#975-#971

 #975. Macklemore (feat Skylar Grey) - Glorious (#52, 2017)

99th of 2017

I mentally pair this song with another that it polled right next to. Since I have less opportunities to talk about Macklemore, I'll save that for when I get there.

You're probably aware of Macklemore's runaway success in the early 2010s. He gets clowned on a lot for it, often for silly reasons (putting stake in the GRAMMY Awards is really not worth the effort, and I thought this *before* all the information about how crooked the nomination & voting process was). Honestly though, I totally get the big success. At a time when popular music was figuring out where it wanted to go next, here was this guy who stood out, not just for his odd voice that doesn't sound ready for the big leagues, but the way he and an as-of-yet non-appearing frequent collaborator carved out a variety of fresh pop rap. You couldn't easily get bored of it because the next single would sound totally different.

The main thing I just wanted to point out here is the extent of just how popular Macklemore was in Australia particularly. While "Thrift Shop" may have debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 a little while earlier, it rocketed up here so fast that by the time it did top the US Charts, it had already finished its 7 week reign here. That 7 week reign only coming to an end because it was replaced by "Same Love". "Thrift Shop" is a very rare Hottest 100 winner to not manage to climb up the charts on the week following its win, just because it was already being bested by another song that performed well on the countdown. Macklemore and that guy I can't name yet had another #1 with "Can't Hold Us", which would have been Australia's 1,000th #1 hit if Baauer's "Harlem Shake" didn't troll itself to the top a couple weeks earlier. Then, despite interest waning around the world, in 2015 they had another #1 hit, and we'll get to it on this list eventually. That's the end of the Macklemore chart topping saga here, but once again while America had sailed off that ship, he kept going here, and scored another two #2 hits here: One being a 2018 collaboration that is not on this list, but the lead artist will be, and this song here.

On the topic of Macklemore dethroning himself, it's actually somehow applicable again when this song came out...but this one's not even involved. Although the official result didn't come through until weeks later, there was enough of an assured response from Australia's 2017 same-sex marriage survey that "Same Love" returned from the ashes and topped the iTunes chart by a landslide. It was enough for it to re-enter at #4 on the ARIA Chart despite not even landing in the top 50 on Spotify. By sheer coincidence, this happened to dethrone Macklemore's song with Kesha, "Good Old Days" that was topping the iTunes chart at the time. This song didn't really see much of an adjacent up-tick, but it did end up being Macklemore's highest charting song on the ARIA Chart that week, and it was in fact the one week it spent at #2, trapped behind a monster hit that will eventually appear on this list.

To get away from Macklemore though, I'll also note that this is the only Hottest 100 appearance for Skylar Grey. It's very surprising that she even has one. Aside from having a first name that is spelt differently to how Walter White's wife (yo) does, and a second name that is spelt differently to how Conan Gray does, making all three of them difficult to remember, she's a protégé of Eminem, who has not appeared in a Hottest 100 since 2002. She and Eminem both traded duties in gifting each other hits, between Eminem's charisma & name power, and her skills at writing a hit. All of this was a world away from triple j, but Macklemore managed to bridge the gap. We'll see so many more cases of unlikely Hottest 100 entrants this way.

Anyway all of this background that I find interesting is just to distract myself from having to talk about this song, because I really struggle to get anything going there. While I can praise Macklemore's early run of hits for sounding distinct, this just feels like a hollow shadow of "Can't Hold Us", but without that usual collaborator's production flair, and without Ray Dalton's strong hook game. Skylar Grey just can't really connect in the same way there, so any momentum I might find myself catching onto just careens into the wall when the chorus comes through. It's democratic and all but this just feels like a weird inclusion in general.

#974. RÜFÜS DU SOL - Treat You Better (#23, 2018)

95th of 2018

Another group with no shortage of opportunities to go over, and another group whose entire Hottest 100 history is within this time frame. Well, they did make #192 with "Paris Collides" back in 2011 to be fair. It really shows how much the group has changed over time as it sounds like it would fit snugly onto their 2013 debut album "Atlas", but not much further than that. Tyrone Lindqvist's vocals are also not quite as expressive as they'd grow to be, he stays largely in a lower register, never really threatening to overpower the instrumental.

For now though, we're going completely arbitrary on the timeline and jumping to their 3rd album "Solace". They've maintained pretty consistent commercial success since 2013 but it's notably their first album that didn't go to #1 in Australia. On the surface, they didn't pick a bad week. A lot of competition but they had the best showing in the debuts, in a top 10 week with debuts from Disturbed, Troy Cassar-Daley, Khalid, Greta Van Fleet, the "Bohemian Rhapsody" soundtrack, and a Like A Version CD, RÜFÜS DU SOL came out on top of all of them. It's just unfortunate for them that it was also the week "A Star Is Born" was fully out in theatres in Australia, so that jumped to #1 in its 3rd week on the chart. The big hit "Shallow" has two co-writers who will eventually appear on this list.

When "Solace" came out, "Treat You Better" looked to become the biggest hit on the album. On Spotify it stormed past the three previously released singles (two of which will appear on this list) right away. It only narrowly missed out on being their highest ranked song in the Hottest 100 that year. I was fully expecting to find out that it's the most streamed song on the album now, but it's in 3rd place, just narrowly behind 2nd.

I'm not going to say that the title of this song is a bad omen. I don't hold any remotely positive feelings about the Shawn Mendes song of the same name that came out 2 years earlier, but there's little else in common between the two. Or at least the lyrics in this are vague enough that it's a stretch to also think that we're looking to score on the rebound here. Actually there aren't many lyrics in this song that aren't just 'I just wanna treat you better'. That's part of the problem really. While my initial feelings on RÜFÜS DU SOL weren't especially positive, time and familiarity helped me pick out something more in it. This song has just never really rewarded me with anything, just a general buzzkill all around.

#973. Bliss N Eso (feat Gavin James) - Moments (#53, 2017)

98th of 2017

Remember way back when I was talking about Macklemore and I said that there was another song I mentally paired with his? I've got some exciting news because we're finally talking about it.

"Moments" is to date Bliss N Eso's last Hottest 100 entry. They put out their most recent album in 2021 and it charted reasonably well despite a lack of crossover hits. It only missed the top spot because they put it out on the same week as a now disgraced hip-hop star that I'll have to figure out how to talk about many times in this list eventually. Make no mistake of their commercial prowess too. The album that "Moments" is on, "The Grid", managed to be the first album to unseat Ed Sheeran's juggernaut "÷" in 2017, a feat that many notable artists tried and failed to do both before and after Bliss N Eso. This includes that year's Hottest 100 winner. However this tenure might be over. Their latest single "Feeling Fly" debuted at #15 on the ARIA Australian Hip-Hop/R&B Chart two weeks ago and dropped straight out of the top 20. That's a chart that's been so stripped by recurrency rules that it houses multiple album deep cuts on any given week.

This came through at a fairly turbulent time for the group. Earlier that year during the production of the video for the previous single "Friend Like You", stunt man Johann Ofner was accidentally shot and killed on the set. Years later we learnt at the inquest that it was the result of negligence on the part of the firearms supplier, whose shotgun had illegally produced shells that were effectively not much different than real ones. The man in question also succumbed to cancer later that year. In response to the tragedy, Bliss N Eso played a tribute show for Ofner and raised $40,000 for his family. The music video for the song now is also a tribute to him, but generally it wasn't a single that got much of a promotional push, and won't appear in this list. I do like the song; I think it's got a fresh sound for them.

I'm a touch less enthusiastic about this song. It's not especially unpleasant, but it just feels like playing a little bit too safe. I'm not especially keen on Gavin James in this song either. He sounds a little like a discount version of a certain Australian Idol winner, who both also has two first names, and bizarrely will appear on this list. Only a problem for me though, the song did very well for them. Thanks to some very lucrative playlisting on Spotify, you might be surprised to know that this is their biggest hit to date. There was more love for "Addicted" in the Hottest 100 of the Decade countdown, but all the numbers lean in the favour of "Moments".

In any case, my main beef with regard to this and "Glorious" was really just a coincidence of placement. There's another song that will eventually appear in this list that also landed closely alongside these two songs. When it placed in the Hottest 100, I saw so much disproportionate outrage towards something that is ultimately harmless, and completely in keeping with the Hottest 100's history and general vibe. More on that when we get to it, but I just couldn't help but feel like these two songs were getting by on the fact that there's so little to really engage with that no one's going to raise an alarm. It's a general issue with this discourse. People are so quick to be predictable and get mad at anything that's even slightly provocative. A lot of triple j listeners think of themselves as being into music that's a bit more challenging, until popular music decides to be abrasive and shameless, and then it doesn't count. I'm almost always going to prefer the obnoxious choice over something that I feel nothing from.

#972. Ocean Alley - Knees (#10, 2018)

94th of 2018

I hope you're as thrilled as I am to get through 14 different Ocean Alley entries. They're about as consistent as Lime Cordiale, getting into the list every year from 2017 to 2022. They only finally ended their streak in 2023 by not releasing anything.

There's a common lazy criticism I've noticed of triple j going back to at least 2010, if not earlier. Simply put, if you want to sound smart and above it all, all you have to say is that everything they play on triple j sounds like [insert most recent Hottest 100 winning artist]. Usually when people say that, there isn't actually much substance in the way of examples. The only times the station tends to sound much like it is usually when they're actually playing said artist. We've had two generations of this with stomp & holler folk artists blowing up. As I write it up, the charts are supposedly littered with them when there's only really 3 of them. It'll call back to the time of Mumford & Sons, The Lumineers, Of Monsters and Men (all of these artists conveniently last appeared in the 2012 Hottest 100), and supposedly dozens more that are vividly remembered for existing, just not for having names or songs apparently.

Anyway it's not necessarily just 'most recent' Hottest 100 winning artist anymore, because Ocean Alley's tenure is one that's left its mark. 5 or 6 years later, everything on triple j sounds like these guys. I'm not really sure what's being referred to there though, but that's also partly because I'm not even sure it's fully understood what Ocean Alley sound like. Credit where it's due, they've switched up their sound quite a bit, so hopefully I'll have newer ways to look at their later entries.

For now we get to "Knees". When I was listening to triple j more regularly (usually my alarm played it for an hour a day in the morning, "Knees" is one of the songs that I couldn't help but keep hearing). Ocean Alley were still fairly new to me so I didn't have much of an impression on them, but this was yet another early sour choice. Unlike some other songs that might feel like they never end, this one is at least above average in length to justify it. I just don't really like the chorus at all. I also feel like the build-up in the bridge isn't quite as effective as it needs to be. It feels like that part alone got it into the top 10 though, maybe it's better live. Mind you I come at this having warmed up to the song a little bit. At the time it might have been my least favourite on 2018's list, so never give up hope. I'll also just use this opportunity to shout out the fact that this song was omitted from the ARIA Chart in February 2019, a careless error that leaves them with only 2 charting songs on the ARIA Chart. We'll get to them both, and so much more eventually.

#971. Meg Mac - Bridges - Like A Version (#91, 2014)

99th of 2014

I always found it remarkably strange and interesting that Scissor Sisters managed to poll two completely unrelated covers in the same list. Their big commercial breakthrough was their disco-more-than-just-tinged cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" (we'll also get a very different cover of that Pink Floyd cover on this list), and then they caught the real luck of the draw when they later covered Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out", in a year when everyone couldn't help but vote for any sighting of the words "Take Me Out".

Meg Mac also achieved this feat. It's not likely you're going to see an artist directly do multiple Like A Versions in one year, so we've just got the one. This was Meg Mac's big breakout year but only 1 of her entries in 2014 was actually a song she wrote, which must feel weird. At least for her sake it was the highest one.

Compared to the Sticky Fingers cover of "Delete", this is a slightly different beast that occasionally finds some luck in the Hottest 100. This falls under the category of 'Covering that song that you wish you voted for last year but didn't know at the time, so it didn't make it'. The original version of "Bridges", by an NZ duo who will eventually appear in this list, polled at #131, a little bit behind Frightened Rabbit and Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros; what an odd list. If that's not bad enough, not long after that countdown aired, it reached the ignominious peak of #51 on the ARIA Chart. Not their last bout of misfortune on the charts, but that's a story for another time if I can remember writing this. I'm also not certain of the production cycle on Like A Version, but it's an interesting coincidence that "Bridges" attained that #51 peak about a week before Meg Mac did this cover. It peaked on iTunes exactly 8 days before this. I can't actually recall what made the song reach its peak. They did a support slot for a British pop star who will surprisingly appear as a featured artist on this list eventually, but that was about a week before the surge. Maybe it was just an iTunes front page plug.

Anyway the problem with the whole situation is that I'm just not really a big fan of "Bridges" in the first place. It gets as far as having a memorable hook but doesn't do much around it. The drop might have a bit of potential but it sounds a bit flat and stiff a decade on. When we go to this cover, it's even more low key and I can't really engage with it either. The most enjoyment I think I've gotten out of it is that when it was finally released as a single years later, it came accompanied by artwork that makes it look like she's holding up a fake moustache over her face and is proud of it. Many more chances to come on this list anyway for Ms. Cam Gem.

#980-#976

 #980. Lime Cordiale - Dirt Cheap (#86, 2018)

97th of 2018

This is a great segue from the previous entry because there's a relatively similar phenomenon with regard to the Hottest 100. It's what I like to call the preview hit. A song from a relative newcomer debuts them to the poll, perhaps surpassing contextual expectations. A year later they're unstoppable. I like to imagine that at least part of this is because when people make their votes, depending on the kind of voter they are, it's possible that they might exclude certain artists from their vote, since they have no chance of getting in. We don't have the liberty of ranking all the hundreds of choices like when voting for the Senate. To be added to the hypothetical list of artists who can realistically poll can be a great boon. Failing that, there's also the general added exposure that getting in for the first time does. A lot of artists will peak in performance in either their first or second year on the Hottest 100, either because the material isn't resonating quite as much, or there's not as much drive to see them just replicate the success they've already managed.

Lime Cordiale fit this model almost perfectly. After this song snuck into the list for 2018, they had a monster year in 2019 with 3 entries in the top 20. They have continued to poll every single year since with very good but also diminishing returns. But then I could also say something similar about another artist up until they re-wrote the record books in 2023, so maybe Lime Cordiale still have a big outing to come.

As fascinating as I find the whole arc, I wish I was able to get more out of this song in general which has me feeling a bit out of the loop. For the most part it's just a simple love song but it's filled with all these strange lyrical choices. It certainly makes the song more memorable, but how many times do you need or want to hear the phrase 'picture us nude'? The answer is three times apparently, so it's a three-pronged attack that L.T. Smash would be proud of. Aside from that, the song's mixing just doesn't feel finished. It sounds like the triplejunearthed version of a song that would eventually get a bit more kick to it. There's a charm to that in general but this one leaves me fairly underwhelmed.

#979. DOPE LEMON - Marinade (#62, 2016)

98th of 2016

I'm really surprised to even be talking about DOPE LEMON. If any context is needed, it's just Angus Stone. He'll appear later on in the list with his sister (who will also appear on her own), but it's under this moniker that this time window gives him the majority of his entries.

The main reason I'm surprised is because we've been down this road multiple times and yielded nothing. Angus Stone released his first solo album back in 2009, under the name Lady of the Sunshine, and it barely cracked the ARIA top 50. 3 years later in 2012 he'd release another solo album, this time under his real name. Credit where it's due, that album was very successful, debuting at #2 and getting a gold certification. It didn't crack the Hottest 100 though, I suppose back then it was a lot harder to make a residency on the list. I don't think it's for lack of quality either. There were two main singles from that album, "Broken Brights", a lovely sparse folk tune that shows off his vocal talents quite well, and "Bird On The Buffalo", which I don't think would be out of place in the DOPE LEMON catalogue. Adding to this, Lady of the Sunshine had a certain song called "Big Jet Plane" on that first album, and it's barely different to the version of the song that would go on to top the 2010 poll. I can't decide if it counts when it comes to the adage that any song destined to be a hit eventually will be.

Maybe this is the wrong angle to take when it comes to Hottest 100 voting habits, but it was hard to avoid the glaring issue around DOPE LEMON when I first heard about it. It's a stupid name. It sounds stupid to say, and I feel like I'm dignifying something that I shouldn't be when I type it out. This one hit it off though and he's kept the name around for 4 whole albums now, the first three all yielding Hottest 100 entries.

I guess then I just got off on the wrong foot here because this is from the first album and I've never really been able to wrap my head around it. Maybe catch me in the right mood and I'll find the main guitar riff somewhat catchy, but otherwise it's a remarkably meandering 4 minute song. I could draw a comparison to Dave Graney's "Night of the Wolverine" which polled even higher back in 1993 (#48), but that song actually pokes its head out on occasion to remind you that it's there. All I can do here is marinade on it for a while.

#978. Flume (feat Vic Mensa) - Lose It (#95, 2016)

97th of 2016

Flume is quite fortunate to have managed multiple imperial phases. His debut album "Flume" was a huge success locally, and then he managed to find some international fanfare which helped steer him to massive success here again with second album "Skin". His albums since then haven't had quite the same success, but his Hottest 100 voters have never gone astray. If you include a handful of entries that he's remixed, he has the most entries in this list all up. 2016 is a big contributor to that, where he had the classic year of taking the top spot but also littering the list with other entries that had their own varying levels of fanfare.

I'm not sure if it's by accident or design that "Skin" took off internationally as much as it did (you could admittedly make the argument that it was in the right place at the right time with what was going on with Spotify's in sound), but in any case, the album was readymade for it. "Flume" is largely driven by its instrumentals, with just a handful of guest vocalists to provide a slightly more conventional sound. This division still exists on "Skin" but it's definitely been skewed in the other direction as it's loaded with guests and more conventional song structures. Some bigger names too, as this album has Raekwon & Beck on the same project! We'll see some more in future entries on this list, but for this one we've got Vic Mensa.

This is the only time Vic Mensa appears in the list. I feel like he had a reasonable amount of hype in the mid 2010s but never got fully off the ground. I mostly know him for his debut single "Down On My Luck", an immensely catchy hip-house track that's just loaded with hooks. It managed a week in the UK top 40 at #37, a month after streaming data started counting to the charts there. That shift tended to make it harder for more songs to reach the charts, so it's entirely possible that a couple months later it wouldn't have been able to get in. In 2018, Vic Mensa got involved in separate controversies with 6ix9ine and XXXTENTACION (posthumously). My main recollection from these events was a radio interview where 6ix9ine asked people to even name a single Vic Mensa song, where he was met with silence. Obviously this wouldn't have happened if I was in the room. It might not help Vic Mensa's case when he's ended up on the same Flume album as another rapper whose name is similar enough to warrant confusion remembering which is which, and with the Hottest 100 and on this list he's come up short both times.

This is one of the songs that surprised me a little making this ranking. I never really remember having any strong feelings either way about this until I started comparing it to everything else here. That's when the cracks start to show and I had to ask myself if I even enjoy anything about this song. I don't think it's just a dud by default, I'm fairly receptive to Flume's approach in instrumentals. I'm nothing if not a person who will gladly tell you which dial-up sounds are my favourite. Not these ones I suppose. It feels like the bag of tricks runs dry pretty quickly, and the oscillating siren-like motif we do get here isn't one of the greatest. Vic Mensa isn't a terrible presence on here either, but it doesn't feel like he's on his A-game with this one. The elephant in the room here is the hook. It...doesn't give much to work with. Vic ends up just sounding a bit silly on it. Can't win them all I guess Flume.

#977. Ziggy Alberts - together (#43, 2020)

98th of 2020

Depending on what perspective you take, 2020 was either the longest year ever, or it's the shortest year alongside all the other pandemic years that collect up in a mushy pile. What can be odd with the Hottest 100 is that so much can happen in the space of the year, and yet the vote comes around and those January hits are waiting to be compared to things that just came out.

Ziggy Alberts really illustrates that situation with this entry, to date his last Hottest 100 entry (he's got another coming up eventually on this list though). It was released back in January 2020 to help raise money to help with the bushfire crisis in Australia at the time. That's admirable. He could have vacationed in Hawaii instead after all.

In June 2020, Ziggy Alberts released another single called "don't get caught up". It got him a lot of negative attention from people who tended to just ignore his existence otherwise with lyrics about vaccination and 5G conspiracies. triple j never played this song and if not for "letting go" getting plenty of airplay into 2021, you could make the argument that he was blacklisted because of it. Except it wouldn't be a very good argument, since he still got played 5 times in July 2020. Always good to look these things up before you form a narrative out of nothing.

This song is well meaning but it's saddled by the timing a bit for me. Frankly it was just so weird after what had happened in 2020 to hear this land in the countdown as if everything was all normal. It even managed to land at the same rough position that all of his songs do. But then everything was normal when the song came out, and it's remarkable in an odd way that the Hottest 100 reflects this. I didn't really hear it much when it came out though so I only really associate it with the post-COVID-19 perspective. It ends up rubbing me the wrong way in the end, or at the very least, makes lines like 'we will fight for this country I adore' read a little bit differently. I think he tackled the environmentalist angle in a more compelling & catchy way on that later entry in this list anyway.

#976. Vance Joy - Saturday Sun (#54, 2018)

96th of 2018

I find it interesting to see which folk-adjacent artists and songs manage to get popular. For the most part, it's dealing in relatively sound-alike ground and so you have to get something going for you that'll make it stand out from the hundreds of other possible choices. It's why I remind myself to be relatively optimistic when I see a new artist instantly break out, marketing can only go so far.

Vance Joy is plenty established at this point (you can read that as either the date I'm posting this or the date this song came out), so he has a bit of a head start there. On the other hand, I feel like he plays to a relatively fickle radio audience who would quickly turn on him if he didn't provide that 'it' factor in his new singles.

"Saturday Sun" is the 4th single from his second album, one of three that will appear in this list (the other two are possibly forming a nation as we speak). I get it as an obvious single. It's so obvious that it's actually by far the most streamed song on the album, even though the other two big hits polled higher. He's digging deep into his bread and butter here but unfortunately it doesn't quite land for me. The dynamics are surprisingly all over the place, with the chorus sounding extremely overproduced after more gentle verses. If that's not enough it builds to probably his weakest hook, as he vocalises the 'baba' of the horns over the top of them, and does it several times. "Baba Is You" came out a year later but this was an unprecedented amount of baba at the time.

This song also employs the classic pop jump scare intro. It takes exactly 1 second to immediately make itself known. Almost purpose built for when Heardle decided to have a particular fondness for picking Vance Joy songs. It's not something I'd dock the song for, just something I find amusing as a stark contrast to "Fire and the Flood", which I recently got all the way to the chorus (50 seconds if you were wondering) thinking it was a different Vance Joy song. You'll never make that mistake here.

#990-#981

 #990. Bliss N Eso - Act Your Age (#67, 2013)

100th of 2013

When I last made a list like this, I don't think I gave Bliss N Eso a particularly fair chance. There's some incongruence between the songs I like and the ones that made the cut, but a handful of their earlier Hottest 100 entries are better than I gave them credit for ("Down By The River", "Woodstock 2008", "Eye Of The Storm" for sure). That last one is of course relevant here because it's probably the first time I heard a song on triple j that was sampling another song I heard on triple j. For that matter, one that was only a year or so old at that point, and one by an artist that will eventually appear on this list. There's a lot to be said about the merits of sampling, and many chances later on to do it. You could even say that we've got a new artist who has built their entire career on re-selling old hits and we'll get to them a couple of times later on.

I guess it was the success of this song that caught me off guard. Every now and then you'll see either the charts or triple j go rogue (depending on your own preference) and get out of sync. Like I remember when following the success of "Heavy Cross", triple j was playing "Pop Goes The World" while the Gossip's label was clearly more invested in "Love Long Distance". Perhaps if triple j were playing that one more it would've charted higher. Similarly, triple j actually put 8 of their songs on the voting list but not that one, so they didn't manage a second Hottest 100 entry that year either.

If triple j were going rogue with this one, it's easier to explain. It probably just doesn't make for great radio if you're going to put a song into rotation that so heavily utilises a song that was just in high rotation. Or I would say this except Australia was a country where "Sexual" by NEIKED and "What Lovers Do" by Maroon 5 & SZA were both massive radio hits just 12 months apart (albeit the latter was a little slow to catch on by Maroon 5 standards). So this song somehow just caught on and became one of Bliss N Eso's biggest hits. The Hit Network were even happy to play it. I guess it's just a bit hard to work out how it all happened when I feel like the initial shock value was the sampling of a song that it so quickly became a bigger hit than. "Act Yr Age" by a band that will eventually appear in this list has a slight lead in YouTube views but "Act Your Age" has a comfortable Spotify lead. Bliss N Eso are definitely more famous but it's just an odd hit I haven't been able to fully reconcile. Incidentally it's not even the only time it happened on this album cycle, because they had another hit right at the end of the year with "My Life", that triple j also wasn't playing (until several months later, oddly). That bad timing meant that it never made the Hottest 100, meanwhile this, which snuck onto the voting list, utilised its external popularity to sneak onto the Hottest 100, Lumineers style.

I just really wish it hadn't. It's not particularly amateurish, but I've never really been fond of just being fed back the same hit but worse. Like, they had the song right the first time, this version takes away some of the shifting dynamics from the original and homogenizes it. I guess credit where it's due, Bliss N Eso predicted the fad of just slightly speeding up songs for zoomers. Also the original band does actually appear in the music video, and everyone's having a good time there. I just don't need Eso making a literal reference to taking a shit in the pool, and then a double entendre about it 6 lines later. I'm not letting Bliss get off easy either, I also don't think there's any earned appreciation of deliberately misinterpreting one of the biggest hip-hop hits of the last 6 months, by yet another artist who will eventually never stop appearing in this list.

#989. Sticky Fingers - Delete - Like A Version (#84, 2015)

100th of 2015

I think at the time, very few Hottest 100 entries bothered me as much as this one. It felt increasingly clear that in recent years, there was a certain formula to Like A Version success, where you could multiply the popularity of the artist with the popularity of the song, and it'll give you the popularity of the cover. It makes sense really, you need something to draw people in to listen to it in the first place, and a lesser known artist doing a competent and likeable cover isn't exactly going to generate buzz. But much like Best Seller lists in all mediums, once you actually lay it all out on the table, it just looks a bit bland and unrewarding to any consumer who craves variety. When they land at the lower part of the list, there's a feeling of regret, like it's something that just lazily crossed over the line.

Lazy is a good word for it here though. As you might know, Paddy from Sticky Fingers already played bass on the original song, so there's good reason to feel like this cover isn't breaking much ground. It's not the only Like A Version to include original personage on it of course, there's a pretty notable one to get to in the future. When this came through though it just felt like people were voting the same song in back to back years, kind of like a certain Bag Raiders song. It also came after 2014 made it clear that Sticky Fingers had a fairly irregular voter reach, with enough clout to vault multiple album tracks into the Hottest 200 and actually polling one in the 100. They did something similar in 2016 so in addition to being a song that was already in last year's list, it was a habitual vote for the band who had nothing else out that year.

There are two elephants in this room. One is Sticky Fingers themselves, and the other is the placement of this slightly above the original. The former I can probably touch on later as they have many entries to come, but for the latter, it's not really something I've long held. It was only when I was making this list that I came to the realisation that this version feels more finished. The addition of keys fills out the weird emptiness of the original. The transitions when the track builds up feel more natural, and Dylan sounds a bit better doing both vocal roles. Still not something I really want to go back to, but I've made some amount of peace with it.

#988. Vance Joy - Fire and the Flood (#16, 2015)

99th of 2015

For quite a while now I've been listening to new music very immediately on Spotify. Often before the playlist's titular Friday because of time zones. The main effect of this is that I've often forged relatively unbiased opinions on new songs. The discourse just hasn't started, and what's more, there's no telling what's actually going to be important in the long run. That's mainly because so little of the new releases of the week do end up taking off, so it's mostly a lot of non-starters. Saying 'this won't be a hit' is such a safe bet because of the odds in play, but it regularly blows up in my face, whether it's a colossal hit from 2021 that will eventually appear in this list, or a big hit from 2015 that's appearing in this list right now.

Vance Joy is one of the biggest names whose Hottest 100 career is enclosed in this list. He started in 2013, and has only missed 3 countdowns all the way to 2022. He has never failed to stay relevant. This song came out about a year after his debut album, that already netted 3 entries which will eventually appear in this list. It was released as one of the two new songs for the deluxe edition of the album, in a time before that meant 'hey we're trying to buff the streaming numbers to get it stuck in the chart'. Bonus tracks always come with a bit of skepticism for me. It's easy to get the impression that they're largely songs that were written for the album, weren't good enough to make the cut, but now that you're selling to people who are already on board with what that album sounded like, you can make an enticing offer with leftovers from those sessions. When I first heard "Fire and the Flood" I thought it sounded exactly like that.

"Fire and the Flood" is not exactly like that. Actually Vance Joy wrote it in 2015. Notably also he wrote it with a certain protégé of Dr. Luke who had never had a Hottest 100 entry at this point. He would eventually produce several others including one where he has a lead artist credit. I'm not sure how much he actually contributed to this though. There's a little more bombast but otherwise it sounds very on brand for Vance Joy.

The writing on this song was always my biggest problem with it. It might just be a case of bad timing, but I feel like it was not long before this that I had my attention drawn to what are two of the most prevailing clichés in songwriting: metaphors about water, and metaphors about fire. For Vance Joy it's a particularly egregious case because his first two Hottest 100 entries use one of these each, and then in a stroke of non-inspiration he puts them both together on this. Not only that though, but he uses it for what feels like a first draft of a rhyme. Flood/blood lands like a clunker as is, but it's all those empty words leading up to it that just take me completely out of the song. It all just feels so workmanlike, and hardly becoming of what could still be argued as his biggest out-the-gate hit song. He has bested its Hottest 100 position four times though.

#987. DMA'S - Believe - Like A Version (#6, 2016)

99th of 2016

It's hard to imagine there's a more controversial take on this list than this placement right here. I'm writing this not too far removed from when this cover version topped the all-time Hottest 100 poll for Like A Versions. A win which feels like one of the most obvious wins in all of Hottest 100 history. The moment I heard about the poll, the first thought that came to mind (even before speculating fruitlessly on a certain artist possibly polling) was that this cover would win the whole thing. Admittedly I was somewhat pre-empted, because /r/triplej had already done a similar poll not long before. This ended up winning that whole thing, and that's on a subreddit that I would think leans a bias towards a certain other contender. If memory serves it's also comfortably the highest certified Like A Version on the ARIA Chart despite never actually making the chart. Lots of people love this cover to bits.

I'm always going to be left out in the cold on this one. Cover versions always carry a lot of baggage, particularly when they take on a life of their own. It's usually a win-win for both artists since they'll inevitably drive up discourse that makes people engage with both versions. Doesn't even matter why you're doing it, a hate-listen is still a listen. I don't think the original version of "Dancing On My Own" (by an artist who will eventually appear in this list) would have so many streams if it hadn't become such a touchy subject after getting covered.

I do not need to come to the defence of Cher. Her many decades of success and relevance speak for themselves. Actually in 2023 I saw her act in the movie "Moonstruck" and thought she was great there too. "Believe" is one of the biggest hit songs of the 1990s and does the rare double of being a pioneering single that overcomes the messy first attempt status to still hold up well. If this were a battle anyone outside of Australia was aware of, Cher is going to win it every single time.

With where this cover stands in the Like A Version history books though, it's hard to not want to scrutinise it. Like we're talking a roughly two decade undertaking, closing in on 1,000 recordings and this is supposedly as good as it gets. It's an impossible task to not be underwhelmed. Not least of which because we've seen this set up so many times before. Literally any time someone takes a guitar and plays a song that is not known to be a guy with guitar song, it's suddenly profound. It's suddenly tapping something that couldn't be felt under its original guise. I think times have changed to an extent with this. Certainly it's been a long time since I saw someone do this with a hip-hop song. That's one that I think most folk have seen the shortcomings of. On the other hand, the rock band playing a stripped back version of a pop song is one that we're gonna keep around for a long time. I don't want to say that anyone's wrong for liking this, and I'm willing to give DMA'S the benefit of the doubt on all the optics, but when you get swathes of people who say that this version made the original into a good song, the implication that anything has been added here, that'll always bug me. I guess good on them for successfully riding this wave, but it's just unfortunate that I'm so at odds with DMA'S' biggest successes. It's also unfortunate that there's no good place to put the apostrophe in that last sentence.

#986. Dean Lewis - Be Alright (#6, 2018)

98th of 2018

Dean Lewis being on triple j is an odd one to look back on. Inevitably I want to draw comparisons to Pete Murray, who shares the same scruffy image, also had his career take off while being around 30 years old, and most importantly, has two first names. Actually Dean Lewis has four first names apparently. The other way it tracks is that Pete Murray also had his big come up on triple j. A couple of songs from his first album made the Hottest 100 in 2003. By the time I started listening to triple j, I was very familiar with Pete Murray's music, but the notion of it being played on triple j was alien to me. Not saying he was bad, just that he clearly found his place with a different audience. This somewhat tracks with Dean Lewis too. He's had 3 Hottest 100 entries, all from his first album, and as I write this, he hasn't been played on triple j since August 2022 (update: he got a play in 2024), and nothing on his second album has been played at all. For that matter, he had a dubious honour with one of the highest annually ranking songs to go persona non grata for the 2010s Hottest 100 of the Decade, so it's not like he has an army of fans demanding he be put back on the playlist. He's still doing well though, "How Do I Say Goodbye" is pretty much his 3rd biggest hit now.

The slight oddity about this whole situation is that triple j didn't *really* boost him from the ground up. They were quick to play his debut single "Waves" when it came out, but didn't give it the exposure it needed during Hottest 100 eligibility. They didn't really start pushing his music until 2017, right before the song hit the advertisement sync up lottery (or rather Universal Music Australia decided to take a chance on it). I remember reading discussions at the time on triple j boards about how out of place he was on the station. Maybe with that in mind it makes more sense that he got taken out of rotation pretty quickly, but it's still strange that he got to this point in the first place. In any case, while he still was in vogue, he got "Be Alright" into the top 10.

"Be Alright" is one of the songs I vividly recall hearing when it first came out. In that regard I have to give credit for writing a memorable song that stands out (also somehow cracking the US market without remotely catering to it). Granted much of that was just the uncanny resemblance to The Streets' "Dry Your Eyes". Bizarrely it's not the only song in the 2018 Hottest 100 I can say that about. It's certainly something he likes to put on, given that in 2023 he released a song called "Trust Me Mate". I'm not a massive fan of that Streets song as it drags on a bit with too much melodrama. Dean Lewis cuts it down to a slightly brisker length, but just can't engage me with his performance the same way Mike Skinner does. In any case, he kept up this momentum to land a couple more Hottest 100 entries, so we'll see him again.

#985. Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over the Country Club (#63, 2021)

99th of 2021

It's been interesting over the past decade or so to see how much the popular music landscape has shifted, and the way that Lana Del Rey fits into it. An out the gate success, but with a perhaps botched campaign that saw her in the reserves permanently. She'd score many #1 albums and briefly pop into the single charts but always felt like she was in her own world, juxtaposed to whatever was trendier at the time. This is all still true effectively, but the numbers have definitely shifted in her favour recently. She doesn't just have a dedicated following, she's got a Spotify listenership that pulls similar numbers to Lady Gaga and Harry Styles (she was ahead of them both when I wrote this). Maybe the most startling shift is the fact that "Summertime Sadness" has recently been popping back into the ARIA Chart, but now it's largely through people listening to the original version, not the remix. Whatever possible stardom that was suggested at the start of the 2010s has finally been realised.

Everyone has their own thoughts on Lana Del Rey, though I have trouble collecting mine. What always takes centre stage for me is the undeniable fact that in 2011 I was absolutely floored by "Video Games". One of the very few times in my life (admittedly many of them were in my late teens) when my obsession with a song consumed me, and it did so from just hearing it twice on the radio, with no indication that this was a future hit song and well beyond just cult classic. Like a lot of people, my interest gradually waned as it started to seem she had run her course. That's not a fair assessment on its own though, as I'll probably get to later on in this list. She definitely is still capable of surprising in a good way.

If we go back to the topic of Lana Del Rey fatigue though, there is a certain degree of overexposure that comes into play. It's not entirely her fault. A lot of it comes down to her tendency to say things in interviews that then get reprinted bereft of any context. The more it happens, the less I feel like I actually know anything about her. She's the kind of artist who could get simultaneous praise from both sides of the political spectrum for appearing to be on their side. Probably without even saying anything about it, just residing on those vibes.

The title of this song (and album) always felt to me like reaching over the fence to court that sort of socio-political engagement without plausible deniability. It puts me off a bit just for going so deep into conspiracy nonsense that is mostly always better off not getting any exposure or credibility. I'm not saying that she actually believes it but I do believe I'd rather not waste my time thinking about it.

That's not why the song is this low on the list though. That mostly just goes down to my primary metric in this list where I just don't really get any enjoyment out of listening to it. It was pretty much a touch of death for this album for me because it was just hard to conjure up the idea of anything exciting when this was the big song from it. When I listen to it, I occasionally hear some sparks of intrigue, or warmth in the production, but it's all largely to serve a soul-draining melody with no real payoff. I don't think the album is particularly bad either, but it's the kind of underwhelming project that made her have to work extra hard to win me over again in the future.

#984. DMA'S - Criminals (#32, 2020)

99th of 2020

Back in 2015, a certain Perth band released an EP, the title track for which will be eventually in this list. One particular track stood out to me, where the band incorporated electronic elements in a sort of scattershot way that felt like they didn't know what they were doing. Listening to it now, it feels like a prototype of the music they've been releasing more recently. A lot of this vibe harks back to 2012, when Muse wanted to get in on that whole dubstep scene and recruited Nero on their 6th album, which would also house their last Hottest 100 entry to date, "Madness".

I guess this is the DMA'S take on things. Except where Muse signal beamed their creative choices, this song almost feels like a trojan horse. The first 40 seconds of this song sound like pretty standard affair. It's got a pleasant melody, lyrics second guessing the end of a relationship. But then the criminals arrive. I'm not completely opposed to this sort of experimentation but it just does not work in this instance. I think maybe there's just not enough variety and creative arrangement to the chopped up vocals, so you end up just staring vacantly in puzzlement at what's on display. The second time it comes around actually ends up even worse because the extra instrumentation just makes for an uglier mix.

It's also just unfortunate because the way things panned out, all this list does is make it look like I really dislike DMA'S, as they just happen to fare the worst in terms of filling up the bottom end of the list. In reality it's just one of those unlucky circumstances regarding the list of songs. My favourite DMA'S song "Life Is A Game Of Changing" narrowly missed this same list and that'd be considerably higher up the table. They've still got another 9 songs to come here though so we'll see how long they can keep away.

#983. Lime Cordiale & Idris Elba - Apple Crumble (#14, 2021)

98th of 2021

It's easy to associate COVID-19 with 2020 and subsequently bring about those associations to things that were popular then. I mean, 2020 was when "Supalonely" and "If The World Was Ending" became hit songs, it doesn't matter if they were released before then, it just feels right. There are a small handful of songs in the 2020 Hottest 100 that are specifically tied to the pandemic, a certain high ranking novelty song certainly wouldn't exist without it. On the whole though, with how long it generally takes between music being written and it coming out, it's not practical for COVID-19 to dominate that year's music.

2021 if anything is the year that is theoretically living in that shadow. Mostly not in ways that we can actually see since it so drastically affected the creative process and the financial viability of it. It's impossible to tell how much music never got released as a result, or how much it affected the rise of TikTok and its increasing impact on what does & doesn't get popular. For more blatant implications in the countdown, there's a Hottest 100 topping artist who mentions the pandemic in an entry. You've also got this collaboration which probably wouldn't have happened otherwise. Lime Cordiale & Idris Elba met up because filming of a Thor movie was moved to Sydney. I'm currently in the process of watching every Marvel Cinematic Universe film but haven't gotten to that one yet, I assume it is okay. It started with a surprise guest appearance at a live show, and then we got word of a full EP collaboration, where this was the first taste of it. It's because of that EP that there are several Cordi Elba tracks in this list.

There is no shortage of opportunity to talk about Lime Cordiale. They're tied for having the most lead artist entries in this 10 year time frame (despite having no entries for the first 5 years and only 1 in 2018). They are ridiculously successful in the Hottest 100. While many artists will pray to sneak their biggest song into the list, Lime Cordiale tend to make the top half, and very regularly the top quarter of the Hottest 100 with basically every single they release. It's the sort of reliable vote-getting that's really shaped the recent polls.

It can make it more frustrating with entries like this because if you're not on board, it can feel like it's just success by default. If an artist is on a hot streak, they have to try pretty hard to kill that momentum. I'm a little surprised that this isn't a song to do it because it's just so...goofy. It has a melody that sounds like a nursery rhyme, paired with bizarrely off-putting lyrics. There's a bit where Idris sneaks in a line about having a foot fetish which gets an in-song reaction of 'wait, what?'. I was gonna say that this is the closest explanation for why he mentions Barney Rubble multiple times, but actually it's rhyming slang for 'trouble', which is a word that they rhyme it with anyway. That feels like it's against a rule. In general I just can't ever figure out how seriously I'm supposed to take this.

#982. Vampire Weekend - Diane Young (#31, 2013)

99th of 2013

There are two things to fear when making a list like this in this manner. The first is that by starting out on a negative tilt, you risk alienating anyone who disagrees with you from the outset, making it feel warranted that they put you in your place once your weakness at the top has been exposed. It's part of why I don't get much satisfaction with writing or talking about the experience of not liking music, and perhaps why so many of these posts so far have gone varying levels of off-topic to avoid the subject.

The second fear is the less obvious one. It's that by unveiling these sequential takes, I'm merely quantifying a predictable result. Many of these entries so far are songs that I've either made my opinion known about them, or that they're just such easy targets that anyone could have assumed my feelings without confirmation. They're the kinds of takes that are so forecast as to be boring. It's admittedly an unwinnable scenario, but I suppose it could be interesting to consider the reverse. After all, there sure are a lot of obvious targets that I haven't yet gotten to. Maybe in that perspective I'm not so predictable but we'll see.

This is one of those songs that I've made my opinion clear on in the past. In fairness, there are many songs I've made my opinion clear on, only for that to shift with time, but this isn't one of them. I don't dislike Vampire Weekend but they are an easy band to dislike. A bunch of NYC college kids riding the tidal wave of twee into super stardom. Their first album in particular is so lightweight as to be insufferable if you're not in the mood for it.

As far as the Hottest 100 story goes, the Vampire Weekend story caps abruptly with their 3rd album "Modern Vampires of the City". In that 6 year period, they had a similar rate of fire to Lime Cordiale, with 11 entries between those 3 albums. It's then another 6 years until they release a 4th album (sans Rostam) and they're not quite able to even crack the list. It's not unreasonable to suggest they'll probably never get in again, but from 2008-2013, they were riding high.

One thing each of those 3 first albums has in common is that the promotional campaign tended to start off with two songs, one a slower, more contained affair, and the other a raucous bid for attention. For the self-titled, that's "Mansard Roof" and "A-Punk" (actually "Mansard Roof" does get energetic but it's that slow start that always sticks with me). For "Contra" that's "Horchata" and "Cousins", and for "Modern Vampires of the City", that's a song we'll get to later and "Diane Young".

I remember reading reviews from German speakers who would do drive-bys on the Australian singles charts, offering their devoid-of-context views on anything we were listening to. One that always stuck with me is a review of "Rapunzel" by Drapht, where their closing impression was finding the repeated 'baby' lyrics to be annoying. In case you were wondering, Drapht does say 'baby' about 10 times on the bridge, give or take where you cut that off. The lead singer of Vampire Weekend (who will eventually appear in this list sans band) manages to say 'baby' 59 times in this song that's less than 3 minutes long. It's all done in an inflection that seems designed to irritate me, and distract me from any fun spontaneity they do have going on here. Apparently I'm not the only person who thought that the opening lyric was 'You tossed a salad like a pile of leaves". It's actually 'torched a Saab' but it's interesting how both lines work with the simile. That's definitely my new favourite thing about this song.

#981. Illy (feat Ahren Stringer) - Youngbloods (#77, 2013)

98th of 2013

My one prevailing observation about this song is a chart related one. Every now and then, an artist who's been around for at least a little while will do the unexpected and score a brief chart hit. It's unexpected both for being a surprise breakthrough, and in these such cases, being something that just feels out of place on the charts. What it tells me in the end is that the artist actually has a lot of good will behind them and if they more blatantly play the game, they're in store for a huge crossover hit. So this was Illy's first top 40 hit, a year after "Heard It All" was a similarly out of place top 50 hit. He'd spend the rest of the 2010s scoring more substantial hits, all of which end up on this list. You could even say that Ahren's band (who will eventually appear many times on this list) have the first half of this equation too, scoring multiple top 50 hits whilst absolutely never chasing the top 40 crossover. In that regard I find this song very interesting.

What's also interesting to note is that the original version of "Youngbloods" is arguably more popular than this. It's winning quite comfortably on Spotify and YouTube at least. I don't recall if I heard the original before this, but it was around the time I first got acquainted with Ahren's band since there was a running joke on triple j to ask how many anchors they have before playing "Anchors", from the album "Youngbloods".

I'll say to be honest if there's a surprise on this list for me personally, it's just how much this song hasn't aged well for me. I was drawn in by the novel appeal of it at the time, and I was generally positive on Illy's output at the time too, not just because he helped give a lot of exposure to a favourite singer of mine. The boring answer to all of this is that the song just doesn't sound good. Illy often has peculiar production on his hits that can have a charm to it even when it feels a bit dated, but this one is just not getting there. The drums could have a real kick to them but they're buried behind a dinky synth. The first other rap-rock hybrid song that comes to mind is Eminem's "Berzerk" from the same year, which has its own issues but does manage to let the percussion breathe a little more. Funnily enough, M-Phazes has a production credit on that Eminem album. He's also produced many more entries on this list, mostly by Illy and three other generally moodier Australian singers.

The other problem is something that's become more prevalent after an additional decade of exposure. There's also no shortage of other times to mention this, but I'm not often a big fan of Ahren's singing. It can be simultaneously cheesy and grating. Generally it works better for me when he's got Joel to back him up (or vice versa), but having Ahren on his own is like taking out the unwanted ingredient of a sandwich and just eating that for some reason.

#1000-#991

 #1000. Logic (feat Alessia Cara & Khalid) - 1-800-273-8255 (#82, 2017)

100th of 2017

There you go. I don't think it's necessary for me to run through the well-documented shortcomings of this song, its rollout and promotion, as well as Logic's subsequent responses to it. That's been well overdone at this point. I also don't want to take away any positive experience that anyone else has had with this song. In reality, we all deal with things in our own way. Mental health is a difficult thing, and I was in a pretty rough patch of it in the mid 2010s. I wish this wasn't Logic's most famous song, I generally like him outside of this song. The success feels more symptomatic of Khalid's name being attached to it, even though he really doesn't show up until the song's nearly over. He'll have a chance to make a better show of things later in this list at least, but for Logic & Alessia Cara, this is the start and end of that ride.

#999. Halsey - Love Yourself - Like A Version (#52, 2016)

100th of 2016

My timeline of events might not be fully accurate but David Bowie ruined this cover. When he passed away in 2016 it was a tragic shock that I don't think we were really calibrated for. I don't claim to know what was going on behind the scenes but I can't help but wonder if triple j knew that this Like A Version was in the pipeline and realised the time of mourning was still on, and this would play a bit too facetious. Anyway, it meant that Sarah Blasko (who sadly will not be appearing in this list) came in to cover "Life On Mars?" that very week, replacing the slot for this Like A Version which wouldn't end up airing until a decent while later. If the shockingly still operating iTunesCharts.net is to be believed, the Monday after the original intended time slot was when the Yo Preston & Kelly Kiara version titled "Love Yourself vs F@*K Yourself" entered the iTunes top 100 briefly (it would soar up a month or so later). I'm not here to talk about that cover, but it did mean that when I heard this Halsey version, I was already across a viral cover of this song that did the exact same 'trick'.

There might have been some shock value in this cover if I hadn't already seen it, but in saying that, I can't exactly say it would have been redeemed. My view on the original song (by an artist who will eventually appear in this list) is that the lyric works simply because of the implied profanity. He's not saying love yourself because it's inherently a wicked burn, but because it's an expert way to sneak an appropriately blunt sentiment into what would become the biggest hit song of 2016 (according to Billboard at least). Actually I understand Ed Sheeran (who will appear again in this list as a co-writer) wrote the song with the expletive first and toned it down to make it work better. I'd have to agree with him, because here we've got the implied juvenility being swapped out for apparent juvenility, and then it ends up just sounding like a kid who wants to swear to sound rebellious. At that point you're just left with a pretty hollow shell, especially given that this is one of the most stripped back Like A Versions in recent times. It's also weird coming from Halsey, who was in a weird stage of their career where it seemed their label was straddling the line between pop star and edgy anti-pop star. You get this weird result where it almost feels like they're positioning themselves above this song, with the elephant on the room being that Halsey is actually on the album that this comes from. Memorably so just because the ARIA Charts mucked it up and actually gave the Halsey feature ("The Feeling") all of the streaming points that belonged to another song on the album, artificially extending its chart run in one of the more bizarre chart blunders that almost nobody remembers except me.

#998. CHVRCHES - Miracle (#77, 2018)

100th of 2018

I really do hate to beat a dead horse and go for low hanging fruit. I've heard many people say that this song is bad because it sounds like a bad Imagine Dragons song. I don't think this is fair to Imagine Dragons though. They're very experienced in the art of making songs that are far more dramatic and overblown than they need to be. Sometimes it wraps all the way around to being something I can work with. I'd take their worst versions of this any day over the real thing that's in front of me. The disappointment I have with this song is only compounded by the fact that it for some reason had to be the only CHVRCHES song from this album to make the cut ("Get Out" & "Graffiti" were quite close at least), and furthermore continues to stand as the last CHVRCHES song to ever make the Hottest 100. I even prefer the collaboration they did with a certain costumed producer who will eventually appear on this list. This is just a reminder to say that I'm not just here to play favourites. Sometimes you need an exception to prove the rule.

#997. Glass Animals - Tangerine (#18, 2020)

100th of 2020

I don't really enjoy "Dreamland". Something you don't totally see in the singles is how much of the album cuts amount to a stream of conscience millennial engagement bait. I don't dislike this as a rule, but I find these sorts of things more relatable if they actually speak to the experience. To make my own '90s reference, it can be kind of like a Seinfeld gag, where the amusement comes from propping up something so specific that nobody's really mentioned before but instantly recognises the feeling behind it. Don't just say 'Remember "GoldenEye 007"?', say 'Isn't it wild that Xenia was dual wielding an RC-P90 and Grenade Launcher on the Jungle mission? Rare were crazy back then'. It's something that comes up over and over again, except surprisingly little on the 4 different songs that make this list. Well, aside from comparing daddy issues girl's Instagram technique to Mr. Miyagi here. Honestly I have no idea what happened with Glass Animals on this album. You'd think it's got something to do with Dave handling a lot of the writing and production on his own, but this is actually the album with the most collaborators on it.

In early 2020, a certain Canadian pop star who will eventually appear on this list released a song to near universal panning (with the exception of the peculiar GRAMMY committee who deemed it worthy of nomination ahead of another eventually list appearing Canadian pop star and their more universally beloved smash hit released a month prior). It's understandably a very easy target that rockists & poptimists alike can get behind in laughing at. All well and good, but I couldn't help but feel confused when that song was collectively decided to be a disaster, and then 12 months later I hear this song land in the quite high echelon of top 20 in the Hottest 100. That goes well beyond a big one hit with some splashback, this would nearly be Glass Animals' highest placing song to date otherwise. Not only does this just sound oddly similar to that other song, but its lyrics feel distractingly asinine in a similar way. Like I just can't figure out how an audience that's been with this band for more than half a decade has really been waiting to hear this. Adding all of this up as well, because of the magnetism towards easy, more obvious targets, when you hear people complain about that year's Hottest 100, you'll never see anyone single out this song that just totally slips into the background. The real nadir is not usually the obvious one. I suppose I'm just more bothered when I dislike something I'm supposed to like, rather than the song that so aggressively shakes its 'this is not for you' at me.

#996. Doja Cat (feat SZA) - Kiss Me More (#7, 2021)

100th of 2021

I don't particularly like Dr. Luke's music. By my count he has a hand in 4 songs on this list (prior to 2013 he also produced "Love Me Or Hate Me" in 2006), plus several others that still have label affiliation. A lot of the time lately his tracks tend to run one particular loop into the ground to the point of exhaustion once you've noticed it. "Say So" is a song I really don't enjoy for that reason, in addition to the hook that feels like Doja Cat is stressing a rhyme on the same word over and over again, even though I know she isn't. The assonance just hits the ear in a bad way.

Fortunately for me that song isn't on this list (admittedly probably only because of a release date technicality not in its favour), but then we have this instead which isn't a whole lot different. In a way it's more frustrating because it's an even more popular song (it's bolded on RateYourMusic as I write this). On a lot of her big pop hits, Doja Cat tends to rap like Flo Rida, which is to say a lot of melodic stressing on syllables to make it stickier, to make it more radio friendly in a way that leaves me cold. Disappointment is what I feel with this song because I know she can be engaging without sanding down the edges like that. SZA's on this song too which only compounds it. She feels wasted on this empty production. Just hearing the opening chords of this song in a public place is dread inducing. I am willing to believe that I could come around to this in the future when I hear it more sporadically (I used to not like "Teenage Dream"), but for the time being even Doja Cat has called it mediocre so I'd like to think I'm not stepping that far out of line.

#995. Ziggy Alberts - Intentions (22) (#48, 2019)

100th of 2019

On a completely unrelated note, I think it's probably very easy to turn one's back to Ziggy Alberts in the wake of things he has posted about online. I didn't really want to do this because I've never found it fun to just categorise an artist as 'bad as a rule' and stick all of their music in the mental bin together. I can think of very few artists I'd feel slightly inclined to do that with, and sometimes I can make a game of it. I'll see their new song on the playlist queue and get to wonder if they've managed to prove me wrong, or otherwise I just get to think about what they've done to screw it up again. In general this optimism has let me be a lot more open minded than I used to be. I'd like to believe that it makes this list more interesting when there are artists who I might put on opposite ends of the spectrum on the whole, but they're still intermingling here because every song has its strengths and weaknesses.

Anyway this song is not the way to go. Leaving aside the not very good hook that you get to hear 12 times in barely over 3 minutes, he doesn't exactly make himself a likeable character. The first verse raises that "Wild World" red flag of negging because he wants to help her but she can't do it herself, honestly it makes "Wild World" look pretty good by comparison. He finds multiple instances to note that he's made it (or half made it) as a musician, which if nothing else provides the funniest line in the song. He takes the notion that people suggest that he's changed over time, and only draws the conclusion that it means that his career has taken off, exactly the self-awareness that you expect from him. The best I can say is that the song doesn't especially annoy me when I have to hear it, just that it's the start of that big sweet spot in the list of me being so bereft of enjoyment to get out of it.

#994. DMA'S - Delete (#48, 2014)

100th of 2014

I honestly swear I get no joy out of contrarianism. If you know your Hottest 100 history, you've probably connected some certain dots and I'm not buzzing about that either. This is just my honest appraisal of a song that's always stuck out to me in an unexplainable way with how it sounds. It's probably part of why it's so popular. You could listen to the radio for hours and it's always going to be the songs that stick out that you remember, for better or worse. Sometimes for me, certain phrases can just hit the ear wrong and I'll never be able to gel with them.

Basically this song has an odd chorus. The title sentiment conjures up a facetious image, where any drama that's attempted to be conveyed is undercut because 'delete' is just such a blunt choice of word. I guess it's supposed to be an inner monologue about unfollowing someone on social media but there's nothing cathartic about it. I think though they realised it because after this you get an extra hook crammed in which feels like a transparent attempt at a sing along. The Oasis comparison is a bit played out at this point but they definitely earned it for those 15ish seconds. Not the only British '90s reference to make though because I still can't help but laugh at how much Matt sounds like Brian Molko when he turns up on the outro. This whole song feels like DMA'S still finding their footing and figuring out what they want to be as a band. Maybe there's a charm to this for some but I think they generally got better over time.

#993. Billie Eilish - wish you were gay (#67, 2019)

99th of 2019

Billie Eilish had a relatively gradual ascent to stardom that hindsight makes appear inevitable. What I often think about in many of these cases is what the particular catalyst is. It's not unreasonable to say that certain artists have built a career off the good will of one hit. I don't think that's the case for Billie Eilish but she spent quite a while in a state of everything going right before her debut album even came out. That album generally appears as the footprint of her success. A roughly 5 year stay on the album chart will do that. It is interesting though to think about how that album holds up to represent her catalogue of the time though. She has a handful of notable songs from around that time that just aren't on the album, or they're there as a technicality on the deluxe edition. I'll be getting to a few of those in the future. All up the album has seven songs that have made the Hottest 100 plus another two that were really close. The main thing I'm trying to say here is that the track list we do end up with, is scattershot, and maybe doesn't represent her as well as it could.

I'm not just talking about this song, but it is a reasonable one to notice. This song just feels like it falls short everywhere. Much of "WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?" comes with interesting production ideas, songwriting and performance. Here we just get this song that's as stuffy as it is sluggish, an unimpressive counting down gimmick that isn't even properly in order, a general lyrical sentiment that doesn't parse very well with a moment of thought given, and an uninspired performance that doesn't really hint at any star power. Obviously it's there though which is why there's no shortage of opportunities to come back to her.

#992. Post Malone with Doja Cat - I Like You (A Happier Song) (#51, 2022)

100th of 2022

"Twelve Carat Toothache" is a fascinating album. It makes me think that there's a lot of behind the scenes scrambling that we're not privy to. Post Malone is a huge ticket for Republic Records, but I get the feeling listening to the album that he wasn't interested in making stuff for the radio at this point. The album feels like it's playing to both sides of the court. The singles are hedonistic and they're surrounded by miserable deep cuts, which feels like a bait and switch to anyone who heard "One Right Now" on the radio and thought they were in for more of that. I'm reminded of that viral tweet about the dark, f**ked up version of Hamburger Helper, when you've got Post Malone wallowing in self-pity on a song called "Lemon Tree". I pay it though, there's something in it. The Fleet Foxes collaboration is also strong, although you could absolutely listen through it and not realise they had anything to do with the song. In general though, the album underperformed which is probably partly why he dropped another one barely a year later, once again confusing the lines of what the end result of supporting your favourite artists really does.

Once Post Malone became a triple j staple, he got 3 Hottest 100 entries from two consecutive albums, "Twelve Carat Toothache" managed just this one, the other obvious radio crossover bid that worked for all intents and purposes. I always struggle to get through this one. It leans the scales too far into the realm of being super cheesy, and in the context of the album, just doesn't feel convincing. It doesn't seem to be a song about anything, and getting Doja Cat on here only makes it more nonsensical. I apologise to the Dojalone shippers but it's probably not happening, it just feels like a symbiotic business decision. Doja Cat seems shackled by the tempo of the song and never really makes her appearance here seem worthwhile.

#991. Ziggy Alberts - Love Me Now (#37, 2018)

99th of 2018

What did he mean when he said 'I'm sick of you always letting me down'? I'm not going to pretend this placement isn't largely based on this being a chore to listen to but it's hard to want to root for this guy. I'm not necessarily opposed to songs about guys who are exhibiting big, desperate loser in love vibes, but I listen to this and I'm not sure he's even figured that much out. The only introspection he offers is one offhand line about regretting not saying something, like he wants to re-roll his attempt at engagement because he blew it the first time. He just ends up repeating the hook so many times like it's that one bit in "Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door" where the mafia guy has to say 'I love you' 100 times to prove he means it.