#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 clue aired, so the clue wasn't out of date (until they re-used it again on their daily calendar), and part of me wonders if this was a catalyst to making the change.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.