#970-#966

 #970. Chet Faker - (Lover) You Don't Treat Me No Good - Like A Version (#21, 2014)

98th of 2014

With triple j's Like A Version program getting to a bigger audience over time, it formed a symbiotic relationship with the artists who record them. It's in triple j's best interest to get the biggest artists they can wrangle in for it, and if those artists are on the rise, it can be in their best interest to check off that rite of passage. Looking back, it becomes a time capsule of who could be considered a big enough deal to warrant it.

This particular entry is a good point to bring up what I consider the trophy room Like A Version. We've seen it happen several times where an artist is having a particularly good year, they get a lot of hype for their Like a Version and it polls incredibly well. It seems to manifest in a similar way each time, where the artist will get loads of entries in the upper parts of the list, with the Like A Version trojan horsed in to represent their sheer cultural grip in that moment. It's the ultimate insult to anyone dreading their success because if that's not bad enough, even the half-hearted cover they did in the studio is annihilating all your favourites in the poll.

It makes for a good reminder that Like A Version audience reach is not created equally. Even if it's initially mostly inadvertently shared on the radio by similar numbers of listeners, you're inevitably going to skew that the moment that fanbases come into play. Thanks to algorithms, it doesn't even need to be about people reposting (although they might do that too), just the sheer engagement level sustains itself, making sure that everyone knows about it. I'm not about to suggest that people are disingenuously voting for Like A Versions they don't like, but the sheer nature of it means that most people will only really vote for a band they like covering a song they like, but might not even hear it if the band isn't high profile enough. Probably why triple j have been so much stricter on what songs can be covered.

So let's talk about Sonia Dada first. I find "You Don't Treat Me No Good" to be an interesting hit song for a few reasons that may or may not be known to you. Firstly, this song was massive when it came out. I can't ever recall not knowing this song, and this tracks because it's a little bit older than me, so it really has always been around. In addition to being a chart topping single, Sonia Dada even had a second big hit at the same time. At one point this group were sitting at #1 and #3 on the charts. This might be because the popular remix of "You Don't Treat Me No Good" was on the single for "You Ain't Thinking (About Me)", a common tactic at the time. I might just be wrong, but it does strike me as bizarrely successful for a song that I instantly forget after I finish hearing it.

Another interesting thing about this song is that despite all I just said, it's basically a non-entity outside of the Antipodes. I always get fascinated by these things because it means that there exists a sleeper agent in a bunch of people around the world (all they had to do was live in Australia at the right time) who have some variety of visceral reaction to hearing these chords, and everyone else has no idea what's going on. Or at least it was the case for a while, Americans might have a little more familiarity with it now since Jerrod Neimann got a pretty big country hit in 2010 covering it. Back when there were only a small handful of non-crossover country hits that could make the Billboard Year End list, this was one of them.

Lastly I'm always finding excuses to bring up the fact that this song was written by Daniel Pritzker, of the same named entrepreneurial family. The man behind this campfire acoustic guitar sing-along might just be the richest person to ever write a #1 hit in Australia. He's not the singer on this song but I believe he's the guitarist. The singer is a man with the now amusing name of Michael Scott.

While I've known "You Don't Treat Me No Good" all my life, I honestly couldn't confidently tell you what I've thought about it over that time. It's one of those songs that are such a staple that they almost transcend the notion of being reviewed for me. I only have a specific memory from high school (possibly Year 12) when the song inexplicably became a choice for spontaneous sing-along for various classmates of mine. In that brief period it grated on me a lot but now I just don't really encounter it a lot.

Chet Faker is a little bit older than me so it's very unlikely that he was in earshot of my teen experiences with this song, but maybe he had his own version of it. It's safe to say that he's tapping into that millennial nostalgia window of 'Wow, I remember this song, I haven't thought of it in ages!', and considering that you're basically never going to see it get cross-referenced in US or UK media, it's an excellent specimen for this sort of thing.

I'm not going to talk about Chet Faker really here, I've far surpassed a rational number of words just talking about Sonia Dada, when at the end of the day, there are way more opportunities to talk about Chet Faker. For now this is just his trophy room entry. A cover that doesn't really re-invent the wheel, just getting by on the sheer novelty of it.

#969. Lime Cordiale - I Touch Myself - Like A Version (#17, 2019)

98th of 2019

Here's another one. While this epitomises the trophy room Like A Version for me, I have to apply some caution with that label. When triple j did a Hottest 100 countdown in 2023 for Like A Versions, this came in at #4. #4 of all time! There's no doubt it's popular, but it's one of the hardest ones to wrap my head around. It's probably not helped by the fact that the first time I found out about it, my immediate reaction was akin to absolutely not having any interest in hearing it. It's hard to shake off that perception when the cover itself doesn't do anything to make me want to opt into it.

Probably though the most central issue is that I struggle to think of a circumstance where I'd want this song to be covered. It's not a song I completely adore, but it's one that's pretty clearly accomplished its mission statement. It's a song that's puerile in the most immediately obvious way, but managed to be so catchy that it couldn't help but become an international hit, played all over on the radio.

My Divinyls history isn't especially clear, mainly because I have trouble slotting things into an accurate timeline. I'd definitely heard their music when I was very young, as I recall my parents playing a lot of music very loudly from the other side of the house. This being the CD era, there's no way to avoid constant repetition. One of those songs was "Boys In Town". That song terrified me. Something about that invasive guitar riff and the repeated lyric of 'get me out of here' was all very confronting to my late '90s pop listening ears. It just sounds like a powder keg waiting to go off. Nowadays I think it's fantastic for all the same reasons.

I can't say for sure when I knew "I Touch Myself", and it would certainly be a much longer time to connect those two songs to being the same artist. The obvious elephant in the room is that it is indeed used heavily in a memorable scene in the first Austin Powers film. I can't undersell how weirdly invasive that film series has been on my budding taste in music, I just can't say for sure it was my first exposure.

That needle drop borders on the act of gender flipping the song just through context. This cover just does it straight up. I'm not someone who gets worked up about that sort of thing in cover versions. I think if it's done with enough care, then it's perfectly valid. I think with all things considered that Lime Cordiale didn't come to this cover version with the intent of making a mockery of it, nor do I think they did it. The biggest crime is just that it's not a particularly interesting cover.

#968. Glass Animals (feat Denzel Curry) - Tokyo Drifting (#34, 2019)

97th of 2019

This is the sort of song that is particularly tough to rank in a list like this. Most songs set their general vibe pretty quickly and your mood will rest in a consistent way. Even when you get to songs with big, belting choruses but otherwise space-filling verses, knowing that release is en route can quell the boredom. This is a song that challenges this notion by absolutely never resting on being too boring.

This is Glass Animals making an AJR song. Not literally but the general hallmarks are there. It's spitting on the face of regular expectations because 'why shouldn't we put this in the song?' I don't even particularly hate AJR. I feel like they're just not a big enough deal to justify the massive anti-jerk they've cultivated online. Like yeah, I probably wouldn't enjoy "The Click" either, but I've got enough foresight to realise this and not listen to it out of morbid curiosity and then get angry about the fact that it exists. I started collecting Hottest 100 entries before I'd even heard of Glass Animals though, so I wasn't able to get away from "Tokyo Drifting".

On a pure sonic level, this might actually be my least favourite Hottest 100 entry, for the most part. I'm just equally fascinated and baffled by the decisions made here. The goofy sounding horns, the haphazard drum programming, Dave just completely slurring all of his delivery in a weird register that totally clashes against the instrumental. It just sounds so bad. It's definitely doing nothing to convince me that Wavey Davey's on fire, no matter how many times he says it.

If it's not exceedingly obvious at this point, Denzel Curry is the only thing that saves this. A lot of rappers doing guest verses can end up sinking right in with whatever song they're on, but Denzel manages to salvage it with his agonisingly brief verse. He brings a level of energy and intensity that perks me up for a solid 23 seconds before we're back where we started. It's also fortunate that this wasn't just a one-off fluke appearance by association, and I'll get several opportunities to talk about Denzel Curry while not being surrounded by all of this. I guess you could say that this is simultaneously the most and least I've enjoyed a song so far on this list.

#967. Adrian Eagle - A.O.K. (#95, 2019)

96th of 2019

As far as artists on this list go, Adrian Eagle has one of the smallest discographies around. This song comes from an EP he put out in the same year. He did a Like A Version then as well, plus one other single he put out in 2016, and another he put out a month ago, that's it. Well, it is for him as a lead artist, because he's put out just as many songs as a guest performer. It's obviously how I first heard of him because this isn't his only appearance on this list.

I'm not super enthusiastic about this song. I think the chorus just doesn't quite land right. Partly because I'm not sure who it's supposed to be targeted at. The use of the word 'them' implies some sort of antagonistic influence that isn't really expanded upon. Or otherwise I guess 'A-OK' as an expression just feels too passive to be properly empowering. I was having a discussion online not long ago, where a lot of words with a meaning of 'moderate' tend to slowly gain negative connotations through the way they're used over time. It's partly because we're only usually interested in things that are good, so while mediocre just means middle of the road, it may as well mean bad at this point, because who would ever spend a significant amount of time trying to sort through things they think are either bad or mediocre?!

It's a shame because I do think that in general, Adrian Eagle's positivity is pretty infectious. There's a cute moment in this song where he talks about how important his mother is to him, helping him getting into music and now getting to hear him on the radio. Actually another song on his EP, "Housing Trust" has him recalling the days before the heights of the ARIA Awards. He won an ARIA Award for his forthcoming entry on this list, but this song was also nominated. From what's been documented on Genius, the only other time someone has mentioned them in a song was a comedy skit by Aunty Donna that has Hamish Blake calling in and citing his Best Comedy ARIA Awards as credentials.

On the whole, his EP is pretty pleasant stuff. It's mostly produced by Jerome Farah. He's never had a big breakout as an artist (I'm a big fan of the song "Tuesday" he guested on with KYE), but as a producer, it's not the last you'll see of him on this list. One alliterative artist in particular he's worked with many times, so he's racked up quite a few.

#966. Ruel - Younger (#87, 2018)

93rd of 2018

Ruel was born in 2002. He's been in the spotlight for so long at this point and yet at the time I'm writing this, he's still only 21 years old. It was basically his gimmick to an extent. Much like Usher with regards to a certain prodigious Canadian (who will appear in this list eventually), Ruel has been M-Phazes' golden ticket for quite some time. Back in 2015 Ruel's father sent him a demo and he just went all in on him. The partnership remains too, Ruel released his first full-length album in 2023 and M-Phazes produced every song on it. One of those songs will appear in this list too, as well as quite a handful of songs he released in-between.

The question I've had to tackle for many years in this regard though, is whether or not Ruel has always been ready for the big stage. Young artists are great for marketing, as well as having so many years ahead of them, but they're also not yet in their prime. When you're a teenager, you're still trying to figure out who you are. You're still doing that afterwards, but you're generally going with the flow. You're definitely not usually putting out pieces of work to be immortalised in lists that some people like me take too seriously. I've got so many snapshots of what teenage Ruel was thinking about on my computer.

That's generally what's held him back at times for me. I just can't quite connect his dramatic soul singing with what essentially amounts to a bit of teenage angst. The best I can say with this song is that it's either jokingly or cruelly making you feel really old. This is a song about Ruel having a falling out with a childhood friend. This song came out when Ruel was 15. I was 25 when this song came out. The chorus of this song has him reminiscing on back when they were younger! It all just feels so low stakes for all the dramatics. Well there's that and I just also find it to be his least catchy song, very stiff in melody when all the lines are separated the way they are. We'll see how he goes up from here though.