#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.