#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.