#760-#756

#760. Flight Facilities (feat Emma Louise) - Arty Boy (#99, 2017)

79th of 2017

It's a cynical way of looking at things, but it is funny sometimes to imagine with some producers that there's a 'Press In Case Of Emergency' button where they call up the previous collaborator that worked before as a safe fix. It's almost never *as* effective because you need to at least do something to make it worth going to (although that trance song that went to #1 in the UK in 2023 between two frequent collaborators I still can't name stands as a notable exception). Flight Facilities haven't done this in the most brazen way yet. There's no new Giselle or Christine Hoberg teaming. They do have "Arty Boy" though, bringing back Emma Louise 3 years later, and they did something similar last year too. My understanding is that this was planned to appear on Emma Louise's own album in 2016 but it didn't end up going through, so Flight Facilities re-worked it and put it out as a standalone single. Suffice to say, I'm talking about "Arty Boy" first.

This isn't really a rehash of their previous collaboration and it works on a different level altogether. Guitar is a tad more prominent, Emma Louise is trying out new flows, it's also the only song I can think of that rhymes 'models' with a form of imbibement that isn't 'bottles'. Actually it's a song that pairs luxury and hedonism in the lyrics with a conceit of distance from it. Easy to miss this because the deflection is hidden away in one lyric that Emma Louise doesn't fully enunciate at the end of the second verse.

Emma Louise could probably sing the dictionary and that'd be fine, I'm just not a huge fan of what else is going on in the track. The beat tends to just throb in and out without any consistency underneath it to keep up the momentum. Aside from another 2017 song we'll get to that deliberately does it as a bit, there can't be that many otherwise conventional songs that have as many cumulative seconds of sheer silence as this does.

#759. Queens of the Stone Age - If I Had a Tail (#46, 2013)

82nd of 2013

Most bands follow a pretty common trajectory in all counts of popularity and reception after they've hit it big. Just a series of slight diminishing returns that nonetheless allows the ship to keep chugging along. Often times, the immediate success of an album runs into the main factor of how well their last album was received and if the releases come in a steady manner that keep people wanting more without starving them in the process. Queens Of The Stone Age just don't work under this rule.

"...Like Clockwork" was the group's 6th album, and it was released 6 years after "Era Vulgaris". Now for me, "Sick, Sick, Sick" and "3's & 7's" are two of my favourite QOTSA songs ever, but I'll admit I'm biased as they're the first ones I knew. I'm aware that otherwise it's probably their least popular album up to that point. Despite that, they came back bigger than ever in 2013, scoring their first ever ARIA #1 album, and also landing 3 songs in the Hottest 100, the most of any year outside of "Songs For The Deaf"'s monster haul of 5 in 2002. I guess I should point out that in that 6 year pause, Josh Homme did release the self-titled Them Crooked Vultures album, a supergroup collaboration with John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin and another very famous rock star I'll eventually come into contact with here. That album sold particularly well, and with Homme doing most of the vocals, could easily pass as a QOTSA album. They've worn so many different hats and had so many different members that he really is the only consistent piece of the puzzle.

I enjoy "...Like Clockwork" quite a lot. It's the QOTSA album I've listened to the most, and I'm glad it got a good haul here otherwise we might just be stuck with the single most popular song...this one. I've always had a little trouble wrapping my head around it, but I suppose it would feel weird no matter what song it is, there just isn't an obvious one. There's often talk about the way songs hit it big for having captionable lyrics, obvious little bits to focus on in TikToks, stuff like that. I don't think this way of listening to music is exclusive to the younger generation though, I think there's a certain allure to the lyric 'If I had a tail, I'd swat the flies', and that can go a long way. There's also some intrigue in the personnel. This is the last song released on a QOTSA studio album that has former member Mark Lanegan on it, I believe that's him with the menacing backing vocals in the chorus. If you listen to the album version, you'll hear an outro section sung by the lead singer of another rock band who had a particularly successful 2013, and will eventually be dissected here.

That works in parts, but I can't escape how relatively sluggish the song is. It's got that goofy dad rock vibe that isn't fun to get through. Or maybe it's a different genre of dads with those shout outs to "Lady Marmalade" and "Da Doo Ron Ron" that I never thought fit in well. I just think that one of their later entries pulls this off a lot better, so stay tuned for when I can go back to lambasting this song's shortcomings again.

#758. Khalid - Better (#52, 2018)

77th of 2018

I want to dispute Khalid's claim of nothing feeling better than this in that I can think of 757 other things that do. In his defence, a good 300 of those such things didn't exist when he made this statement, so that's not entirely fair. Even I'm subject to the same problem with how long ago I ranked this list. I had no idea for instance that Hanumankind & Kalmi would put out the music video for "Big Dawgs" and absolutely stomp this song in terms of 'Music videos where motor vehicles are doing cool shit around the performer'. This one's still pretty good but damn, that "Big Dawgs" video is just perfect.

This relatively unassuming song is one of Khalid's biggest hits. Only two songs spent more time in the ARIA top 50, and they're both collaborations, "Eastside" (#888) and another one I'll get to in due time. That longevity is key, as it easily could've fizzled out at the start of 2019, but it just kept powering on. Released in September, this was the 77th biggest hit of 2018 according to ARIA, but then it was the 28th biggest hit of 2019. That sort of thing is pretty normal to see, but you can compare it to Khalid's Marshmello collaboration from a year prior, which actually peaked later in the year and that only improved from 50th in 2017 to 30th in 2018, so "Better" really had the legs. At the time I'm writing this, it's his most streamed song on Spotify today as a lead artist.

If you had to pick a song to represent Khalid's discography, I could probably think of a few better choices from his first album, but this isn't far off the mark either. It's probably the most natural progression. Not reinventing the wheel really, but a nice update 18 months later with a bit of polishing. I'm probably signposting my own allegiance by putting his entries from his first album higher than both the entries from his second album, but I do still like the approach here. It goes down a treat if you're in the right mood for it.

#757. Boo Seeka - Deception Bay (#50, 2015)

73rd of 2015

Not everyone takes the full album format as serious business and the sole means to consume music. We have data to back this up more than ever before in fact. On the other hand, it's a brutal trajectory if you're a standalone single that slips outside of the periphery. The height of success for Boo Seeka was definitely in 2015, on the back of three popular singles that never made it onto their debut album. Of those, "Kingdom Leader" has held up the best, sticking the landing as a permanent fixture atop their Spotify charts, so it's in good stead. "Deception Bay" has fallen short of this and it takes a lot of going out of your way on their page to find it. I'd feel comfortable saying that "Deception Bay" is their signature song but it just doesn't get as much attention anymore. Back in 2015 it was on top though as their only Hottest 100 entry that year. I probably prefer "Kingdom Leader" the most of the three, but it's not a stark difference.

You can pick any 2015 entry to blame for triple j Unearthed High winners Mosquito Coast getting locked out of the list at #101, maybe even this one. The other day I got absolutely shafted in a trivia setting because I thought the real world Mosquito Coast was a geographic feature in Australia. It's actually more roughly the east coast of Nicaragua, but I thought an Australian band would have to have named themselves after a local feature. Given the timing of it all, I was probably misled by "Deception Bay" being around at the same time. That one very much is Australian, just north of Brisbane. As best I can tell, the name comes from an English surveyor thinking that it was a river, naming it as such, and then giving it this name when he realised otherwise. If you want more deception in your bay though, Boo Seeka's from New South Wales. Not only that, but they've also done the Panama move and now years later is a solo project with the name unchanged. Panama the band/solo artist also isn't really from Central America, if you can believe it.

It's easy to want to file away a typical triple j sound at any given time but I don't think Boo Seeka really fits into it. There's an unmistakable style they've got that doesn't really play into any trends. I might personally file it under the kind of pleasant that I can't imagine getting super excited about, but we all have different perspectives on these things. It definitely has their stickiest hook though and that goes a long way.

#756. Dune Rats - Bullshit (#33, 2016)

80th of 2016

There are lots of artists for whom the #101-#200 ranking zone is the ceiling for them. I'd be very surprised to see Crooked Colours or Confidence Man go all the way for instance. This is just the reality of it. After a while, everyone's generally decided whether or not they're invested and either does that on a steady basis or moves on. You can usually get a good idea for who is primed for the big time.

I thought Dune Rats were gonna be one of those artists. They were not without their opportunities. I listen to their early hit from 2012, "Red Light, Green Light" and it feels like a perfectly catchy distillation of their vibe that fits perfectly into the sounds of the time. It didn't get over the line though. A year later and you can see them in the music video to a particularly popular song I'll eventually get to. A year later, they're leaning even harder into their novelty stoner image and fall even further away from the mark. No way are these guys ever gonna go anywhere. Anyway album number two comes around in 2016 and not only does it hit #1 on the ARIA Chart, but it gives them four Hottest 100 entries across two years. Heading this up were the first two singles that had no problem getting over the line, and got to have the always fun result of landing back to back.

That album is called "The Kids Will Know It's Bullshit", and as much as it would make sense for it to be the case, that isn't a lyric in this song. They're not shy on saying the word 'bullshit' both in and out of sentence form, but I guess what they landed on was a better self-deprecation line than just "Everything You Say Is Bullshit". Their most recent album is called "If It Sucks, Turn It Up". Aside from the weed thing, this is just what they aim for. 

You'll have to wait a few days to see if I also went and gave them a back to back, but suffice to say, this was the higher entry they had in 2016 and I didn't especially approve. I do have to give credit though; they've updated their sound quite a bit. It's not quite as lightweight as before and the guitars have some nice crunch to it. I can't argue with the notion that 'bullshit' is certainly upper tier in terms of profanities that are fun to say. I wouldn't say that the song is entirely riding on that principle though it gets pretty close.

#765-#761

#765. RÜFÜS DU SOL - Desert Night (#34, 2013)

84th of 2013

"Atlas" is a pretty chill album. Nice artwork too. There's a symmetry that's been lost ever since they had to change their name, which also lines up with when they stopped making albums with 5 letter titles, maybe there's something in that. Something I felt dead certain on at the time is that the three Hottest 100 entries they had landed in the exact opposite of how I feel. This is clearly not the case anymore.

I suppose I've just become a fiend for a catchy hook. The other two tracks manage to figure that out, but "Desert Night" is a song that leans hard into its build up only to go back to first gear soon after. I suppose what I'm saying is that this would make a fine album track but I'm not sure why it's a single?

#764. Andy Bull - Keep On Running (#57, 2013)

83rd of 2013

I don't know if you've ever encountered one of those TikTok videos where there's something mundane going either to the side or in the foreground that's just engaging enough to keep you looking at it. I generally imagine some kind of grating action, but really it probably could be anything. The music video to this song provides multiple examples. It's all synced up to the beat of the song too so it's oddly hypnotic even though there isn't much of anything really happening in it. There is one amusing moment towards the end where the tempo ramps up briefly and all the subtlety goes out the window.

Last time I wrote about Andy Bull (#853), I had trouble finding things to say. This is happening again, and it'll happen once more I suspect when I get to the last one. He's just a fairly uncontroversial popstar without much of a gimmick beyond a slightly different vocal style then you might be used to. "Keep On Running" is just a fun little song and there isn't much else to it. Lucky for him he put the album title drop in the lyrics to this song because it's easily the most popular song on it.

#763. Machine Gun Kelly (feat Halsey) - forget me too (#36, 2020)

72nd of 2020

Something that's always stuck with me was someone talking about the once controversial 2000 album by a very popular UK band. This album was hard to swallow for some as their new rock saviours had made a pivot into electronic sounds. That's what I remember when I went to listen to it as well. If you actually categorise it though, you've got the opening track making an immediate show of it, and then like, one other song? Most of the album isn't too far removed from the expected rock sound. But in a more general sense, it shows how readily these perceptions can set in, and how easily you can convince yourself it's true. If it can be true with regard to an album I've actually listened to dozens of times, imagine if it were an artist, or even discography that I'm clearly not going out of my way to explore. Anyway, welcome to Part 2 of the "maybe" (#826) blurb, except I guess this came first.

I don't want to just talk about "Tickets To My Downfall" though, what about mgk in general? It's one where I don't want to trust the narrative because for all the hate he gets across the board, I feel like most people only really ever heard some combination of "Bad Things", "Rap Devil" and "my ex's best friend". In the case of "Rap Devil", mgk's diss track to Eminem, that's a war that I generally see Eminem declared the winner of. Of course that's gonna happen. Stans are gonna Stan even when Eminem is making fun of mgk for being one. If you ask me, I do think "Killshot" is probably the more biting and effective song, but "Rap Devil" is more enjoyable to listen to because it sounds better (although he really served Eminem that auto-tune chorus up on a platter. Between that and the "Recovery" lyric, there are finally consequences for making easy mistakes to be called out upon).

As for "my ex's best friend", it just feels weird to me that the big hit from mgk's break out pop punk album is such a dodgy representation of it. It sounds more like a trap song with a half-hearted rock sound to cosplay the idea of pop punk but not committing to it. That's in addition to being barely 2 minutes long and having a blackbear verse. That just makes me wonder when people laugh at this career pivot, how many of them have *only* heard that song, and amidst its radio success, heard it so many times that it feels like they've heard "Tickets To My Downfall" over and over again, but really it's just that one. Anyway, we're not covering that one because triple j were fairly selective about the mgk they broadcasted in 2020 so "forget me too" is the only one, and the last time I have to wax paragraphs about mgk.

I come into "Tickets To My Downfall" with the uncommon situation of having listened to "mainstream sellout" first, so if I'm being honest, I wasn't seeing that much difference between the two. Maybe the skits were more intrusive on this one. Nonetheless, listening to "forget me too" makes me feel like this genre experiment wasn't for nothing. Any issue I have with that other song, this one better understands the assignment. The guitars come with more crunch and tempo, and we trade in for a better guest star as well. We'll see a bit more of Halsey experimenting with genres in this list, and suffice to say, I'm a fan.

#762. Spacey Jane - Skin (#15, 2020)

71st of 2020

Hottest 100 discourse has always been an endless back & forth between the folks who want there to be more breezy, lightweight songs by Australian bands with little international attention, and those who think there's too much of it. That's gotten especially true lately as the carved out real estate has gotten under serious threat. In any case, where you fall on that spectrum really defines you on a song like "Skin", either a masterpiece example of what music is about, or three minutes of nothing better spent elsewhere.

Where I land on it is that it's a Spacey Jane song that doesn't really have that big 'it' factor to it that you could squint and find in other songs they've put out. I always think of it as just the slower one that doesn't really do anything until near the end, and I could easily believe that I just spent 5 minutes getting there. I can definitely find better examples elsewhere in their catalogue, but it's something at least. Just mashing away at those keys really adds a good amount of excitement to it.

#761. Kira Puru - Molotov (#75, 2018)

78th of 2018

I really have to apologise to Kira Puru. They've had a history in having to point out to festival line up posters that they've misspelt their name, which must just get so annoying. I'm sadly guilty of doing the same thing. My dumb excuse is that I mostly knew them initially for featuring on a song by an Australian rapper (who will eventually appear on this list), but I frequently scrub off the feature credits on my iTunes library to make for tidier last.fm stats. I spent a lot more time hearing the name than seeing it written. Vowels are tricky. A lot of the time we just kind of mumble through them in a way that you could sometimes put any of the main 5 in and it's believable. I run all of these posts through a spellchecker before they go live and nearly every mistake I make is not knowing if it should be an 'a' or an 'e', there are just so many words to memorise.

I won't make the same mistake again though in this case. It certainly helps that Kira Puru managed to carve out a solo career. I never loved this song in particular, but was thrilled to see it find a place on the countdown. It was payback for a year prior, I voted for their song "Tension" which I thought had the makings of a varsity entrant, but sadly didn't really go anywhere. That was the year in which I was the very first voter in the countdown though, so I guess technically speaking, they started off the voting in the top 10, and no one can take that away from them.

"Molotov" rides a fairly similar wave to "Tension". A similar focus on the bouncing bass lines with both of them. I think I was pre-empted in a similar way in 2017 with my love of Selena Gomez's song "Bad Liar", an odd song that samples Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer" and comes through far better than it has any right to. If we look away from that minimalism though, I can see that "Molotov" provides a bit more upbeat closure to it. The hook is tried and true though. Everyone loves "Poker Face", why not find a new thing to stick 'muh-muh-muh' in front of? I'm not sure the actual chorus result is quite the payoff that's promised. It's giving off those crowd chanting vocals from Usher's "OMG" that I've always thought to sound a bit cheap. I'm not usually that interested in Punk Goes Pop-style covers, but there's potential in this. I just want the whole song to go nuts I guess.

#770-#766

#770. Milky Chance - Flashed Junk Mind (#44, 2014)

75th of 2014

I mainly associate this song with the fact that it peaked at #51 in Australia. All things considered, that's a pretty good showing for a duo whom I don't think many would predict had a second hit in them, or certainly wouldn't have picked this song as that. With that in mind, #51 is a pretty good showing, it didn't chart in many other countries (although it's gone Gold & Silver in the US & UK respectively). It's just a very slight missed opportunity. I can think of songs from 2013 and 2015's countdown that also peaked at #51 and make the same association, maybe I'll mention it.

I'm not sure if it really happens anymore, but back when iTunes was a more relevant barometer on the charts, it was fairly common to see staggered release dates around the world. It'd usually either be because of licensing or trying to best capitalise on market timing around the world. Some things just never make it to Australia even today. I lament hearing a Young Knives song I loved on triple j back in 2011 and it's still never made it over here.

There's another side of this coin and it's a peculiar one. A lot of iTunes releases were fairly automated. Probably someone setting a planned release date and it just happening. The side effect of this is that if you were poised and ready, you could probably catch a download for an album that wasn't actually supposed to be released in your country, and could disappear from the store in weeks or perhaps hours. I know this because I downloaded Milky Chance's remaining entry on iTunes back in 2013. At some point, someone decided to market the song over here (I dunno, maybe my download helped persuade them?), and so they took the whole album down, only to eventually put it up for pre-order again. The album debuted in the top 10 and sold well for months, something it may not have done if it were just sitting in the iTunes store already, so it was a successful strategy, but it does make this song a peculiar example. If you're willing to be particularly strict, you can say that this is a rare modern Hottest 100 entry that actually polled beyond its year of eligibility. The other entry is exempt from this rule though actually for reasons I'll definitely mention when we get to it. I'm not saying that it should be barred from the list, just that it's a peculiar situation that I just happened to have a little-known experience about.

Unless I'm very much not fond of them, I find myself usually rooting for one hit wonders to break their status. Perhaps the best spot to land in is to be one of those artists remembered as such, but able to save face with on a technicality. Unless you're the Eve6 guy and you prefer to think of yourself as one. So I was rooting for this one even though it wasn't really a track I ever loved. That's part of why the #51 peak stung so much at the time, although with "Cocoon" (#834) they pretty safely closed the book on that discussion in Australia at least. That said, I'm pretty happy to go to bat for any artist that can get multiple Hottest 100 entries, as not being a one hit wonder. It might not have the same reach as the actual charts, but it's a far more exclusive club. A lot of artists usually back in the day would just skirt the system by putting their bigger hit on the CD single for the follow up, and deleting that previous single, forcing all the late arrivals to Vitamin C's "Graduation (Friends Forever)" to have to buy "The Itch" instead. Vitamin C has more top 10 hits in Australia than R.E.M., what a country.

I think it's pretty difficult to explain the appeal of Milky Chance to anyone who's not already down with it. Somehow this odd German accent wormed its way into us so deep that it caught us listening to a song called "Flashed Junk Mind". The best part of that was definitely triple j listing all of the songs in the 2014 countdown that had body parts in the title, complete with a diagram. We've already had "Left Hand Free" (#936), but honestly this is the sort of essential journalism that warrants funding the ABC. 

#769. Hilltop Hoods (feat Adrian Eagle) - Clark Griswold (#44, 2018)

80th of 2018

One of my earliest movie watching memories is having a VHS recording of "National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1". I'm not confident that I've ever watched the whole thing, just the first couple of scenes were enough to satisfy me, with a remarkable tendency to make me laugh at parodies of things I've never seen. There's another movie I remember seeing the ending of, that I've not yet been able to uncover, but given the style of comedy and the likelihood that I'm going to be fed from the same source, it seems very likely to be another National Lampoon movie. Perhaps at some point I'll need to make a habit of watching them just to find it.

This gave me an excuse to start on that. It had somehow never crossed my mind that this song, named after the "Vacation" patriarch lived alongside previous Hottest 100 entrants The Griswolds (#869) as being cut from the same naming cloth. In modern Hottest 100 terms, Hilltop Hoods are definitely the oldheads of the group, so of course they're going to name their song after a character from an early '80s screwball comedy, they probably grew up watching it.

If I end up pining for more and watching "Christmas Vacation", I may have more to say, but the original movie is fun! It's the kind of comedy that's grounded in enough realistic conceit that gags are more of an interruption at times, which can really catch you off guard. Shout out to a young Anthony Michael Hall for some of the best dry line reads. Chevy Chase is great as Clark Griswold as well. I'm reminded of Darryl Kerrigan in "The Castle", the fish out of water naïveté as the simple living dad comes face to face with the wider world. He acts upon his desires in a much more forceful way, but there's something relatable about the whole thing. I think the way he can manage to convince his family to go along with his improvisations makes the film better than if it were just constant bickering.

For "Clark Griswold", this reference point finds itself in a few lyrics here and there. Suffa does a pretty good cosplay of the character in the video, Pressure not quite as much. Debris plays a detective instead with some great screen presence, and Adrian Eagle is here just being Adrian Eagle.

I think it's a reasonably fun song. Another one where I'd say the verses are probably catchier than the chorus, but Adrian Eagle isn't doing a bad job here either. I've said this about Kanye West's "Hurricane" (#911) before, but the Hoods are somewhat pushed out of the way on their own song. Just one verse each, and by the time Pressure finishes his, there's about 90 seconds still left in the song, so Adrian Eagle's outro is longer than both of the two verses put together. I definitely felt more at home with their other 2018 entry that didn't have a guest vocalist.

#768. Baker Boy - Cool As Hell (#44, 2019)

70th of 2019

It's hard to not root for Baker Boy. I think about a lot of the Indigenous artists we have making waves lately and most of them come about after Baker Boy. Not only that, but he's from the Yolngu tribe in the Northern Territory, fairly remote in terms of producing famous names. I would be remiss not to mention Dr. G Yunupingu, who passed away a few months after Baker Boy released his debut single, and he came from the same tribe. It's not just a demographic stat point either, as he frequently raps in his native tongue and in a way where the sheer joy just drips through it. He's having fun, and wants you to join in.

If there's an obvious issue to be had with looking at everything through music charts, it's that a wider majority will vote alike and any smaller demographic will never catch up. Baker Boy could make some serious waves if he represented a demographic that was more than 4% of Australians. As it is, his debut album came out in 2021 with this song on it, and he was modestly outsold by Coldplay and The Beatles.

It did surprise me just how much of a push for crossover stardom was made for Baker Boy. His songs are constantly appearing in commercials, and even sometimes making it beyond the realm of triple j. This era has not been kind for Australian artists breaking through to the mainstream but I can see why he was seen as having a shot. In any case, he's been named Young Australian of the Year, and last year a painting of him won the Packing Room Prize in the Archibald Prize world. He's done plenty well for himself.

I do find myself wondering about his change in direction. This was the first single he released following a signing to Island Records & Universal Music, and it's always felt to me that his music got sanded down a little in the transition. That's not all bad, actually two of my favourite songs of his came about through this period, though they don't land on this list (talking about "Move" and "Better Days"). The core ideals of his music haven't changed either. I just feel like this song doesn't quite hit the spot of being quite as 'cool as hell' as it wants to be. This is where I make a Poochie joke. It's still pretty good in general, Baker Boy is always on point. The hook just misses the mark on being slick and lands on daggy instead.

#767. Mikhael Paskalev - I Spy (#75, 2013)

85th of 2013

Hey, it didn't take too long to follow that Milky Chance tangent. This song also peaked at #51 on the ARIA Chart, after it had already placed in the Hottest 100. It did so under brutal fashion, vaulting to #51 on two non-consecutive weeks, the same two weeks that some guy called Ryan Keen decided to debut at #50, and then pop back in at #47. Dude's entire existence on the ARIA Chart is to troll Mikhael Paskalev. Neither of these guys are Australian, and I'm not certain that either of them charted anywhere else. Australia is just brewing up the weirdest beef for the fun of it.

Anyway the comparisons with Milky Chance don't end. Firstly, he's got a moustache, and also this song was unquestionably released in 2012, even in Australia. There's a review on iTunes over here from November 2012. It actually got released in March of 2012, but triple j didn't hop onto it until September of 2013. It's another one of those somewhat antiquated processes for them that used to be more common, and easier to get away with since hardly anyone would notice or care. The song probably got popular in the first place because of the music video, which has some pretty slick editing while Mikhael Paskalev does some extremely unslick things. It's a memorable vibe.

If you need a song to go along with that, then this is a pretty fun one. It's got a chorus that really jumps out and grabs your attention. I find the rest of the song is filled with the occasional filler phrase that gets to be a little grating. It's giving off the throwback to a Devendra Banhart sound until you're assaulted by percussion every minute or so.

#766. Ruel - Dazed & Confused (#89, 2018)

79th of 2018

Alright alright alright, so I follow the Spotify charts pretty religiously every day. You can almost guarantee I've looked at them in the last 24 hours. Years before this, it was the iTunes charts. Something about the popularity bars and watching them evolve was so thoroughly addictive. Spotify gives us exact numbers and it works even better. You get exact day to day and week to week figures to tell us exactly what everyone's clicking on and off over time. Both come with their own issues. It's nice to think of it as an irrefutable rank of popularity, and maybe it still should be, but sometimes you just see how the sausage is made and it makes a mockery of the thing. It was true then, and it's true now that people will possibly listen to something if you tell them to, but it's a lot of a better shot than if you don't. I've witnessed some truly bizarre chart behaviour when things are left to the whims of this.

One of the most peculiar instances of this comes in the form of "Dazed & Confused". It's something I don't think has ever happened again and I'm not sure why it happened in the first place. Was it a goof, or intentional? Basically, not long after this song was released, it got a coveted slot on Hot Hits Australia, the biggest playlist on Spotify here and something of a kingmaker. Ruel had previously just popped into the Spotify top 200 for a single day with his song "Don't Tell Me", but this new single was buoyed by the playlist to things well out of Ruel's previous reach. After a few weeks it was placed right up near the top of the playlist (#3 to be exact) where you'll get the most exposure. That brief moment managed to get the song as high as #27 on the Spotify chart. It didn't get a full week enjoying that spike though so it ended up peaking at #53 on the ARIA Chart. The reason being that in the middle of that chart week it was replaced on the playlist by his new single "Younger" (#966) that had just come out a few days before. It wasn't even a 1:1 replacement though, as "Younger" appeared much lower on the playlist, Ruel really got screwed over on that exchange. As a result, "Dazed & Confused" stocks plummeted in a way that's almost never been seen before. A week after it was #27 on the Spotify chart, it was down to #115. If they'd waited just one more day to make the switch, it'd probably be a top 50 hit. As it stands, "Painkiller" (#806) is the only Ruel song to manage it. I don't like to harp on about label bungles because there's usually more going on behind the scenes and they always win in the long run, but this is just such a baffling misplay that accomplished nothing.

"Dazed & Confused" is also a song recorded by Australian recording artist Ruel and released in the year 2018. With how many ears it did reach at the time, it feels like a failure to only barely make the Hottest 100, though Ruel certainly got better at pulling that off in the years that followed. Ruel was the kind of precocious artist I was pre-disposed to disliking, and I generally did, but I always had a bit of a soft spot for this song. He's done a lot in this vein of blue eyed soul but he manages a pretty effective hook for this one. This came out about a year after "Don't Tell Me" and the puberty shift in his voice is very apparent (in a good way!) If there's a problem to be had in the song, it's not Ruel but M-Phazes. The drums just sound awfully tinny at times and don't mesh well with the guitar either. I still like the song but there needs to be a better version of it.

#775-#771

#775. The Wombats - Is This What It Feels Like to Feel Like This? (#82, 2022)

77th of 2022

This could possibly be the last Wombats song that ever polls in the Hottest 100. They couldn't quite make it in 2024 with their latest lead single, which doesn't bode well for next time. On the other hand, maybe they just need to do another Australian tour at an opportune time to win everyone over again. When they were promoting their second album, they toured Australia three times in less than 12 months. As it stands, this mouthful of a song title is the most recent Wombats song to poll, and if it's the last, 16 years is a pretty good innings.

"Is This What It Feels Like to Feel Like This?" probably just makes a strong case for their pulling power over the Hottest 100. Here we have a song whose biggest layer of intrigue is a super lengthy title, and the fact that they actually do say it in the song's hook. Back in 2008 we more or less got two helping of that with Ida Maria and The Black Kids (the latter isn't quite right I know, but the spirit is there). Also it's so funny how vintage those references are and yet The Wombats still pre-date them.

The Wombats are just a competent band usually I think. There tends to be a solid foundation, and I think with experience, they've gotten better at getting the most out of the mixing process. I'm not immune to the rough edges of "Let's Dance To Joy Division" or "Backfire At The Disco", but we've all gotten quite a bit older since then, and it can be nice to hear this smoothly polished rendition of a band that's done more than enough to prove their value. Or I don't know, maybe someone outside of Australia is reading this and is as perplexed and amused as I am sometimes when I find out about the most unusual careers that are being kept aloft in Japan or parts of Europe.

#774. Glass Animals - I Don't Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Dance) (#23, 2021)

81st of 2021

I can't help but keep slotting in references to the latest countdown, so I suppose congratulations should be in order for Glass Animals. I haven't seen all of the current season so there's a small chance I'm outdated on this, but a peculiar Jeopardy! fact is that no contestant has ever won exactly 10 games in a row since the show removed the limit on streaks. Plenty have fallen on all the nearby hurdles, but the dozen or so who came in as a 10 day champion have always won that next game. Why am I saying this? Because I'm autistic, but also because Glass Animals scored their 10th Hottest 100 entry this year, and then 5 minutes later they had an 11th. Much like The Wombats, that's a lot of longevity. Are they perhaps coasting on the success of that one song I'll definitely get to eventually? It's possible. This particular song is probably the best case for that argument.

You can never fully prove that voter FOMO is acted upon. Psychologically it's interesting to think about. It's the manner in which the overall feeling and perception of the artist outside of the voting list influences where the votes go. You can talk about voting for the band, but there's a specific breed of it when the right circumstance arrives. That circumstance could be Glass Animals having the most popular song of 2021 and it not being eligible for that year's Hottest 100 because it already polled the year before...and won. When people talk about how "Sweet Disposition" or "Pumped Up Kicks" should have gotten a second chance, I like to joke that this particular Glass Animals song that clearly got more popular in 2021 also deserves a shot.

This would be a great segue if this song was just a like for like re-tread of that one, but it's not. This is a deluxe album track coming in a year late, so they probably already had it ready to go way before their listener stock multiplied. #23 is a very generous finish for a song with that kind of pedigree, but anyone who thought 'Sure, I'll vote for the one available Glass Animals song' has done their part to make it happen. Maybe that sounds too harsh on this song as if it doesn't have merit. I can certainly understand "I Don't Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Dance)" as a concept. It's much more upbeat and immediately catchy than most Glass Animals singles. Might have been too instant though because I burnt out on it in record time.

#773. Tash Sultana - Mystik (#28, 2017)

80th of 2017

Maybe this isn't the right thing to get hung up about, but I think there are two important things in writing. Firstly having your own voice, and secondly being able to communicate what you're trying to say. The former will probably become more obvious over time as we bear witness to more pieces of writing generated by ChatGPT and the like, and it winds up standardising and learning from itself. The latter is just an important ability to recognise when you're waffling too much and any central idea is just lost in a sea of words. Smart writing isn't just stuffing your sentences with obtuse words, but instead the ability to convey complex ideas without them.

I have absolutely no idea what's going on with the stream of consciousness word flow in this song. Tash says it's about ego death, and the last lyric of the song supports that, as well as a few others, but it sure is a lot of odd lines to go side by side with it. This isn't a huge deal breaker for me, I love a lot of songs that I take no specific meaning from. I just need an angle to write about this song because it's not the kind of song that lends itself to much analysis.

The first few minutes of this song aren't high on surprises or thrills. There's a sound palette that's not far removed from the "Electric Feel" Like A Version (#951) that came out in the same year. Not the strongest hook, but pretty standard all around. Then at the end we get a blaring brass section that itself breaks down into the closest a Tash Sultana song could come to being a club banger. That's a nice novelty at least.

#772. Bakar - Hell N Back (#62, 2019)

72nd of 2019

Depending on the era you're looking at, the Hottest 100 is a popularity contest contained in its own world. If we want the bigger picture, we can look at the ARIA Charts, or Billboard, or what have you. Since time immemorial, the Hottest 100 has played host to a mix of popular chart hits, and esoteric cuts living alongside them. It always begs the question, if #63 is a popular chart hit, couldn't the same happen to #62 if it got the same exposure? Sometimes we get that answer, and get to see a category 2 song turn into a category 1 song. Bonus points if the song in question sounded destined to stay as it was for all eternity, it gives hope for even more just like it. I might just be describing the life cycle of "Hell N Back" right now.

There are a handful of these cases. I'm definitely thinking of a different song that snuck onto the 2014 list right now. Sometimes the Hottest 100 manages to be a hotbed for those early adopters who are clearly hearing something the rest of us haven't noticed yet. In the case of Bakar, I think this was a song that was making a respectable impact on release, but the kind that doesn't show itself on any charts. On most days, it takes about 50,000 streams to reach the Spotify charts in Australia. But what about those songs that are doing 20,000 streams a day? It's hardly negligible but it's not getting any recognition. As such, landing somewhere in the middle of the 2019 Hottest 100 was the first tangible sign of "Hell N Back"'s success. It would follow that with some minor genre chart success in the US, and then becoming a fully-fledged hit song around 2023-2024. This is one of a growing handful of songs in this list that became a hit while I was putting this together.

There's a layer of amusement to this whole process too. This idea of having gotten accustomed to this song, and then watching everyone else, outside of this purview suddenly having to deal with it. It's fascinating to see that different perspective sometimes, like seeing Gotye discourse in 2011-2012 start with people who were previously aware of his work, and drastically shifting to those who weren't. I think there's a lot you can take away from it regarding your own experiences of being on the outside looking in.

Bakar's a bit of a weird one for this concept though because it's a bit of a weird song here. When I first heard the song in the countdown, I had a wave of confusion, not really sure how this unknown singer managed to generate so many votes. I still wouldn't say I completely get it, and given the score of its success has expanded so much, it's even harder to place it. The song is reasonably catchy though, and Bakar's distinctly British accent gives it a little more character. You're still left wondering why this was put in front of so many people, but on the other hand, once it's there, it's fair enough to understand why one might keep listening.

#771. Lime Cordiale - Inappropriate Behaviour (#13, 2019)

71st of 2019

Last year, Lime Cordiale announced a co-headlining tour with another popular Australian band. They did so by first kicking up a fake beef online based around the idea that "Inappropriate Behaviour" was ripping off one of their songs. I remember the night I found out about this and with my priorities in check, thinking 'Yes! I have an angle from which to tackle this entry'. It didn't occur to me until now that I'm sitting down to do so that the band in question still hasn't showed up on this list, so it's been all for naught. I will always respect commitment to the bit though.

You know how it's impossible to make the claim that something is pretentious without coming across as pretentious yourself? That's the bind that this song lands in. A song about finding that a friend's girlfriend is manipulating them, and wanting them to wake up to avoid those seeds of deception. You should listen to me when I tell you not to listen to them. That they call the very act 'Inappropriate behaviour' falls under that umbrella where it's hard to tell how seriously Lime Cordiale are taking these things. You wish they could have a face to face moment with this girl just to see how this statement of disapproval might go down.

It's a lightweight but pleasant tune. You'll notice a nice little guitar riff that's going around behind the track, but you'll notice even more when they take it away briefly in the verses. The song feels so barren and empty in these moments, compounded by the verses occasionally slipping out of the catchy cadence they've got going.

#780-#776

#780. Parkway Drive - Vice Grip (#58, 2015)

74th of 2015

I'm always interested in how metal groups get big. I'll have more to say on the topic when we get to a certain other stalwart group, but it always feels like two fighting forces in a genre that thrives on being uncompromising, but popularity requires compromise. Parkway Drive always struck me as a slight exception to the rule. The metal bands that get big enough to land on my radar generally have a way in, usually a melodic clean vocalist. Parkway don't really have that, it's all Winston doing his thing.

Maybe it's regressing into the point I was making before, but an odd thing happens with them in the Hottest 100. They've never been a reliable presence, never polling consecutive albums. In fact, they only seem to make it in here on albums where they're seen to jump the shark to an extent. This is a conversation I am not really part of, but even I could tell something was a bit off when I heard "Vice Grip". To be sure though, I went back and listened to the band's first two albums. Things get controversial after that, but those two are generally well received. I think I get it too. I'm leaning on the side of preferring "Killing with a Smile" over "Horizons" but it might just be because I listened to it first. They're a band that got their act together very quickly, and I can see why for a lot of music fans, Australia is known as the country Parkway Drive come from.

"Vice Grip" isn't a total departure, but the first time I ever heard someone compare it to Bon Jovi, that's a comparison I've never been able to shake off. Something about those chorus chant vocals is just a band out of their wheelhouse trying to make a stadium rock anthem. I can imagine accepting it for what it is and embracing the sheer cheese factor, but I prefer my Parkway to be a touch more unrelenting.

#779. Hilltop Hoods - I'm Good? (#9, 2020)

73rd of 2020

I said before that the music release cycle is too long to go to the 2020 countdown and expect it to be full of songs responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are exceptions. When something becomes history defining, you can't help but ponder how long it'll take to ripple out elsewhere. The first ever Jeopardy! clue mentioning the pandemic was in October 2021, and you could wonder what the first song written about it was. As best I can see, two Vietnamese singers, Min & Erik released a song explicitly about it in February 2020. In the west, the first notable ones were OneRepublic's "Better Days" and then twenty one pilots' "Level Of Concern". A little later, Australia caught up as Hilltop Hoods put out the song "I'm Good?" for charity. That incentive may have helped its sales, to date it's the group's last top 50 hit, but it wasn't just coasting on that since enough people liked it to land it in the top 10 of the Hottest 100. It's also their 8th and final song to do so, and shares a trait with their first, in that it's essentially just a solo Suffa track.

Initially hearing this song, it's possible to believe that the song was already written beforehand and just forced onto the theme. For the first verse it's just a song about being sick and stuck at home. By the second verse, there's no escaping it. Regrettably it's been 5 years now and there's probably no chance that 'Weird' Al will ever put out "My Corona". It's all pretty silly and yet makes for a solid time capsule of what 2020 was really like, on the off chance that future generations decades from now will get their perspective from obscure Hilltop Hoods songs.

If there's a criticism to be laid down, it's that you can definitely tell that the song was rushed out for a timely release. The beat is upbeat and fun, but the more you pay attention to it, the more limited it feels. There's a bit of a lift with a horn section on the chorus, but it's half-hearted. You get the same situation with the chorus lyrics. Somewhat catchy hook, but it gets drawn out for quite a while serving up mostly the same few words over and over again. Perfectly fine for the time, but it's been 5 years now, we're allowed to have more elaborate Hilltop Hoods songs again.

#778. Bombay Bicycle Club - Luna (#98, 2014)

76th of 2014

This entry has me wondering who the luckiest Hottest 100 entrant might be. A few ways you can look at this. Definitely worth noting Powderfinger, The Cat Empire and the lead singer for Birds of Tokyo and another band for landing at #100 twice, but what this had me wondering is if Bombay Bicycle Club has had the luckiest scraping over the line with two entries ever. It's made more potent with my strong suspicion that no other song of theirs has even come close, so their only two real attempts both did what they needed and little more. In case you were wondering, there's a rapper with two guest appearances, one credited and the other not, both no higher than #93. There's also another rapper with a decent few appearances but their two lead artist entries are no higher than #95. I would also be remiss to not mention Pennywise, three entries ever at #90, #91 & #96. We live in a society that mildly appreciates "Society".

The 2011 countdown is one I have a lot of fondness for. I know, your favourite Hottest 100 is the one when you were x years old but it's got a lot of things going for it that 2010 and 2012 didn't necessarily have. It's also the year I was introduced to Bombay Bicycle Club, notably their song "Shuffle". I thought that song was pretty alright. It's a bit like "Daylight" by Matt and Kim but with some of the more obnoxious elements ironed out. 14 years later and that main piano loop is unforgettable.

"Luna" doesn't have that same kind of character to it. I probably liked it more at the time for that reason, just a low thrills kind of song that sweeps you up in its big emotional swells. It's also one of those songs where the backing vocals are distinct, have their moment to shine, and the song is better for it. On paper, this song is everything and it's great. In reality I hear it now and it just washes over me. It lacks a certain grit, and the chorus isn't quite the payoff it wants to be.

#777. Lime Cordiale - Facts of Life (#15, 2022)

78th of 2022

This is a nice and pleasant song to kick off the countdown, real #95 finisher and its dedicated fans are stoked it managed to get in. Hang on, I'm being told to double check where this actually finished...wow. I jest but if I were to blindly recall all of the Lime Cordiale placements, I'd be wildly off on this one. In the two years since, they've not gotten especially close to this position again, so "Facts of Life" really snuck in while the getting was good.

Worst thing about this song is that there isn't really anything for me to criticise here. It does remind me of a Black Box Recorder song with a similar name that I quite like, but yeah, no scathing critique of what's gone horribly wrong here. Just shocked at how popular it was.

#776. Charli XCX - Boys (#60, 2017)

81st of 2017

I didn't do this intentionally, but it did work out very well to wait until after the 2024 Hottest 100 had aired to start writing about this. The whole Charli XCX Hottest 100 history was drastically re-written, largely in the space of about 2 hours. An artist who has perennially been dodged by the radar has finally gotten their time in the sun, plus probably a few more folks' time as well. I'm not here to debate the merits of that album anyway, but it sure is interesting that prior to scoring 8 entries in a single year, Charli XCX had only ever made the Hottest 100 twice before, first with "I Love It" in 2012, and then with this. If you find yourself saying 'but what about...', the answer is probably that triple j didn't play that particular song. Their response was always more scattershot, often in a way that worked to my liking. You wouldn't pick "End Of The World" and "5 In The Morning" as being among the anointed few, but I'm glad they were because they're probably my two favourite songs of hers.

There are two clear gimmicks to this song. Firstly, the unusual choice to sample the coin collecting sound from Super Mario Bros., arguably one of the most important sound effects in all of gaming because that sheer dopamine hit it provides will justify collecting so many mostly useless trinkets in that game and the next one. Collecting like twenty of them at once has the same effect as watching the King of Spades come bouncing down at the end of Solitaire, just the satisfaction of seeing the overlapping layers like that, but I digress. The other gimmick is the music video. It leans so aggressively into the song concept that we need that Celadon Gym old guy to say 'This video is great, it's full of boys!' That in itself is an example of what she's playing contrary to, because the whole video is full of said boys acting and occasionally dressing like we've all gotten used to seeing women doing in music videos. These two gimmicks work perfectly with each other too because with so many people in the video, hardly anyone gets enough screentime to be appreciated. It's all just 'ding!', on to the next one. It has to be said too; it's a truly fascinating cast. I won't go through them all, but just note that we've got Hottest 100 alumni in Flume, Stormzy, Denzel Curry, Vance Joy and Oli Sykes, to name a few.

The song itself? Charli XCX has constantly straddled between music for the radio and music for the blogs. Until 2024, there was a serious issue with finding a balance between the two, so the songs that do pop off don't seem to have many people sticking around for it. This song does a decent job of fitting between the two. It wasn't really a big hit, and isn't really most people's favourite song of hers. But it's worth noting that for a song that's stranded without an album, it has as many Spotify streams as "Break the Rules", a song that was a hit in its time. For me it's a cute song, but probably not the one I'd seek out when her catalogue has so much more to offer.

#785-#781

#785. Meg Mac - Something Tells Me (#76, 2019)

73rd of 2019

You saw the numbers here, this is only slightly less popular than "Blinding Lights" (#786). That's the unmentioned part of the equation there, that song being released right at the end of November makes for terrible Hottest 100 timing. By the time the countdown aired, everyone and their mother knew that it was way too low. But still, that gives a lot of artists bragging rights that they beat The Weeknd. Not Meg Mac, but she's not far off.

"Something Tells Me" has the sound of Meg Mac with a bigger budget. There's a charm to her early hits, but a voice like this needs the right setting to pull off the gravitas. This song was written with the songwriter we previously called Paige IV, but more often Sarah Aarons, and has more of her instinct for pacing. Not one that stands out a lot in the Meg Mac catalogue but it all mostly works. Really it's just the slight wordless clunk of a hook I have a problem with, sounding like she's either filling time, or can't remember the err uhh next line.

#784. Ocean Alley - Happy Sad (#100, 2018)

82nd of 2018

I didn't properly get to hear this on Hottest 100 day. For whatever reason, the Perth broadcast took several minutes to go live and by then the song was just about over. I grew a little spiteful of this song later on when I found out that King Princess's "Talia" landed at #101. I prefer that song over the two that made it, and it's funny to think that Ocean Alley & King Princess could've been tied at 3 entries each if the votes went a little differently, rather than 4 and 2. That being said, if it was the #100 song instead, then it certainly would've been over before I even got to hear it, so you just can't win sometimes.

Ocean Alley are an extremely easy band to make fun of because it's such low hanging fruit, and who's honestly going to come at you for it? This song even serves it up for you, 'It could've been good, it could've been great', your words, not mine, Ocean Alley. This five and a half minute slow jam is doing nothing to convince any doubters. At the same time, it's hardly their most prominent song so it's not gonna catch any specific heat, but me personally, I had a lot of my ire specifically towards this one.

I couldn't tell you when in my dozen or so listens that this started to click a bit with me, just that hey, the system works. I guess I appreciate that "Happy Sad" straddles between being a jam session and a functional pop song. Maybe both of those aspects come at odds with each other, but there's a decent enough effort on both sides of the fence to give me something to look forward to.

#783. G Flip (feat Lauren Sanderson) - GAY 4 ME (#11, 2022)

80th of 2022

I hate to have to make this the preface but it's probably important context. I'm a cis straight man. There's no getting around it. I tend to find that in a lot of the groups I hang out with online, this default character profile is something of a novelty, and I do find a lot of the time that my general interests line up a lot with those of people on the LGBTQI+ spectrum. I also recognise that a lot of them are generally younger than me and maybe then the thought occurs that times have changed a lot since I was growing up, and maybe a younger version of myself would have spent more time mulling over this particular identity dilemma. But the person I am now? No dysphoria, no reason to think of myself as the wrong version of my true identity.

But actually the more damning problem I have is a complete lack of romantic experience. I've got a bad hand and I accept that. Maybe one day the right person will come into my life and change that, but I'm pretty doubtful. It means I have no space for commentary on any songs about relationships that go beyond obvious platitudes. I hear a song like future Hottest 100 #1 "Good Luck, Babe!" and to me it sounds like toxic, desperate gaslighting, but I have to defer to everyone else who loves it to assure me that it's describing a very real phenomenon. If there was something wrong with it, I sure would have heard about it by now.

Case in point, the only time I ever see this particular song brought up is to point out what a horrible misfire it is. A song calling out a supposedly straight person for not accepting their actual identity. Management is frantically trying to tell me that these are two drastically different pictures and I'm so confused.

If the only problem people had with this song was the way it sounds, that's something I can understand better. I'm not fully on that train of thought but I can see where they're coming from. This is a drastically different sound for G Flip than I'm used to. Post-dubstep pop rock that's as much 360's "Impossible" as it is Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive". G Flip had made a lot of songs that didn't stand out much before this (feel like in general there's a lot more to dig into with their huge 2023 haul than the few years before it), so I was taken aback by it. Listening to it now, I wish they went a bit harder on the guitars. Just fully commit to this sludgy mess of a sound. Also Lauren Sanderson is here. I don't know much about them except that they don't sound different enough to G Flip to really stand out when their verse starts. You could've convinced me that she's just the text-to-speech voice near the end of the song. Still, it's just a weird song to listen to when I'm clearly listening to a conversation where I have nothing to add to it.

#782. Meg Mac - Give Me My Name Back (#59, 2018)

81st of 2018

It might surprise you to know that Meg Mac's entire discography barely makes it over the 2 hour mark. That's with 3 albums, an EP, and various loose singles here and there. The reality is that she really doesn't stuff her albums at all. Both "Give Me My Name Back" and "Something Tells Me" come from her second album that's barely an album at all, with just 7 tracks. Her two full length albums are not much longer either. It's amusing to imagine that the #9 debut on the ARIA Charts for this project was a blip due to it being stunted from this distinction (her other two albums debuted at #2 & #1). With nothing on "Matter Of Time" getting over the line, these two songs may well be her final Hottest 100 entries.

Me ranking both songs very close together is not some admission of them being cut from a similar cloth. They're back to back on the album but it could hardly be less true in this case. "Something Tells Me" was a jaunty, upbeat affair. Here it's dark and brooding, befitting of the song's harrowing message of empowerment to victims of abuse.

I want to say it mostly succeeds but I think the production holds it back a little bit. There's a touch too much emphasis on the fuzzy bass that makes it somewhat reminiscent of that Lorde song I've half talked about (#955). It feels a little dated in 2018 to be trying that out. With this, all I can think about is how I know Meg Mac has had this worked out better elsewhere in that slim discography.

#781. Spacey Jane - It's Been a Long Day (#5, 2022)

79th of 2022

We've finally made it to the real deal Spacey Jane material. I'd say welcome to the incomprehensible ranking show, but maybe I should be the one judging the lists. A lot of how their songs have ranked over the years doesn't have much coherence to me, and maybe they're the wrong ones. In 2022 they polled six different songs, mostly all singles with an especially rare standing to get three of them in the top 10. There must be something special with those entries in particular. It's like in 2005 when Wolfmother polled six songs, and right up the top were obviously "Mind's Eye" and "Joker and the Thief"...but also "Apple Tree". Never really made sense of that one but perhaps you needed to be there. I feel the same about "It's Been a Long Day".

Well maybe not to the same degree as "Apple Tree", I just don't think it does quite enough to make it stand out in the Spacey Jane catalogue. We're docked points straight away for the title drop that opens the song. This is where I gesture loudly to what I said about Panama's "Always" (#856). I'm not always a fan of Caleb's lightweight singing style, and that's probably the worst second of it on display.

There's definitely some merit to the lyrics. It's a song where someone's identified their own downward spiral, and potential desire for assistance, but also doesn't want to be a burden or to bring the other person down with them. The video does a decent job at visualising it. I wonder if it was partially inspired by "Better Call Saul", because I'm strongly reminded of the cold open to the episode "Something Stupid". Sharing screen time for mundane actions like brushing teeth but feeling so distant at the same time. Some of the cuts jumble it up a little, but when it works, it's really effective. Also any excuse to bring up one of the 10 TV shows I know.

#790-#786

#790. Tash Sultana - Notion (#32, 2016)

81st of 2016

It's difficult to escape the comparisons to the John Butler Trio career arc. In 2016 Tash Sultana polls two songs, both fairly drawn out but catchy enough to defy the rules. The higher of the two becomes something of a signature song, and in the years that follow, we get numerous attempts to re-capture that hit in a more radio friendly way. We're talking about two songs where it takes roughly 2 minutes before any vocals appear on the record. It's something I suspect might be streaming poison to keep doing. I'm just imagining having "Notion" come on and someone could easily believe that it's a deep cut by Daughter, or more likely, jump out early because it just appears to be an instrumental for quite some time.

This song is not streaming poison at all, and I might go so far as to say it's the proto-typical Tash Sultana song. Helps that it's the title track to their first EP, all 6 tracks and 40 minutes of it. The only thing really holding it back is that it doesn't strike me as very ambitious once it gets going. The mood-setting intro is immediately the highlight and it just mostly stagnates until a guitar solo towards the end. Other than that, the main thing I remember is another instance of a very unsatisfying rhyme (gestures towards "Fire and the Flood" (#988)). Maybe there's a case I'm not thinking of where it works, but I look at notions/ocean rhyme on the chorus and it just feels unsatisfying. Like, you're just feeding us back the first word with a letter chopped off. Sheer stupid pedantry, but it's not a payoff to me.

#789. London Grammar - Baby It's You (#76, 2020)

74th of 2020

As time has gone by, one of the most peculiar aspects of popular music is the way that the albums chart has gone from a definitive popularity measure, to some sort of rout, to a vague combination of the two that's become even more confusing. If something is genuinely ruling the country, it'll get its flowers in perpetuity, but it'll be mixed in with two whole different breeds at the same time. In Australia and the UK, The Weeknd has possibly the biggest album of the decade, a hits package that's since gotten an expansion pack and charts in the top 10 pretty much every week. On raw numbers, it's justifying itself. It makes a decent showing on vinyl sales but in general, it's there because a lot of people are streaming The Weeknd's most popular songs every day. Ironically though, it's never gotten to #1, often because it's being blocked by albums that sell a lot of copies in one week (or even one day), and immediately drop off the face of the earth. These kinds of pseudo-popularity forms are always at battle, and the latter usually wins. I say they win because the shorthand for judging success continues to be peak positions. So much effort is expended to immortalise it, regardless of what happens in the long run.

With that in mind, the difference between a successful campaign and otherwise is massive, and with London Grammar we've seen it first-hand. You might not realise it, but their 3rd album "Californian Soil", which this song would eventually appear on is the band's only Australian #1. Their debut album spent 10 times longer in the chart but suffered from releasing alongside an album that might have a genuine case for being the most popular of the decade. What's more startling though is that London Grammar's next album, released last year, peaked at #79 in Australia. Sometimes this can be the result of a staggered campaign, for instance a late vinyl release (Here I am looking at the Lizzy McAlpine album last year), but it's not the case here. Something must have gone wrong in the promotion because London Grammar did about 1/5th the numbers of the previous album in pretty much all metrics. In saying all that, "Californian Soil" only debuted at #54 on the Spotify album chart despite being the #1 album in the country, dropping to #139 on the second week. You could argue that it's a more accurate showing without the mighty sales buffer. Still, in a world where many artists chug along with no new hits but a cozy #1 debut every few years, it's hard to fathom a harder, more random collapse.

For all that being said, it's not even the first big drop off that London Grammar had. They had everyone in the palm of their hand with their first album. Lots of songs I'll eventually be talking about. If that's not enough, they even complimented that with one of those songs becoming a very big crossover hit in Australia. They had every opportunity to continue being the next big thing and then just didn't. Their second album came out 4 years later and sold quite well, but for the Hottest 100, they barely slid in at #197, the kind of decline that suggests they were just done serving the general population. Luck was on their side in 2019 that they got to work with Flume and score a surprise new hit, and it seems that helped bring them enough favour to return to the Hottest 100 one last time with this song a year later.

Working with Flume may have influenced the sound on this song. Really it sounds a lot like a Vallis Alps throwback, but it's leaning into the band's electronic side in a way you don't usually see. In the context of the album, it sticks out a little bit, but the song never really goes overboard with it so it's not especially jarring. Listening to the album in full, there have always been a couple of songs I took away from it but it's hard to escape the feeling of stagnation, like outside of "Baby It's You", they're not sure where to take their sound and it's a lot of rehashing familiar ground.

One of the riskiest things you can do for your career is to take a very long time between albums. The moment people realise they can go on just fine without your music, is the moment that you've permanently shed a fanbase. For me it's worked well with London Grammar. Every new album cycle, I get re-introduced and get at least some morsel of a treat to enjoy. Hannah's vocal prowess is obviously the main event of the group and she has more than a few ways of making it catch you off guard. "Baby It's You" I don't think does it full justice. Another song that's permanently stuck in first and second gear and never really reaches the wow factor.

#788. SAFIA - Embracing Me (#23, 2015)

75th of 2015

Ignoring everything I just wrote, I don't feel the need to dive over the whole SAFIA history right here. As far as we're concerned, it's all contained in this time frame. A very exact one at that, from 2013 to 2016. The hits dried up very suddenly after that, but while they were making waves, they were very reliable. Maybe that was the SAFIA story all there anyway, we'll see.

Jumping back to 2015, SAFIA had not yet released an album, a very similar situation with their fellow Canberrans Peking Duk. A couple of Peking Duk & SAFIA collaborations will eventually appear on this list. Unlike them though, SAFIA did eventually release an album, and "Embracing Me" was the lead single from it, although I often forget that because it came out over a year earlier.

As someone who was pretty into them at the time, SAFIA had a way of turning every new single into an event around this time. Full support of the board in my eyes while having absolutely no idea what you were going to get. When songs are especially unique like that, I'm always going to remember hearing them the moment they were first unveiled to the listening public. Songs like "Born This Way" by Lady Gaga, or "The Last Man On Earth" by Wolf Alice. I can add "You Are The One" by SAFIA to that pile, and I can speak in high praise as it's the only SAFIA single from this era that didn't poll here. It's the song I most liken to "Embracing Me". Two songs that open up quietly, and let Ben show off his singing chops for about a minute before the drop finally comes in. It's not a total rehash, and on a good day, I might even say that "Embracing Me" pulls it off better. We've got a really solid 50 seconds going on...

I don't like the drop at all. It's a whole lot of bleeps and chopped vocals. It's not a disaster, I think they pulled off what they were trying to do without any metaphorical hiccups, but it's just not anything I want to hear. To make matters worse, it forms the skeleton of the track for most of the rest of it going forward. For such an exciting build up, we just get no real payoff. If you're willing to overlook the creepy lyrics, 'Like embracing me' just isn't a stunner of a hook. It sounds more desperate and cloying with how many times it's repeated.

#787. Haim - Want You Back (#47, 2017)

82nd of 2017

The Hottest 100 reinforces the idea that a lot of people jumped off the Haim ship after their debut album. This is the only song they've polled after that big year for them in 2013. Certainly if you were to compare them to, let's pick London Grammar and SAFIA as two random artists, the album by album stream decline they've got on Spotify is pretty respectable. Maybe it helps when you've gotten a piece of fortune in the stock of eventual Hottest 100 entrant Taylor Swift. As a band that never truly took control of the charts in their home country of America, the collaboration "no body, no crime" might be the only song a lot of people know from them.

I probably could have been one of those people who bought the debut album and then lost interest afterwards, but they have a habit of really catching me off guard sometimes. They're unlucky not to have another entry here collaborating with a certain Scottish DJ on a song I still have a lot of love for a decade later. They've got a small part with a cavalcade of very cool and random names on a "Hunger Games" soundtrack song I love, and then when I thought I'd heard everything from them, the song "3am" from their latest album just floors me. I don't think anyone ever asked for R&B Haim but it works so much better than you'd expect. It was their 7th most popular song in the past year on last.fm (even higher if you include the Thundercat remix probably), so it's not just me going rogue.

I don't have quite the same enthusiasm for "Want You Back". I can see why they went with it as a lead single but it feels almost a little too safe. I recall finding myself more drawn to the super catchy follow up single "Little of Your Love", but in general I feel like the middle section of the album gets into a pretty likeable groove. All the pieces are there for this one, it just doesn't stick the landing.

#786. The Weeknd - Blinding Lights (#71, 2019)

74th of 2019

Answering the question of what the biggest hit song of all time is, is a fruitless endeavour. You want there to be an answer. There are so many cases of two individual songs in isolation where one is objectively more popular without dispute, so a definitive answer must exist. All you can really do in the end though is pick a particular metric to measure. Whether it's sales, radio airplay, a well-sampled poll, you'll probably find something that feels right in that way, but wrong in another. To take sales as an example, you wind up with Elton John's "Candle In The Wind 1997" single usually. Makes sense contextually, but it's not a satisfying answer. Not a lot of people continue to rave about that record, it's hardly Elton's signature song, and realistically, isn't even his signature version of that particular song. If you're looking for something more agreeable, that ticks a wider variety of boxes, and actually feels like a satisfying answer to that question, "Blinding Lights" is not a bad option.

You're probably aware of this one. Released in late 2019, sounded like a hit, and when the Christmas season got out of the way, it very much lived up to that, decimating the charts everywhere as almost undoubtedly the biggest hit of 2020. For about half a century, the biggest hit song of all time on the Billboard Hot 100 was Chubby Checker's version of "The Twist". It had two runs at being the hottest dance craze of the time which allowed for it to unthinkably become a #1 smash hit in two separate runs. Billboard weights its all-time lists with respect to different eras' standards, so while "The Twist" may have only spent 39 weeks on the Hot 100, it was so ahead of the pack that every record breaking smash hit in the '90s/'00s/'10s just could not compete. This was until "Blinding Lights" became the song to unseat it. Surprisingly it only spent 4 weeks at #1 on the Hot 100, due to an utterly tumultuous period for the chart where anyone and everyone was making a joke of the top spot with sales gimmicks taking over for what probably should have been months upon months of domination for The Weeknd. A better way to visualise the domination though is to say that previously the record for weeks in the top 5 was 27, tied by The Chainsmokers' "Closer" and Ed Sheeran's "Shape Of You". "Blinding Lights managed 43 weeks. Australia did manage to let it run rampant for 11 weeks at the top. Smash hits either side of it from Tones And I and Glass Animals (both will appear on this list eventually) slightly overshadow it, but it's a fairly strong innings. Oh and it's also comfortably the most streamed song of all time on Spotify, that's got to give it some credit in the 'This is the song that is liked by the most people' stakes. Its 500 million play lead only extends every single day, so for the time being, it's not going to change any time soon.

The song is fine. Can you tell I find it more interesting talking about chart achievements than about this song in particular? I've always preferred "Heartless", the song he put out a couple of days before this one. More Metro Boomin & Illangelo team ups in my Weeknd discography please. Love the video too, just oozes with chaotic fun. "Blinding Lights" is a more standard procedure kind of fun. Max Martin ticking the boxes of carefully planned fun that just don't stand out quite as much as his earlier masterpieces as pop music has come to better form itself around his standard. Not to mention, a-ha already created the most iconic synth riff of all time, anything else that comes for the crown in such an obvious way as this does, is gonna be viewed relatively unfavourably. With a few exceptions, I'm surprised more people don't see The Weeknd as an extremely generic pop star. So many of his biggest hits are songs that anyone could have made. His Hottest 100 catalogue is extremely frustrating as a result.