#365-#361

#365. Boy & Bear - Harlequin Dream (#55, 2013)

49th of 2013

There's a modestly important prequel to the Sarah Blasko post I did a while back, which is that it wasn't my first time seeing her. About a year earlier, she was touring as a support act for Boy & Bear, as they were going through a 10th anniversary tour of their second album "Harlequin Dream". It was a good package deal. I probably wouldn't have gone out of my way to see them otherwise. Sarah didn't have a band and only played about 5 (mostly on the new side) songs so if nothing else, it was a teaser that made it all the more necessary to cough up when the better opportunity presented itself. If I remember nothing else from that part of the show, it's that a woman directly in front of me heckled for the "Flame Trees" cover to make it to the setlist. For all I know, this was never the plan. Setlist FM is never quite as comprehensive as I'd like it to be, but the few shows that were documented didn't have it, there might be some truth to the idea that one person really had all that influence.

I did enjoy the Boy & Bear part of the show too, in spite of the very rude person behind me who obliviously bumped me dozens of times. Since they were touring the album, they started the show by mostly (put a pin in this one for another day) playing the album in order. It meant playing a lot of songs they hadn't played in a very long time, but it also meant the title track had to come into the picture very early. If you're familiar with this song and its reputation, you'll hear it and immediately start thinking forward a few minutes, who's going to play the sax solo?!

It's a slight regret that I didn't trust them enough to see it coming. I do have a brief video I recorded at the time of the saxophonist, but it doesn't truly capture the exciting spirit of it, when a man you haven't seen before just walks onto the stage as if he's always been there and delivers the crowning moment. Going back to 2013, this was the legacy of "Harlequin Dream" (the song), the pleasant Boy & Bear song with this unbelievable moment of hype tucked away at the end. I'm not convinced I'd be talking about the song at all if not for it. Afterwards during the show, they admitted that the saxophone was like a magic trick they prefer to pull out later in the set, but they didn't have much of a choice this time around. You might not think it, but Boy & Bear are a very funny banter band.

That's not to say that I didn't always enjoy the song for the rest of its pieces in the first place. It was always one of the meatier cuts from the album for its excellent control of mood and tempo. It's finding the right level of intensity with its stuttering guitar that gets the absolute best out of Dave's falsetto delivery. The pre-chorus to chorus transition might just be my favourite thing on the whole album. It's just a shame, I suppose, that I'd already done this ranking list by the time I got to this experience because it has me wanting to bump it up a little higher.

#364. Amyl and The Sniffers - Hertz (#28, 2021)

31st of 2021

I like to be on a steady pace of being far too prepared with these posts. It's nice to be able to fall back on the chance to take a couple weeks off and not lose any apparent pace (I'm pretty happy to say I haven't missed a single scheduled post day since I've started), but it can have its draw backs as well. Every day is a new set of events that could possibly be relevant talking points for me. Like how you're seeing this post after the 2025 Hottest 100 has come and gone, but I'm writing this back in November without any of that juicy context. I think I got lucky this time. I've been pacing ahead of schedule, but have still been lucky enough to arrive just after the biggest week of Amyl and The Sniffers discourse ever seen. I'll open the curtain fully and say that it's November 19th, 2025. The band have just had a massive free show in Melbourne cancelled by police, getting further press when they used the opportunity to shout out a whole bunch of smaller venues and garner further respect. Also just tonight they practically swept the ARIA Awards, winning every industry voted award they were nominated for, including Album Of The Year. They've also become a rare Australian artist of late to chart anywhere as Fred again.. recently sampled and credited them. It's a lot more to acknowledge when about a week ago I was prepared to just write about how the song "Hertz" has been very recently beaten into the ground by a car commercial.

How did we get here? By usual standards, it's a pretty short story. They got together in 2016, found their present line up in 2017, and released their debut album in 2019. That debut album was released on the label of a certain internationally famous Australian band, but effectively was independent. It reached #22 in its first week which is a positive sign that they were making waves. The two subsequent albums debuted at #2, both behind notable North American rappers (I can say one of them is Drake). This clearly is not a passing fad anymore, Amyl and The Sniffers might just be the future of Australian rock. Considering the increasing positions globally, you might even be able to take the Australian qualifier out of that.

Most popular music fits pretty directly into one of two extremes. You've got music that so aggressively makes you pay attention to it, and music that does the opposite, blending into a desired trend to get picked up by proxy. The latter has certainly seen a boon in the age of streaming, and it's probably the most obvious change in the nature of popular music. The former still has potential, however. When it's competing with more and more of the latter, it'll be prone to stand out more than ever before. Amyl and The Sniffers fit squarely into the former group and they know it.

The first thing you'll probably think when you hear them, is just how much Amy Taylor's voice stands out. Maybe not the first in this wave of overly Australian vocalists, but in an up-tempo punk rock environment, it's reaching out to far different worlds. Probably some gender politics come into play, because we're not usually used to seeing women be so proudly vulgar, as some future artwork will make abundantly clear. They're gonna rub a lot of people the wrong way, but it's securing the lifelong fans that's the most important thing here.

I am not one of those people but I have generally been enjoying the music along the way. "Hertz" is the only one here because the next couple of entries don't come along until 2024. It was quite surprising to hear it at the time. One of those 'they've really made it' moments for a band that could easily have trucked along without that recognition. It's not just a curious gimmick of the moment though, this is a song that has really stuck around. When triple j did a countdown for the best Australian songs of all time, this was the highest ranking song of the 2020s thus far. You can chalk it up a bit to the state of popular Australian music lately and how much of it is previously popular artists coasting, but someone had to rep the current decade and that's the power of standing out. I don't know if it's necessarily my favourite option, but it's a snappy song that goes in and out in about two and a half minutes, so it's a nice little entry point.

#363. Sofi Tukker - Drinkee (#60, 2016)

41st of 2016

I need to share this because it's tangentially relevant, but mostly because I think it's funny to send a time capsule to myself two months from now. Recently I have been absolutely assaulted by "The Girl From Ipanema". It's been in multiple movies I've seen, it's come up in a trivia context, I can't seem to get away from it. If you don't know it (I won't judge), it's a monstrously popular 1960s song from Brazil. It won Record of the Year at the 1965 GRAMMY Awards as well. It's originally entirely in Portuguese, although I think the more famous worldwide version has lyrics mostly (but not entirely) in English. There aren't many songs that have gotten famous all around the world in Portuguese. I suppose I can think of the winning song in the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest (though it's not one that's stuck with me), or failing that, we also have "Drinkee".

This feels like cheating, however. To say "Drinkee" was popular worldwide is stretching the definition pretty thin. It has achieved notoriety in Brazil, Italy and Australia, and that's about it. A very scattershot representation that makes it to three continents and crosses multiple language barriers. I wish I could rationalise a reason for how this happened, but I cannot. They were lucky to get some airtime over here and we were more than happy to lap up this song that's absolutely incomprehensible. They try to spot us one word in the title, but they're cheating a little bit, as it's spelt 'drinque' in Portuguese. It does mean 'drink' so you're probably okay there, but maybe you too have been fooled into thinking that the opening line is 'come dance with me', not even remotely close I'm afraid.

I do find the language barrier to be a little superficial at times. I feel like it posits a greater portion of music fans are deeply focused on entire lyrical screeds and not just gelling with the general vibe of it all. Maybe a simple platitude to latch onto is all that matters, otherwise some serious questions need to occasionally be asked with regards to what becomes popular sometimes. I can only guess that it's those occasional sequences that sound like English words that allow Sofi Tukker to get away with it. It's like getting to the end of that R.E.M. song's verses when you hear the distinct title drop poking its head out.

Otherwise I think "Drinkee" stands out as a song that just doesn't sound like much else around it. It's not just a song that has Portuguese lyrics, it's a song that has about 4 lines of them that are just repeated endlessly (it's about 12 times) and it's the song's second job to just mess around with that fact and keep us entertained for 5 minutes. The guitar does a very good job with this, coming in super slow as if to combat the pace of the singing. I don't know what genre you'd really put this under, it's supposed to be dance, but it feels like a strange allocation. The most appropriate moment is when the beat goes away in the middle to build up to what is effectively a drop later on. Maybe it's the most obvious trick to string you along, but I won't pretend it doesn't work for me every time. Give me more incomprehensible hit songs. They don't even need to be from Sofi Tukker, though I suppose that will happen.

#362. Remi - Sangria (#85, 2013)

48th of 2013

When the GRAMMY nominations come out, I tend to have a look to find out which Australian artists have made it in. There's a very strong America tendency to it all which can expose itself the most when it comes to any international country. You could be just as relevant in the bigger picture, but when none of your fans are on the voting committee, it's moot. Still, Australia tends to do reasonably well, usually good for a few names every year. They really like nominating RÜFÜS DU SOL in the Dance categories, I suppose it's an area we do well in (although it should be noted that their international recognition wasn't 'unlocked' until the 2020 awards). I also tend to probably need someone else to run through the list instead of me because I can miss some names here and there. Names like Hiatus Kaiyote.

The 2014 awards were a pretty lean one for Australia. You had a solitary album nomination for Tame Impala, and an R&B nomination for Hiatus Kaiyote, which was actually a collaboration with a pretty notable US rapper. I know the band quite well now, but it's not often that I get introduced to someone from my own part of the world via the GRAMMY Awards. Maybe that's not entirely true though, because they were getting name dropped all year on triple j in 2013 at the end of "Sangria".

This is a strange way to segue into all of this, but it's genuinely the first thing I think about with this song. So many shout outs on this one. Many are just directly involved with the song, but then there are names I do know, where I'm just thinking, 'yeah, Michelle Grace Hunder is a great photographer but it feels out of nowhere'. Nice bit of connecting lore with it all I suppose.

I am potentially here to drop a bomb shell because I'm not sure how known this fact is: Remi was a band. It is an individual moniker of the rapper, but they've always been a whole thing. We don't stop shouting out J Smith. I guess easy to fall into the trap when he's always referring to himself with singular pronouns, but there isn't a way around that. Don't worry, I didn't realise for years either. I always saw...them as plucky underdogs, getting a lot of praise through the traditional triple j Unearthed cycle, but not really having the necessary pop appeal to cross over in the era of 360 and Chance Waters. A good sign though that there was more to get out of Australian hip-hop at the time.

I did think they had catchy songs of course, just not with that next level of polish. "Saggin" is loads of fun, but sounds like it came out nearly a decade before it actually did. "Sangria" catches up to a slightly more modern era, if you can overlook it leaning on the well-worn path of Australian hip-hop using woodwind samples. It's very much in the world of loose, fun SoundCloud tracks, just that it's one that caught a little more wind than you'd expect. I was a little shocked to see it actually land on the list. I wasn't sure how I felt about it at the time, think I just heard it so often that it became part of the radio tapestry and I couldn't hear it as a song anymore.

This song has aged tremendously since then. Even within the bounds of something that isn't touched up to hit the mainstream, it's just full of those nifty little hooks that keep me engaged. One of the best introductions going around with how immediately it takes you into its world, with a chorus that feels incredibly Allday coded. Remi Kolawole is able to keep up the pace the whole way, but I do have to shout out Sensible J & Dutch because there's a lot of heavy lifting just in the instrumental. Remi never really had a big breakout after the fact but I'm so glad we've got this one here. One of those moments where the triple j voters do an excellent job of time capsuling the year that was with something that might otherwise just slip through and be forgotten over time. I mean I can't say I've thought about "Seconds" by Ghost Loft in over 10 years.

#361. RÜFÜS DU SOL - Alive (#19, 2021)

30th of 2021

You say their name and then they appear. Otherwise I am going to spend this opening section dealing with the most important thing about "Alive". It's something that I'm jumping the gun on by writing right now, but will feel woefully out of date by the time the post goes live. The title lyric in this song sounds a little like he's saying 'Feliz Navidad'. Now that we've made it here, we can wrap things up I think.

If I am pushed for more words, I want to point out that this is a culmination of something I've said in several RÜFÜS DU SOL blurbs previously. RÜFÜS DU SOL have slowly built themselves up as a massive festival headliner around the world, even in countries where they have no visible charting profile. That comes with a lot of pressure because once you're that big, you're gonna get people tagging along in audiences that aren't familiar with your music. Maybe their minimal, chill electronica works perfectly in a pair of headphones, but if you're playing big stages and arenas, you need something to fit that. It feels like a conscious decision on their 4th album to play into this, and "Alive" encapsulates it perfectly. Big sweeping sounds, big sweeping platitudes, big sounding songs.

I've not experienced "Alive" in that kind of setting, but even through headphones, it just sounds immense. Another song that shows its lengthy runtime as a potential threat, but doesn't really wallow around in needless stalling or an unearned coda. Maybe I am just a little more partial to some of their more radio ready tunes, but when I want a big monster of a song, this is a good one to go to.

#370-#366

#370. Courtney Barnett - Elevator Operator (#75, 2015)

43rd of 2015

It's been a long time so I don't know what it's like to hear this song for the first time. It's one of those songs where once you know where it's going, it completely warps your perception of it going forward. Trying to put myself back in that first impression, it feels like a shaggy dog story. You don't reach the chorus until more than halfway through, and it comes out of nowhere, turning it into something much darker.

I don't think there are many popular songs that are quite as facetious as this one, just a carefree, upbeat song about someone potentially jumping off a building. It's the sort of thing that makes me wonder if she just got away with this one, having such a dark song just end up in high rotation on the radio. To an extent, it makes for a bigger impression than something like "Stan" by Eminem, because that one at least builds up to its climax, whereas this goes from a carefree day to 'don't jump' in an instant.

There's some unresolved ambiguity to all of this though. The suddenness is what alerted me to the fact. There's nothing leading up to the chorus that suggests 20 year old Oliver Paul is at all pursuing these dark thoughts. He denies it himself (and if we want to cheat, Courtney Barnett said that she wrote this song based on a story from a friend), and there's an alternative interpretation that it's the old woman who's actually about to do it. I think it's a 'fun' way to look at it that flips the script, but it's also nothing you can totally gleam from the text anyway.

All in all though, it's songs like these that reinforce the kind of detail-oriented storytelling that Courtney Barnett is so good at. Every second line is including a gratuitous piece of specific world-building that feels considered. This isn't just a reference dump of a song, but one from a narrator that's deeply fascinated by the details. I could write a line about someone in a hurry dropping food as they go, but within just the first handful of lines, we've already started laughing at a 20 year old who thinks they're old, eats a premium kind of bread, and shaves off the difference by using the 96 tram in Melbourne without paying a fare. There's just an amusing throughline to all of it though, where you've got a story about two very different people from completely different generations, and yet here they are on the same journey and also sharing some superficial similarities (the boy is worried about going bald, the lady uses Botox and is deeply jealous of the boy's skin). It's something I think a lot about because we always get these generational divides due to different upbringings, priorities and life experiences, but deep down, there are these certain qualities, good and bad, that we can't help but continue to inherit down successive generations. Much more worthwhile to focus on these elements, rather than start a war on minor squabbles. You can learn a lot of things from people who are both much older, and much younger than yourself.

#369, Peach PRC - God Is A Freak (#16, 2022)

34th of 2022

It's very easy to be cynical of a song like this. Peach deals in the world of TikTok where the number one priority is finding something memorable that resonates and gets people to hit the Follow button. This is a platform that rewards aggressive marketing, so you'll often find artists having to make multiple videos with their own songs as a soundtrack. If you're lucky, you'll have inspired a viral trend that gets people to continue doing it for you, but even if you're not, you're still ramming it down everyone's throats and creating the illusion of acceptance, like thinking a song is a massive hit just because you kept hearing it on the radio (or maybe it was a TV commercial, but it doesn't matter).

When I think of songs being designed to go viral, songs like "God Is A Freak" are what comes to mind first. This is a song with exactly one joke that we all thought about when we were very young. If God is everywhere, does that mean he's watching me take a shower? If that's the sort of thing he's interested in, why would we want to spend eternity in the afterlife with him? It's something that's so /r/atheism coded, you can just smell that smug energy from someone who thinks they've nailed those preachy religious types (while God is watching). Just the most tedious people to be around.

On those grounds, there's nothing new to be gained from "God Is A Freak" and I should hate all that it embodies. I think I was pretty cynical of it as well, a lazy attempt at being shocking and provocative that has no purpose beyond that. It's not how I landed with it though, I think in part because the humourous slant in the writing scans as too ridiculous to take seriously, and secondly because as a pop song beyond that, it's checking all the boxes. The funniest thing of all, and I don't think it's meant to be a joke, is the way the pre-chorus structures itself like a Zedd song. Just sub out this song's guitar for a ticking clock and you've created "The Middle" or "Stay". I generally liked those songs though, so that template is probably doing the work for me when I find the release of tension in "God Is A Freak" to be so effective. Maybe I'm the one with f**ked up priorities, but I love an unintentional parody that feeds off the best elements of its 'source'. I know in my heart of hearts that Claire Rosinkranz is a genuine musician, but there's no way I would enjoy "don't miss me" as much as I do if it didn't sound like she was a novelty persona created to wage mockery on future Hottest 100 entrant Clairo's song "Amoeba", truly one of the most unexplainable coincidences in music history.

#368. TV on the Radio - Happy Idiot (#49, 2014)

40th of 2014

If you weren't there for the moment, it can be difficult to make sense of it all, you're probably just gonna hear a second-hand account. On the other hand, there's a slightly weirder scenario, the one where you're partially there for it, but you've never felt like you have the full story. That's me when it comes to TV on the Radio. Are they just a critic baiting acclaimed band, or a run of the mill band that happen to have some hits? I've never really been able to figure it out, and they've largely disappeared from the conversation ever since they stopped putting albums out. I just don't know if there are that many TV on the Radio diehards, or rather, if there should be that many.

I enter in the middle of the story. "Wolf Like Me" lands on the Hottest 100 CD for 2006. It's the only thing I know about this band and I don't really enjoy it. Too much aimless shouting, it feels unstructured. It's something I wouldn't really think about but I keep hearing rave feelings about it, and it pops up as an oddity in additional Hottest 100 polls. At some point in the middle, it clicks. I don't recall if Guitar Hero was what did it, just that it's absolutely my favourite song to play in that whole series. The only song that feels like a workout as it tests your ability to never stop strumming both ways.

In any case, it means I entered that hype cycle with at least a little bit of information. I knew "Wolf Like Me", I would assume that the album it came from was considered good, and so that rationalises the hype that was going around for their next album "Dear Science". It mostly washes over me as one of those albums I believe to be highly regarded, just in a conversation I wasn't part of. It's something I accept and don't hold any spite against. I did know a bunch of songs on that album that ranged from pretty good to great ("Halfway Home"). Nowadays it's possibly likely you just know the album because it houses "DLZ", which has gained a lot more recognition ever since it appeared in "Breaking Bad". A good way to set yourself up for the future, but I still don't feel like TV on the Radio have managed to stick the landing in the same way a band like Mazzy Star has thrived off the notoriety of just having that one killer song in their discography, or Interpol from that one album.

And yet, here I am talking about them, absolutely stretching the possibilities. Plenty of artists have had long gaps between appearances in the Hottest 100, one band I'll get to eventually sprouted out a huge career detached from triple j before randomly popping back in there. TV on the Radio never had that experience. They just had their starring moment and the usual diminishing returns afterward. Maybe nowadays after the definitively non-hitmaking rollout of their 2011 album, that'd be the moment they become confined to Double J, and just being a band checked out by diehard fans, and also those occasional music listeners who feel determined to listen to every notable album that ever comes out. Maybe that still is what happened, but on the smaller scale they had "Happy Idiot".

It's just one of those quirky moments that we're usually not privy to. If it were by some other band, or it came out years earlier, I wouldn't have questioned it. But to fly in the face of momentum and decide to have another moment is something that makes me want to scrutinise the song itself more. It'd have to be something pretty darn amazing to justify this. It's not really, but it's fairly serviceable and catchy in a way that they hadn't pulled off in a while. Maybe there's a lingering thought that the use of the word 'idiot' in the title is itself a winning strategy. Maybe there's nothing unusual, and this is just reinforcing the possibility that TV on the Radio are just a pretty good band, with generally pretty good results. We spend so long looking at the extremes in both directions that we forget to acknowledge this important building block.

#367. The Wombats - Cheetah Tongue (#69, 2018)

40th of 2018

Thus we reach the end of what has been the most respectable of runs in this tally. 10 songs by The Wombats, nothing in the top 100, nothing in the bottom 100. I'm not sure if there is any irony to celebrate here, but it's a fun place to be in. I could never get mad at The Wombats, whether for the deluge of the British music scene that they're a likely figurehead, or for the music they actually made. They fit the perfect middle ground of being popular enough that you've heard of them, but not popular enough that you have strong feelings about them. 'Remember The Wombats? lmao', good source of retweets in the right place. I could cite their enduring popularity that stands them well above most of their peers, but there's no pleasing the crowd of vibes.

I don't expect "Cheetah Tongue" is the most exciting place to wrap things up. I've mentioned along the way that there are numerous songs by The Wombats that I have a bit more space in my heart for, but it's been a long time since I've had the privilege of them finding the necessary votes. What we're left with is not a defining song by any stretch of the imagination, just the closest we're gonna get to tapping into that feeling.

If I were to point to one thing in particular that they do very well here to justify it, I'm listening out for those verses. It's fairly minimalist, just some occasional finger snaps, a scattered guitar loop and some faint droning. The bass pops in after a little while but it's barely audible. I'm just addicted to the tension that the guitar provides, just never reaching a resolution until the drums finally come roaring in for the chorus. Everything after that is just a pleasant formality, but I'll always come in to rep for any song with one brief idea that hits the spot.

#366. The Smith Street Band - Passiona (#49, 2017)

37th of 2017

We've all seen the jokes about cheering during movies when they say the title, especially when it's late in the piece or it punctuates a significant moment. A close second to this is when an album does it. It's such an unbelievable power play to use it as the chorus for a song whose title doesn't even appear itself. It has me asking questions, why did they call the song "Passiona"? The only logical explanation is that it's the particular title that won out on the lottery of Australian signifiers that can read as a subtle in-joke. The kinds of references that just haven't really made it internationally as something we're associated with, which are the best kinds. Also I've got a soft spot here because when I was a kid, Passiona was the ambrosia of the Woolies aisle. The occasionally purchased soft drink that hit different to all the other ones. My teeth aren't very fond of it though so I haven't had it in quite some time. I suspect it still does the trick.

There's nothing refreshing about this "Passiona" though, it's all anxiety and estrangement. An English teacher somewhere is furious at Wil Wagner for starting nearly every sentence with the word 'And'. At least he's fighting the good fight for distinguishing literal and metaphorical examples, and it's gotta be one of the hardest lines about self-pity going around. I think the one single line 'It's also not a competition' is one that just leaps out of the page. I didn't get it from the Smithies, but it's a way I look at a lot of aspects in life. You'll do better to focus on meeting people at their weaknesses, rather than try to live in an attempt to be in the desired percentile of the planet in your self-approved measure of success.

It's not all vague platitudes also, not that I'd expect that from this band. The lyric about having panic attacks on German TV is a very real thing that happened. Wil Wagner will say that it's about the overwhelming emotional toll of being a touring band, but I know deep down he's thinking about those ducks, flying together, away from the "Don't F**k With Our Dreams" pool. And whatever happened to Ed Kuepper? The strong silent type. That was an Australian. The whole song goes through so many mood swings; it really does nail the experience of anxiety.

#375-#371

 #375. G Flip - Killing My Time (#62, 2018)

42nd of 2018

It's one thing to have the vague haze of hype. Lots of bands have it, the intangible feeling of popularity that comes from the fact that they're being talked about. It's something that gets weaponised as an easy criticism that I've never really understood. As if it's all a hoax that everyone's talking about someone who's not only not topping charts, but they're not even participating in them. I really believe in the wholesome approach that it's just a natural consequence of echo chambers and genuine enthusiasm. If it seems fraudulent that you know more people talking about Geese (2 million monthly listeners) than Tyla (46 million monthly listeners), that's on your own circle, but I've never believed in this notion that it's a gotcha that proves people don't actually listen to these artists.

What's this got to do with G Flip? Well, "Killing My Time" was their first song to actually reach the ARIA Chart. It did so with some handy playlist promotion, but that's just playing the same game as everyone else, and we overlook that over time. A certified Platinum hit should be enough to hush the naysayers; it's the first true sign that we're looking at a genuine future star. Though I suppose the arbitrary nature of it all is highlighted by the so-so Hottest 100 performance. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it soak its tune rag.

While it's not really as potent as "About You" (#419), I have always found myself leaning towards this one as a more instantly rewarding listen. There aren't many other G Flip songs that so effortlessly find a catchy hook. This one knows it so much so that it puts the title lyric in both the verses and the chorus. We're looking at a rate of about one 'killing my' every 4 seconds. I guess it's impossible to accuse them of hypocrisy when they almost never go 30 seconds without getting back to it.

#374. RÜFÜS DU SOL - Underwater (#22, 2018)

41st of 2018

With that, we close the book on another RÜFÜS DU SOL album. Two down, two to go. I never purchased this album like the two that came before it, so I'm not quite as familiar with it. Listening now, I'm finding it hard to identify a point of intrigue outside of the big singles. It all feels like a triangle of proximity between them. Not much in the way of 'ooh, this deep cut feels like it's worth hanging out for'. It just sounds like RÜFÜS DU SOL had a few ideas they were tossing between. I'll let you decide which single is 'We have McDonalds at home'

Still, taken on its own, I think "Underwater" represents a slight change of pace. It's fairly long, though not the longest on the album, and I think it shows an attempt to try something different with that. They've always made long songs, and they're not subtle about it, but this is them trying to fit the radio friendly side of RÜFÜS DU SOL into that template, so there's not quite as much down time. I feel like they succeed because it's a 6 minute song that breezes by.

Like with Gang of Youths in "the man himself" (#494), you've got backing vocals that also recall a bit of that "Touched" by VAST sound and add a layer of intrigue. I still feel like we're building to something bigger, which is why I'm vaguely gesturing to some later entries, but something's definitely clicked with "Underwater". Even if only narrowly, it's managed to assert itself as the most popular song on this album, and it feels like the shape of things to come. Can't believe it's the only aquatic song title RÜFÜS DU SOL have ever used though, that feels like it should be their bread & butter. Music to study to on a rainy day.

#373. SZA - Good Days (#22, 2021)

32nd of 2021

I always veer away from being a bully because I think it's a crutch that we're all too quick to fall back on. Maybe most people won't consider themselves a bully, but the patterns are there. It's just a matter of finding an acceptable target that's fun to pick on. Maybe they wronged you, or maybe they're just an easy target because you know you're not going to offend anyone in your periphery. You and your friends might differ on occasional issues, but you can unite in your hatred of...I dunno, Jacob Collier? It's rare to see such smug disdain towards someone so avoidable, but it's usually only half the story. Jacob Collier is a vessel to project all disagreements you have with the GRAMMYs onto.

This might be something that's already getting a bit out of date. The GRAMMYs have a reputation where they can't decide if they should be leaning into a commercial tilt, or a critical tilt, but they'll often askew both, in favour of their own strange depiction of what matters. I remember watching Jon Batiste announce the nominations one year, and a year later he was accepting the award for Album Of The Year. Not necessarily a bad album, but one that will frustrate people on both sides of that previous equation.

Jacob Collier plays a part in this as well. He's won numerous GRAMMY Awards in his career, and even twice been nominated for Album Of The Year, ready to test the faith of anyone who takes the award seriously if he were to win. Behind all of this, he was previously mentored by the late, great Quincy Jones who had some amount of influence at the time. Jacob Collier's music is eclectic, probably the prime example of that GRAMMYs disconnect because it doesn't play to any popular conversation, just maybe some industry insiders with an inclination towards his influences. When you see people talk about Jacob Collier's music, you'll likely hear some combination of criticism that says he's very talented but has no idea how to make music that's remotely enjoyable. All the complexity of Tool, but none of the marketable aura. Just a nerd who wants everyone to know how clever he is.

It's become so widespread that I start to think people have started spreading this without actually listening to his music. I think I might have even done it at one point. I decided to correct this and listen to both of his Album Of The Year nominated albums. I wouldn't say it's all for me, but it's not a total disaster either, just some strange projects that get lost in a huge sea of collaborators. I much preferred whenever he kept the songs to a reasonable length.

This is admittedly me giving up a lot of my time in defence of Jacob Collier, but I had good reason to do it, because he made one of my favourite songs I've heard in years: "erase me" by Lizzy McAlpine. It's one of the first few songs on her second album, and when I was listening to it for the first time on the back of liking a couple of the singles, it was one of the assuring cuts that let me know I was getting into something special. Now, it's definitely a team effort, and Lizzy gives a heck of a vocal performance, but it's Jacob's production and backing vocals that give the song that little extra something to push it to greatness. It's so good that I felt like I could no longer disregard Jacob Collier. A little later on and they teamed up again which earned Lizzy her first GRAMMY nomination (didn't love the song but there's a spark of excellence in it). In fairness too, it wasn't his first point of good will, as a year prior, he also made "Good Days".

"Good Days" was a moment of belated gratification for SZA's pop star career. This was following a much loved debut album that didn't make an especially big splash around the world, but steadily built up its reputation over the years. For me, "Drew Barrymore" and "Pretty Little Birds" are two of the best songs she's ever made. She also kept busy between album releases, a lot of collaborations and soundtrack singles that merely hinted at what was to come. When we finally got "Good Days" to start the campaign for album #2, I want to say it was instant, except the song was released on Christmas Day and missed out on instant exposure you'd usually get. It doesn't matter how big you are, you just won't find many glued to new releases on that particular time of the year. Once 2021 went underway, "Good Days" bolted into the top 10, perhaps an alarming sign when it wasn't the most obvious crossover single. Take yourself 2 years in the future and SZA has a solo #1 single, I don't think it was particularly surprising by then.

I really think the 2020s have opened up a new world of possibilities for the kinds of songs that can become hits, and this is a prime example. In the past, this would be tidied up and trimmed down for radio, but this song just completely does its own thing. SZA lays down her last line (a good one too, 'half of us chasing fountains of youth and it's in the present'), and there's still over a minute and a half to go. Equally a sign of things to come, but also a sign of how much cultural cache SZA had built.

#372. Lorde - Perfect Places (#71, 2017)

38th of 2017

When it comes to longevity, one of the most important factors to work with is the initial audience size. It's not a guarantee, plenty of very successful artists & albums have fallen aside. It is however a lot easier to pitch the idea of a classic when it's something you're already familiar with. I say this as a millennial and while I can't speak for other generations, I feel pretty confident in saying we've got a strong tendency towards idolising the things we grew up with.

What does this mean? It means that Lorde's first two albums have a peculiar place to sit as the years go by. The massive success of the first album vs. the great acclaim of the second one. Not that the first album wasn't also well liked, and the second didn't also achieve some level of success, but it's the situation where you'd expect the initial hype to die off and see the favourite emerge for those who are still sticking fat. I think this happened to a slight extent initially, "Melodrama" is just packed with those fan favourite songs that are primed to turn into belated streaming hits. What we've seen instead is a regression to familiarity. Whenever Lorde comes back into discussion, it pools people into a nostalgic lens, taking them back into the songs that they remembered listening to many moons ago. For many people, this is a subset that includes "Pure Heroine" and not "Melodrama".

At the present moment, the most popular Lorde song is "Ribs", a cut from her first album. It never had a real single push at the time, but by being part of an album that sold a lot of copies (I think you could still do this in 2013), it has potentially attained greater familiarity than almost any song Lorde put out afterwards. Anyway, to move along, four of Lorde's five most popular songs right now are from "Pure Heroine". The one outlier is "Supercut", one of those aforementioned "Melodrama" fan favourites. I guess it's just interesting to see time go by and have things return to a slightly twisted version of the original populist assessment.

I've always thought "Perfect Places" sits uncomfortably in all of this. It's the last track on "Melodrama" but it was pushed as a single before the album came out, to a modest amount of fanfare. It does reasonably well nowadays but I feel like I see some skepticism towards it. Almost like it's just the pop friendly taste of the album that got a bigger spotlight than it deserves. This isn't a view I held (it was always one of my favourites), but I've seen it quite a bit.

I love a big cathartic hook, so it went down a treat for me, but I'll admit it's cooled off a little since it came out. Maybe again it just suffers from being telegraphed to a fault, or otherwise I just lean towards other Lorde singles now that it's not the new one to look at. I'll admit also that I have some mixed feelings towards the lyrics. I think in the wake of that other song I'll get to one day, it can be a bit much to have Lorde take aim at mindless teenage (or thereabouts) hedonism as if she's the first person to ever realise this. On the other hand, it still gets to me. By the end of it, it feels less like a criticism of young people doing what they find fun, and more a lament of the unattainable high. Not the last time we'll deal with something like this in the list, and it's a great way to send off the album.

#371. Juice WRLD - Righteous (#39, 2020)

31st of 2020

Though I couldn't say I'd likely be particularly glowing in my assessment if we had it otherwise, it's a shame that Juice WRLD pretty much only appears here in a posthumous sense. Not entirely true, but he died a week before voting opened in 2019 which led to his first appearance (I'm not certain he would have polled otherwise). That will be the last time he appears in this list, but before that I've got to get through the last of these songs from "Legends Never Die".

I'm not normally someone who goes into these kinds of releases with an open mind, and the speed in which it was released was a giant red flag. It's possible that these Juice WRLD songs caught me at a good time, given what I was listening to when this came out. On the other hand, I think "Righteous" is just one particular example where they got the absolute best out of what they were working with.

I'm not even sure I can pinpoint what it is in this case. It just feels a little self-evident. Emo rap without any bells or whistles attached, just a man reflecting on where he is in his life and how little joy there is to it all. Juice WRLD made a lot of songs about sour experiences with women that don't always come across in the best light, so I think the introspection puts his skills to their best use. He's a man of a thousand ways to say 'woah', and it all just finds a good balance here. Instrumental is great too, wouldn't change a thing about it. Can't say for sure how this would land if he were alive to release it, but as the first posthumous cut, it's setting things off in the right way.

#380-#376

#380. Joji - Gimme Love (#59, 2020)

32nd of 2020

I think the state of music streaming has me attempting to poke holes in the ecosystem out of pure habit. It's all harmonious, you jump from artist to artist, song to song, you get a carefully curated experience that gives you what you want but also exposes you to new things. It's all just too good to be true. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, or maybe the previous bar set by the radio and associated platforms was so dreadfully low that we didn't even realise until something new came along. You lose that communal experience, but you no longer have to spend every day of the next couple of years hearing that song you're already sick of, so I know what I'd choose if pressed.

If my cynicism came from anywhere in particular, it was seeing the kinds of songs that would be propped up by this new system. When the two forms were running concurrently, it was easy to spot what a radio song was, and what a streaming song was. The radio favoured quirky earworms and familiar voices, streaming favoured something more relaxed. Maybe to some degree it's answering the previously impossible to answer question of what radio airplay charts would look like if you could accurately factor in people switching stations in their car to find either a good song, or one that's less annoying. Usually on streaming platforms, you have to get 30 seconds into a song for it to count as a play (generally once people hit 30 seconds, they're pretty likely to get to the end). We're not privy to the data that Spotify might get with this, but it's pretty safe to say that they started balancing their playlists and algorithms around this, and we're more likely to see the artists whose music is primed for this. It's not about giving us the best music, it's about giving us the music that we're least likely to skip before the 30 second mark, or least likely to just bounce off completely. Similar principle to Netflix doing everything in their power to invoke the binge.

I quickly became aware of this, and started trying to notice it. We weren't using the term 'slop' at the time, but the feeling persisted. You'd hear a lot of music, often quite popular at that, which seemed like it was created with the same mindset. It never evoked much, it just sounded pleasant in the background and that was enough. I've said it before, but in 2016 I saw the way tropical house music engulfed the charts, and suddenly I started looking at everything else that was successful, and how it worked in that context. It became guilt by association. The likes of "Treat You Better" by Shawn Mendes, "We Don't Talk Anymore" by Charlie Puth, "Needed Me" by Rihanna, all important microcosms of sameness in Mike Perry's ocean. The years went by and things started to change a little. I think TikTok, even though it feels more explicitly background music coded, has gone some ways to put priority into songs that stand out, and that chart free-for-all has made things more interesting. Before we get there, we get that cynical version of me who's judging everything in that lens. "Gimme Love" maybe barely got a passing mark.

It's something that was on my mind with previous Joji entries. Yes, he's eclectic, and yes, he has a strong following beyond his music career, but he has to play the game as much as anyone else. When "Your Man" (#609) initially asserted itself as a hit from his album, it felt like a concession to this idea. He can be as weird as he wants, but the most assured response is going to come when he plays things as straightforward as possible. It might not be what you, the individual wants, but it's what the fewest number of individual people don't want. No matter how interesting our Joji takes are, it's all going to blend together into one soupy story.

I went through all of this to compliment "Gimme Love" upon an unexpected realisation. I never thought I'd put it down as my favourite of all of his entries, because in my head it's just that song where he says the repetitive hook over and over again. On that level, it's not especially interesting, it's just a hook that's doing the bare minimum to get stuck into your head. If you haven't heard this song in a while, it might sound like a fair assessment. What we're actually dealing with here though is an unexpected pivot that makes up most of the song. Joji's tired of just making totally different sounding songs from each other, what if he made a song that itself feels like two different genres. I do think there's some potency at the start, I just fall for anything with a drum & bass buzz to it. Everything afterwards though is just a nice surprise. I don't know if I'd call Joji the most accomplished singer, but he knows how to get the most out of what he's doing. Putting these life or death stakes into the emotional direction of it all. Maybe he's re-heating the "SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK" formula, but it sounds nicer this way. Even the brief guitar outro just sounds beautiful. I was listening to Beach House's "Modern Love Stories" the other day and I think they both do something similar, just completely overwhelming you so the gentle guitar can hit so much harder as emotional relief. Now, I don't think it's the kind of sound that is especially streamer friendly, but it doesn't matter at that point because you've already been listening for 30 seconds, checkmate.

#379. DMA'S - Everybody's Saying Thursday's the Weekend (#85, 2022)

36th of 2022

One of the most interesting things I have read recently was a decade old article talking about the worst songs of the 1990s. I don't want to link it but to give you the basic cliff notes, they're not shy about including big hitters. This isn't a hit piece about how they dug up some abysmal Bryan Adams deep cut, or if there's a particularly offensive Rednex song out there, they went for the jugular. "All The Small Things", "Everybody Hurts", "Smells Like Teen Spirit", they're not afraid to take everyone's favourite bands to the sword. The closest thing to an obscurity on the list was "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver", but otherwise it wouldn't look much different to a list asking people to name a quintessential '90s song.

What interested me the most about the article was just how dismal it all was. They got me with the preview image because I wanted to see writers who came to make a big stand against universally beloved songs. Once you start with the targets they've got, you've got to work really hard to prove why millions of music fans are wrong. Instead we just get a limp attempt at rationalisation every single time. Nearly every entry could be summed up as 'What's one or two quirky things everyone knows about this song? That's why it sucks'. Remember when "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan was used as stock sad music for commercials? Absolutely the worst because of it. Kurt Cobain says something about a mosquito? Gibberish lyrics you can't understand. There are better Nirvana songs out there but the writer won't name them, lest they have a stake in it beyond being Statler or Waldorf.

It's said that the best way to avoid being labelled an idiot is to not speak up, lest it be confirmed. I think it goes both ways though, because if you leave too many things unsaid, it can quickly become clear that you've got nothing else to offer. When I was reading this embarrassing word count chaser, I was trying to put myself in the perspective of whoever was writing each section, and thinking about what they might have decided to omit because it wasn't necessary, or if it's instead plumbing the depths of their knowledge on the subject.

Two entries in particular took me to thinking about this. Firstly the attack on "Song 2" by Blur, which is two paragraphs to say that it's a send up of grunge music, it's the 'woo hoo' song, and that it's used in car commercials. The first point is always a red flag for me, a myth purported so often that it simply must be true, even though it makes no sense if you stop and think about it for a moment. Why would anyone be making a parody of grunge music in 1997? Hit me up with your "Tiger King" parody, it'd be roughly just as on time. I've not seen anyone from Blur ever suggest it to be the case. Maybe it wasn't an overly serious song, but back in 1997 there's an interview Graham Coxon did with triple j that suggests it really was just Blur looking to try out a different sound. I also just found myself wondering with this article if the author even knew that Damon Albarn was also the Gorillaz guy, it's an easy thing to riff on ('the song was so embarrassing that next time he re-emerged it was as a cartoon character', something like that), but perhaps easy to miss if you're American and both of these bands are at best a fleeting curiosity. This entry also uses a similar line to the Nirvana entry, noting first that Blur have good songs (although they also put 'good' in parentheses afterwards as if to mock the notion), like it's someone who understands they're a big deal elsewhere in the world, but not wanting to do their homework on the subject.

The other entry that comes just before it is about The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony". This one is mostly making fun of Richard Ashcroft for having written this perennially uncool song, but also takes a shot at Britpop, calling the genre 'the limp hand shake of music genres', with The Verve's song being a particularly clammy rendition of it. They compare it to "Wonderwall" and "Song 2" (though they also call it the Blur 'Woo hoo' song, talk about bad editing). They make fun of the fact that Keith Richards gets all the royalties (I won't hold it against the article for this, but The Verve have since won those royalties back), and how much it sucks for a song they can't get paid for to be the only memorable thing they've done. Putting aside The Verve's other hits, I just wondered if the author blew their whole load on what they knew about Britpop in a single sentence. If you're American, what reason would you have to know anything other than those 3 songs (and maybe "Champagne Supernova"). Basically nothing else made it over to the United States, so unless you're willing to do your research, you're probably not going to know anything else. If you did, you'd probably want to prove it because of how gruelling that process must have been.

It got me thinking about where DMA'S fit into this dynamic. Just mentioning them is going to immediately conjure up some combination of words that have the same effect as 'Britpop cosplay'. Australian band decades late to the sound but probably were inspired by it to make music. They went to private school but dress like they just put out "Definitely Maybe". They sound like Britpop...or do they? I'd like to believe I have an above average knowledge of Britpop as a vagrant who wasn't listening to it in the mid-90s, but I fall under a similar trap where there are a lot of names I recognise, but otherwise I just fall into a slightly above average knowledge of the inner workings of Suede, Pulp and Supergrass. I wanted to take this further and find out which band actually epitomises Britpop, and maybe even sounds a bit like DMA'S, so I decided to dig deep into many of those also-ran bands and see what it really was like to have a radio in London in 1995.

After several hours of permanently ruining my Spotify algorithms, I came out of it a little unclear. With one exception I'll get to, I didn't find much of the DMA'S DNA anywhere. The best I could say is that Sløtface absolutely sound like a modern equivalent of Kenickie, just with a reflective look on that era, rather than being part of it. Generally there's a '90s sheen that can't really be emulated. I've always felt like British folk and Australians have a different perception of what's considered 'indie', while with Britpop, you're meeting conflicting ideas when these bands are writing songs to be part of the forefront.

The one connection I did find is that Tommy O'Dell has a similar singing style and voice to Ian Broudie from The Lightning Seeds. Maybe they can almost count as an artist that has broken out of the forgotten pile just because "Three Lions" has an excuse to return to the conversation every couple of years, but I imagine it's not something most people think about unless the football is on. Does England have an ETA, by the way?

I find this particular DMA'S song difficult to place as well. it's got this one little guitar riff that immediately asserts itself and steers everything in its shape. It all sounds very modern, that is, until the chorus where my distant call back can only go as far as Ben Lee's "We're All In This Together". Everybody's saying 'Thursday, what a concept'.

#378. Bring Me The Horizon - Ludens (#96, 2019)

26th of 2019

Video game music has an unusual position with regard to how it flirts with the mainstream. It's the same with video games in general, just this cultural monolith that largely keeps to itself. An ungodly number of people are playing Dota 2 every day but if it's not in your periphery, would you even realise? When it comes to music, once we got out of the 8-bit era, it's been pretty common to see licenced music find its way into video games. There's an enormous but intangible benefit that probably comes with the exposure of getting a song onto a FIFA game, the kind that can turn a niche song into a generational anthem.

As time has gone by, it's also become common to see musicians put out songs specifically for video games, and we're not short on notable artists for that. The National have a song in "Portal 2", Eminem released a song to promote "Call of Duty: Ghosts". They're not often especially noteworthy songs, so you won't find chart watchers pulling up entire video games just to contextualise a hit song (okay maybe it's just me who does this). When it comes to Hottest 100 history, we've got just two I believe. Firstly one I mentioned recently, The Rapture's "No Sex For Ben" from "Grand Theft Auto 4", and more recently, "Ludens" by Bring Me The Horizon (I guess shout out to U2's "Elevation", with a mix of the song put out for the soundtrack to a movie based on a video game). "Ludens" is of course from the 2019 video game "Death Stranding", another cultural monolith unless you've barely heard of it.

I've never played a Hideo Kojima video game. He's mostly famous for the Metal Gear series which I've known about for a long time but have never been compelled to jump into, so I just have a cursory experience that amounts to watching other people play some of the games. I might do some more work on this in the future given there could be some future relevance, but for now, the closest I get is the Metal Gear inspired game on "UFO 50". I don't enjoy stealth sections anyway.

"Death Stranding" is something completely different. Set in a post-apocalyptic world where the surface world is full of deadly hazards, you're tasked with being a courier who re-connects the isolated communities that have formed. The main gameplay loop is going from one place to another and taking extreme care about maintaining balance and integrity (we can't escape these pandemic appropriate releases from 2019). It's the kind of game where a gentle slope becomes a genuine concern. It's a Kojima game so it's full of crazy dialogue and characters whose names sound like a joke if you're not familiar (Die-Hardman is my favourite). I've also never played this game but I've watched a whole playthrough years ago. You might also remember this game for the amusing gaffe by IGN when they made a video about defeating a BT, a thumbnail they had to change shortly after

I'd love to say that "Ludens" is a crucial, diegetic piece that plays during a climactic scene of the game, but it isn't the case. They do have these kinds of songs, you'll likely remember "Don't Be So Serious" from the introduction to the game, and I'd be remiss not to mention the CHVRCHES song that plays over the credits, but you could likely go through the whole game and never hear Bring Me The Horizon. It's just a song you can play in-between missions when you're knocking back ludicrous amounts of Monster energy drinks.

"Ludens" has the band diving into more electronic influences, something they've been doing more and more over the years. It makes this song a little unbalanced at first, as it spends a long time waiting to deliver the cathartic hook. Maybe I'll admit that when I'm listening to it, I spend more time than I'd like waiting for the exciting parts, but when they're on, they're on. One of the catchiest songs they've ever put out. I will not make any statement on what a luden is.

#377. Peking Duk - Fire (#29, 2018)

43rd of 2018

A while back I was talking about the unique position of EPs on the ARIA Chart, and how they tended to slightly distort the bigger picture as they can disrupt how we look at the singles chart. Which song is more popular than the other one at a given moment? Well, maybe one of them gets a handicap and you can't really tell anymore. It doesn't really happen anymore and I was unable at the time to figure out what might be the last time this was a relevant factor. Now that it's staring me in the face, I think it might be Peking Duk's legacy. Well, this was true until a couple months ago when Stray Kids scored a top 10 single thanks to EP sales. Let's call this a slightly different case, the difference between a flash in the pan and a song that looks to be 'one of the hits'.

"Fire" would be one of Peking Duk's biggest hits, a slight return to form after an underperformance in 2017. It'd be their last top 50 hit even, except technically it never charted at all. What we got was the #12 hit "Reprisal", a two track release consisting of "Fire" and also the song "Distant Arizona", a collaboration with Cloud Control. I'm not particularly familiar with that track because it's never really been a notable entity. "Fire" has it beaten on global streams by a factor of 50. I don't know what the ratio was like when the 'single' was in the chart, but even that amount would be tantamount to a 2% boost, nothing that's gonna change the world, but might win some slight position tussles on a weekly basis. Still, it's a weird thing to see, it'd be like if Drake had one of the biggest hits of the year and the chart just said "Scary Hours".

This is a reprisal for me, simply because I've gone out of order. This is the second Peking Duk song to appear here that features Sarah Aarons on vocals, along with "Chemicals" (#390). When "Fire" was around, I didn't have "Chemicals" to compare it to, so instead I was looking at "Keeping Score" (#817), both songs seemed to chart similarly well, though the brand value of Peking Duk may have helped this one in the charts.

It wasn't a song I was particularly drawn to at the time, as it felt like Peking Duk were regressing to style over substance. My first thoughts are to notice all the compositional factors and read them like a checklist. The guitar riff worked in "Fake Magic" (#561), so let's do it again. The blast of sound chorus? Wouldn't be a Peking Duk song without it! Sarah Aarons has also gotten to be quite a star in recent years too, probably don't need to shop around for another vocalist. I couldn't really rationalise it as a hit other than them managing to trim down the fluff and put out something direct and effective. "White Noise" never felt like an instant classic for The Living End, but it has a simple point and it gets to it quickly, so it's not surprising to me that it's one of their most popular songs. Simple messages and images, just does the trick.

I am once again reporting that one of these many cases has grown on me with persistence. I think it's a song that excels at stringing you along to get the place you know you're destined to go. The song actually starts with its chorus lead-in line and I think that's a good choice because it's the strongest part of the song. I wonder if they knowingly realised what they were competing with when they emphasised the line 'if that's the way it's gonna be', but then they went riding with the ducklings so no harm there.

#376. King Stingray - Camp Dog (#27, 2022)

35th of 2022

It's hard to leave this bit out so let's get it out of the way. It sounds like Yirrŋa is saying 'CatDog, please don't bite me'. Now, I watched my fair share of CatDog as a child, and while the idea of making dark and twisted versions of children's entertainment is not something I'm usually interested in (and it's usually the only time the show gets brought up), I think there's something amusing about imagining a ravenous CatDog chasing someone down. Dog probably has a very good reason for it in his own head, while Cat once again has to face the punishment of association. Oh boy, I can count the number of times I let all those unruly students have it when I had to be held in for recess at school for it, I'm holding up every finger for it as I shake my fist at the screen.

If you're unfamiliar like me, but had to make an assumption based on what's happening in this song, then you'd probably be right. The titular camp dog refers to dogs that patrol the streets in Arnhem Land. Unlike me, when King Stingray reminisce on something potentially traumatic from growing up, they do it with a nostalgic love. Maybe that comes with growing up, or maybe it's because most people just tend to like dogs. Even as someone who doesn't generally, I'll at least concede that the music video is very cute and amusing.

I've still got a few iterations of the King Stingray hit streak to come, and the fact remains that you generally know what you're gonna get with them. Is it a rockin' good time? Of course it is. Is there some quality didgeridoo? They use it to make it sound like there's a dog barking in the background, what more could you want? This is actually their highest ever ranking song in the Hottest 100, something I didn't remember at all until making sure I hadn't made a typo at the top of this entry. One can only concede that they have correctly deduced the needs of their target audience. Everyone loves dogs, no one loves getting bitten by dogs. Finally, we have a song for that.

#385-#381

 #385. Jai Wolf - Indian Summer (#93, 2015)

44th of 2015

I've been wanting to make a point about how no matter how exciting the upstart may be, the student always inevitably falls short of the master. The victories are brief, but hollow, as the experienced vanguard inevitably reminds us why they're the big wheel. I've been telling myself for years that Jai Wolf was something of a protégé to Skrillex. He possibly was signed to Skrillex's label although I'm having trouble confirming it outside of a single article. He's actually signed to ODESZA's label, though he has worked with Skrillex a bunch so it still counts. In any case, I'm just bringing this up to say that Jai Wolf's one solitary moment of Hottest 100 glory was slightly overshadowed by Skrillex somewhat fluking his name higher up in the same year (#639), given how infrequently he polls. He's got ODESZA beat, or at least he did, but then they eventually had a slightly higher finish anyway (#550). I'm giving Jai Wolf the win though.

I don't know if this is remotely interesting but a couple of months ago I was put across an old Jeopardy! clue about the definition of an Indian Summer, which cites the American Meteorological Society and to paraphrase them, it's when it's particularly warm during autumn. When it came up, I learnt that the term is potentially offensive, and the AMS actually changed their designation on the website to discourage people from using it. They did this, 3 months after that Jeopardy! clue aired, so the clue wasn't out of date (until they re-used it again on their daily calendar), and part of me wonders if this was a catalyst to making the change. I don't know why Jai Wolf chose this particular song title. He did release it in the summer, and he's the only musician I know from Bangladesh (though he's largely only lived in America), while the lyrics to this song are in Hindi. Maybe the phrase just stood out to him and he worked from there.

"Indian Summer" is a delight to catch in the Hottest 100. Not the sort of song I'd ever find space to vote for, but one that you catch the opening notes of in the countdown and you just think that it's great to see there. We don't like to admit it but I think we can all be grateful for the collection of different voters making sure that we're not all just voting the same genres of music in unison. Someone has to stand up for the top picks across the spectrum. I did have some space in my heart for it at the time, but maybe it wasn't helped that I was listening to it during spring.

The reason I have to speculate on the title for this song is that there isn't really much to go by. This song is not an instrumental, though you may be forgiven for thinking that way. It's all just one Hindi phrase chopped up and looped all over, 'Chand pe le gaye yaar mere', which if I'm to trust the internet, means 'Let us take the moon, and stay there'. It's very interesting that romanticising of the moon continues even long after the space race and the little investment there seems to be anymore. When Jimmy Stewart says he'll lasso the moon as a gesture of love in "It's a Wonderful Life", it feels more monumental since no one had ever played golf on the moon at that stage.

What I notice when I listen to "Indian Summer" now is how it seemed to stealthily show Jai Wolf's inclinations in a way that's only become clear in hindsight. It's an eclectic song that sticks out with its memorable vocal loops, but it's controlled with some anthemic synths on what could probably be called a chorus. I was thinking that the other Jai Wolf songs I've been aware of since then match closer to that component of the song. "Lost" and "Don't Look Down" (the latter featuring a presently unmentionable) feel like huge pop tracks akin to Carly Rae Jepsen's "Run Away With Me". "Don't Look Down" also lets Jai Wolf join the exclusive club of artists that I have voted for in the Hottest 100, so that's pretty cool.

#384. Baker Boy (feat KIAN) - Cloud 9 (#76, 2017)

39th of 2017

I'm writing this a couple of days after the GRAMMY Award nominations came out. I don't have much to say about it but I do want to focus on the Best New Artist category because it's one of the most scrutinised ones. I spoke about it a bit when I was talking about Jack Garratt (#687), but the short version of it is that it's very difficult to get right. You want a full roster of nominees that feel justified, where they weren't likely to be nominated previously, but feel like they've sufficiently cemented themselves as notable newcomers in that 12 month period. This time around I think the committee really did nail the first assignment. You're not gonna get 8 Olivia Rodrigos in a single year but I think they recognised what they did have in front of them, rather than the usual affair of disregarding the future stars even when they're there, because they don't believe in them.

The final assignment is choosing who wins it, and it's the most interesting because while a snub is a snub, the nominations in the long term are always going to be mentioned next to their deemed superior. Maybe Alessia Cara beating SZA didn't seem too odd at the time, but it's only looking more ridiculous over time. That was a funny one too because it could be argued that Alessia had so much extra time to accumulate that attention given she had a hit song a good 2 years beforehand. That's the problem when someone's late to the nominations table, it makes the win feel like a cop out because they've got the proven safety of longevity and more time to be established.

Do you know who else also won an award in 2018 under similar circumstances? That's KIAN. It's a bit unfair I suppose but it really did seem just like an easy choice to make. The previous year's Unearthed High winner Arno Faraji has never made the Hottest 100, but we can trust the guy who's already done it the year before. In combination with his swift major label signing, it's all just too laid out for him in a way that discredits his genuine talents. Artists with obvious connection advantages are always going to be criticised even if they're just as talented because it leaves that thought in your head that they might not have made it otherwise. I also should point out that KIAN beat The Kid LAROI that year so he has his own SZA (and Arno Faraji beat Ninajirachi). At the end of the day, he's within his rights to do it this way, but it's why I like this year's GRAMMY field. Maybe they'll make a terrible decision with it that ages like milk, but I won't feel like someone had a strong competitive advantage (unless you were already aware that The Marías had a feature credit on one of the most popular albums of the decade a few years ago).

I'm saying all of this because I don't really have much to say about "Cloud 9" specifically. It is Baker Boy's debut single, which is notable in its own right, but the way things played out, it already was surpassed in notoriety very quickly by the follow up single. I knew that other song first, so this one has always felt like the rough, less polished draft. Just from the intro to the song it sounds like Baker Boy is just warming up. It's still got all of the usual Baker Boy charm, and I suppose with how quickly the production values started going up, there's a unique feeling to this one. I also just want to point out that two months before this song, there was already a song by Jamiroquai that's called "Cloud 9", and this is the day I learn there's yet another Matt Johnson.

#383. Hockey Dad - I Missed Out (#60, 2019)

27th of 2019

It was not long ago but I'm inclined to want to reiterate everything I said about "Fantasising" (#408). This was the Hockey Dad equivalent of it just a little while earlier. It's probably more notable because at the time I was having even stronger feelings where I'd wish I'd gotten into some of their earlier singles while they were fresh. Latching onto "I Missed Out" felt true to the title, and I was never even close to being deluded into thinking it was the superior release. I might have even gotten worn down on it for a while in my attempts to find that gold again. It's been quite a while though so I think I can assess it on its own merits now.

I think the most peculiar thing in hindsight is that it was technically the biggest hit off the band's third album. Lead single buff is serious but it's also not going anywhere either. It might just have been the crucial single release when Hockey Dad interest was at an all-time high, and maybe me latching onto the song at the time was even part of that. Most of the time I just have no recollection of their singles first coming out, but it's not the case with this one.

If you're looking for a life-changing single, you might have to look elsewhere, but I do think this one craves attention too. That opening guitar riff is one of the nastiest sounding ones they've ever put out, and the song feels built around it. Along with that though, Billy's drumming just absolutely ascends this one. He's not content to just slip in the background so you can count on a big drum fill every 10 seconds or so. When you listen closely in general, you can't avoid the fact that this is clearly a two-piece band, but this is getting a lot of traction out of simplicity.

#382. The Amity Affliction - Like Love (#70, 2021)

34th of 2021

Ball Park Music finished at #43 in 2024 with a song called "Like Love". Maybe we're breeding an unlikely contender for another common title, but for the time being, we've got one of the most distinctly contrasting pairs of shared titles in the canon. "Like Love" is a particularly relaxed Ball Park Music song. I'm not sure where you'd place "Like Love" in the spectrum of The Amity Affliction, but I don't think it matters generally because even their most radio friendly moments are still a few island hops away from what everyone else is doing.

Things might even end up swinging further away in the future. Something I've neglected to mention in any of my Amity Affliction entries is that Ahren is no longer in the band (he was fired, in fact), and has been replaced by Kingdom of Giants' Jonathan Reeves. I think he has a stronger but less distinctive voice, but I can see a result from this where Joel gets more of the spotlight as the longest standing member at this point. We've also reached our Ship of Theseus moment because Ahren was the last original member.

"Like Love" might represent some of the biggest contrasts between light & dark. Just an utterly relentless song until Ahren hits us with his 'like lowove'. Before that when he and Joel are trading lines it's a good set up that gets the best out of both of them. Joel has some great growls on the bridge though. I'm always hearing about singers who can't maintain it, but he's been taking good care of his vocal cords for two decades now and still sounds as good as ever.

#381. Teenage Joans - Wine (#84, 2021)

33rd of 2021

I tend to forget that Teenage Joans are another Unearthed High winning band. I think mainly because they slowly drifted away from their early tradition of awarding it to bands with ill-advised names they'd end up changing, and over to solo artists with modest industry connections. On the other hand, the ill-advised names have started to make a comeback, shout out to 'Lee' and 'Drizzz'. Teenage Joans aren't the only one though, because there's another band that won the year after them and picked up a couple of entries I'll be talking about. If you thought I'd get to them before Teenage Joans, well, surprise! It's also perhaps noteworthy that this career boost means that both members of Teenage Joans were in fact teenagers when they got notably famous, which I can't say is true of other similarly named bands from a similar time frame.

I'm also talking about the song "Wine" which is notable because it's not their winning song, but one that came out a year afterwards. Though I might be omitting some noteworthy measures of success (and I'm continuing to dodge landmines to type this out), this does make Teenage Joans the first Unearthed High winners since Japanese Wallpaper to actually return to the polling list the year after the fact. The problem with the annual new talent competition is that you don't necessarily stake out larger pieces of the pie. Rather you either find a star who dwarfs all future discoveries (see American Idol, Australian Idol), or you just create a revolving door where the spotlight is fleeting because you'll need to make way for next year's winner. I guess it's all the more impressive given that you could argue Teenage Joans' successors as perhaps the most lucrative winners since its inception.

It is not particularly hard to tell that "Wine" is a song written by teenagers. Within the first few lines, they're already talking about spelling bees. When I was about 7 or 8, I picked up a rhyming joke song with my brother and someone I only knew through an after school care program. I hesitate to repeat the whole thing because it's quite profane but one of the less memorable bars of it was 'I went outside to rest my head / suddenly I hit my head'. I'll just say that the proto beatboxing between each line gave it some flavour, but bars, honestly. I'm reminded of this when Teenage Joans give us the pearler 'Oh it hurts my head 'cause you hurt my head, yeah you hurt my head'. I respect something that hasn't been cleaned up by an industry guy, you get something more honest and revealing. It still sounds very silly though.

The title lyric is a similar story, and feels like a bit of a laboured metaphor. I can see the flow chart forming where they've realised 'aging like fine wine' is an idiom that can be looked at alongside its literal meaning because wine is a real thing that people drink. Except no, probably not Teenage Joans at their age. It's honest, but honestly I think it carries a layer of self-reflection to it. The conflict between being drawn to someone on a possibly superficial level but realising that the whole picture has some problems with it. Even still, they're throwing him a bone with the metaphor because there's the possibility that it's all something that'll make sense with time. That's just coming from me as someone who likes to give people the benefit of the doubt, otherwise I'd just say it doesn't all roll off the tongue particularly well and it's a bad lyric. The pop sensibility is definitely there though, just that smooth transition in with the first line of the chorus is a killer hook on its own, so maybe that's what I should be focusing the telescope on.