#690-#686

#690. Seth Sentry - Hell Boy (#100, 2015)

70th of 2015

The canon of songs to finish at #100 is eternally random but sometimes in the best ways. Impossible to curate so you just have to hope that you get something that fits the mood. Very difficult to beat the high bar set by The Cat Empire when they told us to 'get the party started' in 2005. When I'm in the mood to clutch at straws, I might rep for "Hell Boy", as I suspect it's the #100 song that utters the phrase 'let's go' the most times.

Seth Sentry could easily just be someone else's Adam Newling. He's a very unassuming looking guy, and most of the time very understated in his performance. He's a rapper, but treats it pretty casually on the surface with his biggest hits, frequently either singing, or getting into a relaxed conversational flow. His breakout hit "The Waitress Song" was built on breakfast, and this. It's a song that wears its amateur status on its sleeve, and it's probably why so many people love it. This entire premise about going to a café every day just to briefly interact with the waitress, but spending most of his time detailing the failings of the establishment. He comes off as this plucky underdog you want to root for, for some reason.

I think a key part of it all and how it works is that underneath the complete lack of pretence is the fact that he genuinely is a really good rapper. You can get disoriented by how mundane a lot of it is, but step back and realise how insanely memorable it all is, or how he just keeps filling these things with clever little internal rhymes that stick it all together. It's funny to think also that coming from the same EP as that song, I really gravitated to his song "Simple Game", which manages to up the production values significantly and fit in some oddly profound (to me, a 16 year old) lyrics about existentialism. It's like when Drapht followed up "Jimmy Recard" with "Falling".

Perhaps the surprising thing about all of this is that I'm only going to talk about Seth Sentry once. In 2012 he looked primed to go huge. He had a lot more promotion behind him, and was stringing together some bigger hits. His song "Dear Science" seemed to nail the memetic potential even more than "The Waitress Song", writing a silly song about "Back To The Future" failing to predict the future but framing it as a stitch-up that he still hasn't got a hoverboard, with the petulance of a child that didn't get the one Christmas present they wanted the most.

Things just never got bigger than that. With this barely scraping over the line, he only did the bare minimum in successfully following up his biggest album. Of course, it would be unfair to not mention the fact that he also finished at #111 with "Dumb" and #115 with "Run" in this same list, so it could've been a lot better or a lot worse. I think "Run" was my favourite one at the time, just a slick production for a catchy pop tune. Amusingly these three songs retain this very specific pecking order in Spotify streams to this day. There's a 5% difference between the three of them.

"Hell Boy" is a different kind of beast entirely. Seth Sentry can obviously rap, it's just not entirely his modus operandi. For "Hell Boy" he has moments of shifting into lyrical miracle speed rapping, which is usually not a compliment but it's all to serve a song where he's describing himself as an annoying little pest, so I think he gets away with it. It's filled with all these clever little one-liners that are sometimes so annoyingly simple that it's a wonder I've never heard them before. 'Ain't no one on my level of malevolence' is just a perfect encapsulation of the whole thing. I think it loses a little bit of steam after the first verse but only because he sets the bar so high. I have to hope Seth Sentry has seen the classic '80s film "The Wizard" because in the music video he's wearing a Nintendo Power Glove. Why? Because it's so bad. A very young Jenny Lewis co-stars in that film, and in the time between me writing this and it going live, Rilo Kiley have been playing their first shows in 17 years, amazing how these things work out.

#689. Touch Sensitive - Pizza Guy (#38, 2013)

72nd of 2013

At some point in time I forgot the Touch Sensitive story and believed him to be a new wunderkind. He didn't really pop up out of nowhere though, he was a member of the group Van She, who proved to be very prolific despite releasing very little music of their own. I have trouble remembering all of their old hits because they frequently have simple titles, similar titles, or titles that remind me of other songs instead. You can't do "Changes" and "Strangers", it's too confusing. Nonetheless they were quite successful, reaching the ARIA top 10 with their first album. The follow up album 4 years later only made it to #28 which is lower than their previous second week position. It makes me wonder if that downward slide is why they never released any more original music after that, and further makes me wonder how they feel about the fact that the two main singles from that second album are by far their most streamed songs on Spotify now. Belated gratification? In any case, Touch Sensitive, particularly his two big songs I'll be talking about, has soared to far greater heights on his own. Truly, he's Sydney's own Caroline Polachek.

Look, sometimes I'm not sure what you could possibly want from me. I am tasking myself with writing about "Pizza Guy", the instrumental track that runs for nearly 6 minutes of 'ooh ooh ooh yeaaaaaah' and occasionally some other farty mouth sounds. There's more to it than that but the slow tempo will leave you stuck in one place for a decent while. Yeah it sounds good, though I can't say it inspires anything specific out of me. You go, dude, deliver that pizza, or something.

#688. Lime Cordiale - Robbery (#7, 2019)

64th of 2019

This song permanently lives in the shadow of two other songs. One that it sounds remarkably similar to, and another it shares both its title and its central premise of referring to heartbreak in similar terms to a burglary. I can't share what either of these two songs are yet, otherwise this wouldn't be in their shadow. In the real world it's also considerably outmatched in popularity, but in Hottest 100 world, Lime Cordiale's on top. This is their best polling song to date, and arguably their most popular one.

I made the observation elsewhere recently, but it's very interesting the extent to which the charts around the world are just unable to capture everything that's going on. This is Lime Cordiale's only charting song in Australia, and the world in general. It debuted at #63 as a result of the publicity of this polling result, lasted one more week and was gone. The rest of the band's catalogue can be detailed on Spotify charts with having spent 3 weeks in the top 200 in Australia ("Inappropriate Behaviour" (#771)), 2 weeks in the top 200 in Australia ("I Touch Myself - Like A Version (#969)), and a handful of other songs that never lasted more than 2 days in a row. I'm not saying this to punch down on Lime Cordiale as if they're a failure, it's quite the opposite. This band has 7 songs that just on Spotify, have streaming totals that surpass the entire population of Australia. "Robbery" and "Temper Temper" have done it threefold. It's implying an entirely unsung international performance for a band who only ever debut their albums in the 30s in New Zealand and nowhere else. They have played plenty of shows in the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, but I genuinely don't think I've ever heard conversations outside of Australia ever acknowledge this clearly popular band. It must just go under the radar of anyone who uses chart metrics to find out about these things. You could see them debuting at #1 on the album chart with huge first week sales and just dismiss it as an Australian thing, but it's just not possible. "Robbery" would be an "Espresso"-sized hit here if only Australians were running up these numbers.

What else is there to say except that of course this is their biggest hit. They knew they had something with that hook and they ride it into the sunset. Maybe the song runs a bit out of steam along the way (it's a 3 minutes 40 song that feels like it could be safely trimmed down to 2 minutes 40), but it gets the job done well enough. As a nice bonus, there's nothing in here I'd consider a classic Lime Cordiale-ism, where it's dragged down by a strange moment to be included.

#687. Jack Garratt - Weathered (#78, 2015)

69th of 2015

Jack Garratt feels a bit like a case of unlucky timing. He's an artist that to me is always going to be recalled as a BBC Sound of... winner, that being their annual poll to find the next big thing. It's a title that carries with it some pretty heavy hitters. 50 Cent, Adele, Jessie J, Haim, a couple of still unmentionables. Whether it's a case of successfully picking the winners, or having enough credibility to steer it into reality, it's hard to say it didn't do a good job. Jack Garratt was the winner for 2016, announced right at the start of the year, meaning he was just about the first winner when streaming became the dominant force of the future. That's done a lot to dictate a different future in the charts, and as such, Jack Garratt became the first Sound of... winner to never have a UK top 40 hit. He can't even save face with longevity because his second album fell a little short. The 3rd album is supposed to be released soon but with a change in label I don't have high expectations for it.

It's a pattern he started that's starting to become more common. Many of the 9 winning artists since have the same situation, and if there is some success, it also feels short-lived and it's usually hard to say they made the best choice. PinkPantheress is a respectable choice for 2022, but then you see that #1 hitmakers Lola Young & Central Cee were behind her, and it just reinforces how unpredictable the future is. It gives it all the feeling of a dartboard.

The poll drew further criticism this year when the 2025 win was given to Chappell Roan. It's one of those decisions that will ironically age well in public perception because even if her career dries up, it's still been a solid innings so far. That's the problem right there. All those artists I mentioned before had not really blown up to their fullest extent when they won the poll. There are some edge cases, 2014's winner was already attached to two huge hits at that point, one of which was a #1 hit, but then they still went on to become an even bigger solo star in the next year so you can cut some slack. If anything they were one of the most obvious breakout stars to be found. Chappell Roan would have been an excellent shout if it were the 2024 poll. The album had just come out, wasn't doing big numbers but was received positively. Industry insiders might have known she had the right connections to go big, but no one seemed willing to stake the claim. She had that monster year of success in 2024 as it turns out, and so the BBC poll went out of their way to celebrate an artist who had already made it. The best way I can rationalise it is the fact that since the bulk of her success kicked off around May 2024, she only had 8 months in the spotlight that year, and so it's very likely she will technically sell more records or accrue more streams in 2025 than in 2024. They can also save face because she technically only scored her first #1 hit in 2025, with the 5 year old single "Pink Pony Club" getting a belated look-in.

The reason I say the decision will age well is because as time goes forward, the average person will totally forget when this breakout success happened. She'll just become a standout name in some random 2020s year that makes it appear as though the BBC nailed it, and frankly amongst other winners like Pa Saileu or FLO, they need a household name to restore their own credibility. There are many such cases that public perception is so fragmented and built upon snappy headlines that it's easier to get away with selling a farce than to play everything by the book. Imagine the narratives I could spin if I just disregarded any information that didn't suit. I'd say something like, Jack Garratt is a flop artist who never amounted to anything, except here he is and I'm talking about him. It's his only entry here yes, but he also very nearly polled with "Breathe Life" in 2015, and "Surprise Yourself" in 2016. Some of the artists he beat for the 2016 poll include Alessia Cara, Dua Lipa, J Hus & Mabel. Alessia Cara feels a little late to get that treatment, but on the other hand, she won Best New Artist at the GRAMMYs two whole years later, so there's no limit to the whiffs that can take place. This is where I also point out that Confidence Man, 3 albums deep, were also nominated for the poll in 2025.

In any case, I've never really been one to enjoy the mindset of dumping on artists when their careers don't take off to the fullest. I apologise to Jack Garratt if it feels like I was doing that, and either way, I generally liked what he was doing at the time. At a time when there was no shortage of guys with guitars reeling in the adult contemporary market, I can see the appeal in wanting to try and take it in another direction, which is what Jack Garratt did. He presented a similar aesthetic, but swallowed it up in synths that were mostly pretty tasteful.

"Weathered" has the makings of a big hit in it. It's probably one of his most approachable songs and finds a solid middle ground between James Bay intimacy on the verses and Coldplay bombast at the climax. I suspect the combination of him never quite hitting the big leagues, and his album release patterns of being 4-5 years apart from each other has done him no favours and squandered what little momentum he had. But as we have it here, it's a solid throwback to those hype cycles of a decade ago. At least he had his moment.

#686. The Wombats - Turn (#12, 2018)

72nd of 2018

The more control I give myself over what music I listen to, the less I'm able to feel particularly strong ire to anything. Historically there were two categories of this. You had songs that were dominating the charts, and also songs getting played a lot on triple j. Plenty of songs fit under both of those. My habitual listening of both would keep these songs in the forefront, and in the case of the former, there was always this growing sense of frustration as the ceiling for success seemed to keep growing. You want to convince yourself into coping with it knowing there's a limited time attached to it, but then that song singlehandedly breaks the record and it only serves to be more irritating.

At the same time, when it came to the latter group, I could mostly always fall back on the fact that a non-appearance on the actual charts meant that at most it was a mild bother. It wasn't as if the audience was responding to it in a way that suggested I was the odd one out for not being into it. Most of the time this is true, and then as soon as the song disappears from the airwaves, I can handily forget about it. On the other hand, you'll sometimes get cases like "Turn".

It might seem odd on the outside, but I really disliked "Turn" back in 2018. It was nothing more than a random late career single by The Wombats, just another cab off that rack, but this one just landed so poorly for me. I'd usually focus on the lyric 'I like the way your brain works', which I still think is a clunker, but even the song in general just felt completely lacking in thrills and a chore to get through. Just like "Grandma's Hands" (#713), I got a very unpleasant surprise when this wound up all the way at #12. That made it The Wombats' equal second highest entry to date, matching "Let's Dance To Joy Division" from 2007, and only beaten by "Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves)" from 2010, which landed at #8. They managed to poll higher than Drake has ever done so himself, with a song that shouts him out (not the last song to do this of course). Where on earth did that all come from?

Fortunately the story has a similar ending to "Grandma's Hands" in that the song eventually did grow on me. I like the way the guitar gives it a bit of momentum, I like the way that it sounds like a more mature version of The Wombats that doesn't rely on quick blasts of 'ooh's and 'ahh's. I still don't really like that one lyric but I find it easier to ignore now.