#715-#711

#715. Vera Blue - Mended (#29, 2017)

70th of 2017

Sequencing an album must be difficult. Ideally you just have to make 12-14 certified bangers and call it a day, but realistically there are going to be peaks and valleys and it's important to sequence them correctly. You can tell it works sometimes when I go out of listening to an album feeling like I have a consistently solid time, but then when I actually look back at it on a track by track basis, there are only maybe 2 or 3 standouts. A middling effort can easily be disguised if it's between two highlights.

The first track has to get you off on the right foot though. I remember a decade or so ago thinking that a lot of Australian albums seemed to understand this assignment, so often leading off with a non-single that nonetheless had the punch and excitement of one, and maybe sometimes they'd even end up getting the honours later down the track. On the flip side of this...literally, is the closing track, the last thing you're left with. It can be advantageous to end on a strong note, but it requires some level of trust between the listener and artist. It's great to go out with a bang, but you don't want to backload it so much that people just stop listening before they get there.

"Mended" is a relatively rare entry on this list that serves as the closing track on its album. Or at least, it's supposed to be the last track. Vera Blue later released a deluxe version of "Perennial" that includes two previous singles (one of which will appear on this list) tacked onto the end. That's the only version on Spotify now and there's no indication that it ever wasn't like this. I prefer the album in its original standing. I've never been much for an awkward extended encore no matter how good the songs in question are. Once you've been informed that it's over, you want to catch your breath and leave. It's especially awkward when a song like "Mended" feels like the perfect closer until it isn't one. There's a lot in common with the sound of the opening track "First Week" that strengthens the sequencing.

I quite like "Perennial" going back to it for the first time in many years. It is in fact well sequenced with its collection of singles and non-singles that sound like they could be them. I do have to add a community note to the song "Said Goodbye To Your Mother", where Vera Blue suggests the person who said it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all must belong to the latter group. This is certifiably not true because it's an Alfred Lord Tennyson quote, someone who belongs to neither group as he married, had children, and his wife outlived him.

"Mended" is not a song I felt strongly about at the time but it has grown on me a decent amount since then. It definitely belongs to the camp of songs that sound just a little bit like "Fix You" by Coldplay, or at least ascend to a similar kind of climax. The years that have followed have provided me with an all-time favourite song that also fits this template, a song that will not appear on this list but I'm sure I'll bring it up when it's more relevant. For now we're just sitting on a pretty good interpretation of the idea.

#714. The Jezabels - The End (#83, 2013)

77th of 2013

This time I can efficiently dole out the joke. This is the end. After a brief tenure towards the top of the pedestal, this is the last time The Jezabels ever appeared in the Hottest 100. Granted, I may be overselling the tenure of a band who only ever appeared 4 times, but at the time I positioned them very similarly to Boy & Bear. They were a band who were capable of doing big numbers and the future seemed bright. Where did it all go wrong?

On the record, it feels like the weight of heavy expectations did them in. They started their career with 3 successive EPs that vaulted them higher each time. Their second EP "She's So Hard" managed a rare feat of reaching Gold sales (before streaming) without ever hitting the ARIA top 100, while the 3rd EP "Dark Storm" even managed to reach the ARIA top 40. They'd do it again a year later with "Endless Summer", the lead single to their debut album. Both did quite well, "Endless Summer" taking them to Hottest 100 top 10 glory, and the album joining Boy & Bear in the gang of albums who had Adele rain on their parade. Only difference is The Jezabels never had their happy ending because their second album was blocked by MKTO of all artists. Their 3rd album charted a little lower and then the band went on hiatus in 2017 and haven't released anything since.

Reading about every new Jezabels release is bundled with comments of disappointment, where they've either missed the mark or changed their sound away from what drew people in. If you can't keep making hits, you stop making new fans and just watch the numbers keep dropping. For many people, this trajectory just makes sense and it's hard to argue they were hard done by.

My perspective of this band is just completely different to everyone else's, I think. I felt hot and cold with the early music they put out, usually only getting proper appreciation after the fact (looking at songs like "Hurt Me" and "Easy To Love"). The main problem I had is that their single selection would chicken me out of the full length projects. I'm only just now listening to their debut album for the first time, because I'd always look at it, I'd think of the pretty good lead single "Endless Summer" and think that if that's the best they've got, I'm in for a chore of a listen.

Something that helped click The Jezabels into place for me was when I first saw them compared to a band from Cincinnati, Ohio who will eventually appear in this list. They shared the common thread of potentially seemingly like the most boring band in the world but having a relentless drummer who almost singlehandedly put a spark into their sound to make it work. Once I could see what they were doing, it all made sense. The other factor was that the next single on the album was "Trycolour", a brilliant piece of post-punk revivalism that completely countered my trepidation into sheer wonder. At that point the only reason I didn't listen to the album was because I was a year away from Spotify and then just never got around to it.

I did keep listening to The Jezabels after the fact though, and managed a lot of fondness for their second album "The Brink". Once again, I felt like the single choice was a distraction, "The End" doubling down on the same issue I had with "Endless Summer". Given the low finish for the song in the countdown, it feels like a lot of people checked out at that very point and went no further. For me it's their best album. A welcome trimming as the only one under 50 minutes, and just filled with some of their best songs period. Particularly the title track which feels like the perfect progression to link the old and new sounds, while "Look of Love" is probably their best attempt at writing a proper pop song without losing any of the excitement in the process. I think the increased use of synths is done very tastefully but I can see how some might find it a betrayal. The 3rd album is literally called "Synthia" and delves even further into that. I didn't like it quite as much but it has its moments. Particularly I like "Pleasure Drive", even if its synths sound like they come from a similar pedigree to the "Donkey Kong" (not that one, I mean the Gameboy one from 1994) soundtrack which amuses me greatly.

I suspect if we ever do get any more music after this, it'll be something very different. The band is still semi-active on social media. The lead singer also has released solo material I've generally liked in recent years. This is the part where I bring up the fact that in November last year, following the result of the US election, she posted a selfie with a MAGA hat to get a reaction out of people. A lot of confused rhetoric followed where most of her statements were not very clear but nonetheless got her on the side of the anti-cancel brigade. Or maybe it would have done so more if she got enough attention for it. This also happened a few weeks after her solo album release and as best as I could tell, her sales actually declined in the following weeks. While I'm still not sure what she was really trying to say, the rest of the band distanced themselves from it on a social media post soon after and have said nothing since. The lead singer has in recent weeks used International Women's Day as a means to shovel in some clear anti-trans rhetoric, so that's harder to get around the veil of plausible deniability. Once you get into this rabbit hole it's hard to get out, because it's clear who is and who isn't still welcoming. It's a pity though, the band made some great music over the years.

#713. Meg Mac - Grandma's Hands (#46, 2014)

73rd of 2014

It's been a long time coming but we've finally reached the second Meg Mac cover that I promised way back when I was talking about "Bridges" (#971). This is definitely the more well known of the two original songs but I did not know about it at all at the time. "Grandma's Hands" is of course a Bill Withers song, but wasn't in the periphery of his songs that I knew. Compared to "Ain't No Sunshine", "Lean On Me" and "Lovely Day", this quaint 2 minute song doesn't quite have the gravitas to get brought up again.

Meg Mac goes some ways into providing that gravitas. She extends it out to a whole 4 minutes and provides a significant swell to the sound of it that really explodes in the second half. She's not given much to work with so she's mostly saying the title over and over again, but it's done in a way that you'd never realise she re-arranged it so extensively, it feels like a natural interpretation that was always hidden in the original idea. In case you were wondering, Meg Mac does not change the part of the song where 'Billy' is directly mentioned by grandma. I remain agnostic to that whole discourse but it's worth noting.

While I was largely indifferent to Meg Mac at this point in time, at the time, this particular recording was something that rubbed me the wrong way to a significant degree. A song you can't help but feel like you're stuck with as soon as it starts playing, and one where it feels like a sick joke, an act of chicanery that when I thought I could be safe from it, it lands in the top half of the Hottest 100 and I have to continue thinking about it 10 years later. And she gets to be a singer!

Normally I wouldn't be able to tell you when things changed for me, but this is an exception. I have the receipts from my old Twitter account backed up by last.fm. On September 17th, 2021, I was listening to my shuffle playlist that prioritises Hottest 100 songs I haven't listened to very often, and "Grandma's Hands" came on. It was on this listen, having gone several years without hearing the cover that it started to resonate with me. The big build-up at the end specifically. About a year after that, she released a new album and I found myself liking her music more than I ever had before, with some similar ideas to what's employed on this cover. I don't know if that's a coincidence or not, but in any case I certainly derived some amusement when this likely bottom feeder just kept sneaking higher and higher up on this list than the 2014 me would ever fathom.

#712. MEDUZA (feat GOODBOYS) - Piece Of Your Heart (#29, 2019)

65th of 2019

There's a common discussion thread around triple j and whether or not it's late to the party on certain artists. It's usually relating to the biggest stars around and the reality of the picture is that it's not as if triple j is unaware of the artist, but whether or not they're interested in making them part of their playlist roster. That makes it a game of speculation. It's easy to look in hindsight and say 'triple j obviously should've played The 1975 years earlier', but I don't know how you can honestly say you knew in 2013 that they'd still be relevant 10 years later. Let he who has never pre-emptively dismissed an artist cast the first stone.

As is often the case, the derision is mis-aimed, and if there is criticism to be levied at following trends instead of making them, the reality is usually much more banal than is made out to be. That is, if the purpose of these kinds of discussions is to deliver a brutal 'gotcha' to triple j's music programming, then there are constant sources of this pretty much every year. Not in the big names though, but in the minor fashion, where artists are doing quantifiable numbers probably completely under your nose unless you're meticulous about these things.

triple j do this so frequently with dance music. The genre thrives on new names who are plucked from relative obscurity because they managed to come up with one song that tickled enough people's brains to make them want to hear it more. As proof of how difficult that is to do, they usually stay that way, because it's a lot harder to cultivate an audience on an image that's not necessarily present or being examined. MEDUZA are a slight exception to the second part of this, because they did manage multiple hits, both in the ARIA Chart sense, and the fact that they have two more songs that'll appear in this list. On the other hand, they're a prime example of the first part of this, a pattern I've seen repeat time and time again.

MEDUZA are an Italian house trio. They formed in 2018 and very quickly broke through with their debut single "Piece Of Your Heart". The song was released in February 2019, and reached the UK charts in March 2019. By April it was #1 on the UK Spotify chart but hadn't even touched Australia's chart. Sometimes the UK is just onto this stuff faster, but it should be noted that the featured GOODBOYS are in fact British, so that might contribute to it. Oddly enough, Italy was one of the last countries for the song to break through in, and it didn't do particularly well there.

It reached the Australian charts in May 2019, and by June 2019 it was in regular rotation on triple j. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. Technically following rather than leading, but doing so in such a banal way that no one would ever dare rant about it at the risk of sounding deranged. It gives off the impression that there's always someone checking the charts for triple j to figure out what to do, but they only do it every so often, so they don't have the chart watcher brain of immediately listening to every new entry every week. The mere act of listening to new chart entries is so foreign to the general populace that you can get bragging rights of being among the first 1% of people to hear everything just because of what the shelf life is like. Well, unless you only just listened to "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey when it entered the ARIA top 50 this year for the first time ever. triple j get to remain more up with the trends than 95% of people, and so to at least 95% of people, there's nothing untoward or unimpressive about this variety of crate digging. Part of being who I am as a person means that for better or worse, I'm so frequently part of the small percentage of people who are left in the other group for various things, so I'm prone to noticing these things.

I think triple j and radio in general thrive on these kinds of hit songs. The ones that can readily slip into the playlist because they have a proven registration for the hit party, but they're the kinds of hits that aren't going to alienate many listeners. Maybe you could argue a case against what happens in this song's first chorus, where Joshua from GOODBOYS breaks the 4th wall and pre-empts the meaningless melody that he's about to present. It's a fascinating decision because it gives the song some amount of character, but maybe by the time the second chorus rolls around, all you can think of is how blatantly these guys have rubbed their nothingness in your face.

With this being MEDUZA's big breakout hit, and the template from which all future hits are judged upon, it might feel weird that it's the one I'm starting with. I do think template is the right word for it though. There's a good solid foundation in it, you're instantly treated with a rather moody synth tone for a radio house song, but they only do the bare minimum after that. I felt like their later efforts fared better when standing side by side with the blueprint.

#711. The Weeknd - In Your Eyes (#53, 2020)

63rd of 2020

Sometimes you don't get what you want. It's unfortunate but inevitable that the world does not revolve around me. On the other hand, it might be a blessing in disguise, if for instance you're able to count all the times you thought you knew what you wanted, got it, and then realised you didn't want it after all. Who knows what other horror scenarios I'm being graciously denied without knowing what they could be holding back?

That's a really dramatic way to say that when I first listened to The Weeknd's 2020 album "After Hours", I immediately ear marked "In Your Eyes" as a desirable single. I got what I wanted, and found myself questioning that initial thought as it didn't feel like it lived up to my own unspoken hype. Maybe it's fine after all, there are worse songs that could wind up getting heard over and over again, some of them are adjacent to "In Your Eyes" on the track list, but maybe I could enjoy this song to the fullest if it stayed as a deep cut. An additional thread in this tale is that the album's title track was technically released as a single, and it's my favourite song The Weeknd has put out in a very long time.

I definitely still like "In Your Eyes" now that the time has passed though. It doesn't commit itself to any particular melodies for too long to allow them to get grating, and still sounds relatively fresh 5 years down the track. If I'm being brutal, it's the kind of low ceiling that The Weeknd so frequently settles for that makes me so critical of what he puts out. As a continuation on what I said about "Blinding Lights" (#786), it's just not exciting enough to justify the fervour he generates.

#720-#716

#720. RÜFÜS DU SOL - Innerbloom (What So Not Remix) (#30, 2016)

78th of 2016

We can never be sure what the voters truly want. Yes, there's a voting list and you're supposed to vote for your 10 favourite songs, but there's no accounting for misunderstandings, out of character votes, or a need to settle the score. I don't necessarily want to accuse people of voting for the wrong thing because it doesn't suit my own narrative, but I was looking at the numbers for the last Australian federal election and many electorates varied between 3 & 10% on the subject of informal votes. That's close to a million Australians and they can't all just be drawing dicks on the cards, just a lot of people given clear instructions they fail to follow.

I'll get the fair statement out of the way, I don't think the What So Not remix of "Innerbloom" is unpopular, I don't think people voted for it by accident (I have questions about the votes cast for the non-Flume remix of a 2012 song admittedly). You do have to ask yourself though, if RÜFÜS DU SOL had released "Innerbloom" at a sensibly earlier date, or even a sensibly later date, and it had either naturally polled, or was set to poll in 2016, would this remix get anywhere near the look in that it did?

This is a thought that was complicated a bit by the Hottest 100 of the Decade. On one hand, "Innerbloom" landed at #5, an almighty upgrade that goes some ways to righting the misfortune of it originally landing at #103 because it was released too late in the year to receive recognition. On the other hand, this remix managed to land at #64, which either suggests some associated recognition from sitting side by side on the voting list ('ah, why not vote both?'), or the previously crazy notion that maybe this is still being underrated at #30.

If you need the introduction, "Innerbloom" is the closing track to RÜFÜS DU SOL's second album. It was released as a single in the lead up to the album and proved to be quite popular, but didn't quite hit the Hottest 100 as it's always difficult to do so with a late November release. The song is also 9 and a half minutes long. Despite this, and despite the fact that the lead single on this album managed to become a hit on two (or arguably three) separate instances, it stands as the band's most streamed song of all time on Spotify. While I don't think it's quite the minute to minute flawless panorama of sound that it's aiming for, I do have quite a bit of fondness for it. If you've ever thought that RÜFÜS DU SOL were just a fluffy lightweight band, then firstly you should listen to some of their deeper cuts, but also this goes some way to proving otherwise. Crazy to think that "Like An Animal" (#797) was the single that came just before this one.

What So Not is a producer from Sydney. Originally, the name belonged to a duo of Emoh Instead and Flume, who teamed up at least a year or so before Flume's career blew up. They parted ways in 2015, and now Emoh Instead just produces music under the What So Not name by himself. We'll encounter a What So Not song in this list eventually, and it's actually the last song they made as a duo. In that regard, this is the only proper What So Not entry in the whole list. Amusingly, if I'm not mistaken, it's also the only remix on this list that isn't by Flume. Maybe some people still think he's in What So Not. Couldn't hurt the voting campaign.

I'm not always the best equipped to talk about these things, but compared to "Tennis Court (Flume Remix)" (#955), I do think this remix does a tad more to justify its appearance. One gracious thing it does is that it cuts the song down to less than 5 minutes long. It's not just shrinking the song down either; it feels like a totally new arrangement. The first thing you're hit with is the strings that immediately forge a unique identity for it. They return for a nice effect with the song's admittedly amusing drop. I can't call the whole thing essential, but it's nice to mix up the palate (or does 'palette' also work here?) every now and then.

#719. Lime Cordiale - Reality Check Please (#25, 2020)

64th of 2020

I need to address the elephant in the room here. I could save it up but honestly Lime Cordiale blurbs are the perfect dumping ground for these kinds of observations. Why did we get so obsessed with hotel lobby bells in 2020? I don't have the time or resources to flip through all 1000 songs, but off the top of my head, there are 3 songs in this list that have these bell sounds as a little sound effect in the chorus, all from 2020. "Complicated" (#940) is the first one, this is the second, and the third is yet to appear. I live in constant fear that I'm still forgetting one.

With that being said, this is the only one of the three that really leans into it. The other two are kind of tucked away, underneath the vocals. This can't help but rub it in your face as it fills the dead air like a sitcom laugh track. I tried to muck around with the audio to hear what it's like without the bell and it does just feel very unusual. They keep it in for live performances it seems too, but there aren't very many videos I can find of them performing this one.

This is understandable really because I don't know if this is supposed to be seen as a major release for Lime Cordiale. It's a song that comes from the deluxe version of their album "14 Steps To A Better You", the one from the blog background. That's an album that already had 9 singles in its own right, so it's possible that I've just wound up taking this filler of a song on a ride.

The neutral tone I took for all that probably comes across as more critical than it means to be. I've always had a soft spot for this one. Much like "Addicted To The Sunshine" (#726), I think it just about nails the ideal version of Lime Cordiale's light, breezy pop rock. You do have to get through some odd lyrics at times, a weird pre-chorus, and be okay with rhyming 'check, please' with 'in check, please', but I think it's worth it for one of their catchiest hooks. The bridge in particular deserves a shout, as the song goes on a really peculiar journey for about 30 seconds. One of the best ways to fill out that awkward part of the song we've seen so far.

#718. MØ - Final Song (#43, 2016)

77th of 2016

It's not her final song. I didn't let it happen, and the voting public didn't let it happen either. It is her final song as a lead artist, but it's hard to say that she didn't do her part for the one song that's waiting in the wings. That other song also had to have helped this one on its way to being a hit. It reached #12 on the ARIA Chart, which is pretty good, but it's way more interesting to note its chart run where it reliably climbed every week until it peaked, and then dropped every week at roughly the same pace. Just a really nice looking pyramid, the platonic ideal of a chart run. It's so hard to do nowadays. "Something In The Orange" by Zach Bryan dropped more than 20 times on the way to its peak, and has climbed more than 30 times on its way down, an utter mess.

I fall on this in a similar way to the previous MØ entries. She remains a captivating presence on the song, and that helps steer us over the fact that she's treading on very familiar ground. I look at the charts on the week that this peaked and it's just wall to wall tropical house, or failing that, wall to wall drops in the same style and purpose. Everybody wants to be "Sorry" by that Canadian fellow I mentioned 6 entries ago, but few more than this one. I grew to have an allergic reaction to that sort of thing, but I do think this is a better example of it.

#717. Hockey Dad - Sweet Release (#73, 2018)

73rd of 2018

I just want to assure that you are reading the above data correctly. This song is simultaneously my 73rd favourite song in the 2018 countdown, but also the song that finished at #73 on said countdown. I cannot promise that this will or will not happen again because it would be too revelatory for the 5 #1 songs still to come. I queried a bunch of very clever maths types on this and concluded that there's about a 36% chance on any individual countdown to completely avoid these double ups, under properly random circumstances. It really got me thinking about our ability to even correctly subjectively rank things. It's interesting but highly off topic as a gimmick to pad out a Hockey Dad entry.

I don't know how many people remember Eddy Current Suppression Ring. They never fully blew up, but got a decent following with their raw brand of garage rock. It just seemed like the hype evaporated very quickly after their second album, and that was 17 years ago. If you were into them, you might not have realised that they actually released a couple of new songs back in March, I can't see very much discussion or acknowledgement of this online, even from the band's official channels. I bring them up because they're always my first point of reference for "Sweet Release". The unabashed way the verses are performed feels almost intentionally familiar. If not for a certain band waiting in the wings, it'd feel like the most Australian thing we have here. That's not even the peak of it though, as we're treated to the most bogan reading of 'yeah, sweet release' during the chorus.

If you think it sounds a bit odd, you'd be right. As far as I can tell, this is the only song in Hockey Dad's discography that has their drummer Billy taking lead vocal duty. Regular vocalist Zach just handles the hook, giving new meaning to the titular phrase. I was a bit harsher on this song initially because of that, but I think in general there's a solid helping of raucous energy (a phrase I need to replace eventually before I over-do it), to get over the line, compared to "I Wanna Be Everybody" (#751) which sounds a bit lacking next to it.

#716. Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever (#5, 2021)

77th of 2021

When talking about "when the party's over" (#809), I mentioned how it's difficult to really determine the significance of individual singles for Billie Eilish given that she so frequently scores hit after hit in a way that suggests her cult of personality provides much of the legwork and the songs themselves are just a natural product of it. Maybe everyone's had that one song that made them a fan at some point over the years, but she's had so many game-changers in her career that she could probably afford to lose one of them and still make a pretty nice looking Jenga tower.

"Happier Than Ever" might just be the most crucial one. It's the title track to her second album, and one whose individual success went a long way towards salvaging a rocky period where her success wasn't quite guaranteed. The two singles she put out just before this were "Lost Cause" and "NDA", both of which failed to really catch on like her singles usually do. Billie managed 7 songs from her 10 track album last year to make the Hottest 100, but in 2021, she couldn't even get all of her singles across the line. Even some of the earlier singles before that, "Your Power" (#836) and another I'll eventually get to, showed the tell-tale signs of a tailspin. An artist with a big first album returning and getting gifted big chart peaks that the songs did not live up to. "Your Power" peaked at #9 on debut on the ARIA Chart, left the top 50 in just 6 weeks, and didn't even return when the album came out, a brutal rejection by the populace. The other song was even more drastic. It wouldn't be unreasonable to sell your Billie Eilish stocks as soon as possible because she looked condemned to being too left-of-centre for major pop success again. Or at best, she'd have a career arc similar to Avril Lavigne, who occasionally papered over her downward trend after the monster debut album success, but eventually also joined the club of artists whose new albums only spend 1 week on the charts now.

With that in mind, I think it's not unreasonable to say that the title track to "Happier Than Ever" saved her career. Sometimes it just takes that one big song to get people on board, or three, depending on which country's album chart you're looking at. This one was a monster though, proving that Billie could still surprise everyone in a good way, and providing a magnet for her potential Hottest 100 voters. It's still the 3rd best polling song for an artist with no shortage of well-polled songs.

I have always had mixed feelings about this song. In case you need a primer, it's a very minimalist song with some light strumming and gentle singing. That's the first 2 minutes anyway. Around the halfway point of the song, it starts to pick up with electric guitar. The drums soon follow and the song just explodes with righteous fury. For an artist who is often so comfortable in a relatively whispering register, hearing her start belting out for this song is a real shock to the system.

I reacted positively to this at first. I wasn't really in need of a saving throw because I actually liked "NDA" a lot just before this came out, it's the closest she's come to replicating her 2019 song "WHEN I WAS OLDER", my favourite thing she's ever done. Just love the vocoder effect on her voice and the nifty electro layers they both dabble with. "Happier Than Ever" was still good though, and I had it pegged as a relative highlight on an album I generally enjoyed quite a bit. Over time though, it never really fulfilled that earlier promise and I found myself increasingly underwhelmed with the product on display. There's a single edit for this song that cuts it down to more or less just the second half, giving the people what they want, but I think by the end of the year I had become the sicko who prefers the first half of the song. The whole thing had cooled off on me a lot after my initial fanfare.

To put it simply, I just don't think it's mixed very well. I want the guitar and drums to soar and give the song the edge that it's going for. It's so frustrating because I think it can be done right. I listen to live performances of the song and it feels like the song sounds like it's supposed to, but this studio version just compresses it all into clashing noise. This became even more clear to me less than a year later. I don't have many chances on this blog to confess my adoration for Lizzy McAlpine's music because she's never made the Hottest 100 before (alas, the breakout hit was a year after eligibility), but in 2022 she released the song "firearm". That song is so on the nose about attempting a similar idea that I had to scramble to confirm it was written before "Happier Than Ever" was released (it was, but it's really close). Either way though, that song in its studio version manages to do just about the same trick except it actually sounds great, leaving my disappointment with what could have been here even greater. Maybe that sounds like I'm just playing favourites but I think I will eventually make it clear when we're done here that Billie Eilish is not exactly a whipping boy around these parts. I also can now say that Billie put out the song "THE GREATEST" on her next album and that one absolutely soars on the same assignment, top 100 in a 2023-2032 version of this blog? I'm more than willing to acknowledge when an artist whose music I adore is not reaching their full potential.

#725-#721

#725. G Flip (feat mxmtoon) - Queen (#64, 2021)

79th of 2021

This is going to sound like a complete non-sequitur and it just makes me want to open up with it even more as a result, but there's an odd sequence of actions when it comes to the popularity of BTS in western markets. They have a lot of fans, but are constantly fighting against a language and culture barrier that prevents them from being taken seriously. In response to this, their fanbase acts aggressively upon the opportunity to pump up their numbers so much that they have to be taken seriously. This works in that the band and some of their members have accumulated multiple #1 hits, but it also backfires by not passing the sniff test for a lot of people, disregarding all the fanfare for one of the most popular musical groups in the world as illegitimate.

I can never get myself to do this because I've seen how the charts operate. I know that despite the filtering that comes about from streaming numbers being so high, most people just don't listen to these songs all that much to really put the idea across that they're uncatchable. I'm writing this on a day where only one song has been able to double the daily listens of "Iris" by The Goo Goo Dolls. Once you're working with that, I'm ready to believe that BTS fans very much are listening to their music that much, because no fanbase comes anywhere near as close to being ride-or-die.

This is all to say that if you look at the YouTube comments for this song, it's flooded by BTS fans. The only reason being that during a birthday stream not long after it was released, BTS's j-hope was listening to this song. I think of myself being the only person in a crowded setting at times consciously observing music being played, because why would anyone else? But for a fanbase this large, there are enough people just digging into every possible surrounding detail that such a thing is possible. I think it's cute too that G Flip & j-hope have similar naming conventions, that probably helps bridge the gap too.

G Flip is not alone on this song though; they also recruit the much more famous YouTuber mxmtoon on here. When it comes to most famous YouTubers, I'm willing to admit respectful ignorance. If you're not trying to keep up with that scene, it's inevitably going to produce famous stars completely off your radar and that's completely fine. mxmtoon has about 1 million subscribers which is more than nearly anyone I subscribe to, and that's fine. I was poised and ready for this one though because I had heard of her a year earlier. She put out a song with Carly Rae Jepsen called "ok on your own" which I adore. I can never make negative accusations about the merits of the ukulele when it so perfectly anchors the sorrow of that song.

Admittedly I probably wouldn't recognise her on this song without being told about it. Similar to Lauren Sanderson on "GAY 4 ME" (#783), her verse could easily just pass as G Flip putting on a slightly different inflection. She doesn't even show up in the music video to until a little later, so it all makes for a nice clickbait credit that doesn't drastically change what we're working with here.

It's an odd sounding song. The main thing you're going to remember from it is that one looping guitar riff that sounds like it needs a little more time in the oven. I do like when they switch it up during the verses, gives it a Shocking Blue, "Venus" kind of angle. Can't disagree with the message too, despite getting off to a rocky start, I really thought Makoto (Queen) was one of the most reliably powerful party members in "Persona 5", and I'm quite proud of her.

#724. Bring Me The Horizon - DiE4u (#43, 2021)

78th of 2021

It's weird to say this about an entry here but despite this song being released in 2021, the album that it comes from only got a full physical release about 6 weeks before I started this blog. POST HUMAN era Bring Me The Horizon is a lot of constantly drip fed singles which has served them very well in the Hottest 100. They've managed to poll 7 years in a row. It's not clear yet if they'll maintain this as all they have to show for 2025 so far is a cover of "Wonderwall".

"DiE4u" is also the second time here we've had production from BloodPop. You may as well have it be the first time because his first contribution was with Haim's "Want You Back" (#787) where he's not always credited. He'll be back one more time with another Bring Me The Horizon song. He hasn't really become a staple for them, it's just these two songs of theirs that he's produced and co-written. Still, it's an interesting change of pace for someone best known for working with a certain Canadian pop star I still can't say the name of at the height of their career.

Without ever really getting a break from Bring Me The Horizon over the years, I've found a lot of the songs they've released around this point in time have blended in together. They're usually kind enough to put in song titles that call a hook to mind, but I have trouble sorting out my various opinions on them all. "DiE4u" I probably fall the harshest on because I do think the hook is the weakest part of it. Oli's voice sticks out in just the right way to sound jarring and distracting. When the rest of the band is in their element it can be fun though, a lot of energy to spare and I love the cheesy guitar solo near the end.

#723. Thundamentals (feat Thom Crawford) - Something I Said (#30, 2014)

74th of 2014

It doesn't really stand up to long term scrutiny, but my years of watching the ARIA Charts make this out to be Thundamentals' biggest hit song. It has the peak position advantage (it got to #66), but the key difference which generally doesn't show up when viewing chart positions like this is that "Something I Said" really hung around. All their other top 100 hits spent a single week on the chart, but this one made it to 11 weeks. The only caveat I should add to it is that it happened during the last 6 or so months before streaming was added to the chart. The numbers were starting to get pretty low and you couldn't help but spot some real oddities holding up the fort by that point.

On some level it made sense though. Thundamentals were having a breakthrough moment, and after it felt like they'd properly made it, this is the first new song they had out. It's a song that doesn't stray too much away from the formula set up by their previous hit (which we'll get to at some point), but also makes it out to be a more upbeat affair. It comes with a poppier chorus and a handful of attention grabbing lyrics.

It's those lyrics that I found increasingly distracting over the years. From a distance it's a very pleasant sounding song but you zoom in and it's just full of toilet humour, sometimes literally talking about the toilet. Jeswon is the prime candidate in his verse, cracking a juvenile joke in pretty much every second bar. He has the nerve afterwards to explain that he's cheeky after all this. Tuka fairs a bit better as the only person in the song that doesn't tell on himself. His opening line about Billy, Susie and Milly feels like he's telling on the rest of the song. It's his Kimbra in "Somebody That I Used To Know" moment. He might still also be the asshole in the song but at the very least he doesn't give me any ammunition for it, just a pretty solid verse to see us out.

I don't have very much insight into Thom Crawford. He's certainly the second musician I've seen who spells his name like that. It seems like he's caught the same bug that a lot of these Aussie hip-hop featured artists grab. He has no music on his official platforms and hasn't grabbed a big guest spot beyond this one. He did team up with another local rapper a few years ago who will eventually appear on this list. It's a long time between drinks and you'd never recognise him as the same vocalist. He's perfectly serviceable here at least, if I was gonna make fun of him, I'd do it behind his back, I don't know who's reading this.

#722. Kendrick Lamar (feat Zacari) - LOVE. (#92, 2017)

72nd of 2017

This is where I feel I can say 'At last!' as all the pieces are finally in place. All the main characters in this murder-free mystery have made their entrance. In this sense I mean artists with at least 10 entries all up. You could readily admit that there are still some key players out there, as I immediately call to mind two artists with 9 entries each that are still to show up, but you've got to draw the line somewhere. Just to be clear in this instance, I am talking about Kendrick Lamar, and not Zacari, for whom this is his only entry. Zacari is one of several artists on Top Dawg Entertainment who achieved their greatest success by being attached to a Kendrick Lamar project. In case you didn't know, he finally put out his debut album about a year ago. I thought it was pretty good, reminded me a lot of The Weeknd, both the old & new kind.

We're obviously talking about Kendrick here. There's a lot to cover with just the 12 entries he has. If there isn't enough to say, there could well be more to go along with it given enough time. Since I started this blog, Kendrick has scored his first lead artist #1 hit in Australia and nearly got a second one right after. We've spent the past year or so where every new day could mean a new unannounced drop. This is all to say that it's always going to be an incomplete story so the best I can do is deal with what fragments I have.

Just on its own, "DAMN." is an album that invites a lot of discussion. It's tempting to dismiss it as just Kendrick's most commercial project and not think much of it, but that's significantly overlooking everything that is going on with it. Don't take my word for it of course, this album won a Pulitzer Prize. That's one of those eternally enviable prizes that all the EGOT-adjacent accolades can only dream of competing with. Why aspire for anything else?

In any case, there's a strong pattern that's been developing of late when it comes to most new Kendrick albums. That pattern is the way that the albums themselves will frequently be abrasive, confronting or just overwhelmingly dense on most fronts, but he remains a significant prospect for his label. There needs to be something to comfortably promote the album without scaring anyone away. Enter the obligatory R&B radio hit. I don't get to really talk about most of them, "Die Hard" didn't quite make the list, "luther" is too new. Really it always turns these album rollouts into unintentional wars, as the general public tend to flock more to more hard hitting cuts, while playlists and promotion will ensure the R&B track remains competitive, and quite possibly goes the distance in the end.

With that in mind, it's a weird thing to think about because the distance in question usually amounts to a few more weeks on the chart without any clear signs of a smash. Most of Kendrick Lamar's songs will peak on release and then just quickly fall away unless they really cross over. It's his sheer following afterwards that tells the full story though. "LOVE." was not a massive hit, but it's never stopped being streamed, and now has over 1.5 billion streams on Spotify, only 3 of Kendrick's songs have it beaten. "Not Like Us" is at least 4 months away from catching it still.

Something has to kick us off. "LOVE." is still pretty good though. It feels at times like more than half of the song is the chorus. Just measuring it now I'd say it's about 65% give or take, but it's hard to say when the verses blend in so tightly. On the second verse, Zacari's hook gets peppered between lines as well. All very pleasant, just greater aspirations to be sought for.

#721. Winston Surfshirt - Be About You (#27, 2017)

71st of 2017

It's been many months since I wrote about "The Real Thing" (#915), where I spoke of Client Liaison's luck in building a Hottest 100 résumé. I specifically mentioned another artist whose fortunes were quite the opposite. I can finally take the proverbial sheet off the proverbial display on the proverbial stage to reveal that I was forward selling a reference to Winston Surfshirt.

They might be one of the unluckiest artists not named Royal Blood given their misfortunes over the proceeding years. "Be About You" remains their only entry, but they managed to land in the #101-#120 section in 2018, 2019 and 2020 (while not being too far away from that spot in 2017 as well). "Be About You" is a song that stuck with me very quickly but I've never been able to commit a second Winston Surfshirt song to memory. It's possible that they could be a band I've had to write about so many times in frustration with only this shining light around the corner. Like going through all those Dave Graney and Swoop songs in the '90s lists that aren't "Rock 'N' Roll Is Where I Hide" and "Apple Eyes".

There's another thing "Be About You" has in common with those songs which is that it feels like it's just completely out of touch with the sounds of then and only gets away with it because it so expertly accomplishes what it's trying to do. This is Australia, following global trends is optional. When I say this, I mean that "Be About You" is a slow burning song that feels like it has more in common with yacht rock than anything else. 

Winston Surfshirt are billed as a funk and hip-hop band. A lot of very white guys there, that's a red flag. The spoken word section that starts off this song? That's a red flag. I stop laying down my criticism after that because the rest of the song is very tidy. I think Mr. Surfshirt (he just goes by Winston) has a very pleasant singing voice, and it brings shades of a certain NZ/US band I anticipate glazing in the future on this blog. Then the rest of the band comes in and it completes the sparkling polish that it was building up to. Nothing much happens after that, but it's a satisfying enough trick on its own to satiate me.

#730-#726

#730. The Wiggles - Elephant - Like A Version (#1, 2021)

80th of 2021

Often times you can get some measure of appreciation for an artist's impact by looking at the stat sheet they leave behind them. If there's a contemporaneous artist with similar chart peaks to their name, that can be a gateway to understanding what it might have been like back then. The Wiggles don't really allow this to operate in any logical fashion.

Part of the problem is that there isn't really a modern equivalent to The Wiggles. The internet is rife with children's entertainment that ranges from sensible to off-the-rails with seemingly no consistency as to what's able to reach into the tier of billions of YouTube views, and to what degree that content actually impacts the upbringing of those watching it. Maybe we'll get stories from the Cocomelon generation as they reach adolescence in the coming years.

The other minor problem is that for whatever reason I can't figure out, The Wiggles in their budding years just didn't appear on the ARIA Chart. They were constantly touting Platinum sales figures but I've no way to really see where they went with it compared to everything else. It's actually only in the last decade that it's become normal to see The Wiggles reach the charts with most new albums they put out, though not with the sorts of sales they once could boast when they were a cultural phenomenon.

With that in mind, the only real positive proof of their impact I can quantify is the fact that I'm writing all this right now. The Wiggles' relentless touring schedule and constant album releases (perhaps a necessity when you're fostering an audience that's destined to outgrow you in record time) has evidently managed to secure them in the hearts & minds of '90s kids and beyond for good. Plenty of bands and artists have ridden some quantity of nostalgia to land in the Hottest 100 over the years, but The Wiggles went so much further by taking the #1 spot. That's a spot that's always been reserved for some manner of zeitgeisty artist, kind of as a rule. The list of artists beaten to the post in 2021 matches that description perfectly, but this is a popularity contest they were soundly beaten in by a band that formed 30 years ago with some members in their 60s.

It's perhaps worth noting that The Wiggles took to international stardom in the 2000s. There's an odd result that came about where the band got considerably more fame in the United States after the September 11 terrorist attacks, as their touring schedule was unperturbed and the uplifting quality of their music served a greater purpose in that moment. They've been used in Jeopardy! clues 8 times over the years but only first in 2005. They've also kept in the news with the frequent discussion of their Ship of Theseus line up. It started in 2006 when original Yellow Wiggle Greg Page had to retire due to chronic illness that continues to affect him to this day. He's occasionally performed with the group since but suffered a heart attack on stage in 2020. He's actually the youngest original member by quite a distance; Purple Wiggle Jeff Fatt was roughly twice his age when they started up. The yellow skivvies have changed hands multiple times since then, and for the past few years there have been two of each colour as official members. As it stands, founding Blue Wiggle Anthony Field is the only original member still performing with the group and it may make you feel somewhat old to know that he now performs alongside his daughter Lucia, who was born not long before Greg originally left the band.

You'll see a lot of half-joking responses about how people want to bring back the original line up. The same year this cover was released, an actual senator for the National Party pulled the 'go woke...go broke' line with regards to The Wiggles having a more ethnically diverse line up. There's a fine line for millennial nostalgia getting hung up on everything being catered perfectly to childhood memories and we as a generation are failing it all too often.

In any case, accepting the impracticality of Greg being part of the proceedings, this cover is probably as close as you can hope to get for reliving it. Murray and Jeff both came in to perform on this cover alongside Anthony and then-current members Lachie, Emma & Simon. It's just complete bait through and through, that we willingly bought into.

The other factor I haven't mentioned yet is that this is obviously a Tame Impala cover, of their 2012 hit "Elephant". That's right at the cusp of Tame Impala becoming a serious international star but obviously one that's very well known to Australian listeners as the highest polling Tame Impala song prior to 2015 (it landed at #7). Tame Impala had just recently landed at #1 in the Hottest 100 of the Decade poll in 2020, with a song that I continue to dangle like a dollar bill on the back of a pickup truck, but this is probably the only time a Tame Impala song will top the annual poll. It also helps lend to my earlier promise that we get to talk about every Tame Impala album in some capacity despite two of them pre-dating this time period. It's pretty much the perfect choice of song to cover and fits the Wiggles vibe perfectly. Anthony performs the whole cover while wearing an elephant costume over his head. In what has become an increasingly common instance, the band played mashup duty. There's a little bit of their own classic "Fruit Salad" slotted in over the song's long instrumental section. Say what you will, but this band know what the people want.

As for where I stand on all this? Make no mistake, I was a Wiggles kid. I don't think I ever saw them perform at my local shopping centre, but definitely wore out a VHS or cassette at home. I even recall having to sing "Hot Potato" at school at a very young age which goes some way to show how indoctrinated they were at that point. I moved onto top 40 pop music not long after but I don't think I ever lost my respect for The Wiggles and what they do.

For me, this cover is a bit of silly fun. Not really something I go out of my way to listen to. There's a lot of uproar about this winning the poll but I think when the countdown got to the pointy end I found myself rooting for it. It's a bit of potluck as to which hyped upstart gets to put the #1 spot on their résumé, and probably too much discourse for it. Charts often favour that sort of functional competence that doesn't inspire much intrigue for those outside the circle. Sometimes the Hottest 100 can get caught up in that too so it can be refreshing to have a laugh with a result like this. A good reminder to never take it all too seriously.

#729. The Wombats - Your Body Is a Weapon (#25, 2013)

79th of 2013

While you might think of The Wombats as a band who'd need to keep releasing music constantly to stay afloat, they actually have been spacing their albums out by 3 or 4 years consistently from the beginning. Instead of flooding the music market, their strategy has been relentless touring, almost comparable to The Wiggles. It's become something of a joke to see them announce another Australian tour for good reason, because from 2010 to 2018 there were 9 straight years where The Wombats played a show (or 10) in Australia without fail. If not for a lean 2019 when they only toured Europe, you'd be inclined to say that it took a global pandemic to get them to stop coming to our country, but fret not because they came back in 2023 & 2024, and they're already booked to play more shows this year.

I often forget this isn't just a loose single. It came out in 2013, right between two album cycles but it's tucked into the middle of the track listing of their 2015 album "Glitterbug" so technically it is the lead single. It also just doesn't sound like it fits in with that album as their sound felt like a tad more modern glitch than this by then. The rambunctious energy on this actually feels best suited to their debut album. The way it immediately revs up on the intro in particular generates that notion.

This song was perfectly generated to be a Hottest 100 hit. It was released reasonably late (but not too late) in the year, and following a bumper success year for The Wombats in 2011, was the only single they had out at the time. Their next single has definitely moved past it now, but for the purposes of the annual poll, this one performed just slightly better.

It's pretty much what you expect from The Wombats at this point. A big soaring chorus to relieve the building tension during the verses. The first half of the song plays the whole set up so straight that you have to think they were aware of it. After the second chorus we're treated to a softer bridge with oddly angelic backing vocals. I've seen this before. It's a bit of a rehash of what they do on the last chorus of "Our Perfect Disease". I won't dock points for that, but "Our Perfect Disease" is still my favourite song they've ever put out, and that's my favourite part of it, so it's a comparison that this song is always going to fall short on. They even do another similar thing as the last chorus gets accompanied by a 'woo!' that really works to kick it up a gear. It always feels missing when it's not there for the first half of the song. They could probably end the song at the 3 minute mark but they keep it going for another minute, just with the same lyric repeated over and over again. I'm not immune to the charms of things like this (good dog), but I wouldn't miss this outro if it wasn't there.

#728. Vera Blue - Regular Touch (#15, 2017)

73rd of 2017

Last time I talked about Vera Blue was when she was the featured artist on "Papercuts" (#857). It's not the last time she'll take that role, and it'll provide the biggest hit of her career, but she also has 6 more Hottest 100 entries just on her own. Incidentally, I am starting with what is arguably the biggest of them. I'm not contrarian, you just haven't had a chance to see all the instances when the opposite happens.

In case you need a refresher or are just wondering where all of these Australian musicians are coming from, this is one that we have a pretty simple answer for. Vera Blue was originally a contestant on The Voice Australia. She was quite popular on that show too, finishing in 3rd place on the second season. That's when the show was still a certifiable big deal, and with help from the quirk of the show encouraging people to vote via iTunes downloads, she actually managed 7 top 40 hits in Australia under her real name of Celia Pavey. It's actually quite amusing to see her charting adjacent to Flume for one week, 6 years before they'd collaborate. 

After the fanfare from The Voice Australia faded, she followed a similar career path to Matt Corby and Lisa Mitchell, which is to say that she signed to a major label and slowly rebuilt her fame with seemingly low key releases. Maybe it'd be better to compare her to that other Australian Idol contestant who could show up any day now because she also adopted a new stage name, making it even more likely that she found fans who were divorced from that initial hype cycle, or would be more likely to distance themselves if they were aware of her origins. Talent can go a long way and shows like that are not immune to unearthing it.

The other thing that links all of those artists is the fact that the music they put out was at least a little bit outside of the usual affair of those shows. They might have eventually landed a crossover hit, but triple j was a natural home for them. It's certainly true of Vera Blue's early music. She rose to fame with her folk stylings, playing the guitar and singing songs by Simon & Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell and the like. While her voice was still at the centre stage, she took a more electronic turn that's quite apparent on early singles like "Hold".

Her sound has definitely moved around since then, pivoting to a more upbeat pop sound. You might be surprised to know that despite all of this, she's maintained the same primary producer for this entire period of her career, with Andy Mak credited on every song she's ever put out under the Vera Blue moniker. He's not alone though, his brother also worked on her latest album, while her first album, which this song comes from features co-production from Adam Anders. I must warn Green Day that he's a Swedish producer who's been active since the late '90s, and is most notable for being the primary producer behind the many, many songs from "Glee" that populated the charts for several years.

Of the many hits on Vera Blue's first album, "Regular Touch" is probably the one that best predicts the stronger pop pivot that her music would take on from then. It's a rare instance where she isn't really settling in with a low tempo mood but instead just has fun with it. It's not a complete divorce however, with the song being very much anchored down by its obligatory drop, which I think is probably the weakest part of it. I think when she's singing alongside it, it's a strong partnership as there's charisma to spare, with a kind of performance you wouldn't normally expect alongside the skittery production. She's doing the best she can with a song that feels increasingly of its time.

#727. Cloud Control - Dojo Rising (#82, 2013)

78th of 2013

I've been trying to pin down the period of time around 2012-2014 as a significant changing of the guard for the Hottest 100. This was always largely based on vibes so I thought I should look a little closer. So taking a look at the 2013 Hottest 100, something I've caught is that excluding one-time entrants, there are 15 artists (mainstays you could say) who make their final Hottest 100 appearance to date in 2013. You get a similar number in 2012 & 2014, but slightly less in 2021, a year where not everyone has even come back for a new album cycle yet. I'm very curious to see what this looks like for later years, where it feels like so many of the same artists are checking back in year after year.

Cloud Control are one of those 15 artists in 2013. It feels like an extended tenure but they were only on their second album by that point. I first heard of them around 2008, with songs like "Death Cloud", which in hindsight I have to put under that umbrella of songs that sound a little bit like "Hey Now Now" by The Cloud Room. Maybe there's something psychological in that, or maybe it just was the forgotten sound of the times.

I've had mixed feelings with the band over the years. They're prone to get overly twee akin to some of my less fondly favoured artists of their time. They can somewhat get away with it because they do it with songs that I don't generally encounter anymore, but when a song like "There's Nothing In The Water We Can't Fight" lands at a very generous #18 in the 2010 countdown, I guess it makes me want to be more on board than I actually am.

Their pair of entries in 2013 fare better at least. "Dojo Rising" doesn't fully get there, I struggle to connect much with the repeated 'I just wanna get lit' lyric. Similarly, the verses just feel like a promenade between all the interesting things. I like those interesting things though; few songs start as strongly as this one does with that arresting oscillation.

#726. Lime Cordiale - Addicted To The Sunshine (#20, 2020)

65th of 2020

It was a nice gap getting to talk about artists I haven't rinsed into the ground yet. This is our 11th outing with Lime Cordiale and it does not get any easier. Outside of the oddities that come about when they work with Idris Elba, it's hard to imagine a version of this band that offers less for me to dig into, for better or worse (in the case of writing these things, it's definitely worse).

Well, I can make a start with this one with one tidbit. Lime Cordiale is primarily the work of two brothers, Oli & Louis Leimbach. Typing that out has made me finally realise it's probably where they got the name from. Louis is probably the face of the band, and fronts most of their famous songs. I have trouble telling them apart but Louis usually has scruffier hair. This is one of those occasional exceptions where it's largely Oli singing on it. "Colin" (#754) is another one. It's funny in this instance because I never even noticed it until I just watched a video performing this song. At the 30 second mark, Oli just shifts into a higher register to make it sound like he's passed off the microphone to someone else, but it's still him. I'm reminded of a posse rap song we'll eventually get to, don't call me stupid if I forget to mention it.

Louis isn't completely gone from this song though; I have to give him credit for contributing to the harmonies on this song's chorus. That's the song reaching its utmost moment for me. It's not something that always works for me (I've never loved "Here Comes The Sun" which operates on a similar level), but here they meet the task perfectly and I have no notes in that other than the prior build-up being a little tepid. Now if you don't mind me, I'm just going to walk out of here with my Lime Cordiale > The Beatles take and enjoy my week.

#735-#731

#735. Spacey Jane - Straightfaced (#28, 2020)

67th of 2020

Out of all of these Spacey Jane entries, this one has to be the one that's suffering the most from middle child syndrome. Not just the idea that it's surrounded by entries I'd feel more capable of talking about, but if you asked me to try and name all of their entries, this is probably the last one I'd be able to come up with. There's just no mnemonic way into it, and it's not even memorably unmemorable. This would be the perfect way to disrespect it as a waste of time but I do think it's pretty good. Just needs a better publicist I guess.

If there's one thing that it makes me wonder about, it's how the reception of this first album influenced the direction of the second one. Depending on who you ask, that might be an invalid statement because having a direction implies going somewhere different. But I look at the results in 2020 and get the impression that, while they may have been influenced on a song by song basis, the overwhelming feeling is a craving for slower tempos. Hence this mid-tempo song lands roughly in the middle. For a band who broke through with a faster tempo song (I'll remember the name of it when I get to writing its entry), they've been few and far between since. I dunno though, it's just pleasant radio fodder about falling out of love with a partner and the complicated feelings on what to do about that. Maybe it could use a resolution or an expanded perspective, but I have trouble figuring out how to end these things too.

#734. Ziggy Alberts - Laps Around the Sun (#42, 2018)

74th of 2018

The Byron Bay Bluesfest demographic of Hottest 100 voters has been lucrative since time immemorial. If this were to keep going, I'd have to find another generalisation to tag it with because by the time you see this post, Bluesfest will have run for the very last time. Except actually by the time I saw this post again, they decided they wouldn't be ending it after all, how dare they. The legacy is served through the numerous times Ben Harper, John Butler, Xavier Rudd, The Beautiful Girls and the like have made it in. It's a demographic that flies in, in droves, but also one that I just have no interaction with on a day-to-day basis. I feel like that can be an important connection to have in general if you're in the mood to be open minded about music. It's so much easier to like an artist if you already know someone you can trust who does. Otherwise it's too tempting to paint an entire demographic in a derogatory fashion and expand the rift of dissent. Why even entertain the idea of liking something if no one's going to appreciate it? Just a wasted effort all around.

I don't know anyone who's particularly charitable to Ziggy Alberts, but you look at his streaming numbers and have to think that we're just inundated with these folk. Last year he had his catalogue re-assessed for certifications and he landed 6 Platinum singles, this single and "Runaway" were both 3xPlatinum. It's a staggering amount of people collectively listening to this guy. Well, mostly his older stuff, as his newer albums have not come close in getting people to move on. The inundation of options to stream oddly makes it easier to just settle in with what we know. Or maybe he just peaked here and there was no need to explore further.

Regardless of my feelings about him or his music, this is a song I've always had time for. He spends a lot of time talking about the plight of the environment, and how easily we slip it out of focus as we're distracted by our own lives. Even Ziggy is distracted, because he shoehorns a love song into the chorus. Still, starting a chorus with 'Lately I've been' is really copying OneRepublic's homework from the desk next to you, the next word is 'worried' so it's possible OneRepublic returned the favour. It works though, kicking the song into a steady gear that allows it to be rather catchy given how wordy it ends up being. I'm fond of evocative metaphors though so the titular phrase is a good one.

#733. Meg Mac - Maybe It's My First Time (#86, 2017)

74th of 2017

I've been sitting on writing this one for weeks. Sure you can make excuses like 'I went to Melbourne for several days', 'I was sick for several days' or 'The AFL season just started and I hadn't gotten into the swing of multi-tasking just yet', but this is exactly the sort of entry that's gonna put me into writer's block. You know how there's the conversation every year about how the #101-#200 section is better than the actual list? I'm not saying there isn't merit to that opinion. If you like your music in the most natural sense, then skipping over the attention-grabbing gimmicks and getting to the less popular but still largely beloved entries by those who voted them, that's admirable. That's always as far as the discussion goes though because there's little to say about it other than commiserations for the very close, and curious what-ifs when artists unleash a salvo of their own. I always find that broadcast a bit tiresome to listen to, although I'll largely blame the schedule being very against my best interests there.

It's where you'll find many a song like "Maybe It's My First Time" though. Songs that don't quite have the big pop appeal to go big, maybe from artists who've thrived on that before. Mostly just the kind of likeable entries you'd be keen to hear on a setlist, but maybe won't buy tickets to finally get a chance to see. That's not the whole section of the list, for many it's the home of many of their votes, and these are words that aren't describing them accurately at all. On the other hand, there are going to be at least 90 songs in that lower section you didn't vote for, and your mileage is going to vary very little with many of them.

Would it be a big shock if "Maybe It's My First Time" landed at #114 instead? Not really. It comes from Meg Mac's debut album, but she'd already had 4 Hottest 100 entries before it. It may be boosted by the hype associated with the official debut, but it feels like just another day at the races at this point. Any gimmicks related to Meg Mac's style and persona with respect to what else is going on with music at the time are irrelevant at this point. You know who she is, and you know what you're getting.

Anyway this is a whole lot of misleading fluff to get in the way of me saying that I do think this is a worthwhile entry on its own. The roughness making up the backbone of her earlier singles is no longer around and there's a nice polish to it. You might not think of it instantly because it's not the title line, but the hook is solid and memorable to me. A jolt of energy with the added percussion and vocal layering. It's just the kind of unremarkable but generally solid performance that I'd struggle to write more than three sentences about if I didn't frame it like I did.

#732. Boy & Bear - Walk the Wire (#63, 2015)

71st of 2015

The start of the 2010s felt like a big changing of the guard in the triple j sphere. A transition brought upon by the combined efforts of social media and triple j Unearthed to give us so many answers in response of 'Who is the next big thing?'. The near simultaneous dissolution of both Powderfinger & Silverchair, the undeniable top of the podium for 15 years prior gave up a lot of real estate for whoever could come through next. I don't think we ever really got an answer to that but there were a lot of curiosities along the way.

To continue this line of thought, 2010 was also probably the year where physical singles ceased to be a dominant force on the ARIA Charts. We'd seen an increasing number of hit songs in the years previously that thrived without it. Rihanna's "Don't Stop The Music" in early 2008 was the first digital only #1 single, Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl" followed suit 5 months later. In 2010 however, Eminem & Rihanna reached the pinnacle, having the highest selling single of the entire year with "Love The Way You Lie", solely on digital downloads. Once this became the norm, it began to far outstrip the capacity of the physical market. The rough ceiling of about 4xPlatinum sales in physical stores, while still the marker of a big hit, were dwarfed as it become not unusual for singles to reach 8xPlatinum or even higher whilst still maintaining their top 40 tenure.

These bigger numbers filtered especially towards the bottom end of the chart, with nation-conquering hits sticking around long after making their initial statements, and turning the chart from a matter of 'Something has to go here' into 'Just merely breaking in is a cutthroat battle with the odds stacked against you'. In early 2009, it would take about 1,000 sales to crack the ARIA top 50, and by 2012, that number would hover around 4,000. It tracks that simply more people were buying their music, but it removed the hopes of a lot of local underdogs to have a rallying call to get them that elusive exposure. It takes bands like Gyroscope, who could reliably rally together a bunch of sales in one week to get their lead singles onto the chart into a non-entity as the threshold gets beyond them, and now that's something that's only really replicated on the album chart, where you can occasionally get to #1 with sales that wouldn't even crack the top 100 singles chart.

While triple j is forever a relative niche, it has hovered in and around the thresholds of the chart. You could start to make decent Hottest 100 predictions with regards to the kinds of songs that felt anchored to the triple j audience. Cracking the ARIA top 100 was a reasonable benchmark, but the rare few that could reach the top 50 running on only one set of fumes were the ones you knew were a different breed. 

Boy & Bear finally enter this story at this point. They spent 2010 rapidly growing, and it culminated late in the year when they scored a minor hit out of their cover of Crowded House's "Fall At Your Feet". I liked the cover a lot, but I found myself listening to it repeatedly around New Year's Eve and something clicked sharply into place at that time: I loved it. Something about the harmonies and the re-arrangement of the instrumentation to allow more dramatic shifts in mood allowed it to stand admirably alongside the original. You would never expect that one soft-rock band covering another could produce such a startling result. It was the tipping point that put me, and many others firmly in the Boy & Bear camp for years to come. It's more relevant to a future blurb, but last year I finally saw them live and had a great time.

It was in this brief moment in time that the answer felt like it had arrived, Australia's great new hope was this unassuming bunch of softies that seemed to have just won the lottery on having everyone eating out of their palm. In 2011 they proved that the cover wasn't a fluke as their next lead single "Feeding Line" also managed to spend some time in the ARIA top 50, and entirely off digital sales too. There was no gimmick this time, there truly were that many people excited for a new Boy & Bear single that they had the power to do this. We didn't know at the time that they'd never manage another top 50 single, but the accolades came elsewhere. The album would debut at #2 with very healthy sales just behind the monster that was Adele's "21". Boy & Bear's debut album "Moonfire" was one of 14 albums that were blocked from the top spot by that Adele album, if you choose to include Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" which reached #1 in 1977 prior to the existence of the ARIA Chart. Depending on who you ask, they either completed their transition beyond the triple j sphere, or proved it was a one way funnel for the ARIA Awards when they won Album Of The Year for it. In 2013 they would finally get the #1 album they were unlucky to not get, and in 2015 they'd do it again.

The fortunes would rapidly dry up after that. Amidst the band's rapid rise, frontman Dave Hosking was battling illness. Specifically Chronic Dysbiosis, which I've not encountered elsewhere, but involves an excess of bacteria and various disgusting effects relating to excrement that I'll gladly not read about again. That probably accelerated their decline from the spotlight as they wouldn't follow up this album for 4 years, and they've gone from 'Of course they debuted at #1' to 'Oh they got a week in the top 10, well done!'. Surprises can happen (Missy Higgins made the most recent Hottest 100), but it very much looks like "Walk The Wire" will be the last Boy & Bear song to ever make the Hottest 100.

It wouldn't be unreasonable to say that the interest faded because the songs weren't quite as good either. I felt no strong enthusiasm for this song when it landed in the poll for instance. On the other hand, one of the singles they put out in 2023, "Abraham" was a big return that either proved I was craving the sounds of my late teens, or that it was a genuine return to form. The artwork they used even inexplicably looks like the artwork they were rolling out during their second album, before they quickly reverted back to boring photographs.

"Walk The Wire" is not necessarily a bad effort, I might even say it's pretty good. It just feels a little too locked into its initial groove to ever bolt out with excitement. You've just got this stiff middle-era Kings of Leon kinda guitar riff that never really excites, and never really exits either. I can't help but be distracted by it in front of anything else that does happen in the song.

#731. The Jungle Giants - Sending Me Ur Loving (#8, 2020)

66th of 2020

This could be referred to as starting things off with a bang. The Jungle Giants have accumulated 11 Hottest 100 entries, which includes 1 before and 1 after this period I'm covering. Technically "Sending Me Ur Loving" could be seen as the band's biggest hit. It's their highest charter on the ARIA Chart (it got to #55), and it's their equal highest Hottest 100 entry. It might have you thinking 'What an odd song to earn this distinction', and I'd tend to agree, reading it all as a weird curiosity in the end.

It'll feel more appropriate to talk about the Jungle Giants resurgence when I get to tackling an entry from their 2017 album, whichever one might come first, but it might be valid to say that their chart positions spent years playing catch up as we all came to terms with what they were up to. Their previous single proved they could reach these heights, and then this song was released in January 2020 and got to spend the whole year wondering if it could do the same.

The COVID-19 analogies can't help but come back. An odd bit of trivia that's always stuck with me is that the top grossing film of 2020 in the United States was "Bad Boys for Life", not because it was a particularly significant smash, but because it was one of the only ones that got out into cinemas before March. While the music industry wasn't impacted quite as much as the film industry, it's easy to imagine that a whole lot of artists' campaigns were either delayed or had their promotional efforts squandered at least a little bit for most of that year. "Sending Me Ur Loving" was one of two songs in the top 10 for 2020 that were released in January, perhaps that other song which landed slightly higher could be the "Bad Boys for Life" of the Hottest 100.

It's possible to also wonder if this affected The Jungle Giants' release schedule. Something that's always struck me about this album of theirs (which houses 4 more entries after this) is how drawn out the campaign was. This band used to release an album ever 2 years, and now they're releasing their lead single a full 24 months before the album. It seems to be their M.O. now too as I'm writing this 2 years after "Trippin' Up" was released and it still doesn't have an album attached to them. Lead singer Sam Hales also just got hospitalised after a motor accident in March so I wouldn't be surprised if this just keeps taking longer (he's doing better now though). It seems like an odd coincidence to be talking about health issues for singers in two consecutive entries, and let it be known that the same also applies to the next entry, so I'll let you mull on that for the weekend.

The thing I haven't mentioned yet is the way The Jungle Giants' music has changed over the years. So much so that my iTunes library tags have transitioned from Alternative to Pop to Dance across their 10+ years. Their 2019 single is probably a solid turning point though, I'll try to discuss it more in detail when we get to that one, but it's the first song of theirs I can see that lists Sam as a sole writer and producer. Adding to this, Sam also dabbles in another Brisbane band, that being Confidence Man. He's done production work for them, and as far as I can tell, is still engaged to their lead singer. If you're at all familiar with that group, it might lend some explanation as to how we went from "She's a Riot" to "Sending Me Ur Loving".

At the core of it, the song doesn't sound too far removed from the singles on their previous album, I can definitely hear strong shades of the same songwriting. The main difference is just how they put it all together. There's a lot of sanding over the edges to make it sound just a little bit less like an actual band. From what I can find, the rest of the band are on this song but it never feels obvious outside of one guitar line that comes through on the chorus. I'm not saying that I'm opposed to the band's (or rather Sam's) experimentation over the years, but I feel like this particular one lands as the weakest of the set. It's in an awkward middle ground where it's not committing to either side strongly enough and so its relative pleasantness is outweighed by there just being better options either way.