#345-#341

#345. The Rions - Anakin (#64, 2022)

30th of 2022

I'm sorry, I'm not very knowledgeable on the Star Wars franchise. I've seen three of the films but only remember one of them particularly well. Most of my knowledge comes from either internet memes or the things that people yell about. I've never felt compelled to dive deeper into it because of the aforementioned yelling. It's not too important in this case though because even The Rions admitted in an interview that there isn't really anything to do with it in the song. They seemed happy that people who don't know what it means seem to like the song anyway, but I'm not convinced they know either. To me, this recalls a different 1999 film, mainly when they say 'I want you to want me'. Don't ask me for hot takes on "10 Things I Hate About You" either, haven't watched the whole thing.

Nonetheless, we've finally reached arguably the most successful Unearthed High winners, or at least the ones that have most efficiently transferred interest beyond the initial grace period. The Rions have 9 Hottest 100 entries, no one else has more than 2. They recently debuted at #5 on the ARIA album chart, higher than anyone else. Of course, I'd have to ignore some other finalists like Hockey Dad, The Kid LAROI & Genesis Owusu, but it's proof that the selection panel had the right idea. Things could change, but none of their fellow 2021 nominees have had a big breakout moment yet. The Rions have fully succeeded in seeming like a regular band who made their way into the system by making memorable and catchy songs for the radio. On the surface they might seem a bit boring, but I'm putting the proof in the pudding that I generally like these songs.

For "Anakin", I want to draw the comparison to The Rubens, a different kind of Unearthed alumni, who I suspect are pitching to a pretty similar audience. They've got the same soulful affectation in the vocal delivery, and play a brand of rock that's not going to offend anyone for being too ambitious. I think it's the drumming that makes this one stand out a bit more. It feels like Tom is taking every possible opportunity to have his moment on this one, and it never feels indulgent, just makes the whole thing pop.

#344. Flume (feat Vince Staples & Kučka) - Smoke & Retribution (#37, 2016)

38th of 2016

Grab a Sprite, you know where this is going. It's late 2015 and I've just been introduced to a new classic. A career defining song not just for Vince Staples who rapped it, but also Clams Casino who produced it. Pick out your favourite lyric I can't say out loud because it's "Norf Norf" time. I don't think it necessarily asserted itself in the moment, but I'm looking at it now with over 300 million streams and it's fair to say we got there in the end. It's become so normalised that it's even in the most recent Tony Hawk's Pro Skater remake, or at least, all the words they were able to keep in it are. I'll now associate it with trying to get the secret tape in Canada the wrong way because I hadn't found the secret switch. The song also got more famous in another way, thanks to a white Christian mother going viral on YouTube complaining about the song's lyrical content. It's a fascinating look at a foreign perspective. Someone who is perturbed by the violent lyricism, but doesn't skip a beat to say the n-word, and takes most offense at the lyric about skipping school. If the mission was to warn people about the dangers of modern music, all it really did was make the song more famous. It was the first and only time I ever saw the song pop up on the iTunes chart. Why else do you think I don't like talking about songs I don't like?

Between these instances, Vince Staples had something resembling a pop career. Feeding off the release week hype of whatever ended up being the next single released by Flume after "Never Be Like You" (#400), he got onto the charts for a single week, with one of Flume's least convincing crossover singles. Nothing about "Smoke & Retribution" feels like it should work other than it coming out when it did, and being the convenient song for Flume to perform when he came in for Like A Version later that year, since he had Vince Staples and Kučka in supply. For that matter, I should mention Kučka, but she'll be on another Flume single later on, so I'll do it then. Flume comes up here 18 times, so I've got to spread out the topics as best as I can.

If you think electronic music is just bleeps & bloops, I don't think this one's gonna change your mind. Maybe some credit can be given to the performers here for carving out a unique sound here, but maybe it's just going to sound like multiple songs thrown together. I am fond of the half-hearted effort to put it all together though. Just this cold, metallic sound with some of the most fun audio panning going around.

#343. Alex Lahey - I Haven't Been Taking Care of Myself (#36, 2017)

35th of 2017

Sometimes an artist gets a new biggest hit of their career, and it might not feel like the logical pick. In these cases, it's probably a placeholder that represents a general increase in popularity, but one that doesn't have the appropriate song to manifest it just yet. Then their actual career peak comes along and we're left reminiscing that brief period where something else was suggested. Sometimes, it just never comes along and we're stuck with what we started on.

In the case of Alex Lahey, maybe there just never was going to be a likely candidate. She's not really going for gimmicks, so nothing is going to stand out in that way. There'll be a biggest hit by some measure, but it won't stick out and have you say 'yes, that's the one'. Well, if I was pressed to pick one, I might go for another song that comes up later here, but under these bounds, "I Haven't Been Taking Care of Myself" is as big as it gets. Before you're tempted to think the obvious joke, I'll have you know that it actually isn't even the longest title she's got here, so no, it's not that.

Maybe on a superficial level, we're treading familiar ground. Not that the song had been released at this point, but I see the title here and listen to the lyrics, the only thing that comes to mind is "Pretty Grim" (#423). Songs about being a basket case have been doing numbers on the Hottest 100 since at least 1994.

I've always been taken aback by this result. It has me waiting to see if I'll listen to the song and finally have it click. I always liked it, but more in a steady follow up single way, so it's never really been the star of the show for me. Those late singles can sometimes have the longest legs, as Two Door Cinema Club might tell you. It still hasn't happened though. Maybe this is a bit more upbeat than usual which springs up some attention, but it doesn't come off as naturally as some of her others.

#342. Teenage Dads - Teddy (#63, 2022)

29th of 2022

I don't know if it's often appreciated just how few one and done artists there are here. I've had a small handful of late, but the vast majority of it all comes from those who just keep finding their way back in. That notion of a gimmick artist we're not going to check back in with just keeps getting rarer. Future Lucas iterations stay firmly with the lid on. Teenage Dads aren't one of these either, but they've just got the one entry here for me, saving me the trouble of finding multiple ways to say they sound like The Strokes or Katy Perry or whatever they're up to at the moment.

I already hinted at this a few weeks ago, but I'll get the important thing out of the way. When Teenage Dads first got together, they were teenagers. Still in high school even. They chugged away at the music thing for a whole 6 years before they finally got signed to Chugg in 2021. This is still going on today; I'm writing this on the same day they released a Christmas song. They first got on my radar in 2022 with the song "Exit Sign", one of their more Strokes influenced songs with a good grasp on dynamic variation. They're not a very gimmicky band if that's what you're here for, but they can make some likeable tunes.

"Teddy" might be the closest they've gotten to challenging that notion. We briefly put away our comparisons to The Strokes and instead look more closely to Ball Park Music. I want to say they put away their wacky hat at this time because they'd only polled with "Stars In My Eyes" (#568), but that would be ignoring the elephant that's 70%, 60%, 50%, 40% in the room. Maybe they really were getting weirder & weirder. They hadn't been using the zany hat though, the kind that gets us songs like "Fence Sitter". If that's what you're after, you'll immediately get your fill with "Teddy", an absolute sugar rush of a song. It's the kind of thing that I've wanted to hear them do more of. I guess Teddy doesn't live here anymore.

#341. Olivia Rodrigo - good 4 u (#4, 2021)

29th of 2021

If we imagine a hypothetical version of this list that I started one year earlier, we'd have a pretty different list to be working with. Rudimental would be waiting down the line with three drum & bass bangers instead of just one. Maybe I could rehabilitate that one electronic song I never much liked, but heard on shuffle the other day and wasn't bothered, the one that isn't "Love Is All I Got", though I can't say the artist's name yet. Most of all though, it would just help me out a little bit here. "good 4 u" is a remarkably successful song, even by the standards of Olivia Rodrigo where basically any song she's ever released does rather well. It's also a song that holds an ominous degree of infamy: The infamy of copyright nonsense.

At present, there are 4 credited writers on "good 4 u". Olivia Rodrigo and Dan Nigro are the obvious two. The other two I can't mention yet. Again, if I were doing this a year prior, it wouldn't have been a going concern. I could just say them, because they're not from a triple j relevant band at all. That flipped over in 2022, and it just so happened to be a welcome entry at that, so we're keeping it under wraps for now. At least I've been able to say Muse freely at any given opportunity instead, I probably get more mileage out of that.

You probably know what it all is anyway, but the shorter version of this all is that "good 4 u" got struck down in a case because it kind of sounds like a different song. It's never sat right with me. Firstly because spotting similarities in songs, especially by wildly different artists is one of the great joys for me, one that I have to control myself from spreading because I don't want to be the first domino in a chain that leads to disrespecting Colin Hay. Secondly because I just don't buy it. When "Blurred Lines" lost a case to the Marvin Gaye estate on a matter of vibes, it set a hugely dangerous precedent, and here we go. We're talking about two songs that don't even sound alike. Two songs that are only connected because they're pop punk songs performed by women, and in the mainstream zeitgeist, there just aren't many of those. To engage in the discourse of X artist ripping off Y artist is to be no better than the dregs of social media comment sections. Bad faith engagement that doubles as proudly spouting ignorance.

Aside from that though, this was a big deal single for Olivia Rodrigo. The one that proved she wasn't just a higher budget Lauren Spencer Smith (a reference that only makes sense doing this years after the fact). She was here to stay, and set new precedents for just how successful a debut album could be. Or for that matter, pop punk in the 2020s. It was already making a slight splash in the previous year, but it was more in the form of mgk and iann dior, where it felt more like an extension of trap. "good 4 u" isn't mixing it up with modern sounds at all. That's broken open the charts in a pretty big way after a decade of walls closing in on each other. It's like a wake up call that a new generation is here and they're bored of what we we've been listening to. I like that.

As for how this track fares on its own terms, I think pretty well. I think if you're going to re-open a sealed vault for popular music, you've got to be immediate about it, and there aren't many songs that more readily sound like a hit on first listen quite like this. There's a direct simplicity to it that's just so difficult to follow on from. This is probably why when it came to the follow up album, nothing hit quite as well as this, and any attempts just feel like an odd mutation. It doesn't make them bad, just lacking the same general appeal. They're probably the songs that work best for me anyway, because "good 4 u" hasn't had spectacular shelf life for me. Overplay will come for everyone you've ever loved if given the chance.