#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.