#455-#451

#455. DMA'S - The Glow (#52, 2020)

39th of 2020

At last, we've got DMA'S breaking away from the stereotype. They're more than just ballads and low to mid-tempo songs that could still be considered ballads. We're looking at the title track to their 3rd album and it's one where they do occasionally play around with the influences. I don't just mean in the manner of "Criminals" (#984), but like on the opening track "Never Before", which feels like an even more faithful recreation of Madchester than their earlier song "For Now". The most popular song on this album is still the low to mid-tempo ballad, but I'll also allow it, after all, there's a reason I can't say the name of it yet.

For "The Glow", we've got DMA'S pivoting into an up-tempo rocker that's very much in their wheelhouse even if it's not something they're often caught doing. It's the kind I like too. One where the guitar isn't necessarily just a preset mood, but something that actually engages with the pace of the song. It shifts in and out with a surprisingly high bar of intensity that feels comparable to My Bloody Valentine for brief moments. There's also a steady throughline to make the whole thing just feel like a runaway train without brakes. I only want to dock it something because I've been on a 15 week streak of always putting in at least 3 paragraphs on these things, but you have to understand it's so difficult to write much about DMA'S.

Okay I suppose I can share one bit of silly curiosity. If you look up this DMA'S album, you might discover that it actually hit #1 in Scotland, the only #1 chart position the band have ever achieved in their career, which suggests some regional popularity. In the interest of making the charts make sense, I must reveal that it's a largely incongruent chart. My understanding is that suppliers of streaming data were not differentiating the source of streams within the United Kingdom. Since they can't isolate the streams, Scotland's album chart is essentially a pure sales chart. The week DMA'S were #1 in Scotland, the #1 album in the UK was "Legends Never Die" by Juice WRLD. That week, it spent its solitary week on the Scottish chart at #56. Exercise caution when reading Wikipedia tables, Ultratip is not nearly as prestigious as Ultratop. Huzzah, the streak will remain for another 10 weeks.

#454. DJ Snake (feat Bipolar Sunshine) - Middle (#17, 2015)

48th of 2015

DJ Snake is such a chaotic entity in the pop charts. His time in the spotlight wasn't particularly long, but while he was making hits, you could guarantee there was a careful selection process that meant he was never going to coast. Every DJ Snake hit is in some ways weird, unique, or just utterly deranged. In the middle of all of this is "Middle", one of his least gimmicky singles that managed to worm its way into becoming a massive hit. I guess people just liked it. I know I did.

My introduction to DJ Snake was in 2013 thanks to his semi-viral early single "Bird Machine". It's immediately memorable as a novelty trap record, and I can never forget the further novelty Christmas version of it. I don't know why it exists but I love it. Technically this wasn't really my introduction to DJ Snake, because by this point he'd started to gain some attention as a producer for hire, working on notable singles for Pitbull & Lady Gaga.

The real big breakout moment for DJ Snake though was obviously "Turn Down For What", the seemingly out of nowhere hit that proved there was a mainstream audience for the kind of trap music that "Harlem Shake" made appear shockingly out of place, and also a chance for Lil Jon to thrive a whole decade after he was at the peak of his powers. The song was helped by an incredible music video that manages to perfectly fit the song while gradually upping the ante to be provocative and eye-catching as it goes along. It's gotten more amusing now in hindsight to realise that it was an early directing project for the Daniels, who would go on to win big at the Academy Awards for "Everything Everywhere All At Once", a film where I don't have any exciting contrarian opinions to throw out there, I think it's utterly fantastic. One of the oldest apps I've got on my phone is the 'Turn Down For What' button, an app that just exists to play a short clip of the song, what more could I possibly need?

This success continued into the next year and suddenly DJ Snake was getting his name attached to some seriously big hits, including one particularly large one (any day now I'll get to it). "Middle" came at the end of the year as something of a sleeper hit, climbing into the ARIA top 10 two months after release in December. This puts it in the interesting position where it's hard to tell if the song had its potential cut by being a late hit, or if it was perfectly placed to be one of the hits of the (Australian) summer and thus it landing in the top 20 was the optimal finish. This is a great time to bring out my Instagram vote counting spreadsheet and what I can tell you from this, is that halfway into the votes I counted, it was sitting in 20th place but rose to 15th by the end. It received 40% more votes in the second half. By comparison, that other very established DJ Snake hit climbed from 6th to 3rd, but only had a roughly 25% increase. You can attribute some of this to a tendency for big crossover hits to gradually ascend, but with the extra-large gains for "Middle", it's fair to say that people were still discovering it in January.

I haven't mentioned Bipolar Sunshine yet because it might be reasonable to say that he's just the tag-along for this one. I do have to note that I was made aware of him before this single, though I only really remember his song "Deckchairs On The Moon" with thanks to its memorable title (it's pretty good too). I don't recall seeing any major push for him after the success of "Middle". He's still making music but none of it has ever really crossed my path. I got weirdly excited seeing him manage to get this huge hit to his name though.

Maybe I lied about "Middle" not being a gimmicky song. It has that notable feature of a chorus that almost doesn't have any words, just a big drop that occasionally inserts a faint singing of Bipolar Sunshine's hook along the way. I don't think the songwriting principles are considerably different to some of his more novel sounding singles, but without a principal joke to it all, it just feels like a song that's meant to be enjoyed on more regular merits.

#453. Joji - Glimpse of Us (#10, 2022)

45th of 2022

Something that crosses my mind when I read music charts is the simple matter of what a chart run is supposed to look like. This is something that's changed a bit with consumption habits. Maybe we all like to think of the classic parabola: Debut low, gain some traction, hover around for a bit and then slowly descend. I always like looking at chart runs like Sam Sparro's "Black and Gold", where you can pinpoint the exact moment the song reached national importance.

In the age of streaming, I don't think this is the standard model anymore.  With social media that prioritises the happenings of the last 24 hours, this can't possibly be the standard model anymore. It's possible to find new reasons to be newsworthy, and word of mouth can still emulate it a little, but that's something that I feel also reaches its apex very quickly. Anything that sticks around for too long comes across as the machinations of record labels plastering the songs everywhere. Totally valid still, but it never feels like the organic ascent that it's supposed to portray.

There's solid evidence to back this up too. You can look at any single released in the last 6 months on last.fm that wasn't a crossover chart hit and its listener chart will likely show a familiar pattern. There's a big spike on the first Friday, a rapid decline on the weekend (people don't like new music on those days) and then a second, smaller spike on the Monday. Then it just quickly fades out into the pack of irrelevance for the rest of its days, allowing for a potential spike on album release or any notable artist news. Parabolas are out, inverse power graphs are in.

This is something that still happens to an extent with songs that do crossover, but primarily the ones that find it difficult to get radio traction, either because they're independent, or they're just not suited for the format, or both. One of the most common chart run patterns I see nowadays with this are singles that have a decent start out the gate, pick up some virality in the middle of the week, and best utilise that in the second week on the chart (or alternatively, they're just plucked from obscurity on some random day of the week and it's the second week that gets the bigger share). When this happens, it feels most normal to me. The rate of descent can vary, depending on how quickly everyone moves on from it, but it's this idea that you peak very quickly, likely to stand out on the End Of Year chart when you're one of the lowest songs for your peak position, if you make the cut off at all.

"Glimpse of Us" is one of these songs. It debuted at #81 on the Australian Spotify chart on Friday and reached #1 by Wednesday, which when converted to ARIA weeks, meant that it climbed to #1 in its second week. The song had already peaked in the middle of this second week, which meant that by the time the charts came out, it was already clear that it was crashing back down and its reign would be over a week later. A month later and it was diminished to generating half as many streams as it did at peak. The chart run was still respectable in the long run because the ceiling was so high in the first place, but it remains as one of the least successful #1 hits of the decade so far, only really outpacing the songs that exemplify this chart run standard even better (remember that Britney Spears & Elton John #1 hit in 2022?). Still, Joji got that trophy, and remains a tremendously ridiculous answer to the question of 'What song knocked "Running Up That Hill" off the top spot?' (technically there are two answers to this, but Joji did it first).

Despite all of this, it's not even Joji's weirdest contribution to the #1 hits canon. I'd planned to make this connection many months ago so it's genuinely a coincidence, but I have to bring up his Pink Guy persona. There was a little dispute at the time for how it got started, but it's now generally accepted that the 2013 "Harlem Shake" viral video meme was started by him. It's tremendously funny to me that his legacy is being the primary person responsible for two of the most disparate #1 hits possible in the 21st century. Even by Joji standards, "Glimpse of Us" is a tremendous pivot.

Something I often wonder about is how important lyrics really are to hit songs. I'm very guilty of having them breeze by me through repeated listens, not giving it a second thought. Given the passive experience of listening at times, I can readily believe that we're more driven by mood & melody. Maybe exceptions come along when individual lyrics go viral for the right or wrong reasons, but even then, I sometimes feel like the experience is one that rewards a general direction and template, rather than combing through for overall brilliance.

I just think about this with "Glimpse Of Us" because it belongs to a group of hit songs that have serious problems with the moving on in relationships. It's one thing to think it, but another to make it your primary statement. I see a lot of it lately because it seems to be the only thing sombr can write about, and there are many such cases where the singer just doesn't come off in the best light. There are so many meme templates built around this idea of a girlfriend suspicious that he's thinking about another girl, and this song is Joji just admitting it. I guess if I squint my eyes at it, there's a pathetic misery to the way he's singing it, like he's not exactly proud of having these feelings, I just wonder in an age where there's talk about male manipulator music, if there's a reason why we keep getting songs like this that seem to play into the trope. Are we rewarding them by chance, by pity, or through an understood experience. I'll give Joji the benefit of the doubt here but geez man, just keep those thoughts to yourself.

#452. London Grammar - Wasting My Young Years (#61, 2013)

55th of 2013

A hampering experience when it comes to looking at and analysing music charts is this often distracting feeling that initial hype probably matters too much. It's something that comes to mind a lot when looking at old UK charts, where everything debuts high, and drops fast to make room for the next week's set. There's no stopping to smell the roses, so nothing ever really feels like it's connected, just a series of artists accumulating all their capital to get as high as possible, and the material itself being less important. Artists that are exceedingly popular are the kinds who are entering charts within certain thresholds with literally every major release they put out, and that's the kind of result that makes it feel less impressive.

If this was true in the age of physical singles, it's gotten even truer in the age of streaming. We're encouraged to check things out the day they came out. Some stick the landing, some don't, but I look at things like the Aotearoa Hot Tracks chart and it feels like there isn't always enough time to be truly discerning about it. A list of what are the most popular artists releasing new songs that week wouldn't look much different to what the actual chart shows, and funnily enough, with many chart rules tightening to stop the moss gathering, this is the kind of chart that we seem to be guided along to. One where you're either hot or you're not, and the illusion that a great song can cut through the noise feels taken away.

I think about this with London Grammar because they scored three top 40 hits in the UK in the space of 9 months, and then never did it again. Deep down, I know these are popular songs, and credit has to be given for starting with it from scratch, but does anything about a Top 75 chart run of 31-48-out look inspiring to you? Runs like that just make it feel like the curiosity was a mistake, and not something worth pursuing.

I'll get out of this negative spiral though because I do want to compliment London Grammar. While I had enjoyed "Hey Now" (#622), this was the song that had me buying into London Grammar, literally. If we want to get back on the topic of lyrics as a whole vs. lyrics as a context-free grab, then I think this is a particularly interesting one that carries a greater gravitas than is actually intended. We're looking at a story of infidelity and betrayal and framing it around the title phrase is quite a way to show the stakes of it. It feels just brutal as a statement.

#451. Ocean Alley - Stained Glass (#54, 2019)

38th of 2019

triple j must froth at the chance to keep doing it. Oh hey look, it's your recent Hottest 100 winners, and they've already got a new song out. Ocean Alley might be the quickest to do it (unless you count The Rubens' Like A Version) when "Stained Glass" came out a few weeks later. It might feel very disappointing when you've got all this hype and then the song doesn't even make the top half of the list, but maybe it shows what happens when the later single (#608) steals all the thunder. You look at the voting list and "Infinity" carries so much more aura than "Stained Glass", one of Ocean Alley's more low key entries.

There's a spectrum of songs about drugs in the Hottest 100, especially during the 1990s. We cover all the bases, with The Cranberries' outright rejection on "Salvation", Ammonia's apathy in...well, "Drugs", while Mindless Drug Hoover and to a lesser extent TISM took giddy delight at the thought of it. It would be wrong to not acknowledge Cypress Hill in this as well, and maybe The Shamen as well, though they'd need to give up the kayfabe. On the whole, the Hottest 100 voting audience seems pretty on board with the idea, which is probably the least surprising thing you'll hear all day.

Ocean Alley probably don't even belong in this conversation, but for all these years, I've only been able to think of "Stained Glass" as the song that has that one offhand lyric that seems to be admonishing someone for the lifestyle. I don't think that's the song's actual stance, otherwise I've severely misunderstood the Ocean Alley brand, but if I've spent all day contemplating isolated lyrics, then I have to include this last one. Otherwise, I can maybe see why the full enthusiasm wasn't there for this one, but as someone who hadn't really bought into that full Ocean Alley hype at the time, I like this more tamed for radio kind of arrangement from them. We've got the same build-up and climax as "Knees" (#972), but it feels like it fits together a lot better. One of the first times I was really won over by Baden as a vocalist too, he's really capable of being a rock star when he chooses to do it.

#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.

#465-#461

#465. Client Liaison - House Of Holy (#96, 2021)

46th of 2021

Look, when a song you like a lot just barely misses the countdown, the first temptation is to look at what did get over the line and yell at them. It's hard to do that though when they're all so sweet and wholesome (okay one of them isn't). I mean dang, you know you're onto something good when even I'm rooting for Client Liaison on this one.

I don't even have an exciting explanation for this. I listen to "House Of Holy" and it still embodies the full Client Liaison experience. Maybe it's possible that the tune just thrives on its own merits, or maybe they've just tweaked everything around so it's all at acceptable levels. There's no temptation for me to say 'More of this, please', because I really don't know what this is. Well, I guess this is the flute song, in case "Down Under" (#808) wasn't supplying enough of that.

I suppose they do manage to match the gravitas to the setting. When everything's building up to the big hook, you really do feel like you're in some kind of holy house. I can only assume they've leant into this because they recorded a live performance of this on their YouTube channel that says '(Live From Heaven)'. Everyone's wearing white so it just looks like the "Hoops" (#895) music video. Sometimes we can do just fine with having Pet Shop Boys at home.

#464. Flume (feat Reo Cragun) - Friends (#30, 2019)

40th of 2019

When Flume isn't making new albums, he's doing whatever he feels like, with seemingly no reliable pattern. Just in 2025 he released a whole EP with JPEGMAFIA, and quickly followed it up with a full collaborative album...with an artist who will appear on this list eventually but suffice to say hadn't put out new music in a while. In 2019 he released his "Hi This Is Flume" mixtape, full of songs I couldn't begin to describe, and in some cases, would struggle to type the titles out. Just a week after, he put out the song "Friends", which wasn't a one-off, because it ended up on its own mini EP for Flume & Reo Cragun.

I don't mean it as a knock on him to say that this is the start and end of my exposure to Reo Cragun, an American R&B singer who hasn't landed in anyone else's crosshairs. That's a case where I want to trust the process. Flume saw something in him and thought it'd work with his music. Meshing with Flume when he's on one of his wilder trains of thought doesn't necessarily mean there's a place elsewhere.

I can see the vision across the EP. Reo Cragun is remarkably abrasive in a way that I feel only Flume can find a place for it. For "Friends" especially it's quite amusing. When I think of the phrase 'thinking out loud', I either think of the song by that name, or the incredibly juxtaposed hit songs that seem to go out of their way to include the phrase ("Truffle Butter" is the other one). It all feels strangely inspired here, the way the synths seem to tremble and jitter at an incredibly high tempo, but then tense up when the vocals come charging in. It's absolutely pushing the limits of just how off kilter something can be without entirely losing its pop appeal. Well, I thought it did when it didn't chart particularly high on release, but I was very impressed with how well it held up 9 months later when it got voted in here.

#463. BENEE - Kool (#100, 2020)

40th of 2020

Whenever an artist breaks through beyond their usual markets, I always fear it can run a risk in the long run. They'll probably be remembered to an extent, but it'll be reinforced through that global perspective. Suddenly people who could know them quite well have it reduced in the same way, and when the artist comes back around for another album cycle, there's less interest in them. It's probably not the career boon it feels like in the moment.

I thought BENEE's career was in a unique place at the start of 2020. She'd had a great year before that, and then managed to score a global hit with "Supalonely". It didn't amount to much and aside from making a residency on the New Zealand Hot Singles chart, she hasn't charted a single anywhere since then. It meant that BENEE was an artist whose greatest success was in the 2020s, but she hadn't had any notable success with music actually released in that decade. In a Hottest 100 context, she was given a reprieve because she was literally the first artist to notch herself in that decade's history book when she landed at #100.

As a bonus aside to this. I was watching the old X-Men movies some months ago (the ones from the early 2000s). I had a weird sense of deja vu when a young Anna Paquin was playing Rogue with a light streak in her hair. That's not an irregular portrayal, but for a while it looks remarkably like how BENEE does her hair circa "Supalonely", which is now probably what most people think she looks like. I wouldn't mention this absolutely mundane detail if not for the fact that Anna Paquin is also from New Zealand (and has an amusing hybrid southern drawl with the Kiwi accent sometimes slipping out). It's actually such a small part of her history that she didn't maintain the haircut for any other music videos. I know a singer who reminds me of Cher I suppose.

With all things considered, BENEE has done pretty well as an artist I never expected to see any major success. The fact that her debut album this comes from only landed at #22 in Australia probably reinforces that all the hits before that were a series of coincidences, though I do think the fandom is there in a smaller part. She landed in the top 40 for the Hottest 100 as recently as 2023, which goes well beyond just a brief bandwagon.

I do wonder if the whole rush of it just meant that she wrung out all her obvious hits in the years leading up to the album and there wasn't any time to conjure up more. Not everyone can just do a Lorde. "Kool" is a pretty good one. I think some of the appeal from her earlier singles is lost, but there's something to this too. The guitars that take up a lot of the attention remind me a little of Deep Dish's "Flashdance", something about that blending of genres that leaves you a little lost for what to grasp at.

#462. Claptone (feat Peter Bjorn and John) - Puppet Theatre (#41, 2015)

49th of 2015

It's November 2006, I'm watching a music video that I would see as whimsical and I'd also never see the video again for 19 years. In 2025 my second impression is not quite like that and I'm just wondering if I got overly fascinated just in one scene. That video is for the song "Let's Call It Off" by Peter Bjorn and John. I say this mainly to highlight that I jumped into things at just the right time so that for me, Peter Bjorn and John were the "Let's Call It Off" band, at least briefly. That's mildly significant to me because when you see this particular collaboration in the years-after year of 2015, maybe it's a little puzzling. It's easier to accept these things if you hear more music from a supposed one-hit wonder before that status sinks into your brain. I think the same way about Mattafix and Junior Senior, it just means that I can take them more seriously.

"Young Folks" is that song of note obviously. It landed at #16 in the 2006 Hottest 100 and was the only song by this Swedish trio of great note for quite a long time, until they reared their heads back in with this, the unexpected second hit. It's not a situation like Snow where it's just coasting on the first one, this is Peter Bjorn and John just acting like an artist of note that's always been around striking lucky with a new idea, because that is what they are. I'll admit I don't care much for "Young Folks" nowadays. A combination of the cutesy tune just getting a little too overplayed, and my own personal grievances with any generational divide that lacks the necessary nuance to rise above the surface level of observations. Just a little tedious to get through.

This is Claptone's story, a whole different one hit wonder, except I can't really call him that because this isn't really his most popular song, and I don't know what is. I also probably can't even say 'him', because from what I can tell, Claptone is either two or three people who will shamelessly perform in different parts of the world simultaneously. It's another masked DJ situation so they can get away with it even though the mask doesn't even cover the whole face. It's a pretty cool one to be fair.

"Puppet Theatre" is not an overly complicated affair, just running on a small handful of loops. Where it succeeds the most is the way that it feels as though it's creeping in and out of view, starting and finishing with subtlety. It's something that's fitting for the intrigue of the plague doctor masks, as well as various unknown identities (to note: Claptone always uses a voice changer in interviews). It's the sort of thing where I can totally understand why it stood out on the radio and saw some success.

#461. Elk Road (feat Natalie Foster) - Hanging by a Thread (#96, 2016)

49th of 2016

Oh no, it's yet another one where I have more of a backstory for the featured artist than the main one, the rockism allegations can't be beaten. In this case it's more of a forward story though because the prior part of this is that she fronted a band called Tully On Tully that I'm just learning about for the first time, but since then she's been thriving as the lead singer of the band Press Club, which for me has always left her voice never too far away, with 4 albums out now. It's the song "Suburbia" that really does it for me, something about the subject matter just always reaches out to me, and it's just a surprisingly seasoned sound for a band who'd barely been together for very long. When you hear this tidbit about her career, you might be inclined to assume that it's just a weird name coincidence. Nothing about this suggests what she's doing otherwise.

I think it gives the song an interesting angle, albeit one that didn't really show itself until afterwards. If you think that I'm giving it extra credit out of personal bias, then I can also reveal that I bought this song independently for myself when it came out, before it landed in the Hottest 100. Latching onto Press Club after the fact while still being unaware is just more proof that I did it properly.

In any case, Natalie Foster is always going to have the more detailed side of the story because the Elk Road part ends pretty soon after this. Maybe he's messing with us all, but his most recent post on Instagram is from 2018 with the caption 'taking some time off'. The last single he put out before this is called "Ghost". In case you're wondering where he went, he's now an AI tech bro. Absolutely no idea what service he's providing, I don't speak the language. Oh and before he switched occupations, he had a brief stint on Australian Ninja Warrior. Look, it's better than I could do.

"Hanging by a Thread" is a nice piece of electropop. Never overwhelming, but also doesn't just rest on one idea either. Natalie is a great choice of vocalist here who can give it the needed gravitas, although I guess that's not something you want if you're hanging by a thread. I feel obligated to mention that there's a saxophone solo near the end of the song, and when Elk Road came in to do Like A Version, he covered Flight Facilities' "Crave You". I get it. When you admire a piece of work and then make your own, it's really easy to just end up using it as a blueprint. Can't count the number of times I've done it myself.

#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.

#475-#471

 #475. Jack River - Fool's Gold (#64, 2017)

44th of 2017

I think sometimes I might write people off too soon. We've had Jack River here before when she was working with Peking Duk on "Sugar" (#904). It's not surprising that she managed to make the cut with that one, but I remember feeling so surprised when this song made it in. Maybe I shouldn't have been, but in the previous year, she didn't really move the needle with her debut single "Talk Like That" (no relation to The Presets), and her rather good single from later in the year, "Palo Alto", also didn't make the cut. It may well have been close. I have it at #245 in my unofficial vote count, but that's a long way from where "Fool's Gold" took her just one year later. I just can't pick the draft bolters I guess.

The success of "Fool's Gold" still made a bit of sense though. This is another rather immediate sounding song that almost certainly does a better job of cueing up its hook than "Palo Alto" did. Another observation only I'll give you is that its main riff is fairly reminiscent of the one Cherry Glazerr used only about 9 months prior on their song "Told You I'd Be With The Guys", which I absolutely adore and think has a surprising amount of pop appeal. It's like Warpaint with a lot more energy, and plenty of isolated moments or transitions that could work in a TikTok snippet environment. I'll use this isolated success of Jack River to further this argument, "Fool's Gold" was certified Platinum in Australia back in 2020, and might be close to 2xPlatinum now.

In a brief chat with themusic Jack River listed a bunch of songs that helped inspire "Fool's Gold" with a focus on what she calls a 'giant f**k off chorus'. There's no Cherry Glazerr, but she does mention "Stacy's Mom", "Teenage Dirtbag", "Torn", and even a song I can't mention yet. I think the best translation I see in the list is the D Lissvik remix of Fever Ray's "When I Grow Up". I'd not known this version of the song before but it's worth checking out for just how fascinatingly transformative it is, turning the moody original tune into a surprising bop, and one that certainly does have a lot in common with "Fool's Gold".

Unless you want to make a slight reach from that list of songs before, I'll answer the mysterious question by saying I don't know why she chose Chromium as her element of choice on the single cover. There isn't actually an Fg element and on the 1/558 chance they add another element and it ends up being that, it's just too late. Jack River was 25 years old when this song came out too, so it's not that. Maybe she was just really into "Breaking Bad" at the time and didn't have a better way to do it. There isn't even a single element that uses the letter J, it's down in the dumpster with Q. Could've just made it 79 so it represents gold, that's the only complaint I have here.

#474. Japanese Wallpaper (feat Airling) - Forces (#69, 2015)

50th of 2015

It's not uncommon for less well known singers to get their break from a handy collaboration. Sometimes it can feel like a lottery from the outside. Ecca Vandal has a multi-platinum smash hit? Sure (#612), why not? But then if Jack River could make the leap on her own, then maybe it wasn't out of the realm of possibility for Airling as well. A year before this, she landed at #168 with "Wasted Pilots". It's a relatively unassuming single that's nonetheless a great showcase for her unique and alluring vocals. In any case, the priority was overtaken by this single with Japanese Wallpaper.

As far as I can tell, Airling's entire discography was written with Tom from Big Scary (he even has an engineering credit on "Forces"). He even gave one of their songs a cheeky 5 star review on Unearthed. She put out her debut album in 2017 but has been very quiet on the music front since then. All I can see is a collaboration on a song by Scenes in 2024. I adore her song "Not A Fighter" which was on her album. It's the most immediate song I've heard from her, and plays to most of her strengths again.

This is a respectable second place. For Japanese Wallpaper, we're back where we left off on his 2014 singles, but it's another evolution on what he can do with it. This is a four minute song that could probably get away with stopping after only a minute, already succeeding in its initial mission. Everything else is a bonus, as we get more variations on this immensely calm and pleasant instrumental.

Airling is without a doubt the star of this show though, and I don't think I'd want her swapped out for anyone here. She's got the timbre in her voice to sell the emotions completely, and she knocks the performance out of the park for this one. In a song about not wanting to profess feelings for a potential relationship, lest it cause turmoil in the already existing friendship, just that one delivery of the line 'I don't wanna ruin you' does so much heavy lifting.

#473. Joji - Run (#62, 2020)

41st of 2020

It feels like a long time ago because he hasn't released music in a few years (hello me from two months ago, you've got a good few weeks ahead of you), but it was a peculiar time when you could just expect a new Joji single to make a brief dent on the charts. I say this mainly because there didn't seem to be a limit on what was capable of crossing over, he had everyone in the palm of his hand and could make anything work. "Run" feels like the most unexpected of these successes. It's not unconventional in its own terms, but it's more of a rock power ballad than anything else, the kind that hasn't been successful in years. I listen to it and I feel like it could almost pass as a Black Sabbath song, who knew he had this in him?

"Run" wasn't even coasting off of his fame in the traditional sense. When it was released it actually became his first ever top 40 hit in Australia, and he's only had two more since then. I don't know if it's true, but it does imply that he won over a lot of people with this song in particular. When the Hottest 100 came around, it wasn't quite his highest, but it was pretty close. Maybe that's the earliest single buff helping out, or maybe it's just another bit of genre cosplay that's pulled off surprisingly well.

This song is also the most recent addition to the collection for the most common song title in Hottest 100 history. There have now been 6 songs with the title "Run", although one of them is in uppercase and also will appear later in this list. I'm writing this a few days after the most common score in AFL history (80-79) happened yet again. I love a scorigami as much as I love seeing the same thing randomly just happening over and over again. This record doesn't look like being challenged soon, because it was already comfortably the most common title before Joji even got to it. We recently got our 4th "Home" though. I would also like to note that if you counted up all of those "Run"s for how many times they say the word 'run', then Cog's would absolutely dominate the conversation. The 101* times they say the word 'run' considerably outstrips the combined 19 of the other 5. Congrats Flynn on the ODI century.

This particular "Run" probably wouldn't work if Joji didn't have the vocal chops to pull it off. While the underlying tune is good, it's the big release of the hook that solidifies it all. It's also why it's always all the more exciting to say that you can get ready for the next time he appears on this list, tackling a completely different genre again. This is not a spoiler in any way.

*I counted this manually myself because there appears to be a few mistakes on the Genius lyrics. You could also argue that it's really just 100 times because though the expected line calls for the last one, the song's fade out makes it inaudible to me.

#472. Flume (feat MAY-A) - Say Nothing (#1, 2022)

47th of 2022

When it came to making a voting list for triple j's Hottest 100 Australian Songs of All Time list, the station put itself in a curious position to try and capture a lifetime of popular music. There are practical limitations where you have to meet demand even if it doesn't seem necessary. A song like "Save The Day" by The Living End has some notoriety attached to it, and would make sense to appear on the list even if there's very little chance it would make the cut. At that point you might feel you have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise you'll be putting down every single Kylie Minogue song that's ever made the ARIA Charts and it'll stick out a bit.

triple j probably saw this problem in advance and nipped it in the bud. Their solution was to limit every artist to a maximum of three entries. Enough to allow some variety without feeling like it's crowding it up too much. This is inevitably going to transform the final state of the list, because there would certainly be artists capable of polling more than 3 songs (AC/DC for one), and maybe the selections aren't quite on the money. But for every artist like Silverchair, where there's a clear and obvious three (they have three ARIA #1 hits), you get an artist like Flume, whose career is so fresh that the dust hasn't settled. You can look at it from different angles and get very different results.

The particular quandary with Flume is that triple j has their own version of recorded history that says Flume has topped the Hottest 100 twice now. The first is with a song I'll discuss another time, and one that can be safely included without much room for debate. The other is "Say Nothing", something of a curiosity in the Hottest 100 canon. If there ever was a song to complete the prompt 'well SOMETHING has to get the most votes', then it's a solid contender. Obviously it deserved the #1 spot because anything else would be an even greater transgression, "Say Nothing" got more votes than anything else. It's just that not all #1s are created equally.

After the 2024 countdown, triple j announced in their stats that they had the most ever votes for a #1 song when "Good Luck, Babe!" got the job done. Not only that, but they also revealed that the #4 song ("Messy") actually received more votes than the winning song from 2023's list ("Paint The Town Red"). 2024's countdown did get slightly more votes than 2023's, but it strikes me as a significant means of comparison that puts things into perspective. 2024 was a monster year with more than enough potential winning songs to go around, 2023, and if we're being honest 2022, don't have the same legs to stand on.

Maybe that statistic is throwing Doja Cat under the bus, though I wouldn't think triple j did that deliberately. On the other hand, if they were to omit "Say Nothing" from their all-time voting list, that would be a mighty level of disrespect to the people who voted for it. If they're going to do everything they can possibly do to see it over the line, you simply can't leave it out. The fact that it only managed to land at #176 in the subsequent poll is immaterial.

I will put through the perspective that "Say Nothing" is not one of Flume's biggest hits on the whole. It doesn't even come close. On Spotify, it's outperformed by numerous other singles. Even "Insane", a non-single from his first album has more streams, and is increasing the margin at present. Just another case of newer singles having the cards stacked against them, but they're still left with no reprieve. If people aren't hearing them as much, they're not going to have any sympathy for it. I endorse triple j's voting list decision for Flume at least while also accepting that it probably cost him the chance to get more votes.

Even if "Say Nothing" was more popular, it'd be hard to escape the feeling that it's one of the biggest non-events for a Hottest 100 winning song. Flume became only the second artist after Powderfinger to manage it, but they did so with their two most monolithic contributions to Australia's music canon in back to back years. This by comparison just feels like a perennially strong polling artist getting to #1 by happenstance instead of narrowly missing it (Flume had two top 3 finishes in a row in 2019 and 2020). In the context of his career, it doesn't feel poetic in the slightest. "Say Nothing" was a modest chart hit at the start of the year leading up to an album that performed considerably worse than the two that came before it (Flume's first album charted 67 weeks in the ARIA top 50, his second album charted 32 weeks. "Palaces", the album this comes from, managed just 2 weeks, and didn't even hit the #1 spot). It did prove one of the biggest beneficiaries of the post-Hottest 100 bump though, and this is technically Flume's second highest charting single in Australia, so there's another way to deceive yourself with cursory info like a table of chart positions.

Now that I've said all of this, I want to challenge the perspective. I subscribe to the idea that significance can be there to behold even if it doesn't seem like it. If you don't agree with that, consider just how many perennially enduring songs can have their catalyst directed at something frivolous like a movie soundtrack, a meme, or simply being played so much on the radio that we're forced to acknowledge it. No song is inherently worthless just because you can't finish the prompt 'It's that song that...'. Sometimes there's something better in that, the idea that it makes its way into the conversation on only its own merits.

As for the question of 'is "Say Nothing" that song though?', I might not be the right person to answer that question. It's hardly my favourite Flume song either. There's a desire to compare it to "Rushing Back" (#619) as a similarly structured Flume song, though that's another one that's arguably more popular so I'm not preaching to the choir at all. This is probably the more maturely produced one of the two, where it feels like Flume has a better idea of how to build the tension outside of the chorus. I guess I should also say he reached out for a more unexpected vocalist.

The 2021 Hottest 100 result was not especially kind to me. It's the only time I've ever had none of my votes get into the countdown, and this wasn't a series of near misses. Only one of my votes made it into the top 200 that year. In the modern configuration where the voting list is only about 1,000 songs, someone picking at random would have a better chance than I did. Time will tell how things stack up when I get to the pointy end of the list, currently we're sitting on an utterly unremarkable count of having 47 songs left to go from that list in the top 470 here. Part of the problem there is that there's a solid ringer that didn't get a chance to bloom, perhaps unfairly so (more on that another day). MAY-A landed at #101 with "Time I Love to Waste", a song that would probably be my favourite on that list...if it were on there. In that respect, Flume did her the mightiest of solids, taking her from Hottest 100 #101 artist to the rare air of winning the whole thing. She eventually did get her own entry in 2023 with "Sweat You Out My System", so it's not all just coasting off Flume.

In general I've found MAY-A's music to be pretty great over the years. I first latched onto her song "Green" in 2020, adding her to the endless list of artists I found on Spotify who usually don't amount to much, but immediately after that single, she was signed to Sony Music Australia who've kept her career chugging along. Aside from the aforementioned, I really love "Central Station", "Something Familiar" and "ifyoulikeitlikethat". Just a gift for some of the wordiest and catchiest hooks, and capable of both singing and yelling them.

When she comes into this Flume song, she's a welcome inclusion. I wouldn't necessarily say it allows her to explore her full range, but there's a wildcard factor that makes the whole thing more interesting. If you're gonna remember anything from this song, it's gonna be either her sharp delivery on the title hook, or all the stabbing synths that surround it. Now that's what I call a successful collaboration.

#471. Flight Facilities (feat NÏKA) - Need You (#66, 2018)

51st of 2018

This is the most recent Flight Facilities song to make the Hottest 100. That's ending a run of appearing in 8 out of 9 years from 2010 to 2018, just missing 2016 (they didn't release anything that year). There was a near miss in 2019 when they teamed up with Aloe Blacc on "Better Than Ever", scoring one of their bigger hits due to an Apple tie-in, which meant that Spotify didn't give them any flowers (see also "Best Friend" by Sofi Tukker). Then in 2021 they managed 3 entries all within the top 200. I'd be surprised if they polled again, I think the vibes aren't there anymore.

I think their reputation has taken a hit lately due to stories about one of the members. You can find a lot of stories about taking advantage of fans, and a lot more about infidelity. In the past year he's had a second kid and also gotten divorced. As I write this, Flight Facilities have been on tour in America of late and he's not there. I don't think there's any internal strife, but it's just another strange thing to line up. I feel obliged to acknowledge all of this because it might not be right if I just pick and choose whose dirty laundry I'm airing.

To get back to the usual spiel, this song features NÏKA, the singer from New Zealand, not to be confused with any similarly named singers from other countries. She's pretty under the radar outside of this single, but she is actually one of the additional Broods siblings, and I'll admit some embarrassingly slow realisations when I saw multiple posts from Georgia referring to her as 'sister', which could totally be a term of endearment. She does have a remarkably similar voice to her sister too. I don't know what she's up to now because her social media has gone silent pretty much right after this song came out. Someone even took over her old Instagram handle earlier this year. It's not even a very good one, it's got multiple underscores.

For reasons that are either extremely obvious or not at all (which will no doubt reveal itself eventually), I tend to forget her contribution because I'm so used to hearing someone else sing this song. It's one of the most tasteful Flight Facilities songs though. Maybe one of the most deliberate attempts to ape "Crave You" again, with both the synonymous title and also very similar programmed drums. That's a brutally overplayed song though so I tend to prefer hearing this one.