#900-#896

#900. Grouplove - Ways To Go (#33, 2013)

94th of 2013

I hopped on the Grouplove train fairly early. It's fun to think about in hindsight as it really is one of those wholesome snapshots of being young and into music. You get sucked into the idea of the next big thing, and circle around anything that gets even a hint of promise. If I looked at every artist I regularly listen to and specifically what year I first discovered them, you'll see a very large peak around the late 2000s to early 2010s. Eventually you run that gambit enough times that you kind of accept that not everyone is gonna make it.

Grouplove did make it, kind of. This might be their best testament to the fact. Having a big debut (3 entries in 2011) is one thing, but actually following it up and not completely disappearing is impressive. Grouplove nearly had a second song in this list too, as "Borderlines and Aliens" landed at #111 that year. They also came close again in 2016, but "Welcome To Your Life" could only get to #123. Not a bad innings really, but definitely in nostalgia world now.

Regrettably this song has fallen on the other side for me now. Over time I've just not really wanted to go back to it compared to other Grouplove songs. Something about the production just doesn't land right, and it's not compelling enough to get around that. But I just hear nothing but the cheap synths and poorly mixed drums. The whole song, but especially the chorus is smothered by it. I contrast this with "Didn't Have To Go", also on this album. That's a song being propped up by these very same elements, and one I still have a lot of fondness for. There's a recipe to make it work here and they just didn't follow it this time.

#899. Halsey - Graveyard (#40, 2019)

87th of 2019

In 2019 Halsey was coming off the biggest solo hit of their career and could probably do anything they wanted to. This is largely what happened. There was a collaboration with Travis Barker and another pop punk artist who will eventually appear in this list. Shortly after there was a team up with BTS landing on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Halsey's own music would take a darker turn again though, at least based on the song titles. Well I can't talk about the first one yet, but the second one has the ominous name "Graveyard". It's fallen a bit in favour since, but this was Halsey's major hit at the time.

This song does not live up to the ominous title. I can almost see it in the synths that bubble around in the background. It's a decent foundation that's fairly drowned out by the constant handclaps and an occasionally chirpy vocal performance. I'm not saying that Halsey needed to lean into it, but I end up left with something that doesn't that doesn't really stand out. Hard to muster much of anything to respond to this with.

#898. Lime Cordiale & Idris Elba - What's Not To Like (#41, 2021)

91st of 2021

Listening to this song is like looking into a mirror. Just the sentence 'I'm a lover, not a fighter sort of thing' is so painfully in tune with the kinda of filler phrases I find myself using often when talking, and sometimes when writing. It's like, so jarring to hear that sort of thing in an actual, what's it called, song, y'know.

Lime Cordiale can't help but just sound silly a lot of the time. At least in this instance it's not entirely on them. But when I hear this song, I'm always going to get to that one bit just before the chorus where Idris Elba starts singing like he's doing an advertising jingle. It just sounds goofy to me. At least this time it doesn't extend to the main hook of the song, because after the song sounds like it's gonna end on a snappy "Is This It"-like riff, we're subjected to a 15 second self-deprecating skit, and then the song crawls over to a pretty standard 3:15 length after that. When Louis says that there are probably a few things not to like, I tend to agree.

I've also belatedly realised that they've probably just unintentionally remade "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To" by Weezer, which is a long enough title to make it look like I finished this off with more than one sentence.

#897. Hilltop Hoods (feat Eamon) - Show Business (#71, 2022)

92nd of 2022

I gotta say, forget any state premiers who will eventually appear on this list. For my money, this has to be the weirdest collaboration partner to show up here. I can think back to how in 2019, Billy Ray Cyrus had a hand in the biggest hit of the year. Even Snow got resurrected with a second hit, sampling his first. But who, I ask, ever had the guy behind "F**k It (I Don't Want You Back)" returning to centre stage and playing it completely straight?

This is a fairly autobiographical song, but I suspect you could've subbed out Eamon for Adrian Eagle and get a fairly similar performance. That's why it fascinates me that he's here. But then it also functions as a reminder of the passage of time. No matter how long it's been since you last thought about Eamon, he was on some level, a contemporary of Hilltop Hoods, getting his big breakthrough just a year after them. Yes, they really have been around for that long.

That obviously lingers heavily over this track. It's the essence of the track. The whole thing is just riffing on the ups and downs of show business from people who are more than experienced enough to have stories to tell. I guess in that sense, that I wish they had told those stories. I don't doubt they're out there, but you don't get much to go off here. It must be tough to straddle the line of selling relatable content to people who have no way of properly relating, unless you fill it with easy platitudes. The one exception is in Suffa's verse where he mentions a stalker with some degree of detail. The whole thing doesn't really live up to the absurdity unfortunately.

#896. Bliss N Eso (feat Thief) - Dopamine (#86, 2016)

91st of 2016

This is fairly competent all around. I don't love the song's hook but it does work to a degree of being memorable. Thief's voice has a commanding presence to it, very much selling the mood. I haven't heard much else about him. It does seem though that he hasn't released any solo music since this song came out, just one collaboration with Fancy Feelings in 2018. His Soundcloud bio does have a reference to LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge" though so that's always a plus. LCD Soundsystem will not appear in this list but James Murphy will be involved in at least one entry.

I'm a little torn elsewhere on this song. I think performance-wise, Bliss N Eso are fine here, but content-wise it's a little off. Bliss's verse makes me think of all those Ja Rule songs where he acts tough in the verses but then he's a lover boy on the chorus. Here it feels like he's written a verse for a totally different song and then quickly puts in a line about his wife/girlfriend (I can't find any information about him having a partner so I'm not sure on this). Eso understands the assignment a fair bit better.

But then two verses are all you get here. Thief's hook gets stretched & re-arranged a whole lot to pad out the song, including more than a whole minute at the end, and that's the lasting impression the song leaves. Conceptually decent, but can't go the whole way.