Friday, 6 December 2024

#965-#961

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

99th of 2022



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


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


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

97th of 2014



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


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


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


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


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

97th of 2021



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


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


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


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


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

98th of 2015



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


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


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


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


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

97th of 2013



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


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


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


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

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