#540-#536

 #540. Amy Shark - Blood Brothers (#83, 2017)

50th of 2017

The tough part of a follow up is all of a sudden needing to create a new bank of songs and also make them under newfound expectations on what your music is supposed to be like. This is not that story, but instead we're looking at the curiosity that comes with the first release. I'm willing to say that the massive success of "Adore" (#871) was not entirely expected, but I do think that Amy Shark had a lot of songs ready to go by the time that happened. Less than 3 months after "Adore" stormed the ARIA Charts, she had the "Night Thinker" EP out and making a good impression in its own right, reaching #2 on the ARIA Chart during the brief remaining window before streaming would be added to the chart and start to seriously hamper EPs due to their limited capacity to accumulate streams. I'm not sure it would have cost her much, as sales tend to trump streams at the pointy end of the chart, but it's worth noting. Also worth noting that it was Ed Sheeran hogging the top spot again after double-blocking Amy on the singles chart earlier that year.

Still, I find this first EP quite interesting because of how early along the ride it arrived. It feels like more of a starter package of songs she already had made before without too much thought into what the future would hold. A year later her debut album "Love Monster" comes out, and "Adore" features on it again. Maybe that's where streaming being factored in starts to matter, but it sticks out more with what it means for the rest of this EP, as none of the rest of the songs on it got to pop up on the album again. There's an element of shamelessness that comes with tacking on older singles to buff the numbers. Recently Alex Warren & Teddy Swims have utilised self-branded 'Part 1' albums as an excuse to put them all together and hack the system. It's something I think labels and/or artists are extremely aware of and always wanting to do it, but aware of how scummy it looks. In Amy Shark's case, you could probably get some value out of sneaking "Weekends" (#948) on, as it holds up just as popular as most of the tracks that aren't "Adore", but she didn't need to do that anyway, the album still got to #1.

"Blood Brothers" is probably the best example of the way Amy Shark's sound changed to cater a bit closer to what was succeeding for her, as there's nothing else quite like it that she's put out since. It swaps out the slow and moody style she's become known for and presents an alternate timeline where she's shifted into CHVRCHES-style electro-pop. Taken on those terms it's a bit of a black sheep in her discography, but it had enough approval to show up here so I wouldn't call it a failed experiment or anything like that.

The easiest way for me to look at it is that this is just Amy Shark catering her sound so deliberately to me, and me being happy to accept it for what it is. It's a solid opportunity for her to flex the ability to write an incredibly catchy hook in a way that she's not known to do. It's a sound bed that thrives on echola-la-laliah and it's an opportunity she seizes to the fullest. I don't remember being super invested in this song when it came out, but it was a surprise playlist addition that I couldn't really have any reason to deny. Maybe I still prefer the genuine article, but I won't turn my nose up at this.

#539. Sticky Fingers - Our Town (#29, 2016)

59th of 2016

"Our Town" is probably one of the most obvious singles that Sticky Fingers have ever put out. I frequently forget that "Outcast At Last" (#650) was actually the lead single from this album, which makes it all the more impressive that "Our Town" actually snuck onto the ARIA Chart, one of only 3 Sticky Fingers songs to do so. With that in mind, it's interesting that it couldn't make more of a pace ahead of the pack when it came to voting. It landed just 7 places ahead of "Sad Songs" (#705), although maybe that in itself is revealing of the reality of the poll.

Every year since I've ever listened to triple j and the Hottest 100, I've never been particularly great at predicting it, but I have been able to trust it. There's a certain vibe to the results that just generally makes sense when you look at it, if you're trying to quantify what's a big triple j hit, and how they all stack up. Everything in the bottom 50 feels noteworthy, but once you get up to around the top 40, that's when the heavy hitters start to show, and so on. It's one of the most effective ways the countdown holds up as a time capsule, because if I can trust it in years where I'm very much across the world of triple j, then I can also extrapolate that to years I'm less strong on, and get a good idea of what it would be like to be a listener in that year.

The reality is that it's just a music poll, and while that can be a happy outcome that it provides, it's always going to be subject to all sorts of bias depending on what kinds of people vote, and what their intentions are. Sticky Fingers are one of the most obvious examples of this where their fanbase really got a hold of things for a few years. This has been true since the dawn of the poll, but it stands out more when you're a band that doesn't really have a huge mainstream presence. The plausible deniability of literally being The Cure or Powderfinger. In 2014, a whole bunch of Sticky Fingers album tracks infiltrated the top 200 results, and in 2016, even more managed it. The main thing that sticks out about it all is the relative positions. They landed at #177, #180, #181 & #183. That's a level of proximity that doesn't really feel like it's being driven by individuals picking out their favourite songs, but rather there being enough people who voted for all 8 Sticky Fingers songs that were on the voting list. Let me be clear by saying that this is all entirely valid, but it does go some ways to breaking the illusion that the poll is serving a coalesced general opinion. This is just the Sticky Fingers army making sure we get to enjoy the full experience. But it also makes you want to expand that same voting portion into the genuine hits, because everyone who voted for "Flight 101" or "Something Strange" probably also voted for "Our Town". Based on my own data collecting in 2016, I can estimate that all those album tracks probably got about 25% as many votes as "Our Town", and if you removed them, this song might drop from #29 to around #45. That's not a lot admittedly, but "Outcast At Last" on the other hand, goes from #51 to being right on the cusp of the top 100, which is a very different outcome. Still, at the end of the day, it's a democracy, and it's on all the fans of bands that aren't Sticky Fingers for not being as prudent in submitting votes. triple j can only count the votes they actually get.

You can apply a similar logic with anything that relates to music charts. Yes, we're measuring the number of people listening to something and hopefully with a degree of accuracy, but what of pre-programmed playlists. Does the in-the-moment validity of the individual streams get ruled out when the outside observer just sees a pre-ordained boost that coincides with a deliberate tipping of the scales? The beauty of it is that when the dust settles, you tend to forget about it all and take it at face value. In the case of Sticky Fingers, they're a touch unlucky that they wound up the way they did. Bump all those album tracks down about 25 spots and suddenly it's completely out of sight, out of mind. This is also in fairness a similar thing that happens when a Taylor Swift song like "Anti-Hero" debuts at #1, you can't really assess it on its own values because she's probably debuted 9 other songs in the top 10 that week on a shared curiosity factor. I find it inherently interesting, but it makes trying to decipher the neutral bystander's opinion just that little bit trickier.

As a mostly neutral bystander, I do think it all just clicks into place with this one. Sticky Fingers can occasionally come off as a bit too abrasive but they rein themselves in here. There's just a still admittedly potent guitar riff poking its way through, but it's just the delivery method for some very relaxing moments of relief. It's a song that takes the Britpop worship of DMA'S and gives them a run for their money. I do find myself wondering if they weren't really sure how to end it. After the soaring guitar solo it just meanders on for a little bit, but the cheque has already been cashed in at that point, so it's no big deal.

#538. Halsey - Ghost (#94, 2015)

56th of 2015

When approaching the topic of 'Why is Artist X popular but Artist Y isn't?', it's easy to trot out the answer that it's all down to marketing. I'm probably guilty of doing it myself too. Anything short of that is making you liable for falling into the trap of becoming a mouthpiece for those very label machinations that put it all in place to begin with. The truth can sometimes just land somewhere in the middle. The idea that the pecking order is accurate, it just becomes exaggerated because the most viable option has naturally presented itself, and that becomes the catalyst to push it further over the top.

Halsey's star started rising in early 2015, or at least that's when people visibly started Googling their name. At that point they had just a single release, the "Room 93" EP to their name. The most notable songs on that EP are "Hurricane" and "Ghost". Big enough that they warranted inclusion on their debut album later in 2015, but also not exactly the world-beating songs they had up their sleeve. It sure is convenient that so many people backed them early, or horrifying if any of them were not at all impressed by the pop star turn that followed. It's just a weird thing to look back on because these feel like songs that would only get big if they were attached to an established star's name, and that's only true in hindsight. No one listening to "Ghost" could possibly know that it was one of the first dominoes in a chain that would lead to multiple Billboard Hot 100 #1 hits. Okay maybe some people had that belief, fandoms can get very passionate, very quickly.

To me, "Ghost" feels akin to another song that'll eventually appear here. A song that sounds pleasant on the radio, but doesn't necessarily make me think of any grand ideals for the artist in question. This will probably seem silly just because that other song is one of the biggest and most important hit songs of the decade, but before it inherited all of that, it was just a pleasant song like "Ghost".

This probably sounds like a lot of negging when in reality I've always had a soft spot for this particular Halsey song. I was never particularly impressed by their debut album "BADLANDS", which I felt was lacking for inspired moments of songwriting. At a time when it felt like Halsey was just a major label version of indie pop trends, you're left with a lot of the bare minimum which can be the most frustrating of crimes. I didn't think it was a total wash though. "Ghost" is a good one, and funnily enough, I had time for "Haunting" too, a slick electro-pop angle that convincingly sells the stakes while packaging it in a friendly setting. The Halloween Halsey song title pattern was not lost on me at the time.

When it comes to "Ghost" specifically, it operates on a different level, where its best success comes from how quickly it pops in and out to do its thing. It's a brisk two and a half minutes with a lot of downtime that still doesn't leave you feeling short-changed. The success is in the conflicting chorus & pre-chorus that both distinguish each other enough to heighten the pay off. Even the pre-chorus has a build up to that, so you get a song whose pace is always changing that does leave you with a layer of intrigue. I just still find it weird because this all sounds like I'm describing an obscure favourite of mine, not one of the biggest stars of the 2010s. There's very little precedent that says people lap this one up, but I enjoy being surprised like that.

#537. Violent Soho - How to Taste (#92, 2016)

58th of 2016

In 2016, my feelings on Violent Soho's 4th album "WACO" were that it had an undeniable run of hits packed at the front. Every one of those songs was a solid injection of energy while not compromising the pop appeal, something that's important even in Violent Soho's line of approach. There was an exception to this that I struggled to come to terms with, opening track "How to Taste". On one level I felt vindicated that it polled the worst of those 6 songs, but I also felt frustrated that it made the cut anyway. "How to Taste" was a late bloomer that only started getting regularly spun on triple j in December of that year. The dreaded quandary of wondering how much help it got from any opportunity that it was the last Violent Soho song someone heard before deciding to vote. That pairs it with the fortune of being Track 1 on the album and all of a sudden you have a song that's very lucky to be here on its own terms.

That's how I felt at the time anyway. I'm not entirely sure when I started to flip this opinion because now I appreciate it a great deal more. Allegations of this song being a total directionless mess are a slight bit exaggerated, and now I think that those brief moments of instability are the glue that holds it all together. We've seen both sides of the coin from Violent Soho in the past: the band who can write catchy alternative rock tunes, and the band who can throw those inhibitions out the window and go crazy. Candid observers will note that it's the latter that got them to their greatest heights, but that's a story for another day. I think it's very important for an artist to play to both of these sides. Sometimes it can be flagrantly obvious but still get the job done. Whether it's Ed Sheeran releasing "Shape of You" and "Castle on the Hill" on the same day, or it's Drake releasing "One Dance" (#796) and "Pop Style" on the same day. The dichotomy can get people talking and reinforce both of them, as long as they meet the expectations of their respective audiences. Violent Soho benefit a lot by having a song that's not gonna soar up any kind of charts, but steadies the ship in a re-assured way. Not feeding into any of these perspectives can quickly kill them off, as former fans flock to someone more willing to do so.

In this sense as well, it's the perfect opening track to the album. There are times when that can singlehandedly set the tone so strongly that it creates a misconception in the long run (this is me gesturing to a critically acclaimed album released in the year 2000). The first thing you hear on "WACO" is a relatively calm guitar melody. This lasts about 12 seconds until the drums kick in and we get our first of many 'yeah' utterances, a fully guttural 5 seconds of it. Luke dives deep into his most uncompromised register, the kind of slurring/growling hybrid that sounds uniquely Australian. Moments of clear singing on this song are brief, and often quickly interrupted. The spontaneity is the best feature though. Here we've got a rare song that can capture some of the off kilter energy from a live performance and translate it to a studio recording.

#536. Josh Pyke - Leeward Side (#88, 2013)

60th of 2013

My early years of listening to triple j was accompanied by watching jtv Saturday. It greatly heightened my perspective on things given that it was a publicly voted chart, but it also gave me a small weekly window to answer my occasionally pressing question of 'What does this musician even look like?'. I was a couple of years away from having free reign on the internet where I could answer it all for myself. This was never perfect of course, not every musician appeared in their own videos, and even sometimes they'd pull a prank on you, that's the bass player who's doing the lip syncing in OK Go's "Here It Goes Again" for instance. This whole phenomenon was decades old at this point anyway. MTV answered a lot of those questions already, but the world of triple j was one where you'd hear dozens upon dozens of less recognisable artists who wouldn't get that same exposure.

Josh Pyke threw me for a loop a couple of times. I narrowly missed the jtv Saturday tenure of his single "Memories and Dust" so he was just a radio guy for me for several months. Two very immediate things happen: firstly his name invokes a medieval weapon and sounds brutal, and then you hear him sing and he's the gentlest acoustic guitar folk guy going around. It took him a few years to get around to exploiting the former part, his lyric 'They can keep you around like a head on a stake, I guess the industry found a use for my namesake' from "Fed and Watered" runs through my mind constantly. He shouldn't feel so bad, it took that once rapper from A Tribe Called Quest and future entrant on this blog two decades before he did something similar. Maybe he got the idea from listening to Josh Pyke. In any case, he sounds like a totally formal clean-cut dude and then you eventually find out that he's spent his whole career before and since then sporting all manner of handsome beards, and just generally not looking quite as wimpy as you could imagine. Maybe this comes with a realisation that I grew up just not knowingly encountering many people in their late 20s, just no intermediary between high school student and parent of a student.

In any case, Josh Pyke was a pretty big wheel in the triple j scene for a number of years. His staggered release pace and quick follow up meant that he polled in 4 consecutive years for the Hottest 100, including a full trio of entries in 2007. He took a longer break after that, putting out his 3rd album in 2011. He still polled in that year's Hottest 100 through a collaboration with 360, but his own lead single "No One Wants A Lover" could only get to #112. That's usually a sign that you've been put out to pasture except when album #4 came around in 2013, he managed to get back onto the winner's list with this one, to date his last appearance.

If the progressing of the years weren't going to kick him out, there was a more dramatic nail in the coffin in 2014: the official launch of the digital sister station Double J. Double J is effectively a version of triple j that sounds like the one you remember when you were younger. It targets an older demographic of music listeners who are still interested in hearing new music, something that isn't really being catered. triple j will break these new artists into the fold, and they'll probably inevitably age into being Double J-core. It's a welcome solution to the inevitable problem of there just being too many artists to play.

This has a pretty clear effect on the Hottest 100, as now there are many artists who might have gotten playlisted on triple j but instead are more easily slotted onto Double J. That's cutting into audience reach immensely and probably meaning that one's Hottest 100 days are over. I don't think this is the end of the world on the surface, but as a lover of these kinds of lists, there isn't really any equivalent that allows these older artists to still get their flowers. People have often suggested that there needs to be a Double J Hottest 100, but I'm not convinced it would be smooth sailing. They'd be put in a position where they'd need to promote the vote in order to get contributors, but not do it too much that it doesn't just end up shaped by a triple j voter mindset. Given that technically anything is eligible in the Hottest 100 provided release dates are okay, it might cause an identity crisis, or just come across as the snobby elitist version of the original countdown. I'm sure they've thought about it at the station and come to similar conclusions.

Josh Pyke inevitable ended up in this world. In 2015 he released his 5th album and actually achieved his highest ever position on the ARIA Chart, when it debuted at #2. It's funny how time can make fools of our memory because for so long, the first thing I've thought about with Josh Pyke lately is a recollection of him being bitter towards triple j for no longer playlisting him. 10 years later I've found the actual article this comes from and I was pleasantly surprised at how level-headed his response actually was. This is very good for retaining my image of Josh Pyke as one of the nicest guys in Australian music. Well there's that, there's his philanthropy, and the fact that he now balances his music career with writing children's books. He's put out two more albums and continues to get plenty of airplay on Double J. All things considered, he's had a good ride.

This entry here is not a song that will produce many surprises if you're familiar with his work. This is just Josh Pyke doing what he's been doing for years now. In that regard it does feel a bit quaint in the countdown. We're hearing RÜFÜS DU SOL and Bring Me The Horizon, but also here's Josh Pyke still hanging around (note: this is not a tremendously good example because in 2013 he landed between John Butler Trio at #87 and The Cat Empire at #89). It can be one of the most brutal ways artists are shoved aside because you know there's nothing stopping a newer, younger artist from coming along and all of a sudden being the trendy alternative even if they're doing the same thing. Maybe Josh is a bit daggy bringing out the harmonica in 2013, but 8 years later and Adam Newling is thriving. This is how Superintendent Chalmers feels when his jokes don't land as well as Ned Flanders' (I'm not sure which of the two is older though). Also this song is good for me remembering the cool word 'leeward', a word they love to ask about on Jeopardy!, and I never need to remember which direction it actually means, because its opposite, 'windward' is much less cool and much less likely to be asked about. It does mean on the opposite side of a wind's origin though, in case you were wondering.