#700-#696

#700. Montaigne - Because I Love You (#25, 2016)

74th of 2016

We've had Montaigne here before. I didn't really touch on it because they were just a featured artist on "A Whole Day's Night" (#919) and I knew this was coming. They belong to a fairly large group of Australian artists who scored their biggest hit via a collaboration with either a rapper or a producer. It's an unfortunate consequence of demographics and genres. I suspect a lot of people want to support artists like Montaigne but need the spectacle of an event single by Hilltop Hoods to do their part. It's good cross-promotion though. This song probably wouldn't have polled quite as high if Montaigne hadn't been attached to a mega-hit shortly before.

Montaigne has been on my radar for quite a while. I remember them as a finalist in triple j's Unearthed High back in 2012, before they adopted the moniker. They shared that stage with Jesse Davidson who I just wrote about a week ago, while that year's winner is yet to make their appearance here. A couple of years later, they re-emerged as Montaigne and started making a name for themself. I want to say that they operate in a similar lane to Caroline Polachek. Whether they got there first or not depends on whether or not you acknowledge Chairlift, most people don't after all. The song "I'm a Fantastic Wreck" was always very memorable because of course it would be. It's a heck of a statement that they sell with all the required conviction and then some. My references get slightly more niche because it feels reminiscent of The Dø's 2nd album, the one Billie Eilish doesn't seem to know about.

In 2015 they release the song "Clip My Wings" and I'm all in. It's still my favourite song they have ever put out. It's a highly momentum driven song where the vocal histrionics really lock in and enhance the emotional stakes of it. Again I see The Dø as a reference point and I don't know which one came first for me because I didn't buy that album until 2016 but I had some dormant love for it I wasn't aware of at the time. It would end up on their debut album "Glorious Heights", alongside some other great tracks like "Till It Kills Me" and "Lonely". "Because I Love You" also features on it.

I don't want to come down hard on this song. I still think it's pretty good. It's just another shame that it's the only solo track to represent them because I want to outpour the love but have never mustered the enthusiasm for this song. Maybe it's the well-rounded hit that they were after, but I can't help but feel like it's lacking anything to really latch onto. It's the kind of thing I'm sick of saying over and over again but the nature of this list order forces my hand. Eventually I'll feel insufferably populist I'm sure.

Montaigne has released two more albums since then. I'm very familiar with 2019's "Complex". The two advance singles "READY" and "Love Might Be Found (Volcano)" were a big return to form, adding back that little spark that I couldn't find here. Well, "READY" might just be a re-write of "Clip My Wings" (they even mention having wings in the chorus!), but it's legally distinct enough for me to go to bat for it. Not long after, they got selected to represent Australia in the Eurovision Song Contest. It was unfortunately 2020 which meant that the contest didn't happen, but they got to participate in 2021 instead, not quite making it to the final but notching up some sweet European chart positions. They stealthily also scored one of their biggest hits in 2022, teaming up with a certain jokester I fear I'll eventually bring up here.

#699. Spacey Jane - Yet (#40, 2022)

71st of 2022

"Yet". That's what they went with. I'd love to know the story behind that because there's a dozen other names you could use. "Darling", "Honey", Sunshine In The Winter", "Saddest That I've Seen You", you get the point. It's easy to miss the title in this song because it only shows up twice, during the first verse. The first one is tucked away underneath the word 'just', while the second comes out reasonably clear. It's hard to think of a weirder choice of a song title that still technically remains within the bounds of the lyrics.

Anyway this is another chapter for what is one of the most successful albums in Hottest 100 history, "Here Comes Everybody". The original release of it houses 8 Hottest 100 hits, matching the effort of Lime Cordiale's "14 Steps To A Better You", and also technically going past powerhouses like "Wolfmother" and "BRAT" that needed additional versions to get to that number (technically also the version of "Woman" that polled in 2004 is not the one on the album). If we want to go down that track though, Spacey Jane got a 9th entry with "Sorry Instead" on the deluxe version in 2023. Spacey Jane & Lime Cordiale were able to stagger their performance by releasing multiple singles in the year before, which might be seen as less impressive. In any case, Spacey Jane managed to tie the record for the most entries in a single year, until it was broken one year later, and broken twice more the year after that. They got to have their moment at least.

The album was produced by Dave Parkin. Their first album was as well. It tracks that he's from Western Australia, and a big chunk of his discography is a who's who of the state's finest, as well as no shortage of extremely niche bands I remember (that Simone and Girlfunkle record from 2013? You know I know it). His own history as a recording artist also falls under this, as a member of Red Jezebel, a largely forgotten band who live on with me by the fact that they were getting played on triple j in 2007, so I'm very familiar with "More Than You'll Ever Know" and "Kicking Deadly Sins" at the very least. As far as I can tell, Spacey Jane is the whole of his contribution to this blog's list canon, but to be fair, that's a whole lot of songs.

Yet I haven't talked about "Yet". I'm not sure there is much to be said about it except that once again you can largely split up the Spacey Jane selections by their tempo, and this is in the mid-range of that. It's a bother to just fall down on it being pleasant and likeable, but in all fairness, this was only an album track with elevated airplay. I'm not convinced it ever had high aspirations beyond being pleasant to listen to.

#698. Sia - Chandelier (#9, 2014)

71st of 2014

In 2014, a large part of the Hottest 100 discourse was surrounding Taylor Swift, and triple j's stance on accepting votes for a song and artist they had never played before. This is not the time to have that discussion I think, but there is a curiosity that's peripheral to it. While all of this was happening, there was a song being haplessly voted into the top 10 that year that triple j had not yet played.

I don't claim to know how something like this happens. Maybe the first half of the story makes sense on its own. It might seem a bit weird to see a local artist triple j have supported for over a decade finally scoring a massive global solo hit and the station not even giving it a single curiosity spin. If you believe in gatekeeping by Richard Kingsmill in this era, this might be some evidence for you. For what it's worth, he put Sia's "We Are Born" in his top 10 albums of 2010. triple j hadn't refused Sia in general that year, and put "Burn The Pages" in rotation instead, but it doesn't seem like something they'd do today. After the song did manage to poll, triple j seemed content to start playing it. This is something they've also been prone to do, often with big hit songs ("A Bar Song (Tipsy)" by Shaboozey is a recent example). In some of these cases, I almost start to wonder if the process in which songs make it onto rotation has enough cogs that some songs just go missing. Something absent is harder to call to mind than something present, so the less pessimistic take on it is that the Hottest 100 simply becomes that wake up call to say 'oh yeah, we should be playing that song'. In recent years, "Chandelier" has actually become Sia's most played song on triple j from her back catalogue. Many people will now just remember it as a huge hit song and might not even piece together that they never heard it on triple j in 2014.

The second part of the story is perhaps more puzzling, and that's the fact that the song got into the Hottest 100 through the regular process. It was on the voting list. There wasn't some nefarious campaign (externally at least), triple j did this to themselves. This voting list is a crucial part of any song's journey. It is technically possible to get over the line without being on the list, though it's mostly only something that's achieved from big songs by triple j stalwarts ("You Sound Like Louis Burdett" by The Whitlams, or "Ni**as In Paris" by Jay-Z & Kanye West). Getting on the list usually just comes down to getting some amount of airplay on the station during the year. You'll find some hiccups, but most songs that got heard on the station and released within the right time frame will show up. Where it gets interesting is in the case of songs like "Chandelier". Every year, there are going to exist some amount of popular hit songs that are not being played on triple j, but are so ubiquitous that voting list approval would get them over the line. I'm not even convinced that they need to be in tune with triple j's sound anymore. In many cases the sheer novelty of it would draw enough attention to succeed.

As for how we got here. My suspicion is that there's a team of people who work on collating the voting list, possibly throughout the year, or possibly it's rushed together at the end. That first version of the list is driven just by relevant songs that were getting played on the station. After that, either the same people, or an additional party go through the list and have several moments of 'oh but what about this song I like, we should just put it in there'. That felt like the case in the Hottest 100 of the Decade voting list, which was comprised almost entirely of just the 2000 songs that had polled in those 10 years, plus a bunch of notable songs that missed that boat. Some, such as Adele's "Rolling In The Deep" managed to poll solely because someone arbitrarily decided to include it on the list.

It never feels like a thorough process, however. Numerous times you'll see presenters or artists post their votes as part of the promotional material for the website. Frequently these votes will include songs that aren't even on the voting list. Nothing suggests that they should be on the list, but it always feels like a funny clashing of heads between two web teams, and must feel weird to those presenters if they do get around to voting. 2014 actually had a third character in this play of flirting with the countdown, and it comes from an amusing source.

Royal Blood are one of the unluckiest artists in regard to the Hottest 100. They have never polled, they probably never will at this point, because when the world was their oyster in 2014, they ever so slightly blew it. They finished at #102, #105 & #117. Just an absolute shambles of voting organisation from their fans (I voted for "Ten Tonne Skeleton", the one that finished at #117). I've often speculated that the Taylor Swift situation is what did them in. The sheer attention received by that story drove up voting numbers immensely towards the end, enough so that it's possible a slight shift in demographics knocked Royal Blood out of the list, even though no specific song actually took their place. I even have documented evidence that supports this case due to my chronologically organised vote counting efforts. At the moment when Taylor Swift started receiving multiple votes, "Little Monster" was at #83 on my count, and by the end of it, it slipped down to a tied 99th place, very close to its actual #102 finish. There's a solid case for this hypothesis.

In any case, before all of this took place, Royal Blood had inadvertently caused some more voting tomfoolery. A feature that I don't believe has been replicated before or since, is that in addition to showing artist and presenter votes on the voting home page, it included buttons next to the randomly plucked out songs that allowed you to quickly add those songs to your shortlist. The button was also available on the specific pages for those voting lists. What Royal Blood did with theirs is that they included Hozier's song "Take Me To Church", another song triple j had never played. You could plausibly believe it though, and voting was taking place right as the song had just blown up on the charts, so early on in the voting, a bunch of people were voting for the song. I have no idea if this particular song was the instigator, and I'm having trouble using the Wayback Machine to figure out exactly what happened, but at some point in the middle of voting, I found that the song just slowed its voting rate considerably. It went from being at about 5% of the votes of the #1 song at that point, to 1% by the end. It still accumulated a decent few though, and given the respective voting results of Sia & Taylor Swift to how I had seen their votes, I could easily believe that "Take Me To Church" at least made the top 200 thanks to Royal Blood. The problem is that the song was too old and ineligible anyway so triple j would've canned it regardless. A similar thing happened when people were voting for "Killing In The Name" for the 1993-2012 countdown (it was released in 1992), and then more recently when The Kid LAROI's "WITHOUT YOU" was erroneously put on the 2021 voting list (it was released in 2020). 2014, what a funny year. Oh yeah I was talking about Sia.

Honestly I should probably save my words about Sia for her second entry she'll have here, I've already gone way too far on this one and I have a lengthy history with her. I can talk about "Chandelier" though. As I said before, this song was huge. Sia had previously had big pop success while collaborating with other artists. "Titanium" with David Guetta was a UK #1 hit. "Wild Ones" with Flo Rida was an Australian #1 hit. Sia just had that voice that could team up with anyone to make a big hook. It all happened when she was between album cycles though. She had success on her own prior to all this, but there was no knowing what this sudden increase in fame (and decrease in public appearances) would do if she suddenly started releasing her own music again.

Technically "Chandelier" didn't come first. In late 2013 she collaborated with The Weeknd and a member of a group I still haven't covered to put out a single for "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"'s soundtrack (it doesn't appear in the film at all, even the credits which play 3 unrelated songs in a row). It made a brief blip on the charts but not much to write home about. On the off chance you belong to the specific middle group who are aware of the song but not this tidbit, I'm about to blow your mind and say that the song is called "Elastic Heart". It would later be re-packaged as a solo song with a music video and become a big hit after "Chandelier", but that version with The Weeknd did exist, and I much prefer it in that form of fear.

"Chandelier" was the proper start to the campaign however and it was huge. Within a month it had rocketed to #2 on the ARIA Chart. It managed to hover around the top 10 for a while after that (though by today's standards, its 15 week stint feels fairly brief). When it was about to leave the top 10, it was granted a shot in the arm by The Voice Australia. A contestant covering it managed to shoot up its digital sales once more and it looked very possible to finally hit the top spot. I've spoken of the 'Blocked by Adele' collective before, but in 2014 it was the 'Blocked by Justice Crew' collective, as "Chandelier" managed to be the 5th and final song to take a shot at the king but miss. It feels embarrassing to mention this, but on that chart week when it looked like it'd be a close race to the top, a friend and I both secretly bought multiple copies of "Chandelier" to try and make the difference, because you never want to feel like you let a chance slip away. "Chandelier" ended up falling about 2,000 copies short, so it didn't really amount to much, but it was an exciting week. The songs blocked by Justice Crew that year also includes "Am I Wrong" by Nico & Vinz, "A Sky Full Of Stars" by Coldplay, "Problem" by Ariana Grande, and a final song that will appear on this list. Buying multiple copies might seem untoward, but at the same time, Justice Crew announced a competition on the very last day of that chart's tracking week asking people to buy the song on iTunes, Google Play or Bigpond and email the receipt to Sony in addition to answering a prompt for a chance to appear in the song's international music video. The competition closed at 11:59pm that night. I'm also not convinced this was even necessary, but it's funny to look back at one of the few times in recent history that the ARIA Charts have been publicly gamed.

 

This is now the part of the story where I say that I didn't care much for "Chandelier" at the time. I loved Sia and I loved that she was having her moment, but the song in question wasn't for me. I didn't really like the production, I didn't really like the way her voice seemed to slur through an uncomfortable layer of vocoder, and the big hook just wasn't really hitting my ears right. The song just hung around...like a chandelier and I wasn't on board.

At some point in 2014 I had a slight epiphany with this song. I'm pretty sure it happened while I was at Subway. I heard "Chandelier" playing as you would expect to happen in the year 2014, and some of my problems I had with the song didn't seem present. I always disliked the chorus because it was mixed way too loudly. It's just this big blast of sound. When Sia's doing the additional smaller 'chandelier's, you can even hear moments of peaking in her voice that I so badly wish I couldn't notice. The solution to this was so simple, just hear the song without headphones. It gives the song so much more room to breathe and it sounds a whole lot better as a result. I pair it with Ed Sheeran's song "Castle On The Hill", another ARIA #2 hit that has the same problem and solution. Being able to hear a version of "Chandelier" without my quibbles has allowed me to appreciate it just a little bit more. It might not really be what I'm after from Sia, but at the core of it, it's a good song that's worth having around.

#697. Baker Boy (feat G Flip) - My Mind (#88, 2021)

76th of 2021

A year after helping Illy get his last Hottest 100 entry with "Loose Ends" (#842), G Flip does it again for Baker Boy here. Not really but it feels like it doesn't it? Probably a bit unfair given that we're looking at a single from his first album. A year later he'd win the ARIA Award for Album Of The Year. With Tame Impala retroactively removed from the list, he's the second artist to do so without ever having an ARIA charting single. Another artist did it the year before and after him, so that's a lot of years of anti-populism, but to be fair, there aren't a lot of options otherwise.

This is just a fun collaboration. Not the best for either of them but nice complimentary action on both sides. Kind of like an Australian version of when Shakira teamed up with...Rihanna's the one I can say. Maybe it's a bit weird to hear G Flip keep saying 'holla at me', suppose I could use a better pay off.

#696. Catfish and the Bottlemen - Twice (#57, 2016)

73rd of 2016

I have previously admitted to my problem with Catfish and the Bottlemen being that they generally implement messy melodies that don't resolve properly. It's the kind of thing that on its own makes you want to accuse them of simply coasting by on the general vibe. Indie rock fans so desperate to recapture the sounds of 10 years ago with no regard for how well it's being done. Honestly it's a sentiment that could apply to anything. I'm probably doing it in some capacity somewhere.

But I should be fair to this band because I don't think that issue is something that suddenly poisons the well. I also have to catch myself when I say something is an immediate dealbreaker because there are probably always exceptions, sometimes it's just a means to rationalise a reaction to everything around it. I like when songs do things that are somewhat unexpected. It's possible it could even be this song.

It's an odd chorus again, storing all of its energy before unleashing it in a sudden burst, and then doing it twice, maybe even more times. As best I can describe it, we've got two versions of a chorus that I don't think I'd like on their own, but they compliment surprisingly well. They actually do a slight merging near the end when the pre-chorus and chorus are slowed down into each other and it's weirdly cathartic. The secret weapon they've got here is the bass. It's not often you get one that lets you feel the vibrations as if it's at a live show, but it's the special sauce they've got here that pulls it all together.