#880-#876

#880. G Flip - Stupid (#66, 2019)

85th of 2019

Talking about G Flip in this context is a bit like telling a very incomplete story. They've got 14 entries which is a lot, but one year after I cut this off, there were a record-breaking 7 entries for G Flip. They're getting very close to breaking the all-time record and I expect the number to just keep climbing. G Flip prior to 2023 is just a prologue to the main event.

More so than a lot of other artists, G Flip is someone I largely only interact with by collecting songs for this list. It's not quite a zero hit rate, but there are a lot of songs that I only first properly heard when they landed in the countdown and I subsequently collected them. It's like peering into someone's version of music history that's completely detached from your own.

That's not a condemning sentence though. A big part of why I extensively listen to these songs is so that I don't fall into the trap of just quickly filing away the songs I don't know all together into the pile of indifference. Listening enough times allows you to re-construct that alternate history. There are so many songs from older Hottest 100 lists that feel very nostalgic to me despite that being an entirely fabricated memory that I forged more than a decade after the song's actual time in the sun.

They can't all be winners though. G Flip has so many songs like this that made the Hottest 100 that I still have a little difficulty distinguishing them, or at least how I feel about them. I guess I ended up falling down harshest on "Stupid" because it doesn't do enough to justify itself as a standalone hit. The chorus in this song feels like it's in search of a catchy melody that never quite sticks the landing.

#879. The Kite String Tangle - Arcadia (#15, 2014)

86th of 2014

The Kite String Tangle landed two Hottest 100 entries right at the front end of this list timespan, and they both landed in the top 20. I don't think the first entry is especially well mixed and produced, but there's a charm to what it's doing, we'll get to it eventually. This song takes away some of those elements and doesn't sound a whole lot better on the production front so it falls a little bit short. I should have been primed to love this song but it's never really clicked for me.

If you're not familiar or you forgot, The Kite String Tangle is just one guy. It's the work of Brisbane's now distractingly named Danny Harley. Danny L Harle has never had a Hottest 100 entry of his own although he did co-write and co-produce "Houdini" & "Training Season" for Dua Lipa which polled in 2023 & 2024, a very unusual sentence for multiple reasons. The Kite String Tangle lands on the Chet Faker side of the producer spectrum rather than Flume, so he sings on these songs. It's an acquired taste I think.

To go back to my previous point, this is a more stripped down song that essentially necessitates focus on the vocals & lyrics. It's a post-break up song longing for the good parts of that relationship. Most of the lyrics just fall out without much to remark upon (although I don't think the metaphor on 'we're drifting apart, we're parallel sinking ships' was fully thought out), but the one line that tends to stick out is 'you were sleeping in my shirt'. I mostly only say it because it's in the chorus and doing so makes it just feel like a strange thing to fixate upon and repeat. I've never been able to get into the chorus in general though. You're kicked off with an 'oh, oh, oh, oh' that just highlights how goofy his voice sounds and drains the emotional gut punch as a result.

#878. Chet Faker - Low (#70, 2020)

87th of 2020

Chet Faker's hitmaking career came to a very sudden halt after 2015. You can point the broken "Built On Glass" ring finger at a few possible reasons for this, and I can't say I have the definite answer but the obvious lapse between then and now is a brief period where he changed his name. Or rather un-changed his name. He put out music under his actual name of Nick Murphy, then reached an awkward middle point of being Nick Murphy fka Chet Faker, and he's since regressed back to being Chet Faker again. He said at the time that Rick Rubin gave him the idea to do it, so if it was career sabotage, then he's your guy. It's kind of funny that as soon as he changed back, he got back onto the Hottest 100, real Coke Classic vibes.

That being said I'm not entirely convinced that's all there is to it. In his Nick Murphy period, the songs that he was putting out were a slight pivot. A lot heavier on the electronics, and not in the lo-fi way he usually gravitated to. One of his biggest singles was "Stop Me (Stop You)", a sprawling 8 minute epic. I think it's one of the best things he's put out, but I can see why it wouldn't move the needle quite as much.

"Low" doesn't feel like just a cynical return in terms of branding, but it's also a sonic return as well. It's 6 years removed but it I found out that this was an outtake from "Built On Glass", I'd believe it. It just ends up feeling quaint. Like many Chet Faker songs, I can tell there's a hook to this one, but is it enough to seek out the four and a half minute run time? Once again, the answer is not really.

#877. G Flip - You & I (#44, 2020)

86th of 2020

There's a solid uptick in the tendency for artists to appear not just in consecutive years, but with multiple entries to boot. The streaming algorithms are just like the YouTube algorithms and they will not allow you to stop putting out music. "You & I" is a non-album single that came out a year after G Flip's debut album. Not even including the Like A Version (which will eventually appear on this list), there were 10 standalone G Flip singles that came out between albums that didn't end up on either of them. They're not even tacked on, or bundled up for the impression of streaming buzz. It's a sort of pre-fame, just chucking things out to see what sticks kind of schedule I can respect, but they still can't all be winners.

"You & I" doesn't suffer the same problem as "Stupid" with regard to not standing out. This one certainly does, but it's not for the better. That sort of monotony is broken up by a wailing hook that grates just a little. Not enough to get particularly bothered, but it doesn't give me a lot to look forward to either.

#876. MØ - Kamikaze (#60, 2015)

87th of 2015

It's tempting to speculate how much that one particularly popular song that MØ sings on impacted her career and sound going forward. It's all a bit different to "Never Wanna Know" from her first EP which is the first song I heard from her. In truth though, one of the main names behind that one particularly popular song that MØ sings on can also be found on that first EP. He also co-produced this song, if it wasn't at all obvious.

Despite the similar pedigree, this still feels like a completely different career path to the simultaneous one MØ was on that netted multiple #1 hit singles. It makes me think of how sometimes triple j would play deeper cuts from popular artists and just ignore the hit. In 2015 they were doing both, and so by virtue of polling lower, this became MØ's first entry. Someday I'll get to that other song.

This song straddles the line as to whether the more spacious production is charming or serves only to highlight the flaws. In truth there is quite a bit going on with the production, but it really takes the backseat in the verses behind MØ's voice. It's probably a step removed from just being boilerplate tropical house though so maybe it's at the right spot. I just don't get too excited about the skeleton of the song though. MØ has a very idiosyncratic voice, and shows it off quite a bit here, but you get to the chorus and it just feels flat and unrewarding.