#470-#466

#470. DOPE LEMON - Rose Pink Cadillac (#27, 2021)

47th of 2021

What a miracle it is to share that DOPE LEMON has managed to split the difference, two in the bottom half of the list, two in the top half. Don't check the exact numbers and see it as a very respectable performance. Actually there's more to come as there will be another Angus & Julia Stone song, but either way, this is making the most of an unlikely prospect. I've never sought out a new DOPE LEMON song with high expectations, and it lets me get the best outcome when I get to be pleasantly surprised.

I don't necessarily like having this way of looking at things. Expending energy as a hater is tiresome and unrewarding, so I'd much rather try and empathise. To be able to understand a different perspective is a very wonderful thing. I might actually have it here, because this is the DOPE LEMON song that polled considerably better than all the rest. The only logical explanation must be that it managed to rope in a bunch of voters who'd otherwise not been as interested before. It makes sense because "Rose Pink Cadillac" is the kind of song to do this.

I reinforced this by listening to the album of the same name. I wouldn't say it was entirely off-putting, and it actually made for some great background music while entering in spreadsheets. On the whole, just did very little to discredit my initial impression that most DOPE LEMON songs tend to meander a bit.

As the single cut, this one is a reliable exception though. A bit more lightweight than the rest of the album which lets the pleasant guitar riff have its time to shine. I think I mostly like this one for Angus though. I've been hearing his voice for a good two decades now, so the surprises are few, but I love when he lends it a little gravitas. He tucks one of his best hooks into this one.

#469. DMA'S - In the Air (#41, 2018)

50th of 2018

Maybe it's showing my age, but there's an intangible nostalgic tone that I hear sometimes in new music. Just this impossible to pin down feeling that I've heard it before, while not actually being able to triangulate it. Recently it's been the song "Backseat" by Balu Brigada. It's a song that sounds unquestionably like the mid-2000s, but modern at the same time. I think there are Bodyrockers vibes all over it, but when you put the two next to each other, they're clearly doing their own thing. It's aping an older time period in a way you could imagine hearing it back then, but the reality is that it didn't exist, and so there's nothing specific you can point to as the smoking gun that they ripped off.

I think about this with DMA'S a lot because it's a common talking point about them, that I'll admit I've been content with being part of (though I think I might challenge this perspective in a later entry). I suspect that if you listen to "In the Air", you'll feel a certain amount of familiarity with it, even if you've never heard it before. The whole image of the band makes Oasis the easiest touchstone, but like I said once before, I don't really know what this specific song is. Something I have an easier time believing is that the very association puts your mind to the time period of Oasis and you start connecting it to things that they didn't even do. I think this song has more in common with Robbie Williams than Oasis, but that's a stranger idea to sell, which is why I've never heard anyone say it before and it's a fresh thought that only just came to me today. Put it side by side with "Angels". They don't really sound alike still, but they have a similar kind of melancholy, as well as that sinking suspicion that you just know they finished the recording and thought they knocked it out of the park. This betrays the part of the story we've seen, where "Angels" wasn't initially planned to be a single on "Life thru a Lens", but it does sound like the Robbie Williams I know to think like that. DMA'S could go either way, but I tend to always be suspicious of the real personas of private school boys, especially those who present themselves otherwise.

That being said, it's hard to argue with results. This is the culmination of half a decade as a band and managing to really pinpoint how they do things. A younger DMA'S could write a song like this, but I'm not sure they'd give it the same care. It's a song that's the sum of all its parts. All the moments of space that let the song breathe, and just how well the whole thing is mixed and produced. They've come a long way.

#468. Skegss - Smogged Out (#71, 2018)

49th of 2018

What a historic moment. We've made it to my old bus route number. But the real thing I wanted to say is that from the moment I started the plan to type out a blurb for every single entry here, I always thought about all those also-rans that didn't really have much of a story behind them. If ever given the opportunity to highlight it, I would always point to this exact song as the one I worried the most over. Nothing could epitomise the opportunity more than one of the most non-descript and non-noteworthy songs by a band for whom that's already their signature calling. Maybe there are other choices but I'm looking at every Skegss song on here and I feel like I can remember where I was when I first heard them all, except this one.

This is only a bad thing in the context of this particular task, and not something that makes me harbour ill will towards the song. It became a point of amusement when I found myself crediting it more and more as one of the better songs on here. It's still the lowest original one, and if you want to take any personal bias out of it, then the laziest thing to say is that it's the song of theirs that sounds the most like their cover of "Here Comes Your Man" (#740).

It might actually be the Skegss song I relate to the most, however. Whenever I find myself stuck in the city, I gain a newfound fondness for how quiet things have tended to be in the places I live. I don't know if Skegss' experience is also rooted in the difficulties of being in exceedingly crowded areas and always feeling a need to over-analyse the far too many things that are happening, although there is one lyric in the second verse that at least vaguely points this way. Have I done enough? I hope so because there's so much more in the world of Skegss after this.

#467. Jungle - Busy Earnin' (#67, 2014)

49th of 2014

I feel like this would be a very different entry if I was writing this 5 years ago. Jungle are the band that popped up out of nowhere very instantaneously, having only formed in 2013. They didn't often show their faces, although that's no longer the case. They also quickly amassed several popular songs on their debut album so it wasn't clearly obvious what their biggest hit was. "Time" out-charted this song in the UK for instance. Then they just slipped out of the spotlight, primed to be a nostalgic touchstone of 2014. You could say 'Remember Jungle?' with the same significance as Oliver $ or "RariWorkOut". This is not how things panned out in the long run, hence I can throw out the once implausible 'I'll talk about it another time'.

It doesn't really hold true to their whole discography even back then, but I remember thinking that most Jungle songs tended to sound similar. The most distinguishing feature of the band was the way Josh & Tom overdubbed their vocals into something that sounds like a strange novelty. So much of it across so many songs could get tiresome, so I've never been compelled to listen back to the whole album again, just this bite-sized chunk is enough for me.

"Busy Earnin'" does have one other important trick up its sleeve. The main riff is utterly glorious. I can't call it the most triumphant riff of the year because it would have to compete with Saint Motel's "My Type", but they knew they were onto something here. The whole thing feels so built around it that it's in a state of free form when it's not there. Then the song just ends immediately. They've come a long way but they never have things for a normal ending. Neither do I.

#466. The Weeknd (feat Daft Punk) - Starboy (#10, 2016)

50th of 2016

Following the ARIA Charts, I'd always thought that Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" was the unluckiest hit song ever. The song never hit the top spot in Australia and instead spent 10 consecutive weeks at #2, initially stuck behind Adele's "Someone Like You", barely falling short at the end of its reign and then immediately having it be replaced by Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know", and being stuck behind for that entire tenure. That's a regular case of unlucky, but considering that Gotye's music video got accidentally leaked by Take40 and got an earlier release than intended, it's an incredible meeting of circumstances to stop Maroon 5 from getting to #1. To make matters worse, this was the first of 5 #2 hits for Maroon 5, who've never been able to top the chart again after they did it in 2004 with "She Will Be Loved". They were still topping the Billboard Hot 100 so I'm sure they don't mind, but this is some monkey paw stuff.

"Moves Like Jagger" has some competition with "Starboy". As if it's just to give Maroon 5 another runner up position, The Weeknd supplanted their record when "Starboy" lasted 12 non-consecutive weeks at #2, kept out first by James Arthur's "Say You Won't Let Go", and then Clean Bandit's "Rockabye". The Weeknd's own unique version of this misfortune is that it happened in 2016/2017, when music streaming was starting to supplant sales as the primary form of consumption (for my money, "Despacito" is the tipping point). Combining sales & streams is always a bit arbitrary, both for trying to equate value out of them, and also the patterns in which the activities take place. They're just two different activities without much in common. In any case, The Weeknd spent 11 weeks during this time with the most streamed song in the country. Given the respective number of people engaging in the two components, a reasonable argument can be made that "Starboy" was the most popular song in the country during this period. The song did also reach #2 on digital sales, so it wasn't a total slouch in that area either. For all of his success over the last decade and a half, "Blinding Lights" (#786) remains as The Weeknd's only #1 single in Australia.

On one hand, there can be some commiseration for what is probably The Weeknd's second most popular song. It's also his second best polling song in the Hottest 100, so it lives the life of being the bridesmaid. On the other hand, it's also the 3rd most streamed song of all time on Spotify, and making ground presently on the top 2. Sometimes you can still make a killing as a bridesmaid. There's also something poetic about the fact that while it missed the top spot in Australia, it did get there in America, ensuring Daft Punk did get to go out with a #1 single to their name, after that other one actually didn't manage it over there.

"Starboy" is also a ridiculously popular album. I'm checking the numbers and...of course it's the second most streamed album of all time on Spotify (behind Bad Bunny's "Un Verano Sin Ti"). It's hard to say how much it actually stands up to that claim as it might just be an album that's stacked with hits, even hits that weren't hits in the first place ("Stargirl Interlude", "Die For You"). History has shown us that in the long run, albums like this are worshipped.

This album came out only 15 months after The Weeknd's previous album. This kind of release pace isn't necessarily new for him, but it does provide issues when it comes to committing to the promise of the branding. The Weeknd spends the music video for "Starboy" (literally) smashing old records of his to play into the idea that he's killing off the old version of himself. You might remember this allegory from a year ago in the music video for "Tell Your Friends" when he also did this. It makes a little less sense the second time since he's just going from huge pop star to...a different kind of huge pop star, but I can buy into the glossy presentation that's being put forward. They nailed it with the album cover, which still stands out next to the rest of his discography.

The problem is that it's just very difficult to really pull off that rebranding in such a short space of time. Whenever a massively successful artist releases a follow up album so soon after, you can almost guarantee that it's a cashing in on momentum and it's never going to sound radically different because there just hasn't been enough time to find a new sound, and it's the kind of thing that rewards playing it safe. For every "Starboy" or "False Alarm" on this album, you've got a whole lot more that wouldn't sound out of place on "Beauty Behind the Madness". He's definitely made a step of some sorts, but it's not surprising that the next album (that came out 3 and a bit years later) is more committed to change.

This doesn't doom "Starboy" the song. On its own, it absolutely succeeds as a statement of intent. Clearly a little different, maybe strange to wrap your head around initially, but eventually locks into place and that mindless hook ends up feeling hypnotic. Most of the song is just one repetitive drum machine and a little bit of piano, yet it's still a song with its own unique identity that commands attention. Look what you've done, you've got me monologuing about The Weeknd again, and I still haven't mentioned the elephant in the room yet. Ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha.