#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.