#460-#456

#460. Amy Shark - Only Wanna Be With You (#70, 2022)

46th of 2022

"Weird Al" Yankovic continues to be one of the most wholesome musicians going around. By sheer coincidence I managed to catch him in two different Leslie Nielson-adjacent films in quick succession recently. There's the '90s Bond spoof "Spy Hard" where he sings the theme song (with a bit of an 'It's the theme from A Summer Place' to the joke, and then he appeared as himself in the very recent Naked Gun reboot with a different L.N. star.

The main crux though is that while he's known for parodying famous artists, he does so in the most respectful way. Always asking for permission even though it's not legally required, and taking the obvious route, subverting it, and turning it into something profoundly silly. Wholesome humour for all ages.

This is usually the case at least. Some years ago I heard his song with the curious title of "(This Song's Just) Six Words Long". Spoiler alert, it isn't, and even that apostrophe is clearly broken up in delivery so even that line on its own is 7 words long. That's okay, it's a parody of George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set On You", a song that also introduces a sneaky 7th word into its chorus.

It's funny to listen to it for me though because I'm pretty sure I heard the parody before I heard the original. Actually, I definitely did because in case it needs to be mentioned, George Harrison didn't write the song either, his version is a cover of a James Ray song. It's a very repetitive song, with only one line in the chorus, and a verse that just repeats itself each time. It's unusual then that the "Weird Al" version's entire conceit is to make fun of this. It strikes me as an unusual venting of frustration at a song that just happened to be on the radio a lot at the time.

Give yourself a gold star for every paragraph in advance of this that had you figure out where I was going with this. "Only Wanna Be With You" is, to me, a new incarnation on "Got My Mind Set On You". There's a bit of evolution on the formula, cutting it down a word (though she could have done the Cyndi Lauper route and said 'Want To' instead of 'Wanna'), writing another verse, and even putting in some more words after the fact in the chorus. I might go so far as to say that it feels like a finished song.

It's a welcome change of pace for Amy Shark in general, whose catalogue of singles often feels like nothing but slow & moody. This makes it feel like a pop rock pivot is very feasible. For the purpose of live genre tag collecting, I'll note that every Amy Shark song I have on iTunes has been given the 'Alternative' tag, except this one is 'Pop'. In the years since, she hasn't made the Hottest 100, but her iTunes tag has been fluctuating between 'Alternative', 'Pop', and for her latest album, 'Indie Pop'.

#459. Billie Eilish - all the good girls go to hell (#91, 2019)

39th of 2019

Something I'm often thinking about is the way we group together decades. 1999 is not monstrously different to 2000, and yet by association feels completely different. The 'yeah 1990s' of "Break Stuff" vs. the cold modernity of "Crawling". A lot of playlists are built on this identity so you'll see the former next to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and the latter next to "Uprising" and it won't feel especially weird.

I find the cusp on the end of the decade to be the most interesting, because it gets so little time to be part of the conversation. It's something that has to be done in retrospect. The longest running #1 hits of all time* in both the US & Australia both got big in 2019, so if you look back at any random discussion about current music in that decade, they only exist in the form of dramatic irony. Big players that haven't entered the stage yet, leaving all those past conversations in the dark.

*Note: This record will likely be broken by Mariah Carey very soon, so let's chuck on the additional, more timeless qualifier that "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X has the longest consecutive reign on the Billboard Hot 100. That should at least keep standing until around May next year.

I wish I could recall where I saw it, but I have a recollection in 2020 of seeing a list of the biggest debut albums of the 2010s under no scientific scrutiny, and it was putting forward the idea that Billie Eilish's "WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?" was the pick. That's an album that was released with only 9 months left in the decade. If you're anything like me, your reaction to this might start with an eyebrow raise, and then moments later potentially conceding that it's probably the best choice. One piece of compelling evidence I can put in her favour is that it's the only debut album that topped the ARIA End Of Year charts during the whole decade. Olivia Rodrigo did it in 2021, Susan Boyle did it in 2009, but the 2010s are all for Billie.

You can also cross-reference Hottest 100 results and get a similar result that affirms it. Under this microscope, it depends on how you weight things because you could give some credit to Chet Faker's three top 10 entries, while some leniency has to be acknowledged here because while Billie's 5 entry haul looks pretty standard. She was within an inch of it actually being 7. A mammoth turn out by any standards. Okay and well one of those songs wasn't really on the album and it might be cheating, but it's just what we're working with here.

Maybe for my sake that result was for the best. I have a lot of adoration for "i love you", but the #101 song in this countdown was "my strange addiction", and I've had difficulty strongly distinguishing it from this song as they both veer closely into playful circus melodies. Well I guess it's the song that has a bunch of clips from The Office, but I don't have any anecdotes about it, just that recently I was watching Six Feet Under and two of the biggest stars on The Office have minor roles that pre-date the famed sitcom. Rainn Wilson is an absolute scene stealer.

"all the good girls go to hell" is a member of the increasingly common group of singles whose single release feels like an afterthought. Arguably it is because when chart peaks remain the common shorthand, this is a song that became a top 10 hit in Australia as an album track on release, and by the time it was being pushed as a single, it couldn't get back into the top 50. That's not to say it doesn't matter, but it does represent a sea change in how we look at these things, and frankly makes it harder to measure its individual impact. I guess we have to take in the fact that it's here to show that there was individual interest in this particular song.

It makes sense really. If you're looking for a song to stick out on first listen, then this album is full of them, but "all the good girls go to hell" is one of the easiest sells with a lack of inherent weirdness to it. This is Billie at the peak of her powers just dropping hits without a second thought. It's the kind of edgy that doesn't really scare anyone off.

#458. Goldroom - Embrace (#62, 2013)

56th of 2013

Ah, another DJ with a single entry here and not much else of note in their discography, I can't wait to see what wacky adventures he's been up to since he put this one out. The exciting answer is that he's still doing the music thing. Just this year he's been playing shows in America. It's been quite a few years since he last put out any music, but I wouldn't put it past him to do it again.

What about the vocalist on this song, Ariela Jacobs? She's not as famous but she's also still doing the music thing. Actually at some point in time she got given a credit on most DSPs that wasn't there originally. Now that I've said all that, I probably should have given her the credit, but I'm doing it here and if I changed it, I'd ruin the structure of this passage.

When I hear this song now, it feels like a precursor to another song that came out a year after this. If I want to get into full crackpot theory crafting, I'd say Goldroom primed everyone for that one, and it's why it was so successful out the gate. The chromatic riff that keeps popping in is all for him though, and I waver on whether it's a worthwhile inclusion to keep running back. Better to just not focus on it because otherwise the production is very inviting. Lots of high and low end working together to craft something that just sounds lovely.

#457. Ziggy Ramo (feat Paul Kelly) - Little Things (#99, 2021)

45th of 2021

I don't know what the normal story is for everyone else being introduced to Paul Kelly. I assume you either grew up with his music, or you've lately been snuck in via his perennial Christmas staple "How To Make Gravy". I'm in the middle of this line up, so I don't have any confidence on where I started. I do remember triple j holding a tribute to him in 2009, so I just kinda picked most of it up around then. As far as Australian artists making an impact over a sustained period of time, hardly anyone can match up to Paul Kelly, the only artist who's made the Hottest 100 in the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s & 2020s. He continues to be so venerated that we're effectively making hits out of songs that never quite took the country by storm in the first place.

One of the more notable ones is "From Little Things Big Things Grow", a song Paul Kelly wrote and performed with Kev Carmody. It tells the story of the Gurindji strike, lasting for nearly a decade over conflict about land ownership, led by Order of Australia recipient Vincent Lingiari. An outcome of this was the enactment of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 in the Northern Territory, which has allowed Aboriginals to claim land based on traditional occupation. The song is performed slowly, allowing plenty of chance for the severity of the situation to sink in.

In 2021, Indigenous Australian singer Ziggy Ramo recorded an updated version of the song, something that could almost be seen as a prequel given the events depicted, but naturally it's something that still rings through today. Here, he's talking about how this all started, with a papal bull in 1493 that decided any land not claimed by Christians is fair game for colonisers to claim as their own. It's the kind of narration that's clear, simple, and horrifying when it's all laid out like that. There's also a note about the way genocide can be seen as an international tragedy that demands our assistance, but those same people turn a blind eye to what's happening in our homeland.

I love seeing it here because like the original version of the song, it's something you can't really switch off your mind to. It's not really a slow, guided strike as much as it is a series of precise jabs, serving as a constant reminder of our history of atrocities that so badly wants to be painted over with a thick brush. Something that wants to be discarded as a remorseless piece of history just because we don't have any personal connection to anyone involved. Given the Hottest 100's own backstory regarding English settlement (take a wild guess at which future entry I'll be talking about that for), I love seeing this land at #99. Right when we're getting settled in, here comes Ziggy & Paul to interrupt us for nearly 7 minutes and respectfully remind us of what's important.

There's often a lot of talk about the merits of disruptive protests and how they can theoretically weaken momentum for a movement by inconveniencing people. It's the kind of propaganda pushed by those who'd prefer protests to be ineffectual as if to be powerless. So this kind of protest, getting a song like this voted in, is so perfect because anyone who complains about it is going to sound like the grand chief of pettiness. Committal to the cause can sometimes mean sacrificing the deep desire to tell all the bigots of this country how we really feel.

#456. Kanye West - Moon (#97, 2021)

44th of 2021

So we're finally here, I'm writing for you. For the fourth and final time in this list I get to say that this is a song from Kanye West's "DONDA" album without any featured artists credited on it. It's also yet another where the uncredited performers are arguably a more important part of the song than Kanye himself, and for the grand finale, in this particular case, it's two artists who I can't mention by name yet. We've got two artists who are associated with Travis Scott, the first being a major influence whom Travis Scott respected enough to partially take his stage name after, and the other is a protégé signed to Travis Scott's label.

This is probably the most egregious of all the "DONDA" examples anyway. Kanye West's contribution on this song is about 25 seconds of backing vocals. Somehow still not the smallest appearance he'll make on this list, but the one that feels easiest to miss. I really wish I could give credit to the two other performers, but they'll get their chance eventually.

I love seeing when big albums hit the chart. In some ways it's the ultimate power ranking system. Anyone who can get the general public listening to their whole albums for days and weeks on end shows themselves to have an undeniable hold over popular culture. When you're competing with hit songs that have entire systems in place to put them there, and you're still winning, that's a huge statement in itself.

Aside from that though, I love the little stories that take place within days and sometimes weeks. Often times, everyone is going into these albums with a clean slate. There may be some slight expectations if they're fed in advance, but I think for most people, you're seeing a mostly new track list and you're about to find out what is and isn't a keeper. It then turns into a battle between natural order and suggestion. If left to themselves, everyone will find their favourites, and it'll tier things out on its own without much room for change. We aren't left to ourselves though, and so the democracy of everything from think pieces to memes suddenly gets a say. Like party volunteers waiting outside an election booth, it's possible to sway that public opinion over time, and then not only does everything change, but you have yourself questioning what the right state of play should be.

It feels more natural in the case of big albums like "DONDA". We don't always have time to properly sift through these things right away, so maybe we're content with waiting on those who do, and seeing what they find out. On the first day of album release, "Moon" was the 7th highest song from the album on Australian Spotify. By the week's conclusion (which was only 4 days later), it was up to 4th position. It ended up being the 2nd longest lasting song in the ARIA top 50 on the album, only behind "Hurricane" (#911), which itself is a bit of micro-observation because if you look at its chart run, you'll only see it dropping down. These pockets of comparable daily streaming numbers can often tell us as much about the public's taste as the regularly scheduled new weekly radio hits do. Even if the story is as simple as "Moon" being a nice bite-sized packet to take away from a very bloated album.

It felt like a moment of discovery that I was experiencing in sync with the public. There's nothing particularly headline grabbing about it, but when you go back to it, you're given an unforgettable vocal performance from one of the newest virtuosos in the rap hook game, as well as seeing an old favourite back to his emotional best (I am not talking about Kanye West here). The king of transcendent humming just nailing the mission statement.