#570-#566

 #570. Bugs - Charlie - Like A Version (#91, 2020)

51st of 2020

Under ideal circumstances, everyone would get a decent chance to have a look-in. In reality, there's just not enough time or justification to look at everything, so most people are going to pick and choose when they want to explore. On an individual level, this is fine, but when you compile that all together, you get a consistent pattern that just re-rewards those already on top. There's very little chance to get to the top unless you're already there.

Like A Version follows this pattern almost perfectly. I used to say that the only way to get into the countdown is if it's a popular artist, or a popular song, except I'm less certain of the second part. You can definitely cite it as a factor, but there are very few cases where it doesn't feel like just an extension of the first part. Only a small handful of artists can lay claim to reaching their Hottest 100 peak with a Like A Version, and even less of them have made it their sole appearance. One of them is twofold, although born of a certain novelty factor that feels like a loophole. The other is "Charlie" as performed by Bugs.

The caveat is of course the fact that it belongs squarely in the first case. There's always chance for the list to grow, but from 2008 to 2019, 7 of those 12 countdowns have at least one top 10 finisher that's generated a Like A Version cover that's also managed to poll. They don't always land, but it's a pretty good starting point. Sometimes we spend so long quantifying collective taste that we lose the chance to be further surprised by it.

I will probably have more to say about "Charlie" in the future, because it falls as one of those covers that are so recent that I get to talk about both versions. As it is, I'm not good at judging the merits of cover versions, especially when they shift the genre. It's not quite punk goes pop, because it doesn't quite fit on either end of that spectrum, but it's a similar situation. It's giving a little bit more kick to a song that admittedly probably didn't think it needed it in the first place. The intro to this cover also bears a strange resemblance to "Heavy Cross" by Gossip. That finished at #16 in 2009 so it's another money maker.

Given that it's their only entry here, my experience with Bugs is pretty limited. I was quite fond of their song "Alone Again" they put out a couple of years later. It's a song I feel embraces the thick Australian accent more openly and ends up sounding like Kisschasy, or something else of that era. Recently I learnt that the band's bass player was diagnosed with bowel cancer. He's younger than me, so all I can do is add another reminder to the pile that suggests you should seek medical attention if anything ever feels abnormal, it could save your life. There's a benefit concert happening soon and also a GoFundMe. If you're at all like Homer Simpson, you'll want to support the charity with the funniest name.

#569. Bring Me The Horizon - MANTRA (#45, 2018)

61st of 2018

Just looking at the period of time when Bring Me The Horizon have been bankable property, "amo" is their least successful album here. It still hit #1, their 4th and latest album to do so, but dropped out of the chart fairly quickly for a January release. Where it's most relevant here, "MANTRA" is the only entry I'll be talking about here, the prior single released in 2018. Every other single they put out got overshadowed by a peculiar soundtrack single they released, and I will be talking about that one. Just to do stock, "wonderful life" landed at #119 in 2018, and then "medicine" and "mother tongue" made #143 & #147 respectively the year after. Maybe "MANTRA" sticks out because it's the only song on the album with any capital letters.

When I listen to the album, I don't really hear any singles that feel hard done by for missing the cut. The album's pretty good on the whole, but the hooks don't hit as hard as they usually do. The most memorable parts for me are in "wonderful life" when they lean into a suspiciously similar riff to Metallica's "Frantic" (highly entertaining I must say), and in "mother tongue" when you get the album title drop. Maybe I could imagine "medicine" getting over the line, but I don't think it matches up to their usual standard so that's alright. Also I know that I just only mentioned the singles but you've gotta trust me I did listen to the whole album.

In this song about chanting the same old mantra, Oli perhaps intentionally manages to do just that. If the phrase 'Before the truth will set you free, it'll piss you off' sounds familiar, it might be because it's decades old at this point, or because it literally was used in a hit song about a year prior to this, one I'll get to later, of course. It's such an evergreen thought that I spend a lot of time considering my words depending on the setting to help pass out my undoubtedly annoying opinions into something of a comfortable package. I'd add to the meta aspect and say something controversial here but there's nothing about this placement that warrants it. I'm just a guy who isn't deep enough in the weeds to write essays about this band, nor am I going to be repulsed on a sonic level through refusal to make any engagement on it.

#568. Ball Park Music - Stars In My Eyes (#8, 2022)

54th of 2022

I'm putting in an early prediction that I could see Ball Park Music landing in the 2025 Hottest 100 top 10 with "Please Don't Move To Melbourne". They've made the top 10 twice and felt like they were punching above expectation both times. Now they've got a lighter song that's been flogged on the radio with a memorable hook that can land as cheeky no matter what state you live in. They knew what they were doing.

The only problem with this assessment is that the same logic backfired for me a little bit on the last album cycle. Namely the one where "Stars In My Eyes" landed in the top 10, while the goofier, but more memorable effort "Manny" wasn't able to get in. Ball Park Music so rarely seem to get a rallying call behind more than one song. Whatever percent of votes they needed, they only managed 90%, 80%, or some lower number. Maybe it is a bridge too far when I can't even bring myself to type out the whole thing.

Maybe Ball Park Music have gotten into their elder statemen role where they just keep polling with songs that aren't as memorable as the ones that came before. Powderfinger did the same thing, and I liked most of those songs anyway. I like most of these Ball Park Music songs too.

Maybe on some level this is just reaching for niche millennial nostalgia. Like, for all the people who aren't pleased or optimistic about where the countdown is headed, at least they can count on these reliable stalwarts continuing to poll very well with their reliable comfort songs. They do switch things up on the bridge, and it's a good one, but clearly we crave the nursing home retirement community.

#567. Ball Park Music - Day & Age (#63, 2020)

50th of 2020

You're probably thinking right now, 'Hey Dirca, remember when you tried to calculate the odds of how likely it would be that the countdown number matched the ranking number any number of times in order to re-assure that you weren't intentionally influencing the results in ways that don't make statistical sense given how generally random it would be. Well what about the odds of an artist appearing back to back on the list?' At least I like to think you're doing that. I hope so otherwise I built a spreadsheet for nothing. The answer is that I didn't actually calculate the odds because the situation we're working with is entirely more complex, and that's before you get into the mess of what actually counts as a double up. Feature credits? Solo work? It's all a big tapestry designed to break it before you even get to the planning stages.

In any case as someone who is not always good at applying complicated logical formulae to my ideas, I find it much more fun to simply run the test over and over again and get a good idea of the results distribution I'm working with. If you do it enough, you can potentially calculate odds without actually cracking the formula. So that's what I did. I ran 1005 tests and found a satisfying distribution.

Something that could be described as satisfying to me is finding 4 double ups to be the most frequent result, but also that 0 is not unfathomably unlikely. So far we're at 2 double ups and not quite halfway, so I can rest assured that everything I have and will tell here is probably legitimate and trustworthy. It's also great character development from me who took 3 weeks to go from 'This is impossible' to 'I am going to will this into existence'. Well it might just be because Ball Park Music are the final boss of blurb writing with their pleasant competence.

I like to think of Ball Park Music's annual performance being something of a vibe check. For years now they've mastered the art of getting everyone to vote for exactly one of their songs, and done very well with it. If you release frequently enough, you can turn it into a routine that goes some ways to expanding longevity well beyond usual expectations. There's a strong correlation between the two.

"Day & Age" is the one exception to this rule. It's their second fiddle in the 2020 countdown, which gives more credibility to both it and that mysterious song that performed exceptionally well from the same album. That other song is where Ball Park Music seemed to focus all their social media attention, so "Day & Age" polled without them even telling people to get around it, huge classic vibes.

That might just be a literal vibe from the audio though. I listen to it and the first thing my mind does is race to "Ray of Light" by once and future Hottest 100 entrant Madonna (fun fact: Madonna missed out on the chance to hold the record for longest gap between entries, because her 23 year lapse ended on The Weeknd's "Popular", except it landed 5 spots higher than Kylie Minogue's "Padam Padam" which ended an even longer drought. "Popular" was too popular for its own good). We get away from that and veer into more familiar territory. The ending gets a bit loose and crazy, but I can't help but think of another Ball Park Music song that also does this, so "Day & Age" really is just living in its shadow at this point, ominous.

#566. Illy - Ausmusic Month Medley - Like A Version (#66, 2013)

63rd of 2013

I know many are critical about the flavour in question, but I think triple j does an invaluable service for adding a legacy to the great Australian songbook. There are plenty of popular Australian songs in their day that go completely lost in the ether as we get influenced by (usually) American interpretations of the time that are close enough to ours that we don't feel alienated by it, while the scraps that miss coverage are left to starve. Spiderbait's "Buy Me A Pony" wasn't a particularly big hit in its time, but it remains immortal through its status as the first Australian Hottest 100 winner. It doesn't matter that the sample size is smaller than the ARIA End Of Year charts, because it's been imbued with a sense of significance that makes people want to care about it. It's an undeniably Australian version of events.

Me personally, I want it to get more international recognition, which is why I go out of my way to promote this blog and this countdown and transfer that well-earned relevance for what is the world's largest and most scrutinised countdown of this nature. If I can have fun looking at Mercury Prize results, it should be able to go back the other way. Otherwise we leave the perspective of what music is worth caring about solely to the larger international audiences, and that's no good for anyone who values curiosity.

This goes out to Australians too. We need to know our product and embrace it. Keep no secrets from the rest of the world. Look in your mind's eye and live it up, this great southern land of ours. This is Australia after all. Or do what I just did and get some new respect for what Illy's done here because this is difficult to pull off.

While we're at it, I regrettably could have timed this better, but Ausmusic Month is an initiative that's been going on longer than I've listened to triple j. I can't find the origin outside of an article that suggests it dates to at least 2003, and that it runs across the whole ABC and not just triple j. ABC Classic FM also participates. For triple j, it means that the month of November sees an even higher than usual focus on Australian music, including usually the first day of the month having an entirely Australian playlist, even when an international feature album from late October runs through it. triple j already goes above and beyond by default so it never feels particularly jarring when they do this, and they don't have to rely on the same staples that other stations might if they emulated it.

For a crowning jewel to immortalise it, we've got this cover of sorts. Illy put it together in less than two weeks and wrapped together 4 decades of Australian music history into one, as he combines all the classics: Silverchair, Hilltop Hoods, that guy I can't mention yet, and even giving very recent Flume a piece of the action, that by all accounts has aged very well. He puts it together with backing singers, a band and a string section all working to make it larger than life. It has some of the cobwebs of early Like A Versions but the ambition takes it a long way regardless.

While I don't doubt Illy's allegiance across the board, my main thought listening to this is that he got especially excited about doing the Hilltop Hoods section. This was coming just months after "The Nosebleed Section" was once again voted as the greatest Australian song of a reasonable time frame, and it's the one he dives into with the most enthusiasm. I can imagine the cheek he had when he realised he could get the string section to come in right after mentioning 'The people in the front row', and it's the only one where he has a personal anecdote to tell, about how he snuck into a Hilltop Hoods show when he was underage. He's got all the cheeky references to "What A Great Night" and "Clown Prince", and even has some fun with swapping out the Powderfinger reference from the original song to their other especially famous song. He must have gotten so excited whenever he got to make a song with them (#612).

For me the highlight of the whole piece is the Flume section, where he takes "On Top" and transposes it into a surprisingly effective rock section, while never feeling like it's strayed from the original composition. Something I always love about throwing in the new with the old is that it contextualises them together and tells people who are hesitant with one side of music history that you don't just have to stick with the music made for your age bracket. There always has, and always will be great Australian music out there.