#940-#936

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

95th of 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

94th of 2019

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

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

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

94th of 2020

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

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

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

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

91st of 2018

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

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

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

94th of 2014

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

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

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

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

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