#430-#426

#430. John Newman - Love Me Again (#50, 2013)

54th of 2013

Here's the prototype for this set up. It's a new year; a new aspiring producer/singer/rapper bursts out the gate with a hit song. Everyone loves it, and they especially enjoy the contribution of the singer who's featured on it, also a new face. Not long later, you get another one with that same singer. Maybe it's a different main artist, maybe it's not, but it proves the first one to be not a fluke, and then has us all waiting for the big event when they arrive with their own music. We get it, it's a monster hit and nobody's surprised after the carpet has been thoroughly rolled out. What happens after that isn't so important, maybe they turn into one of the biggest stars on the planet, maybe this is as far as they go. You can't take away that moment in the sun, or that time when we were all gathered around Schrödinger's box to find out what this new star would bring to the table.

This is John Newman. You might remember him from such hit songs as Rudimental featuring John Newman, Rudimental featuring John Newman & Alex Clare, or that other one I forgot about but now accept that I can't name in this format. Blame it on the bit, don't blame it on me. Those first two hits stood out because Rudimental found a way to blend drum & bass into a modern setting dominated by house music & dubstep. The combination was electrifying. I should be sick of "Feel The Love" now that I'm wise to all of its tricks but I still can't get enough of it. John Newman is a huge part of this recipe as well. His weary voice fights against the chaotic tide it's been put into, and he succeeds at soulful belting, while also having a playful rhythm. It was hard to believe he was just turning 22 when the song was released, but I was sold.

When it came to his debut single, I was naturally curious. I'd only really heard him under the watchful control of a locked in Rudimental, there was no telling what a John Newman single was ever supposed to sound like. He had the major label rollout though, so there must have been a degree of confidence in the whole project, perhaps he was ready to be the next star.

Any doubt I may have had was washed away when I heard "Love Me Again", it was such an obvious realisation to see he'd pulled it off. Finding that sweet spot between distinguishing from his guest appearances, but not so much as to alienate the audience. It's shifting into upbeat soul with all the pulse and release of drum & bass in a different outfit. I feel like I can imagine the writing process all the way through because every moment feels curated to understand the assignment: don't meander, and keep introducing new things. It is admittedly reminiscent of a song that landed in the previous year's Hottest 100, by a Swedish trio who are still holding out on me. They're two songs that understand just how immense a piano can sound over a dance beat, and it's something that I think a lot of modern piano house music doesn't come close to replicating.

I think for many people including myself who follow music charts, there's a habit that's difficult to shake. That's the habit of feeling like you're on top of things. You look at what's in the charts, and you've got a pretty good idea of what their trajectory is going to be pretty early on. Though it takes different shapes and slants in different directions, the parabola is the gold standard, and everything goes up until it no longer can, and slowly slides away. Then something happens and you are left with two options, you either completely re-assess things under the new terms, or you just pretend you didn't see it. It's why I think current charts are a huge whiplash if you've been following for a long time. The longevity is one thing, but it's just the idea that something can be completely under the radar and amassing platinum certifications like infinite stones. It feels like they're bypassing the assessment and more credibility is given to a song that has a chart run than one that doesn't, even if the latter is considerably more popular. I mean what do you do with the fact that Cigarettes After Sex's 2017 album has more streams than Harry Styles' 2017 album? It just makes it feel futile to follow the charts.

That was a tangent, but regarding John Newman, "Love Me Again" spent a little while climbing up the charts in Australia and got to #23 before slipping away. It debuted at #1 in the UK which wasn't surprising, and the middling performance in Australia wasn't especially surprising either. The UK Chart was built for #1 debuts on most weeks, and he's their local product, they're gonna make a bigger deal out of it. Anyway this isn't the full story because a little while later, John Newman came to Australia to perform on The X Factor. Alongside The Voice, this was one of the biggest stages of its time and you can see top 10s in this era that are thoroughly shaped by it. Oh Avicii, you were hoping your follow up to "Wake Me Up" could make the top 10? Unfortunately John Newman & MKTO were on TV for about 10 minutes last week so they're gonna nudge you down to #12, better luck with the next single! I was starting to wind down on "Love Me Again" at this point, content with how it went, but this just gave it a new life and I felt out of sync with it. I probably should accept it as just playing the game that everyone else is playing, but you can't help but feel betrayed by the whole system when the difference between a minor hit and a major one is promotion. Like, who else is sitting on untapped potential here?

What I do find interesting about it all though is looking at how it creates an audience divide. It was great promotion for John Newman, turning his #23 hit into a #4 hit, one that landed as the 46th biggest hit of the year, but would fall comfortably short of the list otherwise. That's the thing about it though, because John Newman amassed all of those additional sales by tapping into a separate audience. "Love Me Again" even re-entered the radio airplay chart and got higher than ever before. That means a lot more people hearing the song, but so few of them would end up voting in this countdown. You look at all the crossover between this list, and the ARIA Chart, cross-reference their performance, and John Newman's #50 finish here looks positively lacklustre in that context, but makes perfect sense when you look at it with just the initial chart run in mind. These distinct monocultures don't really exist in the same way anymore (a lot of people still watch The Voice, but it hasn't made an obvious impact on the chart in many years), so it's an interesting product of its time, and I'll bet many seemingly underperforming Hottest 100 hits from before my time can be explained away in similar ways.

But yeah, having something thrust back into the spotlight after you're ready to see it out can be a little frustrating, and I was quite comfortable to never have to hear this song again by the end of the year. That was over 12 years ago now and I can let that go I think, maybe I can even love John Newman again. He hasn't had a notable hit in over a decade so it feels like a throwback in the way that some other contemporaneous hits don't. The most notable news since then is just that his brother represented the UK for Eurovision, and might be cursing COVID-19 more than most, because his expected entry was cancelled. He was allowed to do it the year after, but rules state that you need a new song, and this is one such case where you'd like to reject the mulligan because that replacement song had the ignoble honour of not getting a single vote.

#429. SAFIA - My Love Is Gone (#85, 2016)

45th of 2016

There are probably years that look stronger on paper, but the way I see it, 2016 was SAFIA at the peak of their powers. They'd gone from just sneaking into the polls with their 'hey, look at me' singles, to feeling like they're in total control as they just poll with everything of note. All of their polling entries feel uniquely notable, except for the two that made it into the bottom of the list in 2016. They're just polling because they're SAFIA and that's what they do. Well, they're good songs too, but that had been par for the course for a while. Then again they never polled again after 2016, so it didn't just peter out, it died on the vine. The popular video hosting service Vine was discontinued in January 2017, which is me explaining the joke beyond it being what feels like the 30th time I've snuck a Sopranos quote into one of these things, but the first time I've acknowledged it.

With that in mind though, "My Love Is Gone" might be the most straightforward single that SAFIA have released. I'm now just double checking their previous entries to make sure I didn't say this about another one...and we're in the clear. No oblique references, no strange tangents, just a bit of an electropop bop, just comes down to how keen you are to hear bare bones SAFIA.

If there is a distinguishing factor to this one, it's just how much more club ready it feels. The consistent beat here is strange for SAFIA for how normal it sounds. It borders on being completely out of place in a way that I might not gel with, if the core structure weren't as solid as it is. Sometimes you just land on a melody that doesn't need any explanation, it all just works. Never destined to be an absolute favourite, but I'm all for it when it's on.

#428. Major Lazer & DJ Snake (feat MØ) - Lean On (#3, 2015)

46th of 2015

Man, I just wanna talk about 428: Shibuya Scramble. It's a Japanese visual novel and it's one of the funniest things I've ever read. Imagine if you will, a convoluted thriller centred around multiple unrelated protagonists continually crossing paths in the midst of a dangerous plot, all while surrounded by silly people doing silly things. Oh and it's told not through sprites or acting, but just hundreds and hundreds of photos taken on the streets of Tokyo, often under illegal and clandestine conditions. Deciding not only to stream it but to produce dozens of different voices for the extensive cast of characters endeared it to me greatly, even if it's ruined the word 'really' for me to an extent (headphone warning, jeez). I don't remember exactly if any kisses were blown or guns were fired, although both feel very much on the cards for it. Anyway, music. Aya Kamiki, what a star, MØ is pretty cool too.

Before I start calling this song a game-changer or anything like that, it's important to recognise how we got here. There's an article I remember reading on Billboard (it's paywalled now, but if you know, you know). If you can't read it, the gist of it is Spotify explaining how they took interest in initial promise gleamed from user data on "Lean On" (as well as Hozier's "Take Me To Church"), and worked with their respective teams to push those songs to the top (both topped Spotify's global chart). In the case of Hozier, it was a slow burn, but with Major Lazer, the song became a hit fairly quickly and it was just a matter of juicing the metrics with playlist and ad placement to give it the necessary push to go all the way.

On one hand, it's interesting to see this amount of openness, though it stands to reason that at this point in time, Spotify are interested in proving their credentials as both a place of discovery and a star maker. Though it is funny to look at the exact timeline they elaborate on, and with the benefit of more data behind me, the push isn't quite as impressive as it sounds. On the other hand, it feels like I'm once again seeing the sausage be made, and it's the kind of thing that kills off some notions of organic groundswell. So much discourse about music charts comes down to issues we can have over the rate at which new hits come along, but it's so difficult to determine what the natural order of things should look like. If a new chart comes along and there are zero new entries, have we the public failed, or did all the labels and executives just take a week off and forget to prod us in the direction of new hits?

All of that being said, there is a modicum of sense that can be derived from it at times. I look at these particular instances and think to myself that they do sound like hits. We can debate just how exclusive that initial club should be, but the commonality here is that both songs were plucked from early signs of success, so you don't have to get stressed out over the possibility that they were decided to be smash hits before anyone had heard them. It's more reason as a listener to get in on the ground floor early and spread the word. Get that ball rolling.

Still, as I've been going I've made numerous allusions to "Lean On" because it pretty much was a game-changer. Whether it's for good or for bad is up to you, but you can draw up a line for what popular dance and electro-pop music sounds like in the 2010s, and put it right through the success of this song. Artists like Major Lazer were always living on the cusp of big success, but they just weren't enough in line for the version of dance music that Lady Gaga and co. established years ago in the world of Top 40. Listen to a song like "Bad Romance", a banger for sure and one that isn't afraid to challenge production norms, but you also never go more than 2 seconds in that song without hearing Lady Gaga's voice either at or near the front of the mix. It's dance music to showcase the pop star, a recurring pattern where you're never mistaking who the artist is. "Lean On" invites the notion that the big star should be the music, and it's why by contrast, it builds to a roughly 20 second hook with just some slight 'hey!' chants in the background that I'll bet you never really noticed until I just pointed it out. There are earlier examples of this in hit songs, but they never really felt like they were defining the pop zeitgeist the way the funny Major Lazer (or maybe it's DJ Snake) garbled throw up sound could be such a perennial fixture. The United States can often be a barricade to feeling like truly global success when EDM isn't fully playing by their rules. But not long after and we'd get massive hit songs like "Closer", "Rockabye" and "Stay" all employing a similar structure and there was no stopping it. I wouldn't say we're in the same place anymore, but it's still opened the door for more unconventional sounding hits.

I think though there's another way of looking at it, and it's in the context of the changing format of music consumption. Streaming is a very different kind of engagement to purchasing music, and asks us to consider a very different prospect on what popularity really means. For purchasing, you're requesting some amount of investment from a concentrated group of people who understand the transaction. Streaming casts a far wider net by asking less in return. You don't even have to finish listening. There's bound to be a lot more noise in this regard but it works if you trust the notion that people generally spend more time listening to music they enjoy than otherwise. It just means that over time, as the ratios shifted in the favour of streaming, so did the kinds of songs that were best placed to utilise it. "Lean On" comes from the early days where digital downloads still had most of the control, and it did in fact manage to top the digital sales chart in Australia, but it's one of the first songs to show a monstrous gulf between the two. I picked out the July 20th, 2015 ARIA Chart for a reference point and saw "Lean On" was sitting at #26 in its 19th week. When you break down the individual components, it was #32 on Digital Tracks, but staggeringly, had only just been knocked down to #2 on Streaming Tracks. At the same time, Major Lazer's current single "Powerful" (#531) was #8 on Digital Tracks and #16 on Streaming Tracks, suggesting that Ellie Goulding's star power was leveraging it to greater heights. Furthermore, "Lean On" was the 9th best-selling single of the year, but was the most streamed song of the year. It tracks that the song spent nearly a year as the most streamed song ever on Spotify, though it's on the cusp of falling out of the all-time top 100 now.

When we get to the Hottest 100, that is its own beast entirely because it operates on a factor of relative exclusivity that traditional chart components don't. You'll be limited by time and money, but you can buy & stream as many songs as is feasibly possible. Last year I downloaded over 300 songs, and listened at least 10,000 times. Short of the small handful who might cheat the system, the Hottest 100 is formed on the back of everyone only getting 10 votes to encompass an entire year of music. More than enough for some, not nearly enough for others. That former group seems to be the one that gets the most scrutiny, and it's why I went so far at length in defending "Hoops" (#895) about a year ago. Taking the time out to vote implies some level of interest, but it's that feeling that some are just winging it, and disproportionately in disagreeable directions, which causes a stir.

If you do go back to that entry, you might see that I was trying to single out this song all the way back then to make an example. "Lean On" is obviously a popular song, no one is denying this. "Lean On" finished at #3, a terrific result. I looked at thousands of Instagram posts that summer, and I don't know if I ever recall seeing anyone imply that "Lean On" was their favourite song of the year, the one they want to win the whole thing. That's the space "Lean On" occupies. It's why when the Hottest 100 of the decade rolled around, all the surrounding songs in the 2015 top 5 did fairly well and made the top 50, with some additional friends to go with them, but "Lean On" cocked it up and only got to #136. Expanding the field to an entire decade restricted the vote and suddenly Major Lazer got found out. Actually their earlier hit "Get Free" outperformed it by scraping in at #96, despite never being quite as popular in the first place, so it's nothing personal against Major Lazer, just that particular song has proven to be liked by many, adored by few.

That's just what "Lean On" is. I've only just added to these data points myself. I streamed it, I downloaded it, but I never voted for it, and never considered it close to being one of my favourite songs of the year. It's just in that cozy zone of being a fun and catchy single that I've never thought too deeply about until I decided to write an essay about it tonight (which I suppose is less about the content of the song itself and more about its surrounding impact, but that's par for the course with me). There are other things you can talk about of course. Is the music video cultural appropriation (according to MØ in a recent interview, yes)? Should DJ Snake get a lead artist credit? Is it worth it to substitute a clean lyric in order to not encourage gun violence? I don't think I need to make the final statement on every possible aspect. You'll need someone else to lean on for that.

#427. San Cisco - Skin (#97, 2019)

34th of 2019

San Cisco are a fun band. They made those ambitions clear pretty early on. Their trade was upbeat indie pop tunes that had to land on the right side of the charming to annoying meter to get something out of it, but it's far easier to think of examples where this succeeds than those which it doesn't. Draw up that World War II plane with all the red dots except they're all Black Eyed Peas singles. You know that meme right? Whenever I see it get posted, it always does huge numbers.

I remember being taken aback pretty early in their career when they released their self-titled album. The opening track "Beach", now one of their more popular tracks, hinted at a different side of the band. I don't want to say Beach House as much as the title is egging me on to do it, but undeniably there's a dreamy aesthetic to it. Drums that are soaked in reverb, and a focus on ascending percussion that evokes uplifting feelings. It's making great use of the contrast between the band's two vocalists and still is my favourite song they've ever put out. I didn't get to have that land in some Hottest 100 glory so I have to make use of the alternative versions I get instead.

"Skin" isn't tremendously similar to "Beach" but it's the closest I've seen for them to recreating that feeling. The verses are mellow and contemplative, followed by the big release of the chorus with what feels like a similar melody to the first go around. Scarlett doesn't get a turn on this one but Jordi still fills the same role on his own. When it comes to popular bands sneaking in with yet another one, we take these.

#426. The Jungle Giants - In Her Eyes (#89, 2020)

36th of 2020

I'm not sure I was even aware of this song existing until it made the Hottest 100. I probably did hear it, and certainly had to have scrolled past it, but it felt like a weird surprise out of nowhere as a warmup to the more likely success story of "Sending Me Ur Loving" (#731). The massive gap between these two with nothing in between is something that feels less common nowadays. Powderfinger and Ocean Alley have simultaneously landed at #1 and #100 before but to have nothing between just isn't common at all. The shared promotion of being by the same artist just tends to get in the way of that. "In Her Eyes" is a single but with how this went, it feels like a b-side.

When I hear this song, I think of two things. Firstly, damn, I love that similarly named Kylie Minogue song, I should put that on after, and also I hear a slight resemblance to Duke Dumont's "Red Light Green Light" (#583). The tempo nearly matches on them, 124 for Duke Dumont, 120 for this. I don't think there's much else to go on, just that it's quite funny to go back several years before this and think there'd be any way these two artists could be linked.

In any case, it always ended up being a song I was happy to hear. Sam's falsetto tends to sound a little funny, but I can also tell he's truly committing to it. It's just a pleasant little tune that isn't looking to be a world-beater. Exactly what I want to hear at 10am when I'm not fully ready for all the more energetic numbers.

#435-#431

#435. The Terrys - Our Paradise (#76, 2021)

40th of 2021

A lot of artists get popular as a product of their cult of personality. They may serve the purpose of flowing with the tide of music of the time, but what keeps them around for year after year is our inherent draw to the artists themselves. You look at who's still around after so many years despite how much the musical scene has changed, and some of it is effective trend chasing, but the powerful few can even overcome that to an extent, or maybe spearhead the direction personally. It works on both sides of the fence though, because you can easily find artists who are just riding that wave.

The Terrys arrive at a very convenient time. There's a lot of feasting for the music of Sticky Fingers that suddenly stopped getting played on the radio. That's not a deal breaker, but it's a slight barrier of convenience that can have people missing out. In 2024 when Cindy Lee's album "Diamond Jubilee" was getting mass acclaim, I heard word that it was difficult to access because it's not on Spotify. It's readily on YouTube which if anything is more accessible than Spotify, but it speaks to how we lean into a formal process of music discovery. You can't win without it. The Terrys fill that void. It might even feel nostalgic, slipping into a carefree vibe with a vocalist who feels as if they're taking cues from Dylan Frost. This comparison isn't just superficial either, Paddy Cornwall has done production work for the band, and they've covered Sticky Fingers as well. Everything comes together.

I won't necessarily count myself among those who were desperate for this void to be filled, but it doesn't mean I can't like the song either. It doesn't have high ambitions, it's not particularly deep, and they don't even have it in them to write more than one and a half verses. An English teacher would have a field day picking it apart. In fact it's the kind of thing that makes me think they don't have anything profound in them whatsoever. I'm content with just treating it at face value.

#434. Spacey Jane - Good for You (#80, 2019)

35th of 2019

It might just be the mother of all preview hits. In the space of a year, Spacey Jane went from sneaking onto the list to nearly winning the thing, and it's a run of consistently strong performances since then that have never diminished. Being on the cusp of a new decade just makes it all the more tantalising, like a promise of the future to come. It just leaves "Good for You" as that one unlucky test subject that never got to reap the full rewards. I'm not sure it's ever gotten a full re-evaluation either. Hard to do so when they've so quickly flooded the market with a plethora of additional choices.

I tend to think of "Good for You" as the proto-typical Spacey Jane song, mainly because it's just the first one I really got to know. As the years go by, I find myself wanting to reject this even if I don't know what song I should foist it upon instead. It just feels like a different blend to the slower, more sorrowful band we've come to know in the subsequent years. It'd be surprising to hear something like this again. Maybe it's wrong to say this is a happy song though, but it's at least optimistic.

This is the kind of song that benefits from time and experience with this band. The first thing you're probably going to notice is that Caleb has a peculiar way around singing. It's something that recalls The Kooks or San Cisco, and feels like an exaggerated affectation. That would've held me back initially but now 3 albums deep it's easier to appreciate as a highlight. I tend to appreciate the sound of a band that's doing what they can to be heard, because there's an urgency to it that takes a back seat once you've made it. The whole band is packing everything into this song to make it really pop out.

#433. Kim Churchill - Window to the Sky (#42, 2014)

47th of 2014

The Xavier Rudd succession plan has always been rocky. I think bluesy folk singers have a tough time standing out in a genre that doesn't play on excess. You have to get through a lot of gatekeepers who might scoff at something they've heard plenty of times before, but once you're in, you're in. That is unless you're Ziggy Alberts in which case the whole thing goes pear-shaped a few years later and suddenly we're without a paddle again. The brief Kim Churchill period at least seemed promising for a while.

I might be making the wrong comparison here. "Window to the Sky" fits in pretty reasonably with Vance Joy's work around this time. A lot of the ideas on show here that make the song stick out are ones we've heard from him. The music cutting out just before the chorus and those horns for instance. Even the main riff, it has a bit more of a ragged edge to the chords that aren't quite as polished, but otherwise I can totally imagine a burning lady of the lake. It's Kim Churchill's voice that sets him apart though. He has the gruff timbre of someone who's been through a lot. He was only 23 when this was released but was onto his 4th album already.

It's hard to deny the results here. You'd think I'd get tired of this by now but the consistent toe-tapping rhythm makes it never feel like a chore to get through. Love how well the song's hook just cuts through, and while he doesn't take it to the excessive degree of Matt Corby, there's a lot to like in the different vocal inflections on show. I'm glad that I've managed to get a song that almost genuinely goes completely silent in the middle as I've landed at the John Cage number.

#432. Gorillaz (feat Tame Impala & Bootie Brown) - New Gold (#13, 2022)

43rd of 2022

When it comes to growing up, I've only lived one version of it, and from that, I can only vaguely glean at it from my own assorted memories. That's obviously not perfect, since memories have a habit of being self-serving, or at least that's what's reinforced because when anyone else talks about it, they're probably putting the best foot forward. Here is where I think about what our interests are at a young age, and how many of them stick with us. For those that don't, what's the catalytic factor? Is it just natural growth, or are we pressured societally (on a macro or grand scale) to get away from things that are marketed to children?

Remember that lyric from Lorde in "Stoned at the Nail Salon" (#941) about how 'all the music you loved at 16, you'll grow out of'? When the song was released, that was a line that got picked apart in the way you'd expect. A lot of people smugly proclaiming that it's not the case. I don't doubt them either. For decades now I've been listening to music under the lingering guise that most people eventually stop liking new music, and do so at a rather young age. I've seen it pinned down to either late teens or mid-20s, basically that time when you're laying the important foundation for where your life is going to take you, and finding out who you are as a person. Of course you're going to romanticise that period in hindsight, and the soundtrack is an important part. That's the age group it's marketed to anyway, and so popular music will be speaking in the code of that generation. Even if it isn't, maybe you'll just think that it's stagnated, falling short of the previous watermark of your own era, and it's something the younger generation will never understand because they didn't experience it. Now you're set on the path to be that pessimistic crank.

I do start to wonder if for marketing purposes, this is one such area where we aren't encouraged to grow out of our shell. It provides a generational touch stone, and when it comes to the industry, they need the older music fans to get out there and see the reunion shows, buy the new albums and the anniversary vinyl that nobody under a certain age has any interest in. The generational divide just strengthens the urgency of this. You need to keep this afloat because your kids aren't gonna step up in your stead. Even the formats themselves become part of this, so it's a smug celebration if the old icons can move more units than the TikTok star.

This 16 year old music fan isn't the period I want to talk about though, I want to go even further back. It's just as a product of my own experience, but I feel like the real watershed period is at a much younger age, maybe when you're 8 to 10 years old. I can't speak for everyone, and maybe it differs depending on the era, but I feel much more of a nostalgic connection to the hits from when I was in primary school, to when I was in high school, and it's what I feel I get from people my age as well. I expect more of a reaction to Fountains Of Wayne than The All-American Rejects. Maybe that's just part of the growing up experience, where in your teens, you're more likely to have branched out into a sub-culture, and won't have the same shared fondness for top 40 music, or just rejecting that which you know to be part of it.

When I think about Gorillaz, this is where my mind goes all the time. This is a band that have been around since I was a very young child. I very much remember when "Clint Eastwood" & "19/2000" came out, and how obsessed I was. My parents got me a 100% Hits compilation for my birthday because the latter is the one song I wanted (though looking at it now, I see quite a few formative singles even if I wouldn't know it at the time). Since then, Gorillaz have just been an intermittent presence, disappearing for years at a time but then re-emerging without any alarm. I wish I could remember my exact feelings when Gorillaz became huge again in 2005, other than it just feeling like a lifetime apart from the first cycle. When "Plastic Beach" came around in 2010, that was when I had a revelation that Gorillaz were probably the only thing I liked when I was a kid that I still liked as...well I guess I technically wasn't an adult yet but let's ignore the technicalities. I don't think it was actually true though. I still played many of the same video games, still watched as much Simpsons & footy as I could, but for music it sounded about right. That's also cycled out though, the pecking order has changed a bit, but a lot of the pop music I rejected in my teens, I'm much more open to now. Gorillaz were just immune to the first re-assessment because I dunno, they were always cool, get the cool shoeshine.

Just want to add to this assessment that I did not know who Blur were for quite some time. I'm sure I heard "Song 2" growing up but I never really took notice of it until it played in the opening cinematic to a SingStar game. I wouldn't make the Damon Albarn connection for quite some time. It's been a point of amusement for me for years just how closely the two artists sit on my all-time last.fm stats. I've presently got Gorillaz at #49 and Blur at #52.

I suspect that some version of this story is true for a lot of people. They might be Gorillaz die-hards who get fully invested in the lore, or they're just here for the reliable feeding of genre-hopping tunes. If it was at all peculiar to see Gorillaz still going strong in 2005, then enduring 20 years later makes for a scarcely rivalled span of longevity. Sure, they're not having another "Feel Good Inc." hit any time soon (actually at the time I'm writing this, their current hit is "Feel Good Inc."), but the right song or collaborator can definitely pull them back in. Enter "New Gold".

In a year dominated by a new generation of hitmakers like Spacey Jane & Fred again.., "New Gold" sat there as the easy nostalgia bait. Like another case 5 years prior, it was the veteran band who hadn't polled in many years clearly having a hit. I always tend to overestimate these ones and then find they end up a bit lower since there just aren't enough young voters going to bat probably, or even if they are, the previous hits are setting the likely ceiling. This isn't gonna get a higher slice of votes than "DARE", that's just crazy. It did manage to outperform "Dirty Harry", which I just note as a connection because it's the other Gorillaz song that features Bootie Brown. Either way, it's surely Tame Impala doing a lot of the grassroots work here.

The combination works wonders though. On the ARIA Chart, this was the highest charting Gorillaz single in 16 years, and only the second Tame Impala song to make the top 50 (you know the other one, we all know it, I promise it's in this list). It's at least high enough to slightly transcend the suspected hype only status of the debut, which is why I was sure it was in for great things on the Hottest 100. Nothing galvanizes fans of more established artists than the knowledge that they've certifiably got a hit again. You've gotta ride that into the sunset.

Truth be told, I was never in love with "New Gold". It's certainly very pleasant, and the combination of artists helps to blast a nostalgic feeling for many different eras at once. I couldn't tell you what more I want out of it, because it's very catchy, it's just never felt wholly essential to me. I suppose it's in that tough place where it'll probably never feel like classic Gorillaz for me and always just get grouped in with the rest of the last 10 or so years (I don't know which side of the fence "Plastic Beach" goes but it might be landing itself in the classic era now). There are newer Gorillaz songs I do genuinely love ("Ascension" & "Submission" are calling for a spin from me right now, both feature different artists who will eventually appear on this list), but they're the ones I picked out, whereas our sole representation for Gorillaz in this era here feels more like it was thrust upon me as the obvious choice, so the connection isn't quite as strong.

#431. Jack River - Ballroom (#81, 2018)

47th of 2018

One of my favourite tidbits of music trivia that there just isn't a great audience to actually utilise as a trivia question, is the fact that Jack River and the lead singer of Alvvays have names that differ by a single letter. We've got Holly Rankin and Molly Rankin here, no relation. This is only the second most peculiar name coincidence in the world of Australian 'Jacks' though, because Jack Ladder's real name is Tim Rogers, he had less of a choice when it came to adopting a stage name I think. Forget all the party police though, I just wanna be alone.

This is an unexpected feather on the cap. "Fool's Gold" (#475) has the immediate attention seeking hook, I can understand why that's in here, "Ballroom" is a little bit more surprising. Not in a bad way, just that it's a song that could easily be consigned to pleasant maybe-a-single territory. The mantra for the song is a good start, but "Ballroom" isn't exactly the eye-catching title that stands out when you're casting your vote. Evidently though this just means I want to praise the whole thing for not relying on any gimmicks.

This is a second gear, sometimes third gear kind of song. The chorus lift is there, but it's subtle. It's energy saved up for the second time around when we get an additional hook as a bonus. Delightfully devilish Holly, I had my guard down and everything. The arbitrary feeling of success gets to me though, because I look at this, one of the more low key entries in modern Hottest 100s, then I look at "Honey", her most recent single (a few years old now) and a song with about 1/80th as many Spotify streams as this. At a time when dreamy pop has never felt more welcome to be heard around the world, that's an absolute nugget that's fallen through the cracks, and a reminder that I never want to be a minimalist vagrant, only picking through the small handful of choices that surface up on their own.

2024 Hottest 100 Stream

 

It's been done again. Cheers as always to anyone who came along, and anyone who wished me a happy birthday the other day. All greatly appreciated even if I don't always directly respond (it's not my strong suit). Was glad to get through this as a genuine risk since I've never really played this game under these conditions before.

With regards to commentary. I do apologise in general if it's a bit too raw for its own good. Every new post here is the result of hours of preparation and consideration which lets me get my words more to how I like it, whereas this is all very off the cuff and can potentially present a version of myself I wouldn't show if given more time to think about it (you'll also not be surprised to know that it's difficult to do this while also navigating an occasionally challenging racing game). That's not to say that I was being overly negative here, but I just want to make it clear what the difference is between the written & spoken versions of me. If nothing else, I'm pretty happy with my monologue in the last 10 minutes, which I think was a pretty measured response to the whole situation given that I had not planned it in advance.

I've not been in the best of moods lately and was lamenting the timing of this even though the stream went pretty well. Have just been very demotivated and dour lately which has been affecting my creative output (I've written 1 single entry in the last week, and still haven't proofread tomorrow's post). I don't think it necessarily shows, but perhaps there's a more beaming version of myself I could have had.

#440-#436

#440. DMA'S - Silver (#20, 2019)

36th of 2019

It's pretty fair to say that an artist's highest charting single isn't necessarily going to be their biggest hit. You can choose to interpret it that way (Billboard generally does), but you'll pull up so many obvious cases that don't work out quite right that you probably won't want to do that. It's an interesting application because it can happen at any particular part of the summit, including the very bottom.

I'm writing this not long after Tame Impala made the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time with "Dracula". I don't think anyone would consider this a breakout hit by any stretch, even if the reach above the usual bounds is pretty notable. There's a solid chance though that by the time this post goes live, there'll be more Tame Impala hits, because once you break through the first time, it's less surprising when it happens again. The band that likely won't change the story by then though is DMA'S. I'm talking about their UK Chart history, where they've never charted officially, but spent 1 day on the Spotify chart when "Silver" managed to sneak in at #197 on release. This easily could've been nothing, but the fact that it's there gives it a strange aura. Within those confines, they're just the "Silver" band, an utterly absurd concept. Or maybe it isn't that hard to consider. It's the classic lead single hype after a successful album, but this still stands as the highest DMA'S polling position, outside of their Like A Version (#987). Nothing else has come particularly close. It's the kind of thing that makes me want to give credit to the song itself, an initially tough prospect when this had all the makings of DMA'S just coasting on momentum.

"Silver" is not particularly memorable. They pin the title to a repeated lyric before the song even gets going, and when you get to the chorus, it's full of hooks that are also not brimming with exciting personality. 'It's funny how I think of you right now', 'you're still coming round, yeah', lines like these make me think that it wasn't their priority to generate Instagram captions. It's another one that's worked better for me when I meet them at what they're trying to do. With that in mind, the DMA'S songbook of putting together low to mid tempo rock ballads has churned out a winner this time. Another one that won't challenge your perception of the artist at all, but it's admirable for how well they themselves have locked in on the concept. It just sounds good. No muck, no notes.

#439. Lil Nas X (feat Jack Harlow) - INDUSTRY BABY (#8, 2021)

41st of 2021

I don't want to make this all about Kanye West so I'll just get this part out of the way now. He has a producer credit on this song. He's pretty much the most successful artist in Hottest 100 history to have never made the top 10, but he's got this technicality on his side at least. It also unexpectedly became the first song he was involved in to top the Billboard Hot 100 in a long time, and it seemed to be the last, until another one I won't be talking about showed up. For once, it's not through future appearance on this list that I'm not acknowledging something.

Something that's only gotten more clear in the years since, is just how potent Lil Nas X's 2021 singles were for him. The combination of this and "THATS WHAT I WANT" (#636) together just made it feel like he was untouchable. This wasn't remotely the case as he hasn't really struck gold again since. Maybe it's a misplay. I haven't been checking in with him much lately, but I wonder if one of these songs would've hit it big if they'd come out now, because momentum is a powerful factor, it's just a surprise that it vanished so fast.

I mentioned the idea of industry plants once before on this blog. I wasn't even thinking about saving it up for this entry because the truth of it is that I just loathe the term. File it under something that I'll almost never acknowledge when not under duress. Just one of the latest in the list of short, snappy phrases that can put forward the notions of skepticism and dismissal without having to mount a compelling case. Oh, of course this artist I don't like got a leg up, how else would you explain something I don't like being popular? It's incredulous how unwilling some people can be to just accept horses for courses and go about their business. It's always gotta be petty snipes that are justified because they probably cast the first stone (note: everyone thinks this to be the case). It often feels like it's for the sole purpose of denigrating someone for liking something. Everyone just wants to be that mean girl on the bus from a 30 year old Simpsons episode I guess.

It makes me want to applaud Lil Nas X for making a song that's an answer to all of his dismissive detractors and absolutely succeeding to the fullest with it. It's hard to make a strong argument against the guy who's getting demonstrably rich and famous on the back of a #1 hit that he essentially pre-calls in the song. Like yeah, if people want to dismiss artists as one hit wonders when their career is just starting, they better like the taste of receipts in the morning. This song gets by on the conviction of triumph it conveys because it does it so well. Also Jack Harlow is here I guess.

#438. Vallis Alps - Fading (#94, 2016)

46th of 2016

We've covered the full range of the Vallis Alps experience now. The plucky beginnings and the drawn out resolution. All we've got left is that little speck in the middle, where they got another hit in, just barely. It's part of why I found the "Oceans" (#833) appearance so surprising, because if a song like "Fading" couldn't steady the ship, it didn't seem like there was any coming back from it.

It's one of my favourite kinds of entries though. It's the ones that feel lucky to be here and not really part of the prescribed hit parade. You hear "Young" (#519) and that's obviously the hit, but "Fading" doesn't have that same It Factor, just a pleasant follow up for those who were keen to hear more. I'm not completely certain where I stand now, but I've said before that my favourite Hottest 100 ever was Silversun Pickups' "Panic Switch", a pseudo follow up to the generational anthem that isn't tugging for the same heartstrings. As a bonus, it landed at roughly the same spot as "Fading" and is also maybe a minute or so longer than it probably should be, but it's one of those songs I'm just glad to have as much as possible of.

This is my wheelhouse though. Maybe a bit light and fluffy if you came from the emotional heft of "Young", but all the craft still shines through. Parissa gets a chance to run through a few more styles of vocal delivery here and compliments herself well when she does her own backing vocals. It would have been very easy to just call this song "Paradise" and be done with it, and I think I'm glad they didn't because we've got more than enough songs with that name now. I'll inevitably probably download another in the next couple of years.

#437. Genesis Owusu - Don't Need You (#73, 2020)

37th of 2020

The duality of Ourness and the two notable artists on their roster. Maybe their meddling can be a net positive if it's helped Genesis Owusu reach a bigger audience. On the other hand, I have been sitting on certain feelings about another one of his songs all year and it's driving me up the wall that I can't talk about it yet. "Don't Need You" has no baggage attached to it at least, this was just a nice surprise.

This feels like a commercial breakthrough moment. He'd been on my radar for a few years at this point but felt like he was destined for the minor leagues. His music was always a little off kilter and people don't usually go out of their way to listen to music by artists with hard to pronounce names. Even now it feels like a strange outcome. His hits definitely have pop appeal, but they sound out of place with everything else, like he's getting by on pure aura. That part I can believe.

My introduction to paying close attention to his music was a very strange one. What I've learnt of people who still pay money for music is that many of them do so very immediately. The iTunes chart on the weekend is cluttered with a whole lot of new releases that I'm never going to see on that chart again afterwards. I'm not like this though, Like Tom from Parks & Recs, every song I download has to go through a series of rigorous tests, primarily the one of repeated listens over a number of weeks. It's something I've trained myself to do to get myself to like new releases, but it can come at a cost.

In January 2020, Citizen Kay released a song called "Funny Business" with Genesis Owusu. The two notable things here is that Citizen Kay is Genesis Owusu's older brother, the second is that the song slaps. Oh actually there's a third thing, which is that the song wasn't released in January, but February. I'd heard the song in January, saved it to my playlist for further testing, and by the next day, it was gone. I had no idea when it was coming back but it was fortunately pretty soon. I just wonder what happened with that. You hear about strange happenings and the explanations you get are sometimes even stranger. I'm fortunate that the timing window for "Shirim" by Melody's Echo Chamber being deleted was a little more lenient otherwise I'd have needed to wait nearly 4 years to get a hold of it. "illusions" by Shanae borders on being lost media except I still have a copy of it.

The other song that really got me on board that year was "The Other Black Dog". It came out really late in November so I'm not sure it got a proper chance to shine on the Hottest 100 but it remains an absolute belter. Another example of how well he can mold his sound to fit eclectic genres. It actually appears on the same album as "Don't Need You" as well as another song I'll be talking about and the contrast is significant.

This will be the first of 5 Genesis Owusu songs here and I don't mean to completely denigrate it by placing it the lowest of them. There's a goofy charm to this that isn't dissimilar to something like Biz Markie's "Just a Friend", just making it absolutely clear here that the goal is to be incessantly catchy to a fault. It's like you've got two versions of the character in this one, the contemplative one who's thinking about every little detail, and the brash one who speaks without a filter. It's a song about rejecting depression that uses the phrase 'your ass is stinky'. Make up your own mind.

#436. The Presets - Martini (#57, 2018)

48th of 2018

My one reference point for something getting too popular is always that one Plan B lyric about "Valerie" by The Zutons. I don't know how much it actually holds up because I don't know what Zutons discourse is like. It does feel like it's the kind of hit that becomes so big, that despite raising the band's profile, they just become engulfed by it. The Zutons had 9 UK top 40 hits, most of them before "Valerie", all their albums hit the UK top 10. Yet you look at their Spotify numbers and it just looks like a one hit wonder, a massive gulf between the one song and all the others. Even their first top 10 hit "Why Won't You Give Me Your Love?" (same peak as "Valerie") is lost in the abyss. I look by comparison at a band like We Are Scientists who were never that popular, have about the same number of monthly listeners, and I'd imagine more of them are listening to multiple songs.

It felt like The Presets were having a similar problem. It's not really reflected on their Spotify stats (which are a bit weird, I don't think I've ever noticed it before, just a total clutter that's been hobbled together). They had a massive commercial breakthrough in 2008 with their album "Apocalypso" and just could not repeat it. Given what they were putting out after that, I don't even think they were trying to do it. All the big singles from "Pacifica" find some way to betray that expectation and I think a lot of people jumped ship (not literally, although "Ghosts" sounds like pirate music). I remember being so surprised when they managed to get back onto the Hottest 100, and then they just kept doing it after that. I think they did in some way, decide to start giving that "Apocalypso" audience what they wanted.

I don't think that "Martini" is particularly brazen about this (maybe another song is), but I'm finding it interesting to compare these releases a decade apart from the same band. It's making me feel an appreciation for how their songwriting has definitely tightened up. Don't get me wrong, I love "Apocalypso", but it also feels like it's throwing everything at the wall and not worrying about the second draft. It's like they've got a good idea for what the album should sound like but not enough ideas to flesh it out. Some of the looping patterns they use have aged in a peculiar way. I was trying to find exact examples of what feel like the most obvious throwback elements on "Martini" and I wasn't having great luck. There's a stuttering effect that reminds me a bit of "Talk Like That" and "Together", but this one's much less aggressive. The angelic bridge feels like something they maybe considered doing a few times but it would end up coming out half formed. "Eucalyptus" comes pretty close, but I admire the restraint on this one. It's not overcooked, it's not abrupt, it just feels like the natural place for the song to go. Otherwise I've just been holding onto this dumb mondegreen in my head where the chorus sounds like Julian is just repeatedly demanding to listen to Mansionair. Also ending nearly every line of the song with the same word proves they haven't forgotten how to make inanely catchy songs, because it doesn't even feel egregious with this one.

Also aforementioned stream still happening tomorrow on my Twitch channel. Watch in real time as I forget my streaming hotkeys and where the silver coins are on Windmill Plains. I'll be aiming for a 7pm GMT+8 start. I don't have any hot takes about the 2025 Hottest 100 voting list, I just woke up.

#445-#441

#445. Sam Fender - Alright (#92, 2022)

44th of 2022

When Sam Fender previously came up here (#627), I found myself grappling with the issue where personal feelings get in the way of judging everything on a linear scale. Any attempt to properly weigh up strengths and weaknesses is thrown aside by those irrational feelings inside your head that tell you that you're just not interested in pursuing a certain direction. It's not something I see other people tend to acknowledge so I don't know if it's just a symptom of my own passiveness. A more arrogant version of me might say something to the effect of Sam Fender's music being bad and leaving out the part where on a technical level there's nothing wrong with it, I just don't really need another heartland rocker in my life. You never hear anyone say 'Oh sorry, it's not really for me, but I understand that not everything needs to be, so I admire the craft and am glad that your target audience get something out of it'. Why say that when 'Go away, boring white indie guy' cuts more deeply, and asserts oneself at the top of the musical opinion food chain?

Nothing has really changed since I posted that entry months ago. Maybe I've found myself even more aggressively leaning into my passive stance. That's from a combination of continuing to see more music opinion in-fighting, and the realisation from doing this blog that I'm having a lot more fun talking about songs I actually like. When you don't like something, I feel like I have to externally justify it, and even still, there's a layer of antagonising towards those who do. All I'll say is that it's not surprising to point out that the first 50 entries on this blog averaged 440 words, while the last 50 have gone just shy of an average of 600 words. So I don't like talking or writing about Sam Fender because there's a feeling of trying to start a conflict that comes across when you dare not praise a sacred cow.

Sometimes you can be let off from a difficult situation when you've got the right hole cards. There aren't many Sam Fender songs I'd find myself potentially going out of my way to hear, but as luck would have it, with his small sample of entries to choose from here, I got to land with "Alright". It's not particularly one of his most popular songs, but it has the attention buff of coming from the year later deluxe album. As a side note, I wish it were more normalised to document notes on exact release dates for deluxe albums. Looking at Wikipedia and Spotify will have you believe that it was a concurrent release with the standard version, but then "Alright" wouldn't have been eligible in 2022 now, would it? "Alright" was released as a single in July 2022, and the deluxe album arrived December 9th, 2022, which I found thanks to a Dork article at the time and no one else. Actually, Sam Fender just released a deluxe version of "People Watching" today, so I'll mention that for posterity.

I haven't seen anyone else ever say that "Spit Of You" is their favourite Sam Fender song, but I'm here to do that. I think the slower tempo serves him well and gives some space to allow his lyrics to cut through. Or alternatively, there isn't as much focus on trying to commit to being the loud, stadium rock guy, where I prefer a different flavour on it. This feels more natural to me, and so it's not surprising that I'll also go to bat for "Alright", which feels most like it's mimicking "Spit Of You". It still embodies similar ideals to all his other singles, but there's a restraint that allows the bells & saxophone to sound very pretty & pleasant.

#444. Ruel - Face to Face (#38, 2019)

37th of 2019

Do I find it so hard to write about the same artist over and over again? Yes, but believe it or not, it can be harder when I do so with a significant layoff period. Do you realise how long it's been since I've written about Ruel? The last one was back in February. I've been to Melbourne and back three times since then. It just feels like an eternity ago. What conversation was I even having at that point? Well, the last one (#766) started off with the words 'Alright alright alright', so that's a funny coincidence. I apologise to Ruel for turning his entries all into dumping grounds for dumb references. He matured faster than me, I wasn't ready.

"Face to Face" is another song that flies in the screen of the idea that 2020 brought on a whole new suite of pandemic appropriate hits. You can't sugarcoat it this time. Here's a song about suffering a long distance relationship through the politics of online messaging. Ruel feeling anguish over the fact that he hasn't gotten a reply and not being sure if it's his fault, which is compounded when he's seeing his girl respond to other people in the meantime, it's probably the realest lyric he's ever written. I simultaneously live through the paranoia while also being someone who's very bad at responding to DMs. PSA: If I get a message while I'm sleeping, I can almost guarantee I won't reply, because I'll see it when I wake up, need time to collect myself, and then forget about it.

This might just be the biggest bolter in this list. There are some Ruel songs still to come that I've always gone to bat for, but not this one, that I'd likely filed away as just another of those meddlesome Ruel songs that far exceeded acceptable vote capital. Then it just crept up higher and higher for me until I actually found myself concluding that it didn't poll high enough, just by a smidgen. It's a song where Ruel's precocious talent for vocal hooks comes into play. When he's in that desperate yearning mode, I absolutely feel it. I'd also belatedly like to put this song into the crucial Madison Avenue pocket, for songs that in some way manage to recall their essential cover of Little River Band's "Reminiscing". It's always important to disclose as we get higher up this list that I have a tendency towards idolising some utterly random singles, but then I'll hear these little connections and think that it's all a somewhat logical tapestry. It's the discourse that's gotten it all wrong.

#443. Vance Joy - Missing Piece (#15, 2021)

42nd of 2021

Something I think I need to ease back on is calling Vance Joy the "Riptide" (#885) guy. He's had a long career with many hits that absolutely count as hits in Australia, and only miss the mark by lack of chart space elsewhere. We're talking billions of streams outside of that one song, and it's doing a disservice as a music fan to discredit that. I suspect that going down the line, it'll probably still be an endless run of me pulling up the #885 link just because it's a song whose chart legacy fills some mighty impressive and/or bizarre things, so when it comes to making examples, what else am I going to think of before the song that I can't go a week without seeing on the Spotify charts? This is all just to say that I'm failing the task at the moment because I called him the "Riptide" guy earlier this week, but maybe I should back my own meritocracy and call him the "Missing Piece" guy.

It's hard to measure the success of this single because it gets clouded up by the circumstances. When the Australian music industry finds a hit in the 2020s, they go hard in the paint on it. I've always pointed out the increasingly low ceiling on how far Australians can get on the singles chart. We're closing in on 2 years since the last top 10 hit, and the last top 20 hit wasn't much further after that. This isn't the full story though because this all-in approach doesn't produce high peakers, it instead gives us songs that hang around eternally. "Missing Piece" was the 43rd biggest hit of 2021 with a #14 peak. It ranks 4th among songs that didn't hit the top 10, but all those songs that beat it were released much earlier in the year and ran out of gas, so Vance Joy outlasted all of them into 2022. This was not long after The Rubens inexplicably churned out a longer lasting hit than "Hoops" (#895) and I wondered if this song was about to outlast "Riptide" as well (back when that song was missing from the chart for years). It fell just a few weeks short, but it's one of those weird quirks that the charts shouldn't tend to allow nowadays. It's not like when CD Single marketing tactics allowed the Baha Men to spend more time in the chart with the follow up to "Who Let The Dogs Out". "Riptide" is supposed to be Vance Joy's ceiling, and nothing should get close. I guess everyone just saw it the way I did.

"Missing Piece" is not a radical re-invention. I don't think I've ever heard a Vance Joy song that's challenged my perception of what his modus operandi is. It is however, a very agreeable rendition. I don't know how many people it'd convert on its own, but when you're nearing a decade of hearing his music at this point, I think this is the one that's gonna get you to perk up your ears and consider that this has gotta be one of the better ones, maybe even the best one. When I've been going through every single one of his entries, I've constantly found myself picking them apart for those little things that I wish were a little different. This is totally just another re-tread of his typical affair. All the rises & falls are completely telegraphed and I know I'm being strung along for it. I can't get mad at the result though. This is Vance Joy with a budget, first and foremost, and though I can imagine someone saying that it's all instrumental mush, I think everything together just works perfectly to carry the song through. When have you ever thought about the bass in a Vance Joy song? When I see it come through in the chorus here, that missing piece is found.

#442. Paces (feat Guy Sebastian) - Keeping Score - Like A Version (#56, 2016)

47th of 2016

I never watched Season 1 of Australian Idol. It was just a timing thing, I think. Come 2004 I'd be watching a lot more free-to-air TV and that was usually Channel Ten (Nine was not available in my part of the country so there weren't many options). I know many of the stories about it, of course. I just share absolutely no personal experiences about it, so I really couldn't tell you if I thought Shannon Noll was robbed the same way I might say I expected Anthony Callea to win. Well, I do remember thinking that Shannon Noll was doing far better than Guy Sebastian at the time, mainly because they were both scoring numerous #1 hits but only one of them felt ubiquitous (my memory of "Out With My Baby" is contained solely to the 3 second clip of it that I made for a YouTube video).

This is all classic Australian millennial folklore now. By 2009, Shannon Noll's hits dried up and Guy Sebastian entered a second imperial phase, scoring hits that felt much more ubiquitous, and not just tied to the lingering stature of being Australia's first Idol winner. Guy's debut single was the best-selling single of the decade, and yet it sold maybe half as much as 2012's "Battle Scars". There was absolutely no denying that Guy had won both the battle and the war. But even with all that, the hits had to dry up eventually for him too, and he hasn't had a top 50 entry in Australia since 2020. I don't know if his songs are still part of the national conversation anymore, but it's made the Shannon Noll complex return, just as strong as before. It can be quantified as of this year because when triple j polled the Hottest 100 Australian songs, Shannon Noll's cover of "What About Me" landed at #129, while Guy was unsighted. In a polling that wasn't afraid to lean towards pop, there wasn't room for Guy's megahits. Oh well, he'll still always have an actual polling position to his name.

The funny thing about this all for me is that there's an argument in both cases that they're working on a similar novelty. Wouldn't it be crazy if Guy Sebastian made the Hottest 100? It's ripping off a decade old band-aid of gatekeeping by finding a way to sneak in through the bushes. It's the same way Taylor Swift & Morgan Wallen did it a year ago, with what is just a feature credit, but the kind that's absolutely going to draw eyes into it. I guess it's not very sneaky after all. I think it's a symbiotic thing though. Paces isn't a big enough name to get into the Hottest 100 at all (well, he kind of did), while Guy Sebastian just won't be put in consideration. Together they fill in the gaps and it's all destiny.

I wouldn't say that this is filling a deep urge in triple j voters who deep down have always wanted to vote for Guy Sebastian in the poll. It is, however, a perfect setup to showcase the notion. His music just isn't generally compatible with this audience; it's not any kind of injustice. I've had Matt Corby show up in this list already, and a couple more Australian Idol alumnae are still to come. The first time this happened with Lisa Mitchell, it was a little strange, but at the end of the day, her music generally fit with triple j's programming. Once you look past the reality TV sheen that comes with Australian Idol, with all the branding and marketing, you're still left with a lot of music star hopefuls with a common link that they're probably pretty damn good at singing.

That's the secondary shock value that works to the favour of this cover of L D R U's hit from the previous year (#817). You go from 'huh, Guy Sebastian?' to 'oh damn, Guy Sebastian!'. On the surface, this is already a pretty engaging cover version that changes the arrangement down to mostly just Paces playing piano and a drum machine. That's the kind of respectable job that might earn song muted kudos but still get trapped in the sea of non-famous Like A Versions. That's until Guy seizes the opportunity to go all out with his vocal runs. We need Mark Holden to give Guy his long overdue second touchdown.

It also seems to be a necessary component to talk about the future of lesser known Australian DJs in these entries. Paces still appears to be active in music although he hasn't released anything since 2023. Today's edition of random pivots is that earlier this year he's become a fitness guru and I can barely recognise him. It's something he's been working on for many years, since his son was born, and he seems to be in a much better place than he was around the turn of the decade. He was diagnosed with severe anxiety not long before the pandemic hit. It's something he's channelled into his more recent music which surprisingly has itself seen a pivot to pop-punk ala mgk. I'm not sure what kind of future music he may put out, but good for him.

#441. Duke Dumont (feat Jax Jones) - I Got U (#74, 2014)

48th of 2014

There's a company called Replay Heaven that have been around since at least 2010 and they specialise in the very specific skill of sample recreation. It's a means for artists & labels to get around the expensive or occasionally difficult art of flipping old samples as they create a soundalike that you probably can't distinguish from the real thing. They're still around today and still in demand. LF SYSTEM's massive UK hit "Afraid To Feel" was built off their work, and one of the more memorable samples from the new Clipse album (on the track "So Be It"), was also done by Replay Heaven. When deep house music was thriving in the mid-2010s, they were the people to go to.

It speaks to how unpopular the application of copyright & royalty fees is that I don't think I've ever seen any backlash to what is effectively scab work. Much the opposite in fact. Anyone I've seen who knows about this all tends to agree that the session workers who do their part deserve more credit & compensation. Like, did you know that Kelli-Leigh had two UK #1 hits in 2014? This was the first one, followed by "I Wanna Feel" by Secondcity. Both of them are just her imitating a sample ("My Love Is Your Love" by Whitney Houston and "You're Makin' Me High" by Toni Braxton respectively). She's never really had a shining career on the back of this, and only had one more major hit, finally credited this time, in 2017 when she remade En Vogue's "Love (Don't Let Go)" for James Hype. Maybe it sounds ridiculous to say that Kelli-Leigh was a star in the making, but this was also right around the same time that Jess Glynne got her start with two big UK #1 hits as a feature artist, before stepping out on her own and start a run of solo #1 hits. Nothing beats a Jess Glynne solo career.

To me, it all speaks to this weird sort of auteur branding you see from a lot of producers. Like you have to be careful in how it's presented so that the approaching listener doesn't see multiple new names and isn't sure who's supposed to be the star of the show (and they'll probably lean towards the vocalist if given the choice), and this is the sort of thing that strengthens their image as a real producer, not just some pretender who's making pop hits with extra marketing steps. I'm reminded of Flight Facilities talking about their debut album and noting some uncredited vocals so as not to turn it into a barrage of the word 'feat.', so Katie Noonan gets bumped off having a credit there. Duke Dumont seems to have taken a similar strategy. He did credit the vocalist on his previous single "Need U (100%)", but skipped them here, and on another notable single I'll talk about another day. He did find space for Jax Jones though, perhaps that was enough.

Jax Jones definitely gets the best out of this deal. "I Got U" proved to be a breakout single for him, and within a couple of years, his own career was up and running. He never had another #1 hit in the UK, but 7 top 10 hits is still pretty good innings. He also somewhat returned the favour by providing a big breakout hit to a vocalist whom I anticipate I will eventually write things about. Admittedly the problem here is that with two producers credited and one production company uncredited, I have no idea who is doing what. I've learnt not to trust the Duke Dumont anecdote with these things, so the ratios could be anywhere.

It's an interesting choice of sample to build it around. I said before it comes from the title track to Whitney Houston's "My Love Is Your Love". That's a mid-career album that's many years removed from her career peak and most of the singles that get rinsed nowadays. It's a really good album though. One of those 'A star from a bygone era successfully adapts and re-asserts themselves' kinds of albums. This sample doesn't lend itself to just obvious nostalgia, instead picking apart different lines and fusing it into something different. The chorus doesn't even get used! That's the kind of sampling I can get behind.

Furthermore, when it's all done for this song, it goes down an absolute treat. All steel drums sit on a spectrum where they either remind me of the beach, or "Crank That (Soulja Boy)", and this definitely veers to the left on that measuring stick. I'd say the goofy video helps with this but the long-standing YouTube thumbnail means that I'm always just going to think of the Xenomorph looking guy giving out two thumbs up. There's a great pulsating beat that drives it home as well. I can't help but think about how the sausage is made, but I also can't help but want more sausages anyway. Just great vibes on this one.

ALSO: Because I had fun doing it last year, my birthday Banjo tradition on my Twitch channel shall return with a twist. I'm going to do something slightly different, and something I've not really done before which is to try and play through Diddy Kong Racing to the best of my ability, as Banjo. Very difficult to steer in my experience so it'll be like learning how to play video games all over again. I will intersperse it with unscripted dialogue about every song of the 2024 Hottest 100 from #100 to #1. This time the stream should look a bit better too. That'll be on Tuesday at a time that is relatively late in Australia, and relatively early everywhere else.

#450-#446

#450. Slowly Slowly - Blueprint (#92, 2021)

43rd of 2021

This would be an excellent if unnecessary time to spin some yarn about the hot 2025 video game Blue Prince, and make my declaration on whether or not it actually is a good puzzle game (because that's something I find myself scrutinising harder than most things). I haven't had a chance to play it yet. Between UFO 50, Clair Obscur, The Hundred Line & Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 among other things, I just haven't had the time. Oh I could do it before this post goes live, but not likely. Have you seen how big Silksong is? Now if Slowly Slowly made their way onto the Tony Hawk soundtrack, I would only be mildly surprised. They've still got Bodyjar in the remake, they know where it's at.

This song sent me down a rabbit hole about ketamine. As far as I can tell, it's the only song I'll be covering that mentions it, though either side of the time frame, we've got Hilltop Hoods mentioning it in 2012, and a few more artists including and not limited to Bring Me The Horizon and Royel Otis in the ensuing years. In the same year this polled, there was a viral novelty remix of an Abbie Chatfield rant about vaccinations (I want to say the good kind of rant) that made it to #162 despite not being on the voting list. I have some empathy for her as someone who got famous through reality TV to become an easy clickbait comment punchline whenever she dares say anything (saw an interesting ABC segment about her a few years back that changed my perspective on reality TV). Mostly I just think it's funny that this was her early impression, and right now one of the biggest Australian hit songs going around is Adam from Peking Duk cosplaying as LCD Soundsystem to profess his love to her. I'm not convinced it'd be a hit without her celebrity factor, so we've swung some sort of pendulum. There's a (not very good) Columbo episode where a disgraced luchador uses a powerful tranquiliser to sedate their victim in a bull ring and this is what I always think about when anyone mentions ketamine. The mind starts to work slowly, slowly.

This is a more re-assured version of the band getting somewhat back to basics, not so much back on their bullshit. We're still dealing with some layer of tipping the scales a bit too far with the pop-punk balance but there's enough energy with the guitar & drums to pass the test. I'm always glad when there's some chance at a respectable redemption.

#449. L D R U (feat Savoi) - Next To You (#68, 2016)

48th of 2016

I don't get much into the interest of categorising every song by nationality. I think as soon as you start doing it, you're going to run into all sorts of irritating exceptions where you start to feel like the judge of everyone's contributions, and everyone's citizenships. Then it's easy to just get locked into those states forever, so if someone's citizenship changes, it's too late, in my mind you were from this country, and that's what it is. I don't wanna touch it.

All that in mind, "Next To You" holds a peculiar distinction, although it probably doesn't. I mainly say this trusting the owner of the unofficial Hottest 100 database, from whom I learnt that this song marks a notable milestone. "Next To You" was...let's say roughly, the 1,000th Australian song to make the Hottest 100, a mighty tally that I'm not sure even the United States has met nearly a decade later. There's no ambiguity. L D R U is Australian, Savoi is also Australian. You might have to run some checks on the 999 songs that came before this one, but at least there's no funny business here.

If there is any scrutiny to be had, it's probably that you'd argue this was running on the fumes of L D R U's last hit "Keeping Score" (#817). Given that it's a song that got more popular in the year after when it couldn't be voted for (well, it did but that's another story), it's a lot easier to imagine that this managed to score well off the momentum. L D R U hasn't had a Hottest 100 entry since then, it's all that we need out of this arrangement, yeah yeah, yeah yeah.

In saying that I had a soft spot for this one pretty early on, so I was pretty happy to see it get over the line. When I compare it to "Keeping Score", I hear a song that's built more around the character that the vocalist can provide. While they're both focused on similar build ups and drops, this allows Savoi to sing over the hook and give it some melodies to stick with.

#448. Jarryd James - Do You Remember (#7, 2015)

47th of 2015

Over time I've learnt that moments make the legend. You can have all manner of statistical advantage on your side but it'll mean nothing if there isn't a bow to tie it all together. That one thing that either people are gonna bring up from here on, or just a nice snappy accomplishment that all the pressers can use. Just look at Jarryd James. He came within an inch of glory when he got to #2 on the ARIA Chart with this breakout single, the funny kind of #2 hit where it was blocked by two different #1 hits and just didn't get the right timing to have a turn in the middle. He could have become chart topping Jarryd James and receive all the attention that warrants, but instead this is just another pretty notable hit that's been swept away by time. Do you remember Jarryd James? Maybe, but it's likely you haven't listened to him in years.

Maybe the cards were stacked against him though. The one fatal flaw in my argument here is that you have to ignore the other test cases that happened around the same time. Shortly after Jarryd James missed his shot, we had two more Australian #1 hits, coincidentally by siblings, Conrad Sewell & SAYGRACE. Conrad had a pretty good run of success for years afterwards but largely has gone back under the radar again. I'll say that SAYGRACE maybe doesn't count the same way because her #1 hit was a cover of Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me", so it's less surprising she hasn't had another hit (although I think her latest EP has some terrific songs on it). Maybe the same fate awaited Jarryd James either way. He had an older than average breakout at age 30 so the next-big-thing marketing had a barricade. I just never felt like he had a main character moment even in 2015 though. No one expected him to win big at the ARIA Awards, and it feels lucky he was able to win one. For a hit of this size, landing at #7 in the Hottest 100 is the bare minimum, and it's not surprising he's never had another entry.

I found myself initially fascinated with this as a hit song. The rapid ascent up the charts felt right, as a song that clearly stands out on the radio. It's like a more realised radio friendly version of the Chet Faker concept, with more performative singing and the right amount of focus on the one sticking hook (that ascending guitar riff). There's nothing to upset anyone really. I think I just wound up getting a little worn out on it in the long run. In a world of weird, ambitious and intriguing releases, this ends up being just a little too straightforward to hold up to repeat listens. I had myself thinking it to be a fluke, and arguably it still was. Later singles he released were adequate as well, but never greatly sustained my interest. It wasn't until many years later in 2021 when I came across his song "Overdue" that I felt like he'd stepped outside of his comfort zone and managed something that delivered on fully conveying the emotional heft that "Do You Remember" merely suggests. This one still goes alright in a pinch though, now that I don't hear it much anymore.

#447. Ball Park Music - Exactly How You Are (#18, 2017)

43rd of 2017

An accusation that gets tossed around over the years is the idea that many Hottest 100 voters are serving the artists rather than the songs. It gives you a history of songs that balance between the quirky, memorable hits and the same artists coming back for more year after year because people like their vibe. In an era where popularity is determined by streams, and streams can be determined by algorithms that get them off the ground, you start to wonder if it's possible that even these supposed hit songs are running on fumes that no public ever initiated.

In 2016, a peculiar thing happened. Ball Park Music released an album and attained no Hottest 100 entries from it, something that has never happened before or since. I don't think there's any particular reason to explain this, as nothing suggests the band had just fallen away in popularity or anything. The reality is probably just that their three singles couldn't happily agree on an obvious pecking order and they all landed pretty close together around the #150 mark. Personally I go to bat for the opening track "Feelings" which goes into some pretty adventurous territory. The three singles (especially "Whipping Boy") feel all too familiar in hindsight where there are better Ball Park Music songs to go for with similar ambitions.

A year later they get things back on track with "Exactly How You Are", setting a new standard for the band as it became their highest polling entry to date, with thanks to it being the only song of theirs to vote for that year, but also it probably holding up as one of their most popular songs nowadays anyway. After a down year, it felt like a renaissance, and they've never looked more galvanised on the fandom front, scoring a #1 album recently and always polling well. It's like their fans took note of the misstep and are now vigilant to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Letting the song stand on its own for a while I think gave it some extra strength. The last thing you want to do is to have a new single release be met with shrugs because there's nothing to be gained from hearing it, something very possible for a band that aren't particularly gimmicky on the surface. I don't know how to possibly market something on the angle that it's just a pleasant experience. It's much easier to share something with shock value, or wow factor, and Ball Park Music just aren't funny enough to ever make me tell anyone to check them out. Even here, the most shocking thing about this single is the hard c-bomb in the first line of the song, but in a world with bands like Playlunch going around, it's pretty tame, all things considered.

The best recommendation I can have for something like this is that I don't think there are many bands out there with quite as much experience at delivering this kind of sunshine pop. Maybe Lime Cordiale could come up with something similar but I'm not sure there'd be the same attention to detail. I listen to the guitar here and it's rarely staying in one spot, always ready to find a new place to land. It all accentuates the song's climax which isn't full bombast, but lands it all squarely in the Goldilocks zone. I like this song exactly how it is and I don't know how I'd change it.

#446. Billie Eilish - Therefore I Am (#10, 2020)

38th of 2020

For years, Billie Eilish was a fascinating case study for me in radio airplay. One of the biggest talking points regarding triple j's playlist is the level of crossover it has with commercial radio. It's something that goes off vibes that the stats don't back up. You could listen to the station and think it to be the case, simply because it's those catchy top 40 hits that are more prone to getting stuck in your head, or alternatively because there's a lot of music that feels like top 40 music but isn't. For instance, I'm looking at the last 100 songs added to rotation on the station and I count 5 ARIA top 50 hits among them. Those songs might get played a little bit more than average, but you're showing your own lack of attention if you're missing so much forest for a handful of trees.

The other problem with this whole observation is that it tends to show a lack of understanding on what the other side of the equation looks like. If you haven't listened to commercial radio in years, then I suspect you're not aware of the situation. The idea that they just play top 40 music hasn't really existed in about a decade, as the age of streaming has made popular music a little bit too incongruous with what radio stations are willing to play, or more importantly, what their audiences want to hear. It's all well and good if Drake has 100 or so hits now, but the people making those hits aren't the ones listening to the radio.

Nonetheless I think if you do avoid that side of the observation, there's a temptation to fill in the blank with what sounds right. You could even fall into a mental sorting trap, where hearing a song on a Spotify playlist, on a TikTok video, or even on triple j itself lends itself to this artificial idea of overplay, and then pin it to the most likely culprit. I'm far too aware of my own compulsive categorisation to assume the same of the average person, especially one who treats this music as an obstacle instead of any sort of curiosity.

Billie Eilish was one of the biggest exceptions to the narrative. In the space of a few years she became one of the biggest names in music, scoring a #1 hit around the world before she even turned 18, of course commercial radio was flogging her wares. Except not really. While her music isn't particularly threatening, it did represent something wildly different to what tended to be going on at the time. If you're programming a station, you're not gonna be able to just slot "when the party's over" (#809) between "Ride It" by Regard and "Yeah!" by Usher, not without uprooting it and remixing it into something antithetical to the whole point of her music.

The tide has turned a little. I couldn't tell you for sure if radio has gotten more lenient or if Billie Eilish's star has risen enough that it's an easier sell (arguably both are true to an extent). It's less novel to see her have a radio hit now though, recent #1 hits and future Hottest 100 entrants "What Was I Made For?" and "BIRDS OF A FEATHER" have both gotten coverage. But prior to this, this artist with 13 top 10 hits had a total of two radio hits: This was one of them, and the other one is probably pretty obvious, duh.

Maybe this is an odd one to pluck out. Not because it's a particularly strange song, but because it's not a massive departure from what she had already put out. It fits pretty snugly next to "my strange addiction" and "all the good girls go to hell" (#459). I can only assume that the helpful factor here speaks to the difficulty of promoting post-album singles that are never going to match their first week streaming figures ever again. "Therefore I Am" was a standalone single. It was included on her next album "Happier Than Ever", but it doesn't really feel like a lead single in promotion of that cycle. But in a time when Billie Eilish hadn't had a hit really stick itself down in about a year, this was pretty successful and managed to be the centre of attention for a while. It also still peaked in its first week as most of her singles tend to do but it stuck the landing enough to look like a genuine success.

To me, this feels like another example of the classic speedy follow up. Many artists with runaway success have put out another album not too long after and have it feel like a retread, something that becomes clearer when the 3rd album inevitably takes a pivot along with everything else in the discography. This is the part where I mention the Arctic Monkeys. There's actually an exact parallel in Hottest 100 history though, because 15 years prior to Billie Eilish winning the poll, it was Franz Ferdinand with the landslide victory for "Take Me Out". They also released their second album not too long after and didn't tweak with the formula too much. The result is that their next lead single "Do You Want To" landed at #10 in the next year's poll, just like Billie Eilish has done here. In both cases, these are singles that I enjoy on their own merits, but I'm not surprised that a decent handful of people have jumped ship when it feels like a slight regression on what's come before.

The main difference here is that while Franz Ferdinand were offering to meet one's desires, Billie Eilish is rejecting them, because this is a song about rejecting parasocial projections that have been put upon her. She's very famous at this point and it brings in a lot of baggage that tends to come from the intentionally careless desire to favour headlines and clicks over accurately communicating a story. But then really, it doesn't just stop there because even if everything is reported accurately, you're still going to be a person who is more than just the actions of these articles, which alone can have readers projecting assumptions to fill in the gaps. It's what makes the otherwise out of place Descartes citation in the title lyric so appropriate. Beyond every projection you may have of her through her music and actions, she is her own person. I love that she puts out this confrontational idea on one of her most straightforward and catchy singles.