#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.