#750-#746

#750. D.D Dumbo - Walrus (#47, 2016)

79th of 2016

The man known as D.D Dumbo is an enigma. He showed up, released some songs, released an album, got some pretty good acclaim in the process, and then disappeared. Every year or so there'll be a new thread on /r/triplej asking if anyone knows what happened to him. At least Gotye still keeps us updated on what he's up to, D.D Dumbo's been radio silent for 7 years now. He's not really a guy you can just replace either. His two popular songs don't sound much like anything else. Heck, they don't even sound much like each other.

I won't pretend I was fully on the wavelength. He's got that alt-J kind of weirdness down where it feels like coming across a successful idea is the result of carefully curating the best of a bunch of unorthodox ideas. The most memorable parts of "Walrus" are all the little incidental moments. The plucky riff that comes in constantly, the slightly unsettling inhaling & exhaling sounds that bridge the loops together, and D.D Dumbo's own performance occasionally coming out of hiding to deliver morsels of lyrics. It may well be the best version of whatever strange idea came about to conceive it.

#749. Khalid - Saved (#62, 2017)

77th of 2017

This list circumstance exists in such a way to perpetuate the idea that I think all of Khalid's solo songs are roughly equal in quality. There's quite a lot of variation there, if "Location" was on the docket this would be a very different story. At the end of the day, we're just plucking small segments out of a large discography and if they happen to be ones that line up pretty closely, there isn't much I can do about it.

"Saved" is the best one to make this observation on because it feels like the most unusual choice. The ARIA Charts don't always capture everything, but they can do a pretty decent job at setting the pecking order. When you start talking about genuine pop stars, you can draw the line with a fair amount of accuracy. Top 50 hits are probably primed to make this list, anything else and it's unlikely. There's another tangent to this I want to get to once I reach a certain Lizzo song (not the one with similar chart credentials to "Saved", but the other one, that had me re-assessing the parameters of a hit song). Khalid is not a perfect example of this situation anyway. He went through so many hits at once that triple j listeners weren't able to simmer on them and drive them through. Maybe this would be different nowadays. Future Hottest 100 entrant Gracie Abrams managed to spin a 5 entry haul out of a chart history where only two of those songs really lit up the charts, but Khalid actually had plenty of genuine hits that still couldn't muster up the Hottest 100 votes. Amidst all this, you've got "Saved", a song that reached a measly #92 on the ARIA Charts, a week after it polled.

As I alluded to not long ago when I was talking about "Young Dumb & Broke" (#753), this was actually the first Khalid song to get put into rotation on triple j. In the age of TikTok becoming the gatekeeper & kingmaker of hits nowadays, there's a growing sentiment that triple j doesn't jump the gun on new artists like they used to, and should do. I used to feel this way but I don't really think it's true anymore. Granted, I'll accept that they're probably not the ones making the artists famous anymore, but you'd be surprised at just how often they're able to maintain bragging rights on these things. Future Hottest 100 winner Chappell Roan was getting played on triple j in 2023, "Messy" by Lola Young hit #1 on the ARIA Chart this year, but triple j were playing it a full 6 months before it even touched the top 50. The next big thing is probably getting spun right now and we're all just waiting for someone in America to tell us it's good. In the time since I wrote this, Ravyn Lenae's single "Love Me Not" has vaulted up the charts around the world, triple j first played it back in January before this, as well as several other songs of hers last year. Not full bragging rights, but more than they're getting credit for.

It's impossible to fully work out the voter mindset. While you want to believe that every song stands for itself, there can be the occasionally difficult to shake feeling that the voting list might betray the current listener experience, and substitutions are to be had. Someone might be thinking 'I wanted to vote for "Pumped Up Kicks", I compromised, I voted for the Like A Version cover and "Helena Beat"'. Khalid was one of the hottest tickets in popular music when voting was taking place. But you'll scroll to his name in the voting list and see just four of his songs. "Young Dumb & Broke", and three deeper cuts. I'm not saying that "Saved" is an unknown song, but it's probably a sufficient outlet to satiate the supply & demand discrepancy, and that probably helped it a little bit. Maybe it didn't look too strange at the time, but when "Eastside" (#888) and "Talk" (#917) polled similarly in the years that followed, it starts to stick out a bit in hindsight.

In any case, "Saved" is cut from a similar cloth to "Location" really. They're both songs whose central lyric is built upon the social dynamics of phone meta-data status. It's the kind of thing that could sound incredibly cheesy & forced, but I think Khalid's straight-faced delivery pulls it off. If he started making songs about the asymmetry of who's following whom on social media, or who's more likely to send the first conversational DM, that might be a tougher sell. Here it's just about keeping a phone number saved. That has conceptual roots that pre-date smartphones. It's a cute breakup song. He's toeing the line of needing to move on. He's able to delete all their old photos but this one small thing he's clinging onto keeps the possibility on the line. On the other hand, writing a whole song about it means that we're inundated with lyrics that scream 'not over it', but that might just be a forced perspective as a result. If you're prompted to talk about something over and over again, it might just reinforce your investment in it regardless of where your true feelings lay. Have I ever mentioned how endlessly fascinated I am by the Korean adventure game/visual novel "BURIED STARS", about a bunch of pop idols on a reality show that get trapped underground? It's too rough around the edges to really recommend, but it's so unique and intriguing that I'm constantly thinking about it. I don't know anyone else who's played/read it so I've got no one to talk to about it. I just spent over an hour writing about a Khalid song that doesn't really inspire much out of me at all. If I hadn't said all this, it would be reasonable to think that this is the thing that's living rent-free in my head. It's pretty good but there's not much to think about.

#748. Arctic Monkeys - Arabella (#18, 2013)

81st of 2013

Album charts have always been a little off. For what is supposed to be the ultimate barometer of popularity and success, it's never quite worked that way. There's always just some level of noise getting in the way of a natural state of affairs. It does what it's supposed to, but there's no difference between someone purchasing their favourite album ever, someone making a purchase they'll immediately regret, someone buying a present for someone who also might not be interested, or someone just buying an album because it's the only way to get the song they want. There's just no telling what has & hasn't stood the test of time on face value alone.

In recent years (roughly in the middle of the 2010s in most places), streaming has put in a different perspective. In a time where buying albums is no longer part of the regular music fan's activity cycle, it's a necessary change, but one that's brought in a new layer of noise. What the streaming era has taught us is that there is a substantial valley between people listening to entire albums, and people just cherry picking their favourite singles. Possibly they're never even trying out the whole thing, possibly they're not even aware of the album. Australia and the UK mitigate this system a little bit, where the top two tracks of any album don't contribute to the weekly streaming totals, but the loophole is as simple as you think. What if an otherwise frivolous album just had 3 hit singles? It's this cheat code that can turn an apparent flop album into a hit. Usually it's more than 3, but many very successful albums nowadays operate so heavily on this that it's often so frivolous. Benson Boone recently has had a successful album that's endured well, but that's only because he kept his previous hits on there, accruing steady streams like "Age of Empires" villagers. Take them out and it'd crumble very quickly. I can never get a read on how popular he really is because I rarely see someone so popular but with such a gulf. Doja Cat's last album made the fatal mistake of having only two big crossover hits, so it sunk like a stone, but more people have actually listened to it than Benson Boone's album.

Popularity is tough to figure out though. There's still merit to getting a lot of people to just listen to one of your songs. The whole system will tend to reward albums that are being listened to in full on the whole though. Vinyl sales, and a decent trickle of streams for the deeper cuts can make the margins. Sometimes those big hit packages can feel like unstoppable behemoths, but so many of them do eventually fall by the wayside.

This whole preamble was just to point out that when we're talking about popular albums of the 2010s, it's really hard to look past "AM". It might just be the one album that has the whole package. Great sales on release, solid week to week sales to this day, plenty of people listening to the whole thing in full, and so, so many hits to prop it up even if they weren't initially. "AM" was a big deal when it came out, but it only went so far. Mumford & Sons' "Babel" and The Black Keys' "El Camino" outsold it at the time for instance. Its sheer refusal to die in the streaming era has sent it past pretty much all of its contemporaries now. Only Taylor Swift and to a lesser extent Billie Eilish can compete, and at the time I'm writing this, "AM" is outcharting every Taylor Swift album except her newest one. If anyone felt like this album was rock & roll's saviour at the time, it's more than lived up to the responsibility 12 years down the road.

We'll be talking about three songs from "AM" here. "R U Mine?" also polled before this cut off in 2012, but to be fair that's also the single version that sounds a decent amount different to the album version. It pains me a little knowing that most people know it only as the album version now as the slight differences distract me immensely. I guess I understand how purists for "Tomorrow" and "Prisoner Of Society" feel now. Arctic Monkeys have polled something with all seven of their albums over the years, but the three entries they got in 2013 landed higher than everything else ever could. Just a tidy three entries at once all in the top 20, getting to the meat of it with no filler.

I can probably talk more about "AM" when we get to one of the later entries, don't want to blow the whole thing just on "Arabella". When it comes to this particular song, it's not one I'd really miss a lot if it was gone. It just feels like it's overstepping its boundaries just a little as a song whose most notable feature is how much it sounds like "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath. I feel like they shouldn't have been able to get away with it, and I'd rather they tried something more original instead. I'm not a massive fan of the way the drums are mixed in either as it flattens the song a lot, even in moments when it wants to rock out. Can't argue with success, but it really doesn't come quite near the mark of greatness that's implied by it.

#747. FISHER & Shermanology - It's A Killa (#48, 2022)

75th of 2022

We last saw FISHER with "Yeah The Girls" (#794). That song fell into my lap at the same time as "It's A Killa" and I have always gotten the two mixed up. They're both a little more vocal-driven than his previous hits, and the slogan phrases have been subbed out for slogan sentences. Nothing says 'yeah the girls' more than a woman saying 'bang, bang, bang, it's a stick-up', like hell yeah, get that bread, girl. They're also both Dutch coincidentally enough.

It's a different flavour of Dutch, mind you. Shermanology are a brother & sister duo and they're from Curaçao in the Caribbean. That's almost as far as you can possibly get from Australia geographically, so short of any comments about musical output (which I'm still pawning off to a later FISHER entry), credit has to be given for reaching out here. If you're one of those people who gets unusually annoyed about nepotism, then it's my duty to annoy you further, as Shermanology's collective father is Tony Sherman who had a #10 hit and three #11 hits in the Netherlands in the 1970s. You think you like Shermanology for their work with Afrojack and prior Hottest 100 entrant Avicii, but it's all the lingering remnants of Dutch soul & disco hijacking the poll ("Tonight" and "I Wrote You A Letter" are bops to be honest). Andy Sherman (the son) also occasionally sung with The Artful Dodger, which is almost making me want to revive my convoluted flow chart where I tried and nearly succeeded to link every single Hottest 100 entrant ever.

While Dorothy Sherman is definitely singing on this song (possibly Andy has some backing vocals but I'm not sure), it's not clear how much Shermanology are actually contributing to this song, which puts them on equal pegging with FISHER. The duo did put out a 7 minute remix of the song later that has a fairly different vibe to it. Like if I actually produced something, I'm not sure I'd need to remix it myself, but who knows really.

This song probably isn't going to turn many needles for or against FISHER. Another one where you can distil most of what you need to hear down to about 30 seconds, or even less. We're starting to see some worthwhile ideas pop in though. There's a pretty good build up, and I like the switch up on the outro (something about that one note it lands on just sounds funny, and the rhythm is infectious). I'm also always endlessly fascinated by audio panning. You can test your left headphone on "Phoenix" by The Butterfly Effect, and your right headphone on "Obsession" by The Cairos. Or you can just listen to Dorothy after the drop on this song, where her repeated title drops echo back and forth for some reason. My praise can only be faint because I think other FISHER songs do it all better, but this is a start.

#746. Boo Seeka - Does This Last (#85, 2017)

76th of 2017

When it comes to who just makes, and who just misses out on the Hottest 100, it's always going to be a bit arbitrary. When you're on the higher end of things, there's a certain proportion of votes that guarantees a look, but towards the edge, it's unpredictable. Making and missing out can be the difference between whether or not another artist decided to release an album. Hockey Dad made it to #116 this year, that's not very close, but they were beaten out by a collective 16 different songs by Billie Eilish & Charli XCX. No one ever thinks about the casualties of Brat Summer.

Making and missing out can be the difference between getting a proper send off or not. You can look at the bottom end of the 2017 countdown and see a decent handful of artists who haven't appeared since. On the other side of this, there's an alternate version of history where I still have to acknowledge the omnipresence of Kasabian, who landed at #117 in 2017 with "You're in Love with a Psycho". Instead, their Hottest 100 story ends in 2011, and we're tackling another Boo Seeka song instead.

It is a slight bit egregious to talk about "Does This Last" as if it's some late career triumph for Boo Seeka. This came out 6 months before their debut album, and they've got three of them now. The Hottest 100 vote was fickle though, because they also landed at #170 that year with the later single "Turn Up Your Light", and it's been nothing since. triple j haven't really spun any of their new singles after 2020 either, they're just a nostalgia piece now. You may find yourself asking why this only lasts for so long.

I don't remember having any strong feelings for this song at the time. I can imagine wanting to pick any sort of low polling scapegoat at the time given some of the songs that just barely missed that year's countdown, and this is a pretty good scapegoat all things considered! That's not really fair though, it got in, and I think it's a worthwhile continuation of the Boo Seeka history. There's another band in 2017 that was going well overboard in this regard, but the orchestral sweeps do a lot to give a bit more emotional heft to this one. You might not pay it much notice, but while it's on, there's an appreciable quality to it.