (feat The Weeknd) - You Right (#83, 2021)

96th of 2021

There's an alternate universe where Doja Cat briefly holds the record for most Hottest 100 entries in a single year. She ended up with an impressive 5 entries in 2021, but the reality is that it's all she was practically allowed. She had nothing else on the voting list to choose from. If triple j were feeling generous, they could've allowed votes for "Ain't Shit" which could have possibly gotten over the line. It could also have siphoned votes from this and left her at a different set of 5 but we'll never really know.

Despite her very in-your-face attitude, Doja Cat also frequently deals in some of the more restrained songs to have made the pop charts in recent years. A lot of them really depend on my mood as to how I'll respond, because they can just hit the spot right. This one I don't think ever really gets there. It doesn't even have to be the last time I say this, but Dr. Luke just does not do well producing trap music. The drums sound flat and a little too high in the mix. She mined a similar sounding hit in "Agora Hills" from her next album and I think that one finds the balance a bit better.

In general it's just not an especially interesting song. Most notable for the headline grabbing feature, which means I can finally talk about The Weeknd. Except he's a pretty perfunctory presence on this song so I won't bother getting into much detail. He's got way more to show on his own. If not for several of the songs in close proximity to it in 2021's list, I'd say this would be guaranteed to flatten the BBQ listening party vibes, whatever they sound like.

#957. DOPE LEMON - Hey You (#84, 2019)

95th of 2019

I might keep saying this but it's always been very important to me that I treat every entry separately. A lot of people will pigeon-hole artists into a single box and only occasionally deviate. The kinds of folk who might say 'They only have one good song'. Ignoring the fact that there's probably no artist with a big enough catalogue that I'd willingly listen to all of with such a poor hit rate, it's just not a very interesting criticism. I'm not saying this applies to DOPE LEMON anyway. He's got two more songs to come after this one that could potentially be filed under 'Good' if such a line exists, and that's just within the Hottest 100 canon anyway.

The reason I say all of this is because not only is it hard to say much about this song, but it is one I'm guilty of filing away in a lazy manner. This song doesn't really sound like "Marinade", but it gives off a fairly similar, sluggish vibe that doesn't offer a whole lot. It's low enough in the 2019 list that you're still probably thinking to yourself about how 'We got stuck with this while something great probably just missed out'. It's not all that bad but hardly something to deliberately seek out.

#956. Steve Lacy - Static (#72, 2022)

98th of 2022

I've been listening to The Internet since 2015. That's not a flex, they just had a triple j Feature Album in that year and I liked what I was hearing. That album is "Ego Death" and it's their first release since Steve Lacy joined the group. He'd also only just turned 17. In saying that I didn't really know who Steve Lacy was for a little while yet. He'd start popping up elsewhere, and of course on The Internet's 2018 song "Come Over", Syd kindly says 'Steve' before his guitar solo. Eventually, Steve Lacy would find belated success with his song "Dark Red", just in time for him to release a new single that would soar him to bizarre heights...but that's a story for another blurb.

Steve Lacy made sure to certainly not be a Hottest 100 one hit wonder though because he had enough good will to also collect this second entry. Unfortunately it's not really one I can get behind. It doesn't really feel like a finished track. I know that it's a common complaint to say TikTok songs are undercooked, but I think two and a half minutes is plenty of time to get everything done. This just doesn't get there. I can only ruin it further by saying that it's probably the only Hottest 100 entry to ever include the lyric 'uWuWuWuWu'.

ALSO: As previously mentioned, tonight (at around 12pm UK time), I'll be playing through Banjo-Kazooie on my Twitch channel. To 100% the game you need to collect 100 jigsaw pieces, and so every time I do, I'll move through triple j's 2023 Hottest 100 from #100 to #1, talking about those songs with rough thoughts that don't give me the above leisure I have to look things up. There'll be a display on screen to keep up with what I'm talking about to. Should it go alright, I'll post a VOD on here later.

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 #965. Vance Joy - Clarity (#29, 2022)

99th of 2022

It's a positive endorsement for 2022 that I'm putting this in 99th place. It's not really offensive in any way, but something's gotta go there. This entry marks a solid decade of Vance Joy dominance, and with no real sign of waning. A lot of artists who find commercial success can start to feel a bit passé, or at least less in-step with the younger generation of Hottest 100 voters coming in. This being a relatively minor hit by Vance Joy's standards but still landing in the top 30 here is an impressive showing.

I recall being extremely negative on this song when I first heard it. Like usually I can try and find something that makes me want to come back but this song just doesn't have it. The most memorable thing here is the extremely repetitive chorus. It makes me think of Ali Gatie's song "It's You", a song with over a billion streams on Spotify that I nonetheless cannot take seriously. Vance Joy says an approximation of the line so many times it loses all meaning. There'll still be plenty more Vance Joy to come here, and this isn't even the last "Clarity".

#964. Illy (feat Scarlett Stevens) - Tightrope (#17, 2014)

97th of 2014

This track is not on iTunes or Spotify. There are some unofficial uploads on YouTube that rack up 4 digit view counts, but otherwise it's been strangely wiped. It would be interesting to see how the battle stacks up between this and the original album version but it's not a level playing field anymore.

It probably doesn't matter on the whole. This version of the song did make it an ARIA top 50 hit, but months later when it had a substantial tenure on the chart, all the momentum was on the original version. This is interesting to me because the most substantial difference isn't the guest vocals. Scarlett just sounds like she's mimicking Kristina Miltiadou's original version and I don't think most people would pass a blind Coke/Pepsi test on the two. For whatever reason, everyone was seemingly tricked into getting the version of the song that has a lengthy string outro. I'd presume most radio stations were playing a hybrid version that just omitted the outro.

triple j seemingly only ever plays this version though. It's understandable given that Scarlett's pedigree in her other band (who will eventually appear many times in this list) ticks more boxes for triple j listeners than otherwise. It also serves as convenient for the Hottest 100. Illy's album "Cinematic" was released in November 2013 and had no time to drum up support for that year's Hottest 100. This was the only version of "Tightrope" that was eligible in 2014, and it served to bump up Illy's Hottest 100 streak to 6 years. If I was cynical, I'd say that's why Illy did this, but then he fumbled that bag a little later on, so he's not completely shameless.

I've never particularly liked this song. It felt a bit weird to hear on triple j at the time as just leaning super hard into pop-rap in a way that they tended not to go along with. I don't think Illy does a bad performance here, but rather M-Phazes' production turns it mucky. It's the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from Flo Rida or Maroon 5 circa this era. A recipe for success where the appeal is lost on me.

#963. Spacey Jane - Here Comes The Sun - Like A Version (#30, 2021)

97th of 2021

It's not an especially hard-and-fast rule but on the whole I just don't care a lot for cover versions. There's so much music out there to ever want to be stuck hearing something that was already done right the first time. It doesn't help that Like A Version policy restricts it to extremely trendy or well-known songs, the kinds that are already overexposed as is.

At some point in time, "Here Comes The Sun" became The Beatles' most popular song. When they released their catalogue on iTunes for the first time in 2010, "Here Comes The Sun" was the song that charted. On Spotify it has an enormous lead over the rest of their catalogue in streams. Perhaps it just best encapsulates the combination of not sounding so old-timey like much of their early catalogue, and not sounding so experimental like much of their later catalogue. Alternatively it's funnier to imagine that this paradigm shift happened because the song is in "Bee Movie", a cultural landmark to be sure.

This is the first of many entries for Spacey Jane, one of the few Australian bands to have found a significant following in the 2020s. In an era when most Australian albums spend a grand total of 1 week on the album chart, Spacey Jane managed to crack the streaming code and chart for months on end. I'll have many opportunities to talk about all the singles that made this possible.

For now, this is their trophy room Like A Version. The timing is a little off as this was a year between albums for them but they still managed two top 20 finishers in 2021 so it looks the part in isolation. As far as these go, it's probably the most redundant one to me. There are no thrills to be had, it's just Spacey Jane playing "Here Comes The Sun". Entirely pleasant, but offering very little to seek out.

#962. Birds of Tokyo - Anchor (#72, 2015)

98th of 2015

If I can say nothing else in service of this song, it's that it really got me thinking a lot about the frivolity of genre labels. Like it's a means to market an image without admitting you're marketing an image, because no one wants to say they like an artist because of what they look like. So often though, that image is what decides the genre. Katy Perry can have loud electric guitar in her song and get labelled pop, while Birds of Tokyo will have this over-indulgence in synths be the most played song on Triple M for weeks on end.

Actually there's another comparison I've made so many times that I worry I'm overdoing it to the people often in earshot. The year before this song came out, Ian Kenny's other band (who will eventually appear in this list) covered a certain UK trio (who will also eventually appear in this list). That band tend to get interesting genre tags, in part due to their label origins, but they don't get the same branding as this single does. It just feels wrong to me when this sounds like an attempt to re-create that group's biggest hit.

I'm not opposed on principle to this sort of experimentation. The whole EP is very synth heavy but I think the second track, "Puzzle", does a good job of it. There's a sticky chorus that's accentuated by the synths behind it. I'm also contractually obligated to mention track 3 on the album, "Weight Of The World" which descends into hilarity. It was all produced in-house, but it's the sound of a band well out of their depth. At the same time if you take out that template, I can see parts of it fitting onto their next album, which I'll get to discuss here eventually.

An important thing to disclose here is that Birds of Tokyo were one of the first bands I ever got obsessively into as a teenager. I fully cheered them on as they went from scrappy side-project to chart-topping stars. From this point on, the allegiance got a little sketchy. I can only imagine how Fremantle Dockers fans feel. Birds of Tokyo played at their losing Grand Final, and then about a year later, release a song about anchors. At least they've not done anything to upset West Coast Eagles supporters.

#961. Sticky Fingers - Australia Street (#70, 2013)

97th of 2013

I feel like everyone got it right the first time. This was the band's second ever Hottest 100 entry, and a little bit of a comedown from their first, landing 9 positions lower. When triple j did a Hottest 100 of the 2010s, the fanfare came roaring in, and this was their highest ranking track. Admittedly it feels like a technicality. When it came to that countdown, there was a lot of re-ordering the canon that matches closely with Spotify play counts. That's a chicken & egg situation if there ever was one, but it does make it seem pretty clear that "How To Fly" was their real meal ticket, but with a voting list largely based on previous vote results, it never had a chance.

The thing I do find interesting about this track is that it's in the surprisingly common lineage of the early 2010s with major label stars being accused of ripping off Australian bands in their music videos. Probably the most notable one was with One Direction having a similar visual effect to Clubfeet's J Award winning video for "Everything You Wanted". It got thoroughly dislike-bombed by One Direction fans and never recovered. Ariana Grande also caught heat for the video to "One Last Time", in regard to a Canberra band who will eventually appear in this list, and for this one, we go to Coldplay. They're all probably coincidences really, but in any case, Coldplay filmed the video to "A Sky Full Of Stars" in Sydney, specifically in Newtown, with a growing flash mob behind them. It's very similar to "Australia Street"'s video which uses the very same street, but they walk in the opposite direction. This one probably raised the least fuss of the three, in part because Sticky Fingers said outright that they didn't care, and because Coldplay fans aren't going out there rallying each other to take down the underdogs.

I don't have any deep, calculated reasons for ranking this the lowest of Sticky Fingers' original songs on this list, it's just a bit of a mood kill to get through. There are definitely songs that I like for elongating the words on their hook but this one just doesn't land for me. I was pretty on board with the first two songs of theirs I'd heard at the time (when I ranked the first 2000 Hottest 100 entries at the time, "Caress Your Soul" landed at #737), but this made me feel like their main appeal was a little lost on me.

ALSO: While I'm here I'm going to properly announce that on Monday night I'm going to continue my annual tradition of streaming Banjo-Kazooie on my Twitch channel on my Birthday while simultaneously going through with rough thoughts, hot takes, opinions on every song from the 2023 Hottest 100. More info on my Bluesky when I have it, and I'll probably mention it on Monday's post too.