#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.