#490-#486

#490. Dustin Tebbutt - The Breach (#44, 2013)

57th of 2013

I'm still not sure it can be properly calculated just how much of an impact Bon Iver has made on music. Recently there was a lot of talk about Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros and the song "Home", proof of the song's notoriety in the bigger picture. It was derided by many for self-evident Marmite qualities, as well as being a progenitor for a lot of similar music to come after. It's one of those fascinating things that hits you after the fact that part of your visceral reaction to a seemingly tame song in hindsight comes from it breaking ground in some way. I will not be offering any opinions on the song "Home" in 2025, just a small brainwave to say that before Alabama, Arkansas, there was North Carolina, Wisconsin, and just one guy in the woods about to make a huge impact.

I'm just now learning that while Bon Iver's debut album is in part inspired by the angst of a breakup, the titular Emma is not that person, but rather an encapsulation of Justin Vernon's own state of mind. The album was another one of those things that the charts can't possibly do justice to, because it lacked the traditional pipeline of a major label release and couldn't thrive off a big debut. It lives on modest chart positions everywhere, but Platinum sales in Australia, the UK & the US. Another album whose most visible impact was shown at the time on the Hottest 100, when the single "Skinny Love" landed at #21 in 2008, and 6 months later, #92 for the Hottest 100 of All Time. It starts to make a little more sense how drastically successful the cover version by Birdy was in 2012. I'd love it if ARIA could update the certifications on the original version because Birdy's cover went 11xPlatinum last year and we've got nothing for Bon Iver. The two versions hold surprisingly close figures on Spotify to this day, so I wouldn't be surprised if Australia could get the original to around 10xPlatinum now. We as a country probably are a little more invested at this point.

I actually don't get to talk about Bon Iver in the capacity of an entry for this blog, as they haven't appeared in the Hottest 100 since 2011. It's not for lack of trying, as they tend to figure somewhere whenever there's an album release. Closest they got was "33 "GOD"" landing at #102 in 2016. Learn to share, Violent Soho. Or maybe Flume is to blame, sharing his name with a Bon Iver song, but inadvertently keeping them out of the list.

The impact of Bon Iver thrives, nonetheless. When I listen to music in the vacuum that is my own room, it can be easy to forget just how far reaching it all is. Furthermore, I think of all the things that have inspired me in my life and realise that it's absolutely how things pan out for musicians. I'm absolutely positive that careers have been forged by Bon Iver because right now I'm reading Dustin Tebbutt's love letter to "For Emma, Forever Ago"

This is perhaps one of the least surprising things I've discovered. The moment you hit play on "The Breach" and hear Dustin Tebbutt's soft falsetto vocals, I can't imagine anything else is coming to mind. It's interesting to read in the article that while I've connected them on a superficial basis, when Dustin speaks about the record, he admires it for the less tangible parts, such as the DIY production and the lyrical approach. Maybe once you're so engrossed into an album and start making music of your own, it shouldn't be surprising that it's going to come out sounding a little similar.

Over time I've become more observant of the probably obvious observation that more famous musicians tend to attract more listeners in perpetuity. The hurdle of 'Most people haven't heard of this artist' is an absolutely vicious glass ceiling that many are unable to get past. So when you get an artist like this who is so obviously cribbing from another artist, but on some level managing to get more success with it (in addition to appearing here, "The Breach" charted higher on the ARIA Chart than any lead Bon Iver track), it's worth considering what they did to accomplish that. The obvious answer to this is that "The Breach" is a catchy tune that's more immediately accessible than even Bon Iver's biggest hits. Much like Lewis Capaldi releasing his debut album right around when Ed Sheeran was collaborating with big rap stars, this is the answer to the question of 'What if Bon Iver just stayed permanently within the lane of the debut album, rather than the more ambitious sounds they started to explore afterwards. I always think there's room for both, and "The Breach" excels in this department, very nicely produced little song.

#489. Hilltop Hoods - Walking Under Stars (#57, 2014)

52nd of 2014

If it wasn't obvious, I'm an advocate for the little guy. This can be in both the direct and abstract sense. The little guy exists both as the musician who doesn't have all those lucrative marketing advantages and hordes of fans to do their bidding, but it can also exist within that opposite lens. After all, how often do you ever see anyone going to bat for the runoffs of the hugely successful artists, where it feels like they're just exerting their popularity to take up space away from more deserving acts. Hit songs whose only purpose seems to be for padding stats. They can be the most loathsome subject because you just get the feeling that no lesser known artist could possibly see a fraction of the success with the same (or more) drive. This is the entry where I write more words than nearly anyone has ever written about Hilltop Hoods' "Walking Under Stars".

Perhaps what I just said shouldn't even apply to Hilltop Hoods. Once you reconfigure the parameters of massive success to just one country of 27 million, you lose some of that potential buffer that global success provides. In the previous paragraph, I considered citing "boyfriend" by Ariana Grande & Social House, a successful song that vanished from nearly every global chart in the space of a few months. That song probably occupies this slot for many pop music fans. People who will be here for Ariana Grande when she's providing smash hits like "thank u, next" or "no tears left to cry", but get frustrated when she just waltzes in on name power to score a global top 10 hit that's quickly discarded and only cited as a statistic in the future, something for Ariana Grande fans to gloat about. It's the kind of hit song many can only dream about, but for the artist in question, one that probably wouldn't even make the Greatest Hits compilation.

I like "boyfriend" quite a bit. I'd say it's severely underrated, but I'd be ignoring the reality of the situation. Though the ceiling for Ariana Grande is quite a bit higher, it's still a massive hit. There's no shortage of people who'd be ready to defend it, should the opportunity arise. It still feels underrated within its own context, but for the bigger picture, it really isn't. That's where you get a "Walking Under Stars". This is a popular enough song that I'm talking about it! I've also never seen anyone talk about it in any context that isn't akin to 'oh, it's just that other Hilltop Hoods song that made the Hottest 100 in 2014'. The YouTube comments are pretty positive, but there are only about 20 of them. The last.fm shouts are pretty positive, but I only saw two of them. I know Hilltop Hoods are popular, I've seen the charts, but I can't really say I've seen any defence or reverence for them higher than my distant take. When that's the ecosystem you witness, this can't help but feel underrated. It's the same mindset where it's a bold stance to say "Ordinary" by Alex Warren is anything other than terrible, and that's the most popular song of the year!

If there's anything I want anyone reading this blog to get out of it, it's to be able to see that these different perspectives exist. Not just that though, to actually give them the respect they deserve. It takes a lot to see a remarkably dissenting yet frivolous opinion and not mentally discredit it for being outside of your own world of thinking. It's something I struggle with sometimes, but I truly think that the most wonderful thing about music is the way that we can all go into it seeking and being rewarded by completely different experiences, and the sooner that stops being a warzone, the better. Anyway, back to Hilltop Hoods.

I started listening to triple j in late 2006. By all accounts, it could've been a more severe situation, but I got there right around Ausmusic Month and J Award season. All you need to know there is that Hilltop Hoods won Album Of The Year for "The Hard Road", and it's a tough thing to get used to when you're still at the starting line. Had I heard any Australian hip-hop before that point? I can't imagine so, but here it was being praised at one outlet, while endlessly discredited whenever I got away from that echo chamber. I leant into the temptation and was one of those people who also was just not picking up what the Hoods were putting down.

I don't think that time is a guaranteed elixir. There are plenty of songs on the 2006 Hottest 100 that I've not grown any fonder of 19 years later. There aren't really any I'd say I actively dislike (it's a good list), but there can be a limit to how far the adoration can go. Hilltop Hoods are the main character of that list with 5 entries, and they're also the main character of my own personal experience growing up with that list. If I had to pick the 10 songs that have grown on me the most in this time from that list, at least 4 Hilltop Hoods songs would make the cut, and I reckon they'd have the top two locked up with "The Hard Road" and "Stopping All Stations". Seriously, that whole album has aged tremendously well, or maybe given the accolades, it was always good and I was too slow to realise.

My experience is anything but universal. I'm not sure what the initial catalyst is, but if you're a fan of early Hilltop Hoods, you're not being fed and nobody seems to care. It is important to note that Hilltop Hoods had their first big crossover hit in 2009 with "Chase That Feeling", an ARIA top 10 hit. They'd get plenty more over the next decade. Through this perspective, there isn't anything surprising, but most artists with belated breakthroughs always have catalogues of hits that weren't. It's a self-correcting outcome that tends to happen when the earlier albums are more critically acclaimed. For Hilltop Hoods, this only manifests itself through "The Nosebleed Section", a song I can't even say belongs in that group anymore because it's technically the group's most recent top 40 hit. It was an eye-opening experience in late 2023 when the group quietly released "The Highlights", effectively just a streaming playlist, but one that lived out that version of events. The collection contains only one song before "Chase That Feeling", and you know which one it is. This era when Hilltop Hoods were winning awards, scoring the first ever Australian hip-hop #1 album was just discarded. It seemed crazy to me, but the streaming numbers checked out. These songs that initially tormented me but eventually warmed up were just not really getting streamed. Not just that, but clicking through the year by year stats on setlist.fm makes for a sad experience when you see songs seemingly retired over time. There are gaps in the cataloguing, but "The Hard Road" went from being an expected staple to not having been played live after 2019, that song is the lucky one that didn't disappear years earlier. It's just such a shame to see what's become such an integral part of my musical journey be slowly written out of living history.

That's a heck of a preamble for "Walking Under Stars", I'll admit. The reason it all comes to mind is that when I went to make this list, I'd see this song and think of it in that same reductive sense, 'Oh yeah, that's a perfectly cromulent song, but I obviously prefer the other one'. By the time it caught my eye more closely for ranking this list, my mini drama about the state of the popular perception about Hilltop Hoods was fresh in my mind. Listening to this song, something clicked in me. It's not just the most perfunctory Hilltop Hoods song you've ever heard, it's one that's remarkably well made. A rare entry in what I guess has to be considered the modern Hilltop Hoods era that genuinely feels like something they could've made a decade earlier. Debris & Suffa (I don't know how they split the workflow) don't get nearly enough credit for how well they flip samples, on par with the international influences they clearly admire. This particular song was actually produced by One Above, and I'm not certain there even is a sample here, but it feels no different to me. Aside from all that it's just some of the tightest rapping I've heard from them. There's a very satisfying metronome pace to the flow that really solidified to me that this is an absolutely worthwhile inclusion.

#488. DOPE LEMON - Uptown Folks (#87, 2016)

52nd of 2016

If you spend too long looking at music charts and hanging around with people who also look at music charts, you're bound to develop some strange habits. Inevitably, you're going to get very accustomed to seeing and typing out the names of some songs and artists over and over again. I've refrained from doing it here, but when I was in the need to rely on quick shorthand, nearly every song of note would get shortened to an acronym. You only need a little bit of context after that, so you know whether SIO is "Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift, "Shake It Out" by Florence + The Machine, or "Set It Off" by Timomatic.

Sometimes I'm able to step back from all this and recognise how strange it is, but the part that's difficult to divorce from is the additional sense you have when you see a title, or hear a song, and instantly think about how popular it is, or how it did on the charts. There are some songs that are so popular that probably everyone gets that mindset to an extent, things like "Macarena" or "Gangnam Style". I'm always wondering what it's like if you don't know those chart stats, how you can distinguish the mega-hit from the not-so-popular song that just happened to get put in front of you a lot. It's a great way to get a leg-up in some trivia settings. Imagine you have to name all of Cold Chisel's top 10 hits and you're the brave soul assuring your teammates that "Khe Sanh" and "Flame Trees" are both incorrect.

I suppose the litmus test for all of this is one you can answer yourself, depending on your chart knowledge. When you saw the title of this song, "Uptown Folks", did anything prick up in your mind? An intent to make sure you read it correctly, or just the odd feeling that it sounds strangely familiar? I suppose the only answer is whatever Angus Stone thinks about this. There is a monstrously popular hit song with a very similar title to this, which will eventually appear on this list. Is this entirely done in jest, something he didn't even think about, or somewhere in the middle? There was a bit of discussion about this at the time but I don't think he's ever made a comment about it himself, probably the best move, keep 'em guessing.

If that big song is about excess and glamour, then this song could hardly be more different. A much more low key affair about abandoning that luxury and enjoying the patch of life that's right in front of you, like your garden if you have one. Maybe it's a bit much coming from one of the most successful musicians in Australia, but at least he doesn't force the idealism too strongly. It's a DOPE LEMON song, it's gonna be a chilled out affair.

I always found myself drawn to this particular one as a highlight. While other DOPE LEMON songs I've spoken about before have drifted around in a lot of empty space, "Uptown Folks" is anchored more strongly with a tidy guitar riff that keeps coming around. The bridge is also a highlight, a little drawn out, but doesn't feel out of place. Angus gets to put a bit more intensity into his delivery, and we're greeted with the fascinating alternate universe where he leans heavily into psychedelic rock. It pays off very well, indeed.

#487. Andy Bull - Talk Too Much (#61, 2014)

51st of 2014

Obviously a song I relate to, sometimes. Depending on the circumstance, I'm either talking far too much or not at all. Hard to find that middle ground. If you've ever encountered someone doing either of these two things, I can almost guarantee they're aware of it. It's just one of those tough things to balance. Imagine keeping track of a conversation and your own meta-contribution to it (as well as potentially your surroundings) all in real time. It's absolutely exhausting. I try to give anyone the benefit of the doubt as long as they're not being hostile.

The trajectory of Andy Bull is one that highlights the frustrating reality of the recording artist. With very few exceptions, if you want to keep up your momentum, you're not ever allowed to stop. You're destined to be gradually forgotten about, maybe filed away as an occasional 'hey, remember them?', but there's no interest in keeping up with the developing story. No matter what else you have to do or say in your life, to the general public, you're solved. Your career is now destined to be summed up in progressively fewer sentences.

I see this with Andy Bull because I see an artist who was thriving on a hot streak. He was signed to a major label and starting to see real dividends, this is the 3rd song of his I'm covering, and they're all on the same album. If he kept this up, nothing suggests to me that he couldn't have secured more hits for years to come. If you've ever wondered what happened to Andy Bull after this, the simple answer is that he just stopped making music. His next single wouldn't arrive until 2020, and the subsequent album was in 2022. You've probably not listened to that album because not a lot of people have, at least compared to his previous one. Even more unusual to me is his 2024 album, which at least on Spotify has the instrumental version tacked on after it. The play counts of the two versions are not always remarkably different which makes me wonder if a lot of people just put the album on and left it on, not realising they'd dived into the instrumentals. It's the kind of stat padding that manages to make an artist seem less popular.

When looking into this, I found an interview Andy Bull gave with Tim Shiel on Double J in 2022, where he talks about his perspective as an artist, where you're made to promote yourself as both a person and a product, and how tiresome and draining it can be. He didn't call it burnout, but it does feel like a much-heard experience. Specifically though, he mentioned the balancing act of being a content creator and also getting to live your one life you've been given. To me it just reminds me of the façade we all put in front of ourselves to keep up appearances, where we might end up not talking about the things through which we could potentially find a sense of kinship. I've never felt so connected to the guy who just made some catchy songs on the radio over a decade ago. Maybe nobody is talking enough.

The other sneaky bit of lore I learnt by sheer chance here is that Andy Bull mentioned his occasionally intense recording experience that meant doing dozens of takes for some songs and after the gruelling session, getting hit by a spark of inspiration for another song. One of the specific examples he mentioned was doing this for "Talk Too Much", and then coming up with "Keep On Running" (#764) from there. That's just a funny bit of peeking behind the curtain to realise that this 2014 single is arguably older than the one he put out 15 months before it.

I went into this just wanting to say that I always liked this song a fair amount, and that it felt like a more refined sound for him, one without some of those jagged edges that muddy up the momentum. Maybe depending on who you ask, that just translates to it being his most dull single, but I think there's merit to it. Sometimes a tune just connects with you in a straightforward way and all you want is for it to stay like that. I just hope that stepping into the version of me that talks too much was more worthwhile than the opposite version that I'd fully expected to land at again.

#486. Golden Features (feat Thelma Plum) - No One (#92, 2015)

51st of 2015

Back when the ARIA Charts were more controlled by sales rather than streaming, there was an odd relationship with EPs. In the early days, you had releases potentially buoyed by a popular hit single, but reaping the benefits that the distribution of an album could provide. The first ever #1 debut in Australia was Midnight Oil's "Species Deceases" EP. It was released in 1985, right in the middle of the band's hot streak, so it's not surprising to see it sell well, but it's also the band's only #1 single despite the fact that I suspect most people aren't familiar with any songs on it. "Hercules" is the 'hit', and it's a good one, but it doesn't get talked about often (although they rarely exclude it from compilations).

Around a decade later and you've got The Living End managing the longest charting single of the 1990s, with "Second Solution / Prisoner Of Society". Iconic songs in their own right, particularly the latter, but it just looks like a chart run for an album that was super-imposed onto the singles chart. Grinspoon's two equal highest charting singles are both EPs, one of which might have charted a little higher but was placed on the album chart in its first week. It's having the best of both worlds.

Once we made it to the digital age, we saw a new layer to this system, one that felt a little like a triangle trying to squeeze through a circle. Every now and then, you'd see a popular single listed on the ARIA Chart as an EP, or rather there was an EP and it was allowed to have the individual digital track sales included in its tally. There'd be a natural desire to want to categorise these entries, whether they're driven by EP or single sales, but it wasn't always black & white. In many cases, it was a necessary teaming where I don't think the individual single could've gotten over the line, nor could the EP. In any case, you're left with a chart run that you want to attribute to a single, but in reality, it's getting some buffs from the EP. Matt Corby's "Into The Flame" EP peaked at #3 in early 2012, while the popular single "Brother" was #5 on the Digital Tracks chart. A year later, and a certain Lorde single/EP is doing something similar (although I don't think it affected the final peak). I'm not sure what it was like in-house, but as an observer it felt like a bit of a chart hack.

We don't really see this much anymore, as EPs don't generate the kinds of sales they used to. If they do, they're not attached to the relevant singles that are impacting the charts at that time, so it'd take a very unlikely alignment to make this impact again. I'm not sure what the last notable example is, but I do know an example that looked like a serious blunder at the time.

In 2015, Golden Features was primed to make a big jump. "No One" was rising up the ARIA Chart, into the top 60, and the "XXIV" EP that it featured on was about to come out. My only guess is that "No One" not being track 1 on the EP is what cost it, as the chart came out next week with Golden Features landing at #58 with the EP and #60 with "No One", completely forgetting to combine them. If they had been combined, it would have landed at #35 that week. Both Golden Features and Thelma Plum have never had a top 50 single, and maybe they never should have, but you'll always feel robbed when you don't get the same freebies that everyone else is getting.

Maybe Golden Features is just unlucky. He first made a strong impression in 2014 with his song "Tell Me", a forward thinking bit of electronica that feels like a more tasteful evolution on the big room house of say "Animals" by Martin Garrix. Maybe the most literally a song's chorus could be described as 'wub wub wub', but it's effective all the same. Not effective enough though, because it finished at #101 in the Hottest 100 that year, with an added irony to the result given the vocalist featured on the song.

I did think there was solace to be had where Golden Features would surely at least be able to score a first Hottest 100 entry afterwards, and he did, but he cut it pretty close in the end. It was a tough list to crack though, he still beat "Innerbloom". "No One" is interesting on its own as a breakthrough. I don't think it's quite as flashy as "Tell Me", but there's a lot of care put into it. I'm reminded a little of "HEART ATTACK" (#550), though it does come with more hooks. The default tone of this song feels muted, but in a few seconds you're likely to get propped up by a new drum beat, or maybe a funny siren. We're still early in Thelma Plum's career at this point, but she's lending a lot of personality to the proceedings. It's a 5 minute song that just breezes by.