#395-#391

#395. Big Scary - The Opposite of Us (#17, 2016)

42nd of 2016

One of the first music videos I fondly remember watching was for "Ms. Jackson" by OutKast. It's generally a song that tends to stick out since Big Boi & Andre 3000 both remember to fit in that one memorable bit during their verses. The video deserves some credit too, finding a middle ground between looking like a ray of sunshine (until the end) and feeling like it's trying to evoke terror. It's just gloomy, stressful, and full of cute animals, love that owl. The main thing you've got to remember is near the end of the song when they have the dog walk along the piano to make the actual production feel diegetic in the moment.

You've probably seen that video, right? It's on YouTube, over 400 million views, very likely this is the case. On the other hand, are you aware of the Big Scary spider thing? If you manage to transport yourself back to 2016 and find anyone talking about this song, you're going to see references to this but not actually find it. I've tried very hard and gotten nowhere. What I can only guess started from a joke about "The Opposite of Us"'s piano hook sounding like a spider creeping across a piano has managed to morph into a performance piece. There's a photo of Matt Okine in a spider suit while Alex Dyson is playing the piano. I know it exists but I can't find it at all anymore. All I can say I learnt from the experience is that I probably heard Matt's standup comedy long before he was on triple j because he got himself a brief spotlight on an episode of Rove Live back around 2008 and the jokes sound familiar. Ryan Shelton was part of organising the competition that led to this, so that's the first domino towards that 'Like a librarian!' ad being all over TV in 2025 (the second domino was the weird bounce). Matt also voted for this song in the Hottest 100 of 2016, so any possible mockery was done with the greatest of esteem.

At the time I remember thinking that turning this song into a meme of sorts is how it got so big. There's another song I want to dive into about this in the future, but it's a very lucrative business model. It serves as a simple answer to an otherwise difficult question, how on earth did a Big Scary song get this popular? This is stepping well beyond their usual bounds in a way that only makes sense if you imagine a greater influence tipping the scales. Sure, it's a very likeable song that resonated accordingly, I just wouldn't think the audience reach is feasible. I said the very same thing about "Luck Now" (#701) as well. Subsequent Big Scary albums haven't made anywhere near the same impact, so it sticks out even more.

This is such a lovey-dovey song that I had to extensively double check that Tom and Joanna weren't a couple themselves. I'm 90% sure they aren't, but they both have children and I've never been able to identify their partners anywhere (if they don't deem it a necessary part of their public profile, that's completely valid). Maybe this whole song would just come across as too cheesy if it really was written and performed by two people in love. I suppose we take away the most validating version of events.

#394. Skegss - Valhalla (#55, 2021)

37th of 2021

I've never been particularly drawn to Norse mythology, apologies to Neil Gaiman (or I guess, maybe not). Sometimes you've just got to get in early, and for me, Disney's "Hercules" came out years before "Age Of Mythology". By the time that hit, I didn't know what a Norse was, and I just wanted Zeus to throw lightning bolts. In my MCU adventures I've had a bit of a soft spot for the Thor movies. I think they strike a good balance of stakes and power structures. You're gonna have to put some limitations in there if you're dealing with literal gods. Also nothing from any of those movies lives more rent free in my head than Chris Hemsworth saying 'Do I look to be in a gaming mood?'. Technically that's from an Avengers movie, but we take those. It's been well over a year since I mentioned the fact that the Lime Cordiale & Idris Elba partnership started when one of the movies was filmed in Sydney due to the pandemic. I've now recently seen that movie and Idris Elba is only in a post-credits scene. I don't know if this is funny or not but it's worth acknowledging.

I'm not sure how much research Skegss did into the topic. You don't get a lot to work with in this song, just a second or third row clue on Jeopardy! about how Valhalla is the great hall where warriors go after being slain in battle. Benny from Skegss says he was inspired by "The Last Kingdom" anyway. It's a solid excuse to live (and die) it out in the music video though. If nothing else, you'll feel blessed to live in a time when Scotch Fingers exist.

The song has always stood out to me a little just because of that one guitar riff. I wouldn't say it evokes Norse mythology, but there's a memorable urgency to it that sticks out alongside other Skegss songs. Pretty standard affair outside of that, so maybe defer to regular Skegss business here.

#393. The Kid LAROI (feat Juice WRLD) - GO (#60, 2020)

33rd of 2020

In hindsight, Juice WRLD's unexpected sudden passing might be one of the biggest turning points of popular music at the end of the 2010s. It's recently been noted that there were no rap songs in the Billboard top 40 for the first time in 35 years. This is partly influenced by new chart rules that I suspect will continue to not favour rap music, but also what are you supposed to do when a whole generation of stars didn't live to see what should be their heyday? Juice WRLD lived on less than a week after he reached legal drinking age and still managed to leave behind a massive catalogue of music in that time. That's the work of someone who obviously has a lot of ideas, but also still hasn't fully matured and certainly could've managed greater ambitions with it. The closest approximation we've gotten to see instead is the career of The Kid LAROI.

Before The Kid LAROI had ever charted a single in Australia, he'd already supported Juice WRLD on tour multiple times, including what turned out to be his last ever tour in November 2019. This all came about through a connection on Grade A Productions & Columbia Records. Standard affair really, but the two connected into something described as a mentorship. This song wouldn't exist if they weren't hanging out together in a studio at some point. I think The Kid LAROI's music has drifted quite a bit since then, but every now and then he'll release another cloudy chilled out song like "A COLD PLAY" or "NIGHTS LIKE THIS" and the Juice WRLD influence rings out so strongly. I think they're some of the best songs he's ever made, same with "GO".

The Kid LAROI's rise was rapid. He scored his first top 100 hit in Australia at the start of 2020. In June he had his first ever top 50 hit with "GO", and just 13 months later had two #1 hits and the biggest song in the world (#669). It's a release pattern that's gonna look relentless to anyone who was growing up around it, like how I felt when I learnt that there was a new Need For Speed & Tony Hawk video game nearly every year in the 2000s. All just a constant shifting of the goal posts for what is his signature hit in a way that leaves "GO" lost in the shuffle. A significant hit left feeling irrelevant mere months after release, as both The Kid LAROI, and even Juice WRLD's posthumous releases just dwarfed it completely.

The Kid LAROI's early releases were often very unpolished. The musings of a teenager still figuring out what he wants to do, but already has an ear for sticky hooks. It's been years and I still can't forget all the hooks to "Diva", laid down as aggressively as they are. Arguably his music hasn't fully shaken that off, it just has a shinier coat of paint to disguise it. "GO" felt like a step forward in figuring out how to utilise the situation. He mumbles through a chorus that seems to lose clarity even when he's repeating the same words, and even his more sung cadence on the verses is a little hard to make out too. Still, his voice strikes a great balance with the instrumental, a more laid back one than usual, and the song just drifts through effortlessly. If you do find The Kid LAROI's squawking to be a bit off-putting, then Juice WRLD's lower tones can be a reprieve. I won't be tackling The Kid LAROI's discography after this, but Juice WRLD still has some more to go, go, go.

#392. The Presets - Do What You Want (#93, 2017)

40th of 2017

Last night I was watching a video by 'i am a dot.' about video game sequels that ruin their entire series going forward through their own ambitions. It was talking specifically about the Star Fox, Katamari & Banjo-Kazooie franchises whose second games left an impossible task to follow up, with different strategies that ultimately left everything to be a disappointment by comparison. It's a crushing realisation that ambitious follow-up efforts set an unmatchable precedent. Meanwhile it's entirely possible to coast by without much change in the formula that works. I'm writing this before the new one comes out, but there hasn't been a year since 2009 that there wasn't a Call of Duty game in the top 2 annual best sellers in the US. If they've been adding killer new features every single year then that's news to me.

I brought up something similar last time I talked about The Presets (#436), but I want to open up that book again, in part because I just listened to a bunch of Presets albums and I need to collect my thoughts somewhere. Just looking at it from this perspective, I see a lot of those examples with this duo. Their first album "Beams" had splashes with success but didn't take them to the stratosphere. Not surprisingly when I listen to it, with a few exceptions, it's not an album that seems particularly interested in doing so. It's establishing The Presets as a duo who make electronic music, but the spark of direction hasn't fully formed. When I consider the album's breakout hit "Are You The One?", you can see the wheels turning towards their eventual destination. It feels like a prototype for "Apocalypso", where all the prior versions of what The Presets were, become locked in on this specific figure. Loud, thumping tunes with Julian barking equally loud mantras. They'd run the loops into the ground but make it irresistible all the same. No one was escaping the grip they had over the airwaves in 2008. By now you've probably heard the story about how will.i.am heard "My People" while he was in Australia that year and used it as inspiration for the next Black Eyed Peas album, "The E.N.D.", a major impact right then, but also a catalyst for years of EDM domination in America.

The issue I was tackling in my head when I was writing the previous Presets entry was whether or not "Apocalypso" actually held up 17 years later. That's a long time in the world of electronic music, enough time for a whole new generation to come through to tweak the formula into something a little more effective. Even if they don't necessarily improve it, you're inevitably going to be left with something that's the product of its time, and sounding increasingly distant from the present day with every passing year. In any case, you'll probably create a false version of it in your head, one that's better than it actually is. I think a lot of creatives experience this issue when they put out something new and it's suddenly disregarded as subpar because their previous works have been mythologised and sanded over to an unreasonable extent. I was listening to Ninajirachi's album recently and it just feels like it's setting a new bar for what you should be doing with this genre of music.

I still do enjoy "Apocalypso" a lot. If I'm looking for an album to put on while you're focused on something else, there aren't many better options for me. That might just be because I'm used to all the quirks so nothing is a surprise anymore, but it absolutely fulfils its mission statement of being relentless. I do maintain some of my reservations I hinted at previously though. You get a lot of cuts where I start questioning if all the best decisions were made, or if they just chucked out the first thing they thought of. "A New Sky" has an ill-fitting chorus that drags on and never arrives without feeling awkward. "Together" is intense, but feels like a less realised version of "My People". "Aeons" and "If I Know You" just feel awkwardly placed next to it.

When The Presets released "Do What You Want", the lead single for their 4th album, I thought it might have suggested a return to this sound, begrudgingly or otherwise. It's got all those previously defined hallmarks of "Apocalypso" but 10 years in the future, as if to say they can still do it if they want to. It became their first Hottest 100 entry in 5 years (they actually never really had an off year, but it's a long time without releasing anything after a relatively underperforming album in-between), proving that there was still an audience craving it.

It takes us to what is The Presets' most recent album, 2018's "Hi Viz". I'll spoil the mystery, it's also not another "Apocalypso", and instead takes them to strange new places. Previous albums have been largely without collaborators, but this one has Alison Wonderland, Jake Shears and even DMA'S helping out. It almost feels like we've returned to the mentality of "Beams", where every new track carves out a different idea. If like me, you've also aged 18 years since 2008, then you may well appreciate just how much more dynamic range there is here. Just further proof that even if they're not creating hits like they used to, musicians tend to just get better at their craft over time. I don't have as strong an attachment to "14U+14ME" as some of those earlier releases, but I've got to appreciate what they've managed to do with what almost feels like a "My People" remix at times. I wonder how high I'd rank it if it had polled and I had more time with it (it landed at #175 in 2018), maybe above this one.

At the end of the day, "Do What You Want" appeals to my baseline instincts. It gets me moving and has a hook as catchy as it is mind-numbing. Maybe it's a total throwaway, but then I've also spent the last week playing the newest Katamari game. It's offering very little other than more of what I've already enjoyed, and maybe it's even a little worse (I think the controls don't feel as comfortable as usual and haven't had the same feeling of becoming an unstoppable menace as before), but my main thought has just been 'hell yeah, new Katamari!'.

#391. The Jungle Giants - Treat You Right (#68, 2021)

36th of 2021

It doesn't always have to be deep. I constantly think about how a lot of general opinions on music can start to reflect a seemingly bizarre ideal. Music that adds to the discourse is good, music that feels like a backwards step is bad. There are other factors to it of course, the previously established audience can set the tone for who's allowed to get away with what, but I see a version of myself, looking at some songs and starting to reject them on principle. How can I possibly like something if it gives me nothing to talk about?

Maybe that isn't an entirely unfair approach, it just seems like one that begets an unreasonably high (and unusual) standard. I like to imagine that among all the people in united voices praising a lot of the same opinions, that there's some nuance behind the scenes. Maybe like me, they're primarily listening to pleasant but frivolous music. Then I'll see someone's Topster or their RYM profile and feel like they got lost in the idea that there are only a select handful of praiseworthy albums, and it's just a matter of if you like "Currents" or "Wish You Were Here" more. If you've never loved anything that isn't already widely acclaimed, then you'd absolutely hate "Treat You Right".

It's got all the makings of being completely forgettable. Here's The Jungle Giants for the 9th time and they're still on their dance pop binge. When's the actual hit coming through? I probably felt something similar when it came in. Just another entry to please the fans that's thoroughly inessential to everyone else. No one's gonna take you down a peg if you dare insult or even ignore "Treat You Right".

So naturally it ended up growing on me a lot. I think it strikes a different chord to all of their other post-"Heavy Hearted" (#491) singles. The tempo is a little bouncier, and I think the pre-chorus is a particular highlight. It's one that takes the sound to the logical extreme, sounding completely like a build up to an EDM drop, but it still feels like The Jungle Giants all the same. Ironically, you can hear Janet from Confidence Man's voice on this track so we're dealing with a very tenuous middle point between these two entities. I also want to point out the music video as being highly bizarre. Sam growing and training a bunch of Sams in a greenhouse until seemingly getting replaced a la "Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers". At least they didn't get in the kiln.