#670-#666

#670. Meg Mac - Never Be (#11, 2015)

67th of 2015

At long last, it's a call back to 3 months ago. When I was talking about "Roll Up Your Sleeves" (#798), I mentioned that there was a second song Meg Mac performed at the 2023 Brownlow Medal ceremony. Give yourself a gold star if you remembered or figured that it had to be this song. This is another song I feel falls under a similar category to what I'd said about Boy & Bear (#732) and The Jezabels (#714). It's a song that's distinguished in hindsight by the fact that it reached the ARIA top 50, something no song of hers did before or since. At the time it makes you think that it's the inevitable reach of her rising stardom, but then in hindsight you have to start giving the song itself more credit. It's her highest polling song in the Hottest 100 by quite a distance, just missing the top 10 in what has to be seen as a pretty stacked year. Not to mention, look at some of the songs it beat!

The same thing always happens in these cases, where it takes quite a bit of effort to start assessing the song on its own merits. I've ended up more favourable to it than I initially expected. I don't think it necessarily has any fresh tricks up its sleeve, but it does feel like a strong culmination of what Meg Mac was doing at this point.

Definitely one of the funniest starts to a song even if it's unintentional. Just this incredibly nasal 'nah nah nah nah' before any music comes in. If you happen to have an mp3 copy of this song, try starting it at the 10.7 second mark and see just how much of a different impression you get going into it, because it's always the first thing I think of. It makes me forget how exciting the song actually is. Not the strongest hook, it lands a bit awkwardly with the unspoken semicolon before 'thank the lord'. I love the momentum rise on the way there though. Another one of those songs that spreads out its methods of attack and switches them up, giving you all the excitement of a house music drop except it's Meg Mac wailing about her past friend's mistakes or something like that. Really strong vocal runs too, and wouldn't you believe it, that first 10.7 seconds comes back on the final chorus and gives it some extra punch without being distracting.

#669. The Kid LAROI with Justin Bieber - STAY (#2, 2021)

73rd of 2021

Good to knock this one off. I would not have expected that my extended bit of never uttering the name of artists yet to appear on this list would clash with a surprisingly high need to reference Justin Bieber, but I'm freed from it at last. I'm nothing if not fallible so what you've seen up to this point is at least a handful of cases where I've forgotten the role he plays here for an instant and then gone back to fix it. Trust me though, it's very funny to go to my document that has everything I've ever written for this and have this be the very first hit for his name. Fret not as we've still no shortage of further cases just like it. I think in general I just totally forgot how high I ended up ranking this song.

Let's do the thing that I've apparently been pining to do for months and actually talk about Justin Bieber. This is to date his only appearance in the Hottest 100, and he's wasted no time by taking the runner up spot. Well, maybe he's wasted some time because it's taken 12 years of his music career to get to this point, but he's still plenty relevant up to now. The Justin Bieber story is one that's moved in all sorts of directions from year to year. It's only now that things have slowed down as he's having an extended period without releasing anything. As I'm writing this, he hasn't had a top 50 hit in 3 years, and outside of his annual 'shawty' stocking under the "Mistletoe" for Christmas, hasn't been in the chart for 2 years. "STAY" was his last to hold on because it's a song that very much lived up to its name.

I want to take it way back if only as a reminder of how far we've all come in this time. Go to 2009/2010. I've just finished high school, but I'm also still a child. Everyone who's ever topped the charts up to this point has been older than me, and it doesn't generally look like that's gonna change, until this precocious Canadian singer pops up and is immediately deemed to be a big deal. He's barely a year and a half younger than me but it's already enough of a sign that he's absolutely the enemy. Just the cherry on the top of awful music industry creations. It was a combination of herd mentality and a sheer visceral reaction to hearing his voice and the kinds of things that he sung but I hated him so immensely. For many people, that'll just amount to cringy social media posts, but for me, I made a (thankfully always obscure) website solely for making fun of him. I barely actually did do that on the website and it became more of an outlet for me to test out web development stuff, but it really is a time capsule of the moment. When I wasn't doing that, I was following a YouTuber's crusade against Justin Bieber, one who got into a hacking war with a pre-adolescent fan, which is an even higher level of stupid that might be best to be lost media although I can't help but want to re-experience something that was driving me that I'd absolutely never get involved with nowadays. You don't know how far you've veered off course until you actually measure out the accumulated distance. Or that's what I thought until just a few weeks ago that channel popped back up on my feed after over a decade of being suspended. I haven't dived into it, but that's another incredibly unlikely thing that's happened from me tempting fate.

Both I and Justin Bieber eventually became adults and it started to cool off a bit from there. I was highly anti-Bieber still for a few more years. In some respects it was more than that because I saw more and more people over time start to flip over to taking him seriously and thinking he was capable and delivering on actually making good music. I didn't really see it myself until occasionally in 2013, when he put out a more low key R&B project in such a way that we all ended up hearing it piece by piece. I thought some of those songs were actually pretty good. I suppose I was still cheating by only giving him credit when he was making music out of his wheelhouse, a classic way to rationalise dislike with an exception that still puts you above them.

It wouldn't be unreasonable to say that a lot of people had their Bieber conversion point at some time around 2015/2016. It was the point where on the charts, he went from something of an outsider from the Top 40 machine just boosted by his eager fanbase, to an artist with the general public completely ready to take him seriously, and a still active fanbase adding the numbers to take his smash hits and turn them into 'biggest hits of the year' kinds of smash hits. He probably should have had 3 straight #1 hits in this short span but the simultaneous release of Adele's "Hello" with his "Sorry" meant that he was stuck at #2 for one of them, not for any lack of trying. We've already tackled Halsey's cover of "Love Yourself" (#999), but I do think his takeover is best exemplified by his first #1 hit, "What Do You Mean?". It's the sound of him absolutely capturing the modern zeitgeist...arguably he was a little early to it, with a song that is so undeniably pleasant that it was probably the point in which I couldn't find myself to hate him anymore. He never ended up being the first artist with a #1 single that was younger than me, Reece Mastin beat him to it by about 4 years.

So I found myself pleasantly surprised with Justin Bieber's run of hits at that point, and it was a sign to be positive. Unfortunately, that combination of public approval and a strong fanbase also has its draw backs. From this point on, he was completely let loose on the charts with a level of ease that always made it feel like he had a handicap. After "Love Yourself", he's had 6 more #1 hits which includes two further stake-claimers for what becomes by far his biggest hit ever, eclipsing all else before it. First it was the "Despacito" remix, then it was "STAY".

My opinion on Justin Bieber soured in a different way. I didn't think that he was awful, spawn of Satan, that sort of thing. Instead I just felt like out of all the pop stars, he was the one who was prone to stinking up the charts the most due to his sheer regularity of putting out extremely mediocre singles that seemed to always chart higher than feels right. In 2020 it was probably an all-time low, where he had 6 pretty big hits and the most damning thing about it is that I might consider putting "Yummy" in the top half of those. "Stuck with U" is by a wide margin my least favourite of his big hits and really stinks up its own reputation as a charity single when you read the phrase 'all *net* profits'. I'd also say of those hits I think "Monster" is pretty good but then it's really Shawn Mendes' song and so I'm just deflecting the compliment again.

Apart from the lack of a break given, I didn't take as much issue with his run of hits in 2021. "Peaches" being the hit that it was, is still a bit strange to me but I like that he helped Daniel Caesar & Giveon get a #1 hit to their name. In general though if you ask me now, I don't have any issue with Justin Bieber in general. I can freely speak of him without coiling up. I can look back on some of his older stuff with more of an open mind. Teenage me would be mortified but I enjoyed "Baby" last time I heard it. I just wish he was held to a higher standard and he saw it through to make more stuff that's genuinely great, and less in the vein of just being a chart cheat code like his underwhelming contribution to the "Despacito" story that took a lot of limelight away from a song that was more than serviceable without him. There's a Billie Eilish moment that needs to be brought up at a later date with similar stakes, and honestly, there's also this song.

I am completely contributing to the very thing I was complaining about for spending so long talking about Justin Bieber on what is actually The Kid LAROI's song. My excuse is that this is Justin Bieber's only entry and The Kid LAROI has another one to come, so why not just get it out of my system. Even if I am being rational and optimistic, I don't think The Kid LAROI ever had quite the star power on his own to make this song as big as it ended up being. It might help that there isn't an original solo release of this song to compare it to, but I do think that Justin Bieber doesn't drag down the quality of this one. The two of them are fairly interchangeable so it's not quite the jump scare to hear Justin Bieber like it has been in the past.

While I'm making fun of my past transgressions, I've got another one. I heard this pretty much as soon as it came out on a New Music Friday playlist. I wasn't able to find any old tweets I had on the matter, but I distinctly recall posting something online to the effect of saying that I thought "STAY" being under two and a half minutes meant that it was a non-event that probably wouldn't trouble the charts. In case you forget what the winter, spring & summer of 2021/2022 were like, then I have to note that "STAY" managed 17 weeks at #1, making it the second longest running #1 hit of all time. It's only just recently been bumped down to having the 4th longest top 10 tenure of all time. "STAY" looked like it was done, but was still hanging around close enough that this Hottest 100 finish helped add the last 3 weeks to its reign. The Kid LAROI's next single "THOUSAND MILES" (#812) barely managed to outchart "STAY" for just its first 4 weeks, despite the fact that "STAY" debuted at #1 10 months prior to that song's release. Even to this day, "STAY" will occasionally get overtaken on the Australian Hip-Hop/Rap Singles Chart (I wouldn't really call it either of those things but alas), but anything that does it is always living on borrowed time. 4 years on from its release and "STAY" is still topping that chart. "STAY" even went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, making The Kid LAROI still the last Australian artist to do so, you have to go back to Sia's "Cheap Thrills" in 2016 to find another one. We've all made bad predictions from time to time, but this one of mine really takes the cake, attempts to throw it in the bin from point blank range, and ends up eating it instead.

"STAY" comes at the end of an extensive campaign of promoting The Kid LAROI's first mixtape "F*CK LOVE". It was released, then extended and re-released two more times after that. Once it all wrapped up, it ended at 35 tracks long, but a little under 80 minutes, which if nothing else, makes my issue with the length of "STAY" a bit of a non-concern. It's actually longer than the average track here. It's situations like this that practically beg for a sophomore slump. I can't technically use that in the literal sense because The Kid LAROI released "The First Time" in late 2023 and that's technically his debut album, but it certainly feels like "F*CK LOVE" is his debut album in everything but the paperwork, and its stretched out release means that it's loaded with hits. You can't keep doing that because you have to start from scratch the next time and it'll never succeed to the same degree, especially since it's hard to imagine him ever having a hit of this stature ever again.

"STAY" is a very brushed up version of The Kid LAROI. No trap beats or endearingly unpolished drums, we're fully in the world of synth pop here. It's really tempting to draw the comparison to The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" (#786) as two songs that operate in a similar lane, trying to create the next iconic synth riff. When the general public make similar songs into the biggest hits of 2020, 2021 and 2022 (I am dragging Harry Styles' "As It Was" into this conversation), you want to ignore the individual merits and read it as a solved formula.

I like "STAY" a bit more because I think it utilises its two vocalists a bit better. They get caught up into the higher tempo and play along with it well. Chopping a minute off the run time of "Blinding Lights" makes it harder to wear out on it, especially as it goes a little bit further to shift things around. The best part of the song is just after Justin Bieber's verse where we get a break from the synth line and instead just have The Kid LAROI multi-tracking himself in front of the drums. Then they bring the synth back and it's a satisfying release.

#668. Catfish and the Bottlemen - 7 (#19, 2016)

69th of 2016

I live in the most common time zone in the world. That's thanks in large part to China's universal time but it covers a lot of Southeast Asia as well. This is the case all year round as I also live in one of the two Australian states that don't observe daylight savings. The most drastic thing it's done in my life since moving here is that I usually don't know how to program my watch. I've even found when taking trips to different parts of the world that I'm just used to not adjusting the time and doing the calculation in my head. I used to have a watch that ran too fast by about 15 minutes and I adjusted for that too. It actually proved a great motivator to hurry up because that initial shock before the realisation kicks in can get you on your feet.

As someone who mostly engages online with people in different time zones, I almost never get to enjoy the fruits of my stubborn electorate. I'm either converting to Australian EST, American EST, or British time, and it's on me to keep track of when each country shifts back and forward an hour. I like this time of year because everyone's a little bit closer to me, but it would be much easier if I could safely keep track of it. I can't always trust looking things up because people have a habit of using the two names interchangeably, or you can find an accurate time online without it being made clear that it's not actually being observed at the moment. Ideally I would just schedule everything by saying it's in 'x' hours, although I understand few are as willing as me to do the mental maths.

In that regard, I've never related to Vann McCann more than the one line of this song that'd be a throwaway if it's not where the song got its peculiar title from. A song about long distance relationships and struggling to find a good time to call because of the sometimes forgotten time distance. I am incredibly bad at responding to direct messages I get while I'm sleeping and try to avoid doing the same to others, but I'll also admit that it becomes very likely that I'll just forget to send the thing waiting for a better time. I promise I'm not intentionally ghosting anyone; I just don't usually have my head straight immediately after waking up.

Pretty good song though. I do find myself docking points because it does my least favourite Catfish and the Bottlemen trick by breaking out of the singing cadence to make an aside. I just get unnaturally bothered by the 'I never want you' type lines that feel like they undercut the whole thing by association. Otherwise there's a good balance of tempo to this one. They also tease the chorus by offering a little bit more of it each time and I think it keeps the song sounding pretty fresh. I feel like my seemingly random preferences feel like contrarianism at times so it's refreshing to go out on an artist with what is their biggest hit in this context.

#667. Baker Boy (feat Bernard Fanning) - Wish You Well (#31, 2022)

67th of 2022

It's not something I'm usually interested in talking about, but if you had to ask me what my least favourite Hottest 100 winning song is, I will probably always say "Wish You Well". I came into triple j in 2006 and got engrossed in the sound of it at that time, so there might be some unfair bias against 2005 there, but I look at that result and it just feels so antithetical to what I'd grown accustomed to. I got into triple j because it offered a world of music I'd never encountered before that felt unique and intriguing. The winning song that year was Augie March's "One Crowded Hour", an odd literary musing that never loses its shine no matter how many times I hear it. It's just so much of a buzzkill to see that 12 months prior, the voting public couldn't get less adventurous. Awarding the lead singer of the band that already topped the poll twice before as he sets out to make the most instantly stale acoustic guitar jam. One that would easily take the mantle away from "Wonderwall" or "Taylor" if it was at all known overseas. No winning song feels quite as devoid of ambition as "Wish You Well" with its nauseating riff that never goes away. Generally I've liked Bernard Fanning's solo work otherwise, I think he has a gift for melody, finding those little nuggets that take the songs to the next level. Even as recently as last year he put out an album collaborating with another '90s triple j stalwart who will find his way onto this list at some point and I thought he still had everything working there. "Wish You Well" is just the weird one that doesn't evoke anything and yet is just about the most popular song he's ever written. It's hard to get a good measure on this because it wasn't eligible to chart in 2005, but according to a radio countdown on Nova in 2011, it was the 3rd best selling song of all time on iTunes from 2005, which suggests to me that it was probably a monster that never got its official flowers on the ARIA Chart. Powderfinger never charted higher than #4, and with how the charts operated then, I strongly suspect he could have surpassed that.

Anyway, I was forced to reface my demons in 2022 because Baker Boy decided to sample "Wish You Well" in his song of the same name. I had my hat of skepticism firmly on but I ended up being pretty content with the result of it. What really helps in all this is that it sounds like the result of me being on the committee for how the sample was utilised. It doesn't swallow up the song at all, which really is just feels like a Baker Boy song with a guest hook. All you get from the original song is the pre-chorus that comes in like a sudden plot twist, and then the chorus itself which graciously removes the grating guitar riff altogether. It's just such a thrill to isolate the problem in this way, remove it, and instantly fix most of my issues with the song. Maybe Bernard should have always recorded it with a band, I can think of 4 guys who'd go great with him.

It's also just a great fit in general for Baker Boy with his eternally good vibes. He's someone who I could never get annoyed at for wishing me well, and he remains a likeable presence all throughout this one. It might be a cheap saving throw from an artist who was struggling to poll at this point, but it works a lot better than a mission briefing of this kind tends to suggest.

#666. The Wombats - Greek Tragedy (#29, 2015)

66th of 2015

At some point in time this became The Wombats' most popular song. I'm not entirely sure when. Most clues point to a moment it had on TikTok 4 years ago, but there were signs before that. Still that's weird isn't it? This song came out a solid 8 years after a most popular Wombats song should have come out. That's like if Kaiser Chiefs had a huge in 2012, or Arctic Monkeys' most popular song was from...actually let's hold that thought. 

Still, we have this polling as a time capsule to suggest that it was well received at the time but not reaching its full potential. When it comes to belated virality, it's easy to be on the outside and decide 'oh, strange TikTok quirk', but I think it's too easy and unproductive to dismiss things on that level. I do think that the platform has made this sort of thing happen with greater regularity. In the past you had Chris Isaak's "Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing" going from a #27 hit in 1995 to a #9 hit in 1999 after it was remixed and included in Stanley Kubrick's last film "Eyes Wide Shut". It just took so many people working behind the scenes to set up these situations that it was a rarity. Now we've got older songs reaching new audiences every day to varying degrees. Most people won't even notice something on the scale of "Greek Tragedy" because it never reached any belated chart positions, but it's still notable in its own right.

With all that in mind though, it's simply a case where it has become a lot easier for songs old and new to reach a lot of ears simultaneously, and easier for that moment to be capitalised on. If you're on the outside, it's going to look like the mysterious past song ghoul is just picking things out of a claw machine at random (if you asked me a month ago which old Black Eyed Peas song was gonna be in the charts, I might need 15 guesses to get it), but I posit that it's always been like that. If you could manage to divorce yourself from the radio and TV cycles that drove hits in the past, it doesn't look much different. The picking and choosing feels just as random, and sometimes the timing is just bizarre. I see Regina Spektor's song "Fidelity" having a minor spell on the ARIA Chart about a year too late and it makes little sense other than it roughly coinciding with her being in the country. That feels no different to a TikTok moment for me.

The way I usually see it is that we're more likely to unlock potential out of these songs. That's especially obvious in the case of anything that no one in their right mind would think it was destined for big things (like say a "Space Song" by Beach House). It just creates a different kind of puzzle. For The Wombats, maybe "Greek Tragedy" always had this potential and it was just held back by people even more dismissive than me about the idea of listening to The Wombats in 2015 (I mean, I still did), keeping them in their late 2000s niche. This just flips the script where now "Let's Dance To Joy Division" is filling that role for anyone who heard this but isn't interested in diving deeper in their discography. You can have a winner, but it'll always feel transient because we can't make everyone listen to every song.

Anyway, "Greek Tragedy" is a pleasant track. A bit Wombats by the numbers but they know how to string you along for the runtime. Actually with that in mind it's surprising the vocals take a whole 40 seconds to even come through. I haven't checked their whole discography but it's a considerably longer wait than any of their other Hottest 100 entries. It also has a memorable music video starring April Pearson of "Skins" fame. I won't spoil it if you haven't seen it just that there's a content warning at the start of the video and it's not just because you get to see Murph taking a bath.