#505-#501

#505. Asta (feat Allday) - Dynamite (#47, 2015)

52nd of 2015

The posting gap might hide it, but here I am writing effectively back to back entries on triple j Unearthed wunderkinds. Asta feels like a whole different generation. Her first song "My Heart Is On Fire" won her the competition, and allowed her to fly over from Tasmania to record another single for triple j. That single is "Escape", and might technically be her debut single because "My Heart Is On Fire" only got put up officially a little after that. That song has been described as a demo, and that's a fair enough description. It's mostly just Asta's voice, a guitar, some drums & hand claps. "Escape" bumps up the budget and allows for more dynamic range, so the guitar can soar, and Asta really gets to show off her singing. She's hard to forget with her husky tone, but that recording lets her fully show off her capabilities.

Here's the funny thing that happened: "My Heart Is On Fire" made the Hottest 100 (at #50), "Escape" did not (it made #137). Asta set a precedent going forward where there was more interest in the winning song than what came after, and since then it's been much more common to see that reflected. I'm more partial to "Escape" myself, but sometimes there's something undeniable about the raw songwriting ideas that can win out over more studio polish. Less is more, or something like that.

At the core, Asta had a pretty consistent sound established through these early singles. I was fairly on board with her at the time, and this was accelerated greatly by the release of her next single "I Need Answers" in 2013. I don't get to cover it properly as it only managed a #170 finish, but I adored that song at the time, and that's only increased since then. If those early singles were a draft concept, then "I Need Answers" is the fully realised version. Just a delicately balanced song that's always building to some stunning vocal runs. Maybe the answers need to come from me because I couldn't fit it into my Hottest 100 vote that year, but I'm glad I got to see her live some years later, as it's very high up on the list of modestly noteworthy favourites I've been treated to over the years. I can't really talk about my favourites yet because they're attached to artists who'll appear in this list later. In the interest of transparency, I'll note that "My Heart Is On Fire" and "I Need Answers" were both produced by another Tasmania local Cal Young (aka KOWL). It doesn't mention this on the Spotify credits.

"Dynamite" is where things get a little different. There are 4 credited writers on the song, Asta and Allday obviously, but also Lauren Michelle Bliss and Andrew Klippel. No KOWL to be found. I can't find much about Bliss, but Andrew Klippel might be one of the most prolific but otherwise not overly famous Australians working in music. He's a co-founder of Ourness so he manages future Hottest 100 entrants Royel Otis and also another artist I haven't yet gotten to. I wish I could confidently say that he signed the Google defamation document about Royel Otis written by someone who can't even spell the band's name correctly but it's covered in '[REDACTED]'. The other very funny thing is that he's also the main guy behind Euphoria, the largely forgotten Australian dance pop act who scored two #1 hits around the same time Nirvana were just sneaking into the top 5 with "Smells Like Teen Spirit". You can see him in the video for "Love You Right" sporting a tragically early '90s look. I just can't believe he's showing up here mere days after I was reading about him.

Sometimes I will flat out live up to the stereotype about not liking change. I did not like this new Asta, which seemed completely out of flux with what I was familiar with (I didn't know about the collaborator change, it was just obvious vibes). We lost the moody acoustic guitar tunes and got this strange, blatantly commercial tune that sounded nothing like her older music. Adding onto that, it felt like she was reduced to being a guest star in her own song. That statement doesn't entirely live up to scrutiny. Allday gets about 55 seconds of the song, but most of what you get from Asta here is the same hook repeated multiple times, so I can't say it feels like she's got 75% of the song.

I can't actually recall when the song started growing on me, but I suspect it was fairly recent. My memory of making this ranked list is having this song down as on the cusp of being ranked from very early on in the process, meaning that I might have imagined putting it down outside the top 900, only for it to work its way up to nearly the halfway mark. Pop isn't a dirty word for me, but when an artist I like scores their biggest hit with something I'm not ready for, it's a difficult thing to adjust to. I haven't kept up much with her music since this song but I gravitated to her collaboration with former Hottest 100 entrant Luke Million, on the very catchy single "Heard It On The Radio". For this song I just have to take it on face value. Allday is a good presence (this is actually the last time he'll appear on this list), and Asta absolutely belts it out whenever she gets the chance here. Can't imagine the song being made any other way, so why not just embrace the fun silliness of it?

#504. Hockey Dad - Germaphobe (#96, 2020)

44th of 2020

I've been waiting 5 years to say this: "Germaphobe" is a song that appeals to the baseline fear that many of us have of Jerma985. I've seen that one GIF, what more do I need to say? But wait, I have a second comedic observation. Much like "House Arrest" (#545), this is one of those potential accidental pandemic anthems. It's hard to get an exact reading on the recording process of this, but the album "Brain Candy" was released in July 2020, while the string of singles for it started coming out in late 2019. I think it's very fair to say that this song was written before the pandemic.

One other thing I can say for certain about this song is that it helped secure Hockey Dad what could be considered on a very specific metric that I've constructed around it, the luckiest Hottest 100 haul ever. Not only are they the only artist to land two songs in the first 5 positions of the list, but they were the only entries they achieved that year. I would say that it's scraping by with the least sufficient effort, but then I might still have highly positive things to say about them. It does remind me of the old Flash days when Newgrounds would give out a medal to the worst rated submission of the day that managed to scrape over the line from being deleted. I'd check them out for a laugh and they were always absolute garbage, yet still above my pay grade as someone who never had the time or effort to do anything better. I reckon I could now if the ship hadn't sailed.

I don't want to put too much stock into what was ultimately a frivolous difference in votes, but I can't help but compare this to the other Hockey Dad song that polled in 2020, a song that sounds quite a bit different for them, and wonder if there's more to be asserted about voting patterns. I've said before that Hottest 100 voting can feel like it's a battle between the hits, and the favourite artists. An apolitical (usually) fight between progressive and conservative. True success comes from managing to appease both sides of the equation, and that's why you're more likely to see big finishes from crossover hits by established triple j artists. What I extrapolate from all of it though is a tendency to lean towards the more familiar. "Germaphobe", an unmistakable Hockey Dad song is naturally going to be more primed for votes.

This is not to say that the song is without merit, or without bite. Hockey Dad are here because they're good at what they do, and even in their more straight-forward songs, they're often sneaking in some interesting songwriting choices. It's a song that reeks of '90s nostalgia, and only doesn't commit to it because there's too much polish. Billy's clean drumming gives it that necessary spark.

#503. Kingswood - Micro Wars (#76, 2014)

53rd of 2014

This is probably the hardest section in this whole list to write about, I say, having only written half of it all so far. There's something about hitting that sweet spot between having glaring flaws and having soaring moments of greatness that leaves you with a bit of nothing. It's times like these that I find myself maybe slightly empathising with the wide adoption of a term like 'mid', but then I get more confused by its use and then grow to loathe it even more.

I think this list demonstrates the problem with it. Am I in the 'mid' section of the list by the strictest definition? Or does the somewhat exclusive qualification process for it provide a higher threshold for it all? I've been talking about songs I like for months now. Can liking something mean you've gone too far to consider something mid? Or is that all still the point? I don't think I actually want an answer to this because all it will do is pile on the ever growing spectrum of viewpoints it seems to fulfil. All the while, it gets spoken of as if it's just the absolute worst, bringing in the horseshoe concept that something mediocre is actually worse than something wretched. To me it reveals a rigid attachment to scoring music that I've grown disinterested in, but simultaneously, being seemingly aware of how it doesn't really seem to work. When score inflation starts to hit big, you end up devoting so much of the score range real estate to things you aren't interested in, and you still can't get it right. What a mess. The only level I can find myself siding with it is the admission that yes, if you are deliberately tasking yourself with talking about something that gives you little ammunition to work with, you won't be happy about it. Ah, to be treated with the chance to reel off the classic talking points.

So I should probably talk about the video to "Micro Wars", hey? For me it's filed with the ideal way to experience it being late night watching "Rage". It's like the Adult Swim classic "Too Many Cooks" (which aired a month before this video came out), where not knowing how long it's going to last adds to the absurdity. It's really two videos, as they also play the album track "Eye Of The Storm" directly after. All up we end up with a 10 minute video about rival biker gangs that is notable because of the sheer number of cameos contained within it. They mostly keep that until the end of the video, where you just get bombarded with familiar faces: Sticky Fingers, Tkay Maidza, Ian Moss from Cold Chisel, a couple artists I can't mention, actually there are even more than first advertised because a pre-fame Kita Alexander pops up in the background. Most of them end up in a silly gunfight. It's a great bit of kitsch because it can hide behind the plausibility of deliberately bad editing. Anyway, it's also a prophetic video because the last one standing is future Hottest 100 winner Sam from The Rubens, who I'm pretty sure gets the most kills and could probably send in a UAV.

Despite previous objections I do think that the song is quite likeable. It was a bridge between the old & new Kingswood that didn't leave me in the lurch. The tempo is down a little, but they instead bring a big level of affirmative energy. Some of the finest dramatic 'oh's ever put to tape. Now let me never have to write about Kingswood again (note: I will write about Kingswood again).

#502. YUNGBLUD - Polygraph Eyes (#99, 2018)

54th of 2018

Talking about YUNGBLUD is wading into discourse that I've largely tried to avoid. He is an artist who inspires very visceral reactions from people that I've often thought should have been able to avoid him. He's spent his whole career gradually getting more famous but not really becoming a chart force in the process. He has had a #1 album in Australia, but no major hits to speak of. Even his only top 50 hit in Australia, "11 Minutes" feels somewhat random and insignificant on the greater scale. I enjoy that one a lot, but it didn't quite make the Hottest 100 so it won't show up here. Instead, the vast majority of our YUNGBLUD content for this will come from his very polarising debut album.

The Hottest 100 produced an arbitrary and specific relationship with YUNGBLUD for me, in that I've largely only interacted with those two hits from the album and not the rest, yet I've been abundantly aware of the backlash he receives. It's mostly to do with the way he portrays mental illness, turning it into some variety of gimmick or joke. It's not something you really hear much in "Polygraph Eyes" (I suppose it is there). Now that I have heard the album, I understand it completely, and all the hatred that YUNGBLUD received made perfect sense to me. "21st Century Liability" is one of the most unpleasant albums I've ever heard. The two singles I can get around though.

"Polygraph Eyes" was a somewhat difficult sell. In what has to be one of the stranger release timing coincidences, YUNGBLUD's album came out exactly one week after Dean Lewis's "Be Alright" (#986). These are two songs about letting down a person named mate about not getting the girl they want. I'd hate to be that guy in the winter of 2018. This one actually did come out first though via YUNGBLUD's self-titled EP. Oddly I think it's the disparate elements that do the trick here. You've got dramatic strings but then they're put next to electronic elements and it all just works I think.

#501. The Wombats - Lemon to a Knife Fight (#22, 2017)

47th of 2017

I'm writing this just after the Alison Wonderland entry (#587) came up where I mentioned "U Don't Know". This is the second time in quick succession that I've found myself watching a music video where a man ties up and kidnaps a woman, takes her to a forest and then she runs away and turns the tables. I wish I could reveal that there's some notable actor in the video for "Lemon to a Knife Fight" but they're all Irish actors with limited roles outside my realm of knowledge. The video's director also made the music video for future Hottest 100 entrant MK's "Back & Forth" (also Jonas Blue & Becky Hill), that's a really great video if you've (likely) never seen it before. Main actor just gives it his all.

This one's pretty good too. I see The Wombats at the start of the video and they look so unenthused, like this is what a decade of being a moderately popular indie rock band does to a person. Then for a while you'll forget that they were even in the video until a (probably unnecessary, story wise) twist at the end that loops it back around. The Wombats have blood on their hands.

Back in 2012, Children Collide released a song called "Sword to a Gunfight", so there is a strong history in this game of Mad Libs fighting. Depending on the circumstances, I think I would back The Wombats in having a better chance as an underdog. Realistically there's not much difference in reach, so it's just a matter of who gets the upper hand first. This is just me, the person who is poisoned by knife vs. bat discourse, and leaning on the side of the bat.

It does give this late career Wombats single a little more character I think. A certain level of whimsy over "Give Me a Try" (#868) or "Be Your Shadow" (#832). The song is more about kicks and punches though, so the title, the music video & the lyrics all portray different kinds of fights, something for everyone!