#585-#581

#585. Kanye West - Praise God (#82, 2021)

62nd of 2021

We're back to regular "DONDA" programming. By that I mean it's another song that is credited entirely to Kanye West despite the fact that you'd be forgiven for not even noticing him on the song. He has a grand total of 6 bars on this song, plus another 4 if you include the repeated chorus. The intro to the song is a speech given by Donda West only a month before she passed away, and I'm pretty sure she has more words in this song than Kanye does.

So for the most part, this is a double feature with Travis Scott, who teams up with Kendrick Lamar's cousin, whose name I'm sure I'll come up with when it's more appropriate. Travis Scott does the bare minimum, you won't be shocked when I say he doesn't have a memorable line at all, but all I ask of him usually is to go along with the beat and he does his job just fine.

It really is the other guy who steals the show. Partly because he gets so much real estate all on his own, and also because it's so wonderfully weird. If you can recall that huge trap Billboard #1 hit in early 2018 by two artists who will eventually appear on this list, and remember the way the guest artist on that song's verse was remembered for how utterly bizarre it was, then that's the energy we're getting here. It's somewhat on purpose, I don't think it was intended to be an actual finished verse, but rather a placeholder for potential flows, only Kanye decided to keep it as is. I think it doesn't quite hold a candle to his other effort in 2021, the one that's singlehandedly keeping his name out of this, but his switching up of flows in ways that probably shouldn't work is very addictive. He does the same thing Kendrick does sometimes with the high pitched voice only he goes so much higher to the point of novelty. Most memorable is always going to be right near the start of the song, where the placeholder lyrics run fully rampant. Everything's getting repeated over and over again, and it's just so funny to keep hearing 'Tame Impala' in it, just the world we live in.

If there is something Kanye does get right on this song though, it's the production. Maybe it's not fully him though because there are 7 producers credited on it, but it's one of the more accomplished and fresh ways he's managed to combine gospel music with trap. It peaks early since it takes a back seat for the last two minutes, but it is genuinely haunting when it's jumping out of the background. Maybe there's a better song that can be made with all of this, but I find a soft spot for this genuinely goofy track. I would like to pretend Kanye West isn't involved, but I must admit that I don't imagine anyone else hitting publish on something in this state.

#584. Mallrat - Better (#46, 2017)

55th of 2017

I am abysmal at recognising animals in photos. It's one of those imprecise judgements that I've never been particularly good at. I promise I'm not a robot. I did however need one to figure out what is actually on the single cover for this song. I'm led to believe that it's some variety of cow. I always thought they were either dogs or horses, which in hindsight wouldn't be appropriate because Mallrat has since made songs for those animals. She does ride a horse in the music video, however. Either way, I always really liked the artwork, it's immensely cosy.

Mallrat's rise was fairly rapid in hindsight. She was about 6 singles deep at this point, but hadn't gotten major attention either. Enter this single, released in the middle of October, and it quickly gets added to triple j and immediately makes a huge impression on voters. Short of massive crossover successes like "Thrift Shop", it's very hard to think of many cases where votes get quickly amassed for a song released at the end of the year, by an artist who hadn't really generated all that buzz yet.

It makes me want to re-assess it from the alternative perspective, where "Better"'s #46 finish could be seen as an underperformance in hindsight. The years that followed would see Mallrat consistently poll very high, and it's this launching pad that got her there. Ocean Alley polled their first entry (#814) just 2 places below "Better", and they both leapfrogged straight into the top 10 a year later.

"Better" manages to be cosy as a song as well. It strikes an odd balance where I could say that it's quite light & floaty, but also comes off a little over-produced as well. It all pools up into a strange genreless mush. Mallrat comes off well on top of it though. Maybe she hasn't quite found her way to some of her stickiest melodies, but we're getting pretty close.

#583. Duke Dumont (feat Shaun Ross) - Red Light Green Light (#37, 2019)

52nd of 2019

This is probably a symptom of my annual tradition of collecting Hottest 100 entries after the fact and doing most of my listening the year after they're released. In the case of "Red Light Green Light", I'm just always immensely stuck with the obviously wrong feeling that this is a COVID-era hit song. I listened to it so much in 2020 after all. I'm inclined to say that it probably wouldn't have taken off as well a year later, but given the vast increase of TikTok's influence in that short span of time, I can also believe that it might find its own audience anyway. This misremembering runs both ways. Before I looked it up, I was certain that the Netflix series "Squid Game" also debuted in 2020 (it's actually 2021). Deep down I just want to more closely connect these two pieces of media that play around with the children's game Red Light, Green Light in slightly different ways. If nothing else, this song got immensely more amusing to me after that.

It's difficult to see this song as anything other than a deliberate attempt to manufacture some virality out of a goofy song idea. On the other hand, I still lose it every time when I see that one video about it perfectly timing up to a traffic light. It did make me wonder how the song actually works in a live setting. I liked to imagine that the whole place goes completely crazy when instructed to, but it seems like everyone's a bit tame with it. It even felt like some people didn't understand the urgency of the red light. I guess not everyone's been through kindergarten after all. Shaun Ross is a liar anyway. He says that he only has two instructions, and then about a minute later, he's giving us a third one relating to the strobe light. I can only conclude that this is a Simon Says situation and he doesn't really want us to make slow wavy motions with our arms. I only got that from a live video though; the music video only shows his head during that part so all you get is a sideways nod of approval. Also possibly a seizure. There's no warning for this on the video, so this is me politely telling you that you're probably better off not looking at it. Still, how often do you get a music video that's actually considerably shorter than the song itself? This one cuts it down to just over half the original length.

How is it as an actual song though? I think it definitely falls under the category where it doesn't really matter. It's a gimmick that's not designed for solemn reflection or being background music to a Rocket League session or anything like that. When the single cover explicitly states 'FOR CLUB PLAY ONLY', I start to feel like it's a folly to take it any further than that. I do think it's quite fun though. The drop feels a little underwhelming with how tense the build-up is, but if it's not working I still think that's everyone else's fault. It's also unfortunate that we're left in the 'Stop' position at the end of the song, unable to ever continue.

#582. Kendrick Lamar with SZA - All The Stars (#28, 2018)

64th of 2018

On January 18th, 2010, Kesha debuted at #7 with her song "Blah Blah Blah". In some respects, it could be considered the first hit song of the 2010s, its parent album "Animal" was released right at the start of January and the song debuted alongside it. A decade later and I grew into a new chart fascination. At what point does the 2010s decade end? I've been eagerly watching every single week to see how long it will take until an ARIA top 50 is released with zero 2010s singles sitting on it. Deep into 2025 and I'm still waiting, but we're getting very close. Previous stalwarts "Riptide" (#885) and "Cruel Summer" managed to be dislodged, so nothing feels permanent anymore. We've even had some lucky breaks with random surges for Charli XCX & Black Eyed Peas songs from 2020 and 2009 respectively, just missing both cut offs. At the time I'm writing this, there's just one song holding the fort right now, quite tightly as it were, and it's "All The Stars". I now publish this realising that ARIA's new chart rules are coming into effect today, mere hours from now, and "All The Stars" will be removed from the chart, we were so close to something natural, alas.

"All The Stars" benefits from an often underappreciated effect that does a lot to dictate the chart life of new and returning hits. At any given point, if you look at the charts below the top 50, you'll see numerous old songs just hovering around without any momentary boost to justify it. There just aren't enough noteworthy new songs around so they're going to share space with the most popular oldies. If one of those oldies were to get a boost though, they're going to quickly get stuck in place because the floor for the fewest possible streams they could get in a day has just been comfortably increased. Even just a little bit can make a big difference. It seems strange to say that more people listened to "All The Stars" on the 127th day out from the Super Bowl than the number of people who listened to any Beach Boys song on the day Brian Wilson died, but when tens of thousands of people were already doing that a year ago, it's a fairly hard advantage to overcome. It's also amusing in the context of Kendrick's half-time show. After he performed, "Not Like Us" actually made it all the way to #1, a clear answer for what everyone thought of the show. "All The Stars" just climbed to #8 after that, but within 11 weeks, had overtaken "Not Like Us" with a gap that's only getting bigger. Those steady listeners had the final say all along.

I've joked at times about the notion that the music charts are always shifting in search of the final answer of what the most popular songs should be. It's something that comes to mind whenever you see a flash in the pan move in and out so quickly that the longer running chart hits start to gain leverage and positions because they're never going to drop as fast as everything else. The streaming era has heightened this a lot because it frequently has me question if listener fatigue even exists anymore. It does make my joke look a little closer to reality though, you just need there to be no more new hits unearthed. At the start of June there had only been 12 new top 10 hits for the year in Australia, which includes two songs that immediately plummeted, and also the very old "Pink Pony Club" that technically hadn't gotten there before. I never would have guessed our ideal chart would have so many Teddy Swims songs in it, but that's how it goes. A funny thing happened after I wrote all this, where the entire ARIA top 50 singles chart was unchanged from the previous week. I'm glad this happened now while the chart feels completely representative, but I'm not sure how many have clocked onto the fact that the new chart, with more exclusions, is actually more susceptible to this kind of behaviour, so maybe it will happen again.

I might be exaggerating the longevity of "All The Stars" a little bit. I hope I'm not because otherwise this entry could age very poorly by the time it finally goes online, aging like negative milk. At the time when the song came out, it actually declined very quickly, a modest 22 week run in the top 50 for a song that climbed to #2 just feels like nothing these days. It's only in the past few years it's managed to gain unstoppable legs, but then again, I've thought that about a lot of songs that eventually gave way in the end.

"All The Stars" has another thing going for it, maybe something that'll hurt it in the long run depending on who you ask. We're talking about a song attached to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's no small part either because it's the main theme to "Black Panther", the one with enough credibility to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Whether you think all of those movies are a waste of time or not, that one's probably going to hang around. Chadwick Boseman's untimely passing only gives it more reason to feel like a special moment to its viewers.

Last year upon a whim that was not my own, I started watching every single MCU film. Not all of the TV series because I have limits to how far I'll push myself, but every mainline film, and many of the supplementary films that add essential context to them. I live in utter shock at just how many "X-Men" films there have been. The most valuable thing I've learnt from the experience is how you really should never catch yourself buying into stereotypical jokes as being actual examples. For so many years I've heard people talk about 'Marvel dialogue', essentially glib, facetious commentary being made by characters under dire circumstances because the studio can't go 30 seconds without a joke. This is probably true of the "Ant-Man" and "Deadpool" movies, but it's nowhere near as prevalent as it's made out to be. No one ever says 'well, THAT happened' either.

If I have anything that could be described as a controversial opinion on the films otherwise, firstly it's that I don't think the movies got particularly worse after "Avengers: Endgame", although I understand it's hard to muster up the same enthusiasm for something once you're so certain that it's past its peak. The other one is that I don't think highly of "Black Panther". The enlightened centrism of Wakanda is more politically conservative than they're willing to admit, and so when the conflict does arise, you end up with a villain who's probably justified in his motives. It's only because he kills people and is called 'Killmonger' that we have to accept he's clearly the bad guy. I also have a major trypophobic reaction to his costume design but that's just me. Really though I just don't think the film does anything to earn a greater reverence than any of the surrounding films, it's just as serviceable as most of them.

The film's soundtrack was produced by Kendrick Lamar, and basically every notable song on it has Kendrick on there somewhere. The other big ones are "Pray For Me" with The Weeknd, a top 10 hit in Australia that surprisingly doesn't figure here, and also "King's Dead", a collaboration with Jay Rock and two other artists who'll eventually appear in the list. It sadly doesn't play during the scene when T'Challa appears to be dead, the film could be elevated to great new heights if that one line from the song appeared in it.

High profile collaborations like this are lucrative because it's creating intrigue out of meta-data on its own. If you're just pumping out solo singles, you need to keep finding a new gimmick to get people coming along, and if you lose the momentum even briefly it gets even more difficult to win it back. Why should I listen to this song? Oh, it's got SZA on it? That'll do. Never mind the fact that Kendrick & SZA have teamed up so many times now, they've managed the longest running Billboard #1 hit of 2025 together so it clearly works.

Very rarely do these collaborations work out to be the dream meeting we all want them to be though. Maybe a team up can cover both artists' weaknesses and introduce variety to keep the listener engaged, but so often it ends up feeling weirdly mercenary, and without the kind of singular vision that makes someone want to follow an artist's career. You're just left with an unsatisfactory hybrid.

That's pretty much how I fall with "All The Stars". It's a song that's very pleasant to the ear, I don't think it's aged badly at all. I do think the instrumental just lacks a bit of flavour for the long haul. SZA sounds great, but can't find a satisfying statement to land on. It doesn't help that her pronunciation gets a little unusual, giving weird emphasis to say 'All the stars are CLOSER', except it sounds like she's saying 'kosher'. Generally just feels like we're padding it out for time at this point.

#581. Broods - Mother & Father (#40, 2014)

62nd of 2014

I had a lot of fondness for iTunes's free single of the week promotion they had running for many years. It's hard to say how much it helped the artists involved, but I believe there are stories of songs like "Fireflies" and "Pumped Up Kicks" getting the deal some time before getting so in-demand as to surge to the top of paid downloads lists. I got the impression that it generated a decent number of downloads though, because one week there was a Wavves single that was put up with a real price tag, and enough people downloaded it anyway that it appeared on the iTunes chart. I'll bet a lot of people never even realised what they did.

I don't know how often I did partake in the venture, but I believe it is how I came across "Everytime" by Broods. I must have trusted them enough to take the freebie, but on the other hand, I left it largely unplayed for weeks and weeks until I heard it on the radio one day and realised I already had it. Love that song, it'd be my favourite song by Broods, one that matches their penchant for catchy hooks with intense urgency. One of the more creative uses of the millennial whoop, where it sounds more like a siren of some sort, don't give KRS-One any ideas.

While this was happening, Broods had an actual proper single they were promoting, and it was "Mother & Father". Technically it's their first ever Hottest 100 hit but it doesn't feel like a breakthrough success at all, just successfully bridging from the initial "Bridges" success. It was a song I had some more time for. It's extremely Joel Little-coded, so you could easily imagine Lorde singing it instead. The one thing that does stand out to me other than Georgia's singing is the punchiness of the drums. For a producer who's sometimes considered infamous for turning pop music into a much drabber affair, this one's pretty lively!

#590-#586

#590. Ocean Alley - Breathe / Comfortably Numb / Money - Like a Version (#54, 2021)

63rd of 2021

In 2006, the Australian Broadcasting Company ran a poll asking everyone for their favourite album, which was later revealed on TV. The results aren't particularly interesting on their own, it heavily leans on the history of rock and very little else. No hip-hop, no electronic music, just the token "Kind of Blue" jazz pick, and the occasional Australian time capsule with Anthony Callea and Delta Goodrem's debut albums finding their way in. There's also Darren Hayes' second album which I suppose is the only electronic music to be seen. Actually the Australian music canonisation is interesting. Midnight Oil narrowly lead the pack with "10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1", only just ahead of Silverchair's "Diorama", but at the same time, "Frogstomp" only just barely made the list. Despite triple j being affiliated with the ABC, even Hottest 100 darlings Powderfinger narrowly sneak in with their latest album at that point "Vulture Street", no love for "Odyssey Number 5" which would go on to win a triple j poll for Australian albums 4 years later. Anyway, I was watching this TV special because it was on and I was starting to get interested in learning more about music. They reached the end and the poll was won by Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side Of The Moon", something I'd never heard of before.

Maybe that sounds silly to you, but it's a good way to check in with just how little I knew about music at the time, mostly only knowing the stuff that would get played on our local top 40 station growing up. The reach of Pink Floyd's iconic album just did not make it over to me, and with a lack of easy resources in those quaint times of the mid 2000s, I could only wonder in mystery for years. What does that album sound like and how amazing could it possibly be?

I actually wasn't totally unaware of Pink Floyd at this point, I just didn't know it. I was aware of "Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2" without knowing what it was. I recognised the familiarity to it with The Living End's "Wake Up" that was released earlier in 2006, and it was also sampled by Salt-N-Pepa in a song I heard quite a lot when I was younger. I'd then get another helping of it when Eric Prydz remixed it for "Proper Education" just a few months later in 2007, although the band were always credited as just 'Floyd' when I saw it, so it was a little obfuscated from me, as if the universe did not want me to connect the dots. When Pink Floyd were more properly put in front of me with triple j's Hottest 100 of All Time in 2009, it was with two songs that weren't even on the album, but I was very impressionable at the time and willingly bought into the hype.

At some point I downloaded the album and listened to it. I wish I could tell you what my first impression is. I feel like the album has such a self-sustaining legacy brought upon by people like me who simply must know what the music on this album must sound like, and being lightly puzzled when they find out. You find out that it's just not this immensely catchy fun rock & roll record but something much more spacious and considered, outside of the obvious single "Money". The main thing I noticed was the way every track flowed into the next. Not something that was new to me, as I'd already heard Cut Copy's "In Ghost Colours", but this made it really feel like it was just a small handful of tracks that really weren't made for listening on their own. I was still very impressionable at this point so I bought into the hype again and decided that I thought the whole thing was brilliant.

I think my constant pursuit of new music is the only thing that stopped me from going full into Pink Floyd worship, the kind of person whose unique ranking between "The Dark Side Of The Moon", "The Wall", "Animals" and "Wish You Were Here" would get the whole crowd clapping for how daring & contrarian, yet admirable it would be. I haven't really explored it all properly but I'm probably a "Wish You Were Here" guy.

This brings us to Ocean Alley, look how much I can say when I'm not actually talking about them. Nonetheless, this is a very interesting turn for them, and Like a Version in general. While the segment is often criticised for how often bands & artists are just checking in to be the first one to cover the new hit song of the moment, here we have veterans of the segment, coming in for their second innings (the first will also show on this list), and once again going full dad rock, covering a bunch of roughly 40-50 year old songs in sequence.

It's funny to think about how "The Dark Side Of The Moon" all runs in sequence, which would make for an obvious thing to replicate, but Ocean Alley actually do include multiple tracks from that album and don't even put them next to each other, inventing their own medley in the process. I think it's a nice move to start things off with "Breathe (In The Air)", as not necessarily the obvious choice to those who grew up on it (it is admittedly a popular cut nowadays). It's a nice way to pay tribute to an album that reminds those who already enjoy it that it's more than just the big hits that come to mind first. I felt the same way when twenty one pilots covered My Chemical Romance's "Cancer", and I think I gained a new appreciation for it in the process. After that, you get to the more obvious headline choices in "Comfortably Numb" and "Money".

I think the first two segments of the medley work best because it serves as a further reminder that these two bands that very few are speaking of in the same breath, actually have more than you think in common with how they sound. I'm not saying Ocean Alley is the second coming of Pink Floyd, but they slip so easily into their sound that it has me questioning all my preconceptions about music. The medley ends up packing multiple songs into shorter segments that add up to a slightly longer than usual length, and it's a good system. I always like making segmented compilations of my favourite songs because it's an efficient way to speedrun all of the best bits.

#589. Lime Cordiale & Idris Elba - Holy Moley (#93, 2022)

58th of 2022

I've said before that Lime Cordiale had an arguably unprecedented hold over the voting populace. There's polling every album cycle, but it's another step ahead of that to have literally every single that ever gets pushed to radio wind up on the poll, and typically in the top half at that. they only really broke this in 2024 when there just wasn't the usual space for an Australian contingent as there usually is, so I find myself not wanting to blame them for it. I also should technically point out that one of their most played songs ever on triple j is the song "Ticks Me Off", another track from "14 Steps To A Better You (Relapse)" like "Reality Check Please" (#719), but that didn't start getting spun until the year after, so I also can't put that on them. When you poll so well, so consistently though, it starts to feel unearned or at least it doesn't feel special because you can see it coming a mile away. It's like predicting the next Taylor Swift album will debut at #1. You need some kind of exception to prove the rule.

"Holy Moley" is as close as we were getting for this. It's the third single from the "Cordi Elba" project, released while the first two were presently being voted into the 2021 countdown. It would get attention taken off of it later in the year when Lime Cordiale released several more singles on their own (not that one), but they've never had trouble juggling multiple hits. They thrived on it. A year later and we finally get to see the result we've been building up to...and "Holy Moley" just barely sneaks in.

The key factor I've been burying is that "Holy Moley" was largely disliked when it was on the radio. It felt like a bridge too far for people who were just tolerating the project before, but really were just fed up with the stranglehold that Lime Cordiale had on the radio for the past 3 years which just wasn't getting any better. Those who were here for the ride evidently weren't especially impressed either. It's understandable there too, because you don't get your usual dose of Lime Cordiale on this song, as Idris Elba is taking all of the time behind the microphone to himself. What does he do with this precious time? He tells us that he's shitfaced all the time. If that's not being high on your own supply I don't know what is.

I never approached this song as any kind of contrarian. At most it was just a guilty pleasure for me, the sheer bluntness of Idris Elba's lyrics somehow wrapping around to being oddly cathartic, but mostly just very catchy. Outside of that chorus, the song is mostly just Idris Elba going on a middle-aged rant. If nothing else, it's nice to know there's a Hottest 100 entry that opts out from doing shoeys. He sounds livid to even acknowledge it. My favourite thing I learnt is that the song was originally going to be named after a celebrity but even Idris Elba couldn't get them to go along with it, now we've got no way of knowing who it even was. I had hoped it might accidentally turn up in the APRA AMCOS catalogue but it does not. This is the worst "You're So Vain" mystery because no one could possibly mistakenly think it was about them, it's just a secret that maybe four people know about.

I do want to give Lime Cordiale credit on this song though, because despite the vocal distribution, they're doing a lot to make this work. The groove is infectious, but they don't let it linger on endlessly, so you get a rather exciting bridge where they suddenly turn into Daft Punk but also go on a strange rock odyssey. I don't drink so I can't say I want what they're having, but I'm happy they've done something productive while potentially being shitfaced.

#588. The Jungle Giants - Bad Dream (#57, 2017)

56th of 2017

In 2013, The Jungle Giants were the latest plucky young band coming in the wake of all those other plucky young bands. They snuck onto the Hottest 100 with their single "She's A Riot", and it wouldn't necessarily have been surprising if that was all she wrote. The signs were there when the second album came around in 2015. It's a worrying sign when your debut album charts higher than the follow up, and the margin wasn't particularly close either, as they went from #12 to #25.

For a lot of bands, that's a flop, or might just spell the end of your career as it becomes evident that your audience has moved on. "Speakerzoid" is a strange album. I don't hear much of the band as they started, and instead I hear shades of Cake, Pond & Pixies, a bunch of disparate ideas that don't really mesh well.

I became fascinated about this part of Australian music history when I was doing research regarding their next album, 2017's "Quiet Ferocity" and I caught an interview with lead singer Sam Hales who admitted that they'd gotten ambitious with a desire to step forward from the last album and couldn't quite get it how they wanted, and so the third album was a more realised version of that.

It proved a remarkable success. The Jungle Giants had enough good will that they were able to turn around from a misstep and come back more popular than ever before. They generated 4 Hottest 100 hits just on this album, well on their way to reaching Platinum sales with all of them (I suspect they're there; it's just not updated).

The first one we're getting to is "Bad Dream". I don't see it as the dud of the lot, but something has to come first. It's actually quite likeable and might be the most unique one. It has some remnants of the last album hanging on it. Unusual songwriting, only this time I think they manage to get away with it. It's memorable because the most striking hook that you get from it is just more aggressive (relatively speaking) guitar paired with a strange 'ahhhh' vocal line. They know when to put the drums away and let the track float in space, makes for a pleasant little journey.

#587. Alison Wonderland - Run (#59, 2015)

59th of 2015

Years ago when I was first getting accustomed with the history of the Hottest 100, there was a discussion topic that always intrigued me. Who is the most surprising artist to have never appeared in the Hottest 100. You can look at overall popularity and impact, but usually what it comes down to is a question of what song of theirs could feasibly have done it. It's a poll that pans for a lot of gold but inevitably is always going to miss some in the process. Some artists just remain ever popular without having that one song to go by, or they have that song, but no one knew it at the time.

Some of the names I tended to see tossed around for this distinction were artists like Goldfrapp, Beach House, Sufjan Stevens, Spoon and Wu-Tang Clan. It's been quite a while though and perhaps there's a new generation that are about to learn startling things about their beloved Cigarettes After Sex or TV Girl. A name I left out of this, and maybe one of the more surprising exclusions is The Flaming Lips.

There's a good reason I didn't include them, because they have made the Hottest 100 before, but only as a featured artist, alongside a British duo who will eventually appear in this list, proving there was still time for The Flaming Lips to do the same. Still it's interesting. A point against their favour is that their big commercial hit "She Don't Use Jelly" didn't chart until it appeared on "Beavis and Butt-head" (I'm led to believe this, I'm not old enough to remember), and even in those loose eligibility years, triple j seemingly weren't having it. You'd think the back to back punch of "The Soft Bulletin" and "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots" would find something, but still nope. Something I've believed for many years but never been able to verify is that The Flaming Lips landed at #101 in 2006 with "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song", I'm sure it was said on the air just before the broadcast but sadly no record of my vague memory seems to exist anywhere.

If there's any proof to the idea that The Flaming Lips might just be cursed, then Alison Wonderland gave us a new sequel in 2015. Her song "U Don't Know" featured Wayne Coyne, and was the lead single to her debut album "Run". It wasn't just a silly novelty either, it actually reached the ARIA Chart at #63, something the subsequent singles didn't manage, and yet voters just didn't fully go in to bat for it, so it landed at #113, meanwhile the title track I'm supposed to be talking about had a much cozier finish. I'm a big fan of "U Don't Know". I think it excels with the build-up of tension and release. It's the duet I never knew I needed. Need to make an 11th hour addition to also say that 8 hours ago I saw "Superbad" for the first time ever, and in addition to seeing someone wearing a hoodie related to that movie yesterday (after I had already planned to see it), McLovin stars in that music video. These are the kinds of bizarre coincidences that make you second-guess the suspiciously strange coincidences you also encounter. Nothing could have planned for this, but I know it's all stupidly random because I made it happen.

When I get to "Run", the thing that instantly comes to mind is Flume. Only, I'm not talking about Alison Wonderland biting him, because I think there are shades of "Say It" (#707) and "Rushing Back" (#619) in this, songs that weren't yet released. It's a little more intense than your typical Flume track but the skeleton is all there. By all accounts this was a success but I can't help but feel like she isn't getting all the flowers she deserves.

#586. Spacey Jane - Sitting Up (#6, 2022)

57th of 2022

We're pretty deep in the Spacey Jane weeds, what is there even left to say at this point? I've said before that I saw this band live back in 2018, when they were just the token local opening band, destined to go unremembered unless I randomly catch something that looks like their name and it takes me way back. The Jungle Giants were headlining that show. I would hesitate to say that I actually did see Spacey Jane live, because I spent most of that time playing cards. Some variety of Gin Rummy I believe. If any future hits were on that setlist I'm none the wiser. The best I can gather is that they probably played "Feeding The Family", but it's all fairly undocumented in that era.

How's that for an intro? They seem keen on the idea because they also started their second album with a non sequitur. I suppose it's difficult to avoid that. They go on to pair one of their more upbeat tunes with much more dour lyrics, recalling a depression cycle that lead singer Caleb went on during his final semester at university. I feel like that context is necessary with this song because otherwise it sounds like he's just not taking a breakup very well. It feels like a cry for help, the people he's talking about who change, that's him. It's all a curiously self-aware look at his own downward spiral, and showing how his internal & external process differs.

Obviously I relate to this on some levels. Not the drinking and debauchery, but the isolation, the feeling that even in your wildest dreams, you just cannot imagine reaching the same wavelength with anyone. There's a value to that though. I like to twist it around the other way and get a sense of purpose by not quite fitting in line with everyone else, and not just in the 'I think I'm different but just in the same way that tens of thousands of other people do'. More like the idea that you have something to offer that no one else is going to provide.

Otherwise you know what you're getting here. Nothing particularly innovative, and I might be inclined to dock points for a chorus that doesn't resolve with much excitement (it doesn't lift or go down, it's just strangely steady). Other things definitely work though. The somewhat brief instrumental break on the bridge is wonderfully nostalgic. It has the makings of a song that'd really belt it out of the gate from there (I'm thinking "Dakota" by Stereophonics but there's probably a better example), but I'm content with not expecting that out of Spacey Jane. What's important is that they're doing well with what they're trying to do, with who they are as a band.

#595-#591

#595. Cub Sport - Party Pill (#73, 2019)

53rd of 2019

Something I didn't mention when I was talking about "Jail" (#597) earlier in the week is that a further quirk of the album was Kanye West not allowing any curse words on it. For DaBaby's verse in part 2, he was still saying it, but it got bleeped out. You can pick your own punchline for 'I can accept ____, but I draw the line at swear words', there's certainly no shortage of terrible options on what can fill in the blank.

I say this because the most memorable thing in "Party Pill" is the inclusion of a symbolic bleep. It's not obscuring a traditional curse word, but instead the word 'shame'. The connotation of the word is relating to Tim's homosexuality and how he felt about it at the time, so the censorship is a way of saying that it's not anything to be ashamed of.

It's a good way of contextualising their story, but other than it being signposted in a very disarming way, I like that it's not really the focal point of the song. A frustrating thing about a world filled with prejudice is that you can feel as though, or alternatively just come across as if you're spending more time dealing with that aspect of it rather than getting to enjoy the thing that you're fighting to protect. This song is able to spend most of its time embracing that love and the positive effect it has, and I think that's great.

#594. Allday - You Always Know the DJ (#35, 2014)

63rd of 2014

Onto a song with a much less affirmative message, although it's one I've always had trouble fully puzzling out. This is a song where Allday is pretty fixated on a girl who goes out every night, gets into clubs without paying and usually ends up having sex. There are a couple of ways you can read this. A couple of lyrics stick out as variations on slut shaming, but it's also possible to read it all as a cautionary tale.

I lean to wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt. There's a read of this song to suggest that he's mansplaining, telling someone how to live their life. Realistically he's probably right about it in the circumstances, at least from his perspective it does sound like the people at the club are taking advantage of the girl (we don't really get her perspective on it, just a second-hand account). On the other hand, he ends multiple verses of the song with a variation on 'I don't know', implying a sense of confusion at the whole thing, where maybe he's just cautious of the slippery slope she could be on. Or that he's 'just a singer' so he probably shouldn't be your last source of advice.

I dunno though. Maybe I'm overthinking it because I haven't seen a lot of discussion on the topic. I do think there's some merit to having a fun, catchy song about the perils of having a fun, carefree lifestyle, and I appreciate that Allday at least puts some focus on the real villains of the scenario (could use a little re-write though). In looking around at this I found out that Allday made a popular TikTok video about the hypothetical of a catchy song that carelessly sneaks in questionable lyrics. It's actually surprisingly catchy, he seems like a funny dude.

#593. Allday (feat Japanese Wallpaper) - In Motion (#44, 2017)

57th of 2017

I previously enlisted the help of mathematicians to find out the odds of having my personal rank line up with the original position a certain number of times. Then after I had done this I realised that because of a mistake I made whilst initially compiling the list, it's something that actually happened a statistically reasonable number of times after all. Something I don't think I can say the same for is instances of two songs by the same artist going back to back.

What's funny about this is that I have a recollection where I once seemed to go out of my way to do such a thing. I'd make lists of my favourite songs of the year back around 2010 and it would happen every time. Then I think I heard someone say that it's something that makes them question the validity of any such lists and I probably overcorrected in the direction of not doing it pretty much ever.

In theory, when looking at all possible outcomes, a list that is filled with these back-to-back entries should be very likely. These 1,000 entries are all different, but similarities crop up, and any two songs being by the same artist is a pretty big similarity really. If I'm predisposed to liking or not liking them, that shrinks the likely range for them to fall in, and that's a good way to have them just sound similar anyway.

I mentioned the same concept when I was talking about Ocean Alley and "Double Vision" (#838). Any similarities just make you want to try and figure out what unique properties they each hold, and then they just turn into two magnetised ends of a cord that will always be nearby, but hesitate to make full contact. This is all to say that now that I've finally done this, it's with two Allday songs that don't really sound much alike.

We're looking at a Japanese Wallpaper collaboration here. It's Allday's song, and rightly so, but I feel like we're a few short instrumental interludes away from it feeling like they could swap places. Allday uses up all the available space to prevent that from happening. Still, it's a good instrumental on its own, and when Allday is in singing mode, he's right at home on it.

#592. Mura Masa (feat A$AP Rocky) - Love$ick (#13, 2016)

61st of 2016

"Love$ick" feels like some kind of fluke. Mura Masa was building a name for himself in 2016 but took a giant step forward with the help of A$AP Rocky. A handy co-sign for sure, but hardly a guaranteed hit. A$AP Rocky's inconsistent hitmaking leaves him in a strange position nowadays where he's mostly just seen nowadays as the father of Rihanna's children.

It's a little unlucky for Mura Masa though that this is his only entry. He wasn't far off a second, his earlier single "What If I Go?" landed at #122 in the same year, but he's never quite had the juice to push anything quite as strongly since. This is only partly true though because the small piece of information I've left out is that he's got a co-writer and co-producer credit on PinkPantheress's future Hottest 100 hit "Boy's a liar", which has easily become the biggest hit of his career. "Love$ick" never even made the Billboard Hot 100 so there's quite a gap between the two on that front.

There was reason to believe that Mura Masa could be a major player in the future. At a time when the streaming age was ushering in a different age of dance music, fitting in more for quiet contemplative home settings rather than explosive festivals, Mura Masa's music had a fresh twist on the formula. It was relaxing, but also expressive. I listen to "What If I Go?" and I feel like he's cracked a winning formula, a bit like Flume in his early days, he just needed something bigger to make a statement.

You can never be sure how well known these facts are, but "Love$ick" is not a fully original song. It was previously a mostly instrumental song from an earlier Mura Masa EP, and had the title "Lovesick F*ck", ironically that phrase doesn't actually appear in the song until A$AP Rocky was added. I like the quote from Mura Masa in an interview where he said that he put it together at Abbey Road studios during a brief period that A$AP Rocky was available. He says 'We hung out, smoked cigarettes, talked about fashion and Tame Impala.'. That last point will become relevant again at a later date.

It's something that just feels strange in hindsight. How could there ever have been an instrumental version of this song, A$AP Rocky fits it like a glove, like he was always meant to be there. To see a Frankensong become a hit like this becomes strange in its own way, although considering that it's the Ice Spice remix of "Boy's a liar" that took it to its heights, I guess it's par for the course with Mura Masa.

For me it's all a bit frivolous but still fun. I hear the steel drums and think about how a similar sounding beat in "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" once caused me genuine dread. I've come a long way since then and I think it goes some way to signalling a carefree vibe. Probably the aim all along. There's a lot to like in how it all comes together though, this song can get away with having 3 different melodies running alongside each other.

#591. Wet Leg - Chaise Longue (#45, 2021)

64th of 2021

By complete coincidence I'm running back to back with two artists that come from islands in the English Channel. Mura Masa is from Guernsey, while Wet Leg are from the Isle of Wight. Though it's a small constituency, Wet Leg can't even claim to be the most successful Hottest 100 artist from the Isle of Wight at this stage, as The Bees landed at #33 in 2004 with their song "Chicken Payback". I suspect Wet Leg were closer to getting a second entry given that "Wet Dream" also landed at #118, and maybe their new album could still accomplish something, but we don't have the benefit of that data in the era of The Bees so it wouldn't be fair to use it.

Wet Leg belong to the cavalcade of artists who get so much media hype that it requires chart research to determine if it's actually reciprocated by the public. I'm your person for this fact, or rather, the me of 2022 who researched it at the time. Wet Leg released their debut album in 2022 and despite having no chart entries in any capacity in Australia before that, it managed to debut at #1. With the top spot on the album chart usually reserved for either long developed fandoms, or the big who's who of streaming hits, it's very unusual to see a new artist just immediately jump in at #1 without a crossover hit. In fact I can tell you that prior to Wet Leg accomplishing this, it was a whopping two months prior when Australian rapper Huskii also did it. But after him you have to go all the way back to Susan Boyle who managed it in 2009. Before that it generally does not happen much at all. You just have to accept that either Wet Leg are an extraordinary moment in music history, or maybe that the charts are heavily distorting themselves from what they used to be like. Wet Leg also dropped out of the chart immediately after debuting at #1. A bit short of Susan Boyle scoring the 18th biggest album of the decade with less than 6 weeks on sale to do so. Funny to think that until their second album came out, that solitary week at #1 was their only appearance on the ARIA Chart, blink and you'll miss it.

When an artist does manage to soar to these heights and receive this height, the most obvious question to ask is 'Why?'. Maybe the answer is usually a competent packaging of agreed upon ideas that either explores them further or just provides ample hope that it's the return of something nostalgic. Rock criticism veers in this direction constantly, and it's easy to look at Wet Leg as just another one, but I think they managed to stick out for all the ways they weren't playing along with the understood formula.

"Chaise Longue" is probably a joke on some level. It draws in attention because it immediately forces the hand. Not only do they make a dick joke three lines in, but they also repeat it 5 more times after that. It's not quite as many times as Tom Cardy punches your dad there in "Mixed Messages" (#653), but if we're getting close to those numbers, something has to be considered about it. The rest of the song is a "Mean Girls" reference (with a solid re-write the second time around), and getting horizontal on the chaise longue.

Novelty songs of this nature don't usually get a lot of traction because when your main appeal is jokes, people don't necessarily just want to hear them retold over and over again, or at least not in short proximity. Deep down I think arriving at quoting the same jokes from 30 year old Simpsons episodes is a part of us all, a part of us all, a part of us all. But I remember when I listened to Wet Leg for the first time, the thing that struck me the most was that I was surprisingly engaged with the music. It was "Wet Dream" that stuck with me the most, but I can appreciate the pairing of deliberately lazy lyrics about being lazy when it's coupled with a surprisingly potent post-punk slow burn. They do say the title phrase exactly 46 times in "Chaise Longue" but I'm really just not paying attention to that part of it once it gets into overkill. You just don't really see genuinely popular songs that sound like this very often.

#600-#596

#600. Paul Dempsey - Edge Of Town - Like A Version (#88, 2017)

58th of 2017

The question that was on everyone's lips after the 2016 countdown came through: Where was "Edge Of Town"? Maybe not, but it seems like whenever it comes up, I see a lot of surprise that it never impacted the Hottest 100 at all. I don't think people realise the extent of it though because Warm Tunas only goes down to #100. When I was counting votes independently, I had "Edge Of Town" finish at #146, maybe that's not much, but there were only two songs above it that also didn't make the top 200. One was an Architects song, a band prone to being overestimated in these things. "Edge Of Town" must have been so close to the top 200 but I'll never know, I'll just reserve the right to judge everyone who didn't vote it because I definitely did. Oh and by the way, "Edge Of Town" is a song by a band who will eventually appear in this list, really screwed myself up here again.

Or rather I should say that Paul Dempsey screwed me over for the second time. He's the lead singer for Something For Kate so this is the second time in quick succession that I've had to deal with him trying to spoil the list by covering an artist I'm yet to talk about, after doing so with "Sweet Nothing" (#630). That one's still contraband obviously. But it is ultimately interesting that for someone who's prone to covering major noteworthy artists, he would also extend the favour to a much less famous band. For a brief period of time they had no Hottest 100 entries, just this cover that partially helped stop them from making the list in 2017 (this band reached #127 in 2017, they would reach the poll properly in 2018).

I am a very big fan of the song "Edge Of Town". It was a bit of a slow burner but grew to be one of my absolute favourite songs of 2016. This is around the time that it became increasingly more likely that my favourite songs were ones that are not especially noteworthy, which has a hint of feeling arbitrary, like my stamp of approval is so random to the outside observer that it doesn't mean anything. I gotta say though that Paul Dempsey deeming it worthy of his time is a remarkable compliment.

I already spoke about Something For Kate last time, but I have very high reverence for Paul Dempsey's solo music as well. When he's playing the starring role, it's not a whole lot different to Something For Kate. I got very familiar with his first album when triple j played it a lot in 2009. I have a lot of love for "Have You Fallen Out of Love?" in particular, and even lately he's been teaming up with Bernard Fanning in the ultimate '90s nostalgia fest which I'm all about apparently.

A big draw in "Edge Of Town" for me is the frenetic energy. Here's a new band with their own ideas that don't really play by the rules. You get a chorus that intensifies to match the chaos portrayed in the lyrics. Apart from a brief burst near the end, I don't really get any of that from this cover version. It's mostly just because this is a Paul and one guitar affair, so there's only so much he can do with it. I respect the hell out of him and I love that he covered this, but it's hard for me to ever pick this over the original version.

#599. Hilltop Hoods (feat Montaigne & Tom Thum) - 1955 (#4, 2016)

62nd of 2016

I'm not sure if anyone has ever figured out how or why this song managed to be as popular as it is. To the outside observer, maybe it's just another hit song, but in reality it's just about the biggest hit Hilltop Hoods have ever had. It runs remarkably close in streaming numbers to "The Nosebleed Section", but managed to crossover on release in a way that song could never have hoped to imagine. When I wrote this, "The Nosebleed Section" had thus far peaked at #75 in Australia though it's since had the stars align for it to reach #31. "1955" peaked at #2. If it was just a spur of the moment hit, it should have crashed out by now, but it still puts up very solid numbers to this day. A silent achiever, where nothing about it particularly screams out 'This is the one'.

On the other hand, there's another opportunity for "A Whole Day's Night" (#919) to cop a stray as that other Hilltop Hoods song featuring Montaigne & Tom Thum. Maybe this one has the head start advantage, but it clearly feels like the one that has more merit in terms of intrigue and utilising its guest stars.

The song's old-timey presence comes from a Dylan Moran comedy set where he said that he always wanted to visit Adelaide so he could know what it's like to live in 1955. Side note: absolutely love "Black Books" although I haven't revisited it in many years. Suffa wrote the song embracing this ideal as an Adelaide native. It actually makes for a curiosity where there's another comparative point with "The Nosebleed Section". Whatever you think is the Hilltop Hoods' biggest hit, you can safely say that Pressure doesn't have a verse on it. It's actually even more extreme here as I'm not sure he appears on this song at all. Even in Tom Thum's interludes, he mentions 'Lambert's Sniffing Salts' [Suffa] and 'Barry's Brylcreem' [DJ Debris]. Pressure does have a writing credit but there's nothing to see for it.

I feel obligated to mention that Tom Cardy also parodied this song multiple times as part of his Song Sequels series. I'm technically also learning this because I feel like I've encountered them multiple times and never realised there's more than one. He's got a "1355" version that might work as a history lesson although I've not checked if all the lyrics are historically accurate, and the easier to get away with "4055". If you're reading this in the very distant future, you can check for yourself how it went. It's all pretty funny and worth showcasing fellow comedian Julia Robertson with a very impressive Montaigne impression. I also like to imagine that there are a lot of people who might only know these parodies and not the original song they come from.

I think the song works on the odd premise that it's trying to do, and having two guests to divide the attention and do what they do is a good part of it. I wouldn't say it's a favourite for me because I tend to prefer Hilltop Hoods with a bit more tempo, or at least some higher stakes. I guess though as I say this, I'm running out of them at this point, luck of the draw.

#598. Glass Animals - Gooey (#12, 2014)

64th of 2014

I'm a very vocal advocate for defending so-called one hit wonders. The tag gets thrown around so hard and fast that you can't help but feel the prevailing criteria is less about something that can be statistically challenged, but just the sheer will power to create them. Whether it's out of dismissive malice or just that vague sense of 'It just feels right' because it's a fun way to categorise artists that people are aware of and don't feel invested it. It's not like anyone could take offence to it.

For me there's a certain arrogance to it that I can't abide. It's extrapolating from the initial thought of 'I only really know/like one of their songs' to 'Everyone only really knows/likes one of their songs'. Except 'everyone' very rarely means everyone, just people like them with similar backgrounds. It creates pecking orders between charts, and by extension, countries. Or I'd say that if it actually was treated as such. It's a bit like what I was saying a few weeks ago with "Seventeen Going Under" (#627). The only reason I hesitate to see it like that is because all those smaller countries just no longer even have an agency. Finding out that someone actually had a top 10 hit in Belgium is an annoying case of the truth getting in the way of a good story. Even if the artist in question is from Belgium, it doesn't count. America and its charts that allow very little outside of its pet genres to make an impact get to call all the shots.

That's where it starts to irritate me a little bit. I think that the sometimes small and sometimes large differences in musical culture around the world are a wonderful thing. Maybe there's more credibility lent to something that can be popular everywhere, but those isolated pockets are what makes us who we are, although ironically I tend to find nowadays that charts differ more for their rules than their constituents a lot of the time. In any case, discrediting these aspects is tantamount to discrediting the lifestyle that produced it. When someone says that Gotye is known for only one song, it's telling me (and many others) that my high school years spent worshipping so much of his music are irrelevant, even though those early successes are what set him up for his world domination. All I'm saying is that a lot of people are missing out on a lot of great music by being dismissive in this way. In any case, I suspect Glass Animals have a similar upbringing.

Was "Gooey" a hit song? I'm inclined to think so. Without much of anything to come before it, it managed to clamber up to the ARIA top 40 for a single week before descending back down. In some regard it might be the bare minimum for hit status, although I think there's a world of difference from that to something that debuts at the same position from release and immediately tumbles. In any case, by the end of the year it'll have reached 400 million streams on Spotify, quite a lot for a song that only barely snuck onto one official chart in the world at a time when the threshold for doing so was just about at its lowest.

So it becomes a point of curiosity when that bar of success is so thoroughly exceeded to become an afterthought. I don't have access to official sales figures from when "Gooey" peaked on the chart, but I can make a reasonably accurate approximation (it'd be around 2,500-3,000), and it's probably only barely higher than what "Heat Waves" (#741) is still managing week by week 5 years after it was released. It might be tempting even from an Australian perspective to rescind Glass Animals' first hit since it's so far off the new benchmark they set. If you're looking at chart positions, you can't give Glass Animals a second hit without also giving second hits to Lou Bega & Chumbawamba. The only difference is that "Gooey" is certified 3xPlatinum. Now that would be an excellent tool for weighing up artists' discographies if they were ever reliably updated. Maybe Chumbawamba have crawled their way to Gold with "Amnesia", except their label suffers from long term memory loss, and won't remember to ever check.

Fundamentally though, it is very interesting that Glass Animals managed to be more successful in Australia than anywhere else. The line is a little blurred in the 2020s, but I do think it might be a lingering remnant of this local popularity that helps "Heat Waves" be *the* biggest hit of the decade in Australia compared to being just *one of* the biggest hits of the decade everywhere else. At the time I likened them to alt-J, a similar phenomenon just a couple of years earlier, leaving a similar impression of 'this is a little bit weird for something so popular'.

I felt like "Gooey" was an easier proposition than alt-J's "Breezeblocks" at the time as well. The alt-J song is jagged and filled with strange hooks that jump out of nowhere, while "Gooey" is more interested in setting a vibe and staying on that same level. It came out before streaming was officially included in the chart, but it does feel more streaming friendly.

It also feels strange to say this though because when you do focus in on "Gooey", it also reveals itself to be more spacious than you might think. Long stretches of it are held together by light drums and a distracting dripping sound. There are a couple of synths that come in and out but not much else. I think what keeps it all together is the way Dave's vocals are produced. I'm not sure if there are backing vocals outside of the last chorus, but it feels like there's more of him before that as well, and it keeps the song from ending up like the trainwreck it feels I just described.

#597. Kanye West - Jail (#50, 2021)

65th of 2021

The thing about a new Kanye West album is that you really never know what you're going to get. He's not one to just coast on his previous successes, probably more likely to deliberately sabotage them if anything. I can't exactly add a 'to present' to this notion, but it was all true for a long time, and it's a big part of why he generates so much fascination, a true wild card for better or worse.

So it's often a mixed bag that you're gonna get and that's something I learnt to embrace. It makes that first listen so fascinating because you can be on a ride with no brakes, and the bounds of 'What is he gonna do?' and 'What is he gonna say?' are so much harder to see than pretty much anyone else in popular music. You just hit play and wait for that 'Oh my God, we're so back' moment that usually comes in early. A song that doesn't necessarily sound like anything he's done before but just immediately clicks into place as a moment of hype for what's to come.

It doesn't seem reasonable to say it anymore, but if I'm being perfectly honest with myself, this was that moment for me initially. A strange, borderline hard rock riff to sit alongside your regularly scheduled ego check. It's also hiding a Jay-Z feature on it, which admittedly is more exciting the first time you hear it, less so when you come back to it and start to wonder if maybe he should have taken a better crack at it. It's actually the only time Jay-Z appears on this list. He had a handful of entries before 2013, mostly alongside Kanye West, but he remains an odd outlier with how triple j handled his output. He didn't get any recognition until after his initial 'retirement'. 2006's "Show Me What You Got" ended up on a voting list and seemed to lightly open up the floodgates, but triple j weren't really playing his big hits like "Run This Town" or "Empire State Of Mind" so he doesn't have much to show for it. I'm sure they'd do it differently if they could run it back.

Somehow this ends up being the optimal version of the song anyway. Part of the overstuffing of "DONDA" means that there's also a "Jail pt 2", a version that replaces Jay-Z with DaBaby and Marilyn Manson. This happened so soon after the DaBaby homophobia scandal that it's hard to tell if it was a deliberate act of needling from Kanye. He's famous for pushing work on his albums right up to the deadline so it's not impossible. Supposedly though he was always supposed to be on the original version but Kanye was getting pushback from his label, and his words, dubious though they may be, were that he wanted to give DaBaby a feature as the only artist who said in public that they'd vote for Kanye during his presidential campaign. Marilyn Manson on the other hand, it's very hard to escape the obviously deliberate choice and timing, coming out in the same year that he was facing abuse allegations from Evan Rachel Wood, and many other women. In 2025, the investigation finally ended and he got off with no charge but you still can't make me want to have anything to do with him, and his inclusion on this song just feels like more of a sneering mockery than it already was.

On the whole I still find the song somewhat interesting. It's built on a sample from The Boomtown Rats, which is a really curious listen going in only knowing one song of theirs. It ends Side A of their 1979 album; Side B begins with "I Don't Like Mondays". The song sounds strangely like David Bowie and in that sense, it's impressive how different it is when it's repurposed for this instrumental. Is it all a bit uncomfortable now? You better believe it is, but I also am still stuck in that mindset of the genuine thrill I felt with this song at the time. Kanye West just lives to be conflicting.

#596. The Chats - The Clap (#82, 2020)

53rd of 2020

We've got three helpings of The Chats in these parts and I'm not entirely sure how much point of difference there is to acknowledge in all of it. The subject matter may vary on a superficial level, but on the whole you're getting fed variations on the same thing: An overly detailed look at Australian life with the principal joke being 'I can't believe someone made a song about this'.

It's something that I can already superficially appreciate. For a lot of people, just the notion of it hits way too close to home and lands squarely in cringe territory, but I've always thought that we should be allowed to express our unique identity. I've seen so many American and British movies where much of the draw comes from people leaning into their accents, phrases and way of life, usually in the gritty sense. The 1993 film "Naked" feels like an afterthought alongside a young David Thewlis who is just in love with the way he talks (I won't pretend I wasn't either). So rarely do we get that over here. It's probably just that the Australian accent lends itself more to a more relaxed vibe through a comedy, but I did see the psychological horror movie "Talk To Me" a while back and I felt like the most compelling part of it was the setting, and just hearing people talk like people I know, but under more stressful and agitated circumstances. It can be highly effective if done right.

That's probably not what The Chats are doing, but if nothing else, they've proven that there's at least a niche market internationally for people gazing in on an updated version of Australian stereotypes, some three decades after "Crocodile Dundee". Well, they're not international stars by any stretch, but they've got global recognition that a lot of far more successful Australian artists will never get, because they're the band that made "Smoko".

If you are looking at this internationally, you might be surprised to know that "Smoko" does not appear in this list. It was a viral breakout hit in 2017, but something of a novelty. triple j may have acknowledged it early on but they were not pushing in all their chips. It wasn't until 2019 with a new single (and a major label signing) that they started getting behind this band. I can't remember exactly when I first heard the song, but I definitely joined in on the fascination with the novelty, something you'd never think would be more than a funny YouTube video. It's an excellent distillation of their energy though. Utterly confronting in a 'trying so hard to make it look like we're not trying' way, but succeeding through the bluntness of the minutiae. Just the vivid image of a tradie sitting on a milk crate and getting hostile at anyone who comes near him is such a realistic portrayal expressed with poetic brilliance.

I don't think "The Clap" fires on quite the same cylinders, but I'm very sure it's intentional. You could argue that it's doing the complete opposite by providing as few details as possible and just hammering home the specific thesis statement that it's a song about someone getting gonorrhea. It's undeniably a very punk rock thing to make such a narrowly focused song like this. On that level I can embrace it, though I do still end up having more fun with their other songs.

#605-#601

#605. Broods - Heartlines (#42, 2016)

63rd of 2016

In 2016, Broods had the biggest chart hit of their career in Australia, and when the Hottest 100 rolled around, it was beaten by about 30 places by this song that never even charted. The two are neck & neck in Spotify streams to this day, but I always wonder how we came to this. Some songs just weather the tide of getting forgotten by the end of the year better than others I suppose. Personally, I blame Rihanna, but that's a story for another blurb.

"Heartlines" has another thing going for it, as the only song in Broods' discography that has a writing credit for one Ella Yelich-O'Connor, or Lorde as they're sometimes known. This is a pretty natural fit I would say. Two of New Zealand's most successful musical products of the time, and both known for extensively working with Joel Little. They've since gone their separate ways, as Joel doesn't have a writing credit on the latest album for either of them, but I listen to this song and can definitely imagine it being a Lorde song at times, especially that pre-chorus.

I do sometimes wonder if this song suffers from forced rhyming. The conceit of missing a connection with someone because they're overseas is a solid foundation, but how many words can you possibly rhyme from that? 'Heartlines' to 'state lines' is fine enough, but I can't imagine ever saying the phrase 'We could fool the datelines', unless I was a member of government in Kiribati. Really we're just rhyming 'lines' with itself over and over again. That's all minor nit-picking though. The song still sounds good, and as someone who is regularly thousands of kilometres from the people I talk to the most, it does hit that unique feeling of isolation pretty well.

#604. Hayden James - Something About You (#44, 2015)

60th of 2015

I like to believe I have thusly proven my commitment to fairly assessing music across all genres. How else would I unintentionally put this song so closely ahead of "Your Man" (#609) when they sound largely different but are anchored by one near identical hook? It's clearly proof that I'm not just making up these opinions on the spot. If you put that fast spoken bit at the start of your song, you're falling just shy of the top 600, that's just how it works.

In truth though I felt far more enthusiastic about this one when I first came across it. I've said before that I'm always excited to see new producers make a commercial mark because they feel more prone than a lot of other kinds of artists to make a genuine shift in the sound of the mainstream. A lot of popular music is just singers working in tandem with producers but sometimes the truest litmus test is to see what's making waves without a huge name attached.

At this point I'd already heard his song "Permission To Love", which was pretty good. There was an emotive side to it even with all the synths dripping down around it. "Something About You" felt like a toning down, but it allowed for a crisper sound as a result. I'll admit the pitch shifted vocals sound a little silly, emotional pleading of this nature makes you sound more like either a villain or a joke. It works best at the start of the song, that's a title drop I've never really dreaded because the song shifts into gear so immediately afterwards, and it's such a pleasant gear to cruise in. Also happy roughly birthday maybe, Hayden James.

#603. ZHU - Faded (#11, 2014)

65th of 2014

The rise of ZHU, and in particular this song, was quite remarkable. He severely lacked an image, and actively worked against the notion of having one. The lines 'Music is faceless. Let my music tell my story.' occupy my mind any time I think of him, because I had absolutely nothing else to go by. It wasn't even clear to me that he was providing his own vocals. It was his intention to succeed on these terms and it almost felt too suspicious how well it was working out.

The boring answer to all of that is that he had help pushing the single through a major label. Sony put the song up for pre-order for a while, so when it was released, it instantly shot out the gate to make people take notice. In my mind I always think that it immediately peaked, but it actually vaulted back up in the following weeks to reach #3 in a very congested top 10 that wasn't letting anything stick around. An excellent effort in promoting something that I couldn't see getting anywhere near as high on its own legs.

I just think it's neat, I suppose. It has two neat tricks going for it. Firstly that hypnotic riff that anchors the whole track, and then the pounding bass that comes through after. I still don't think very highly of ZHU's singing, but he knows how to switch things up and keep this largely repetitive song from getting too stale.

#602. Mac Miller - Blue World (#24, 2020)

54th of 2020

Well now I'm sad. Mac Miller was only 19 years old when he managed a surprise #1 album in the US, doing so without a major label or even much in the way of crossover hits. He turned 26 in 2018 and released his 5th album, but he would die from a drug overdose before the year was over. While he did end up releasing a lot of music in his lifetime, it still remains a major 'What if?', but really it's just a terrible thing to happen in general. As far as celebrity R.I.P.s go, this is one that hits me pretty hard.

Mac Miller started his career as the epitome of college frat boy rap. He seized that moment for all it was worth, with no reason to think he wouldn't just be another Asher Roth. I barely noticed him at the time because he never crossed over to Australia, but I was aware of him as that annoying "Donald Trump" guy, he existed to be clowned upon.

He got more on my radar with his next album, "Watching Movies with the Sound Off". In part because it's a memorable album cover for better or worse, but also because I remember the prevailing consensus I saw around it was that it was strangely good. Mac Miller spent his early adulthood being very prolific with releasing mixtapes, and really honed his craft in the process. "Faces" would come out the next year, and though I don't remember what the impression of it was at the time, it's been heralded as his most important release in hindsight.

I've never seen any artist's lyrics analysed as much as Mac Miller's for how it tracks his mental health journey. I think it goes a long way to showing why he resonates so strongly because he really laid it all out for everyone. He reaches rock bottom around 2014, but then starts to find a new level of clarity after that. I can't help but see parallels with my own life. He was about the same age as me, and my own mental health struggles lined up pretty close with his. I got through mine, and it really looked like Mac Miller was doing the same, but he didn't get to experience the other side. It's so tragic to see how close he got.

Mac Miller was still around when he got his first Hottest 100 entry, but otherwise we're looking at one entry buoyed by the tragedy at the time, and two more posthumous releases. This is the first of those two. The album "Swimming" was released in 2018, and he was simultaneously working on a companion album, "Circles". Supposedly there was going to be a third one as well, I don't know if it was going to be called "In" or not. His estate didn't rush things, so "Circles" would take until 2020 to see a release, and it did very well. These posthumous entries were arguably his biggest hits, and he memorably landed back to back entries in the Hottest 100, next to Lime Cordiale who also landed back to back entries.

"Blue World" is an odd one. The gimmick attached to it is one of the producers who worked on it. It's one of the two guys from Khalid's "Talk" (#917), which means I still can't say who it is, but you get the idea. You can definitely feel his influence on this one, and it's a little distracting as well. I have to trust that Mac Miller did in fact record the lyrics the way he did, but you can definitely imagine a more sombre version of the same song if it was ever the plan. Comparing it to the other posthumous single of note, I'm sure he wouldn't want it all to be a mood killer, I've just never been sure how I'm supposed to listen to this one. The vibes are unusual to say the least.

#601. J. Cole - MIDDLE CHILD (#56, 2019)

54th of 2019

Oh hey, it's been a while but I finally get to talk about a US rapper who had a #1 album in 2011 but wouldn't really impact in Australia until years later. Even on those terms, it's arguable to say that J. Cole hadn't quite had his popularity recognised in the US, the sheer persistence of many of his biggest hits far outweighs their often unremarkable initial chart performance. I think many would be surprised to learn that "Wet Dreamz" and "No Role Modelz" only peaked at #61 & #36 in the US, while they combine for 22xPlatinum sales now. J. Cole fans are incredibly dedicated.

In Australia, J. Cole often had his popularity underrepresented because of his tendency to release albums in December, a big time to boost sales but only if you're there for a more general audience. He was probably primed to top the charts, but didn't do so until 2018 when he released an album in April. On the singles chart, he became a rare example as an artist who was able to flood with album tracks despite not having a visible career of hits that he was arguably coasting on. It's to the point that he has 24 top 50 hits in Australia, and only 4 of them have spent more than 4 weeks on the chart. Two of those are guest spots, both from artists who will eventually appear on this list (arguably both are being carried by J. Cole's guest verses in these instances), one is a belated long haul of "No Role Modelz", which in 2022 & 2023 managed an absurd 36 weeks in the top 50 without ever getting higher than #40, the other one is "MIDDLE CHILD".

I don't know if I would pick "MIDDLE CHILD" out as the obvious crossover hit of J. Cole's discography, but it's helped a lot by being a standalone single, letting it get all of the attention to itself. Something I've noticed when studying last.fm figures is that in the age of streaming, repeat listens from hooked fans are the key to rocketing up to the top of the charts. It's hard to do that when the whole album is released together as one big package, as you've got to rely on everyone spending time listening to the whole thing and then deciding on similar favourites to pick out and listen back to immediately. In the time you're listening to the new J. Cole album, someone could have already spun "MIDDLE CHILD" ten times. We saw this in 2025 when future Hottest 100 entrants Sleep Token were seeing very high debuts with their new singles, but once the album came out, they couldn't come close to matching the same daily figures. It's something that rings truer for artists without a proper mainstream following, or rather, a lack of true crossover hits.

"MIDDLE CHILD" is a song about J. Cole's odd position in the world of hip-hop. He's an artist who hasn't been around long enough to be a true oldhead, but is also clearly not part of the new school. It's a weird one because you have the knowledge and perspective to bridge the gap, but what usually happens is that you're either ignored or incorrectly lumped in with an extreme that doesn't really fit you, because the binary differences between those two groups can't help but get all the attention. When I was younger I used to get caught up in all sorts of arguments about whether new or old music was the clearly bad one, and I'd sometimes get assumptions made of my character because of association. Now that I've gotten older, all that it's really done is reinforced it more strongly. Largely that generational divides are stupid, but now I truly get to see the most negative stereotypes foisted upon me from both sides. All the while, you can't help but notice how superficial a lot of the differences are. A lot of zoomers can't help but default into musical taste and a sense of humour that's already derided for being codified as millennial or boomer-core.

In any case, J. Cole doesn't actually talk all that much about this. For most of this song it's really a prototype diss track, one without any specific targets named, but it comes with the promise that there will be a retaliation. This has no doubt gotten immensely funnier after 2024, when a J. Cole lyric instigated the Kendrick Lamar & Drake beef, which led to J. Cole weighing in on it initially, before he basically admittedly that he loves Kendrick and that he doesn't have it in him to be this kind of rapper. You just can't take any of the threats in this song seriously anymore. It'd be nice to imagine J. Cole using his position to mentor the next generation, but I'm not even sure if he's equipped to do it anymore.

As a pop song, it goes alright. I tend to find myself drawn into something that changes the game to an extent, where 'J. Cole finally gets a crossover hit' qualifies in that regard. When he's focused, he can be a pretty engaging presence on a song, I don't think it's controversial to say he's good at rapping. Maybe the auto-tune is a little cheesy but it gives the song a decent hook. My favourite J. Cole song is probably "m y . l i f e" from 2021 (helped by a certain guest feature). A pretty big hit in its own right, debuting at #11 in Australia and making #139 in the Hottest 100. He also made #105 with "p r i d e . i s . t h e . d e v i l" that year, a near miss that means this is still his only ever Hottest 100 entry. An odd curiosity but a pretty good one. A lot of very popular artists never even get to have that one victory.