#280-#276

#280. The Buoys - Lie To Me Again (#85, 2021)

19th of 2021

There's a strange Australian link with Amazon series "The Boys". I first thought about it last year when someone highlighted a niche reference from the prop department that would mean nothing to most people, but lit up the eyes of Australians. There was a series of names on a sheet of paper. There was a Veronica Barassi, followed by a Franklin, Prestia & Skilton. Fascinating in its own right, but then I learnt that in addition to two Kiwi stars, there's also an Australian actress on the show, while self-professed nepo baby Jack Quaid often collaborates with Aunty Donna and executive produced their AFL podcast (though he wasn't familiar with the sport). When Mother's Milk is first introduced, it's via a bunch of people calling him "Mr. Milk". There's a whole looking glass I need to get through, but in the meantime, I missed the boat on watching the show and only started watching it a few days before I knew I'd be typing this up. I have tried my darnedest to get through the whole show before this post went live but I've still got half a season to go. I like it. It's been a long time coming because I've known about it for longer than I've known about The Buoys. That's the Australian Buoys obviously, not the "Timothy" Buoys. The Buoys really ate when they made that one though. "The Boys" actually references that song in a scene where an octopus named Timothy gets eaten. Otherwise, the whole show is just a stealth advertisement campaign for the discography of Billy Joel.

By the time The Buoys made it here, they'd already had 6 line-up changes with only lead singer Zoe Catterall as a consistent member. They've had the same line up since 2019 so all the chaos is largely behind us. What we've got here feels like a prelude to a story that hasn't gotten to thrive in the outset. I love The Buoys. They're in very exclusive company as a band I've voted for more than once in the Hottest 100. They've not had a single entry since this one though and it's a real shame.

By all accounts, "Lie To Me Again" probably is their most popular song, and I'm not sure what they can do to change this. Something about it obviously connected with me at the time but I find nowadays, it's not a song I tend to opt for. They've just made so many songs that are much more fun by comparison. Then again, "Lie To Me Again" has its own role, a key contributor in the world of songs about shitty boyfriends. Not the same kind of shitty boyfriend as on "Red Flags" or "Subject A", but one with a goomah on the side that they end up going to. The kind of boyfriend who might co-captain back to back flags, or maybe they'd be right at home as one of the The Seven.

#279. Lizzo - Juice (#28, 2019)

20th of 2019

We have more tools available for chart analysis than ever before and it's always crucial for me to use them to the fullest. Once you start cutting corners, you just start to misinterpret everything and confuse 'this makes sense to me' with 'I have evidence to back this up'. To me, Spotify monthly listeners is an incredibly interesting metric. It's not without its faults, as obsessive listening is treated with the same significance as a one off auto-play track, but it's self-correcting in its own way. I find it more useful to look at artists with respect to their own peaks, rather than alongside others. I don't actually think Pitbull is currently bigger than KPop Demon Hunters at its peak.

When artists aren't in the spotlight, it's all you've really got, and it's a way to differentiate someone who's still doing numbers, to another who has genuinely been lost in the pile. Khalid for instance has about as many listeners as he's ever had. They're more scattered and he's fallen down the pecking order quite a bit, but he's doing numbers, and he's one contrived nostalgia cycle from vaulting back up to a new high. In fact it's hard to find many artists who truly fall off. Maroon 5 had one underperforming album back in the day that made their return to stardom feel paycheck to paycheck. Except now it's been 5 years since they last cashed one of those and the momentum hasn't slowed at all. The Chainsmokers have gone even longer without a big mainstream moment but they're still as big as they ever were. Part of this is because the population keeps growing and there aren't enough new artists to push people off the old ones, but with a few exceptions, artists never are the fads they come across as.

Lizzo is one of those exceptions. It's very difficult to find many artists who have fallen from grace to the degree she has. She's had enough hits that she should be set for life, maybe that'll still come down the track, but in the last few years, her stocks have plummeted immensely. Her monthly listeners have been cut by nearly 70%, and she's gone from a top 100 or thereabouts artists (highest I can find is #105 but she may have gone higher), down to 1237th. When I looked this up, more people were listening to Cutting Crew than her, as well as many artists I've not even heard of.

How can this be? The topic I've avoided talking about with these Lizzo entries are the allegations. Partly because I always had something else to mention, and partly because I wanted to hold off as long as possible in case something happened with it. This has somewhat panned out, and it has reinforced my chance to watch Lizzo's listeners continue to slip down. In any case, Lizzo received multiple lawsuits against her from people she worked with, accusing her of all manner of things that can be boiled down to being the absolute worst person to be around. The kind of thing that makes Jeremy Clarkson look like a saint by comparison. One of these lawsuits was dropped in 2024, seemingly on a technicality, and then in December 2025, another case was also dropped. For litigation purposes, it's great for her, but in the grand scheme, she's completely killed all her good will. It's hard to imagine her career ever recovering.

There is something to be said in all of this about the occasionally frustrating power dynamics that set this into motion. Maybe it's for the best that Lizzo is reprimanded for her actions, but then you find yourself wondering if a man did the same thing, would he face the same consequence? Probably not, or at least, not until every profit can be wrung out of his image and persona. You see the same thing with regards to LGBTQI+ creators, especially with regards to transgender communities. They have an audience that so badly want them to get things right, that if they make a mistake, it'll cause outright fury that only gets heightened once internalised bigotry from beyond that community takes hold and makes the pile-on bigger. Meanwhile a cisgender man can write about whatever he wants with nowhere near the same scrutiny. What it creates is a system where people who could potentially be a face or voice for a marginalised community are scared out of participation, lest they be subject to the same criticism. Whether you think the things Lizzo has been accused of and may well have done are particularly heinous or not isn't really important, but for her as a plus sized black woman who isn't shy about showing it off, it's a lot of avenues that subconsciously or not, make people more likely want to take her down. I can't help but find myself compartmentalising it all in the same way. There was a point where I was thinking forward and I was feeling more shame for the strong Lizzo rankings I was due to unveil than say that of Kanye West or Arcade Fire. Artists whose falls from grace feel less actualised because they haven't jettisoned anywhere near as much of their audience as Lizzo has. That's the world collectively telling you that she's the biggest problem, and you can't help but put that on your mind. Maybe Lizzo just didn't get enough hits in the end, and a more vital career filled with songs we can't tear away from our hearts would have kept her in our good graces. No one ever stops listening to David Bowie, Led Zeppelin or Red Hot Chili Peppers when they learn that they've done heinous things with children, they're too important. Lizzo was just a brief fling with some frivolous hit singles that weren't made to be canonised by the rock & roll crowd though, we can part our ways with that.

Aside from all this, the song we're looking at here, "Juice", is part of an increasingly common lineage. It's a song that's arguably been overshadowed by older songs in Lizzo's catalogue, but at the same time, absolutely benefitted from them. I had a passing familiarity with Lizzo prior to 2019, so I knew "Juice" when it came out. It could've been her big pop breakthrough but it wasn't really. That came a little while after when she had back to back hits with "Truth Hurts" and "Good As Hell", two songs that were quite old in 2019. That's never stopped us before though. Nowadays the experience is so scattered and fleeting that we can just make songs into belated hits when they were already hits, or are currently hits. The ceiling no longer exists.

I think this is the key to why we've got "Juice" here though. When voting comes around, you can't pick the older Lizzo songs, but maybe they introduced you to some other songs, and here's the hit that is eligible. If you've heard it enough in 2019, you might not even question the fact that it only peaked at #100 on the chart, it's just clearly Lizzo's biggest hit of 2019, and Lizzo is a big deal. It can feel like these eligible songs can be leeching off the lingering popularity that comes from wanting to vote for a song you missed the boat on. I'm gesturing towards Foster The People in 2011, who were no doubt popular, but were filling in a lot of missed votes for "Pumped Up Kicks" when they had two songs in the top 15.

If I can put myself back into my 2019 mindset, I'm all for it. Sometimes it takes lingering popularity of other songs by the same artist to put a spotlight on songs that might not otherwise get there, lord knows there's a lot of those to come as I count this down. "Juice" might not feel like it, but for me as someone who's been watching charts for many years, there's always been a bit of a disconnect between 'I think this sounds like a hit' and 'This is what a hit sounds like'. For every larger than life song that proclaims its domination like a "Hollaback Girl", there are a lot more songs like this, songs that don't quite have the same sauce. Maybe a lot of people online will fall in love with it, but the radio programmers and streamers just won't get behind it. Look at the song it directly beat in 2019, "Piece Of Your Heart" (#712). That's sitting on the right parameters to be a monster hit, even if it'll be harder to find a self-professed major fan of it.

Lizzo songs will often be criticised as being more of a blank space to be filled in with Tumblr quotes or something like that. Hard to not notice it once you've been told this, but I've never loved the characterisation. It just feels like an extension of the idea that Lizzo promotes (though doesn't necessarily practise) positivity and again, it's that increased scrutiny towards someone like her. Sometimes the world needs those meaningless profundities. The song's chorus manages to be both specific and malleable. Your juice can be anything. It's the sheer confidence and conviction that Lizzo brings to the table that makes it succeed, even if in hindsight we have to wonder if she protests too much.

#278. Rise Against - I Don't Want To Be Here Anymore (#80, 2014)

34th of 2014

Every now and then I'll see a recycled listicle that talks about those songs whose titles aren't what you think they are. As someone who used to read many things like this when I was younger and building up my musical knowledge, I can understand their purpose. I don't know if they are quite as viable in an age where people are much more likely to see the proper titles while listening (as opposed to whatever title was used on a file sharing service). I'll concede that exact titles aren't always common knowledge. On Jeopardy! a while back, all three contestants got the Final Jeopardy! clue incorrect because they all mistakenly omitted the pronoun from Johnny Cash's "I Walk The Line". Some song titles are just cumbersome enough that you do go through life either never learning the truth, or finding out once and having it stick with you. Songs like "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)", "What's Up?" or "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)". Some other songs almost feel like they're playing a prank on you, but become a certain code of recognition that lets you know this person has probably gotten to the other side of the struggle with you. No one has ever said "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" without instinctively reminding themselves to adjust from that gut instinct. I haven't fallen for that one in a long time, but on the less famous side of things, I might frequently forget that this song here is not called "I Don't Wanna Be Here Anymore". 6 words is just a good hard limit on a title before it gets a bit cumbersome. And look, maybe Tim McIlrath is saying 'want to'. The lyric video attests to this, but I've never heard any 't' sound out of this song. At least Cyndi Lauper puts a bit of an 'o' sound into it, and even splits the words at one point.

Rise Against have often occupied an interesting space for me. As far as popular alternative rock bands go, they're the one that seems to skirt on the edge of being a bit too far gone to cut it in the mainstream. I think they've succeeded because in spite of the overall package, they're just too good at writing incredibly catchy songs that rope in people who might otherwise not be interested. They manage to play to a popular crowd without feeling like it's their primary aim. More than anyone else though, they're just that one band for whom I keep running into fans. People I wouldn't necessarily think to be interested in a band like this that have a strange soft spot for them, or maybe just a couple of their songs. I first heard of them via someone who might otherwise be listening to Fedde Le Grand or Alex Gaudino, but also had to download "Prayer of the Refugee" because it just has that unbeatable guitar riff. I don't know if the big screaming chorus was a plus or baggage, but it's given that song a heightened sense of importance to me, like it's the song that made them.

The slight edginess found its way into me, it was appealing to reason, or something like that. I'd hear more songs of theirs and just like what they were putting down. Songs like "The Good Left Undone" and "Re-Education (Through Labor)" just solidified that they had an excellent knack for writing choruses that flipped the script and made it feel like you were getting more bang for your buck. There was an obvious political tilt to the songwriting that made it feel important even if I wasn't necessarily getting the details beyond the broad strokes. I've never really had many people in my ear who listen to harder and louder stuff to tell me that Rise Against are wimps, so to me they just felt a little bit special. It's that often myopic view that the band for which no one really has a worthwhile retort against just feels good to listen to.

The notion of Rise Against being totally not populist would slip a little along the way. During this still relatively early period, they found some radio success with the song "Savior". At the time it was a record-breaking song for just how long it spent on the Alternative Songs chart, 65 weeks. It wasn't just a radio darling though, as it's gone on to be a streaming monster. If you look at songs released in 2008, you're only gonna find about 20 that have more streams than "Savior" (which is closing in on 1 billion on Spotify). Some monster hits of that time like "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" and "So What" are playing second fiddle to this punk rock song that could only get to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 Bubbling Under chart. Perhaps the band's major label distribution got the best out of them. I used "Re-Education (Through Labor)" as a means to teach myself how to play Guitar Hero with all 5 frets (not the best choice but I liked the song a lot). By the time the Hottest 100 had rolled around, I'd mastered it to the point of whipping out the plastic peripheral and playing along with all the note mapping that I'd memorised at this point. A core memory of mine just made from the song being licensed to a video game. I kept this enthusiasm up for their next album "Endgame" in 2011. This seemed to be a dropping off point for many as it didn't really muster hits to the same degree as before (though there was enough hype to make "Help Is On The Way" their only charting Billboard single). I listened to that album a lot and got my fair share of songs that felt like a big deal to me. "Architects" is a little too weird to go all the way but I've loved it for 15 years now. It felt like the moment had passed after that though, they'd retreat back to their niche in favour of a younger, hipper replacement.

The weirdest thing happened. Maybe you can pin it down to the soon to be changing tides of 2014's chart rules, but Rise Against inexplicably had their first ever charting hit in Australia with "I Don't Want To Be Here Anymore". It got to #69 too so it wasn't just a weird fluke on the cusp. For whatever reason, the public just decided to jump in on this song together, rather than gradually discovering it over a matter of months, or just buying the album instead. As if to show it wasn't just some meaningless fluke, here it is here, I'm talking about this because Rise Against made the Hottest 100 again, 6 years after what seemed to surely be their only ever appearance. I've been writing all of this with a sense of bewilderment. I can't believe Rise Against are part of this list.

The pieces are still there with "I Don't Want To Be Here Anymore". My mind wants to say the fire had burnt out but I can still feel it. It's just shy of being a big highlight because I've heard it all at this point. In a pinch, it goes down a treat, but it's missing that extra special something to put it at the top of the pack.

#277. SAFIA - Over You (#89, 2016)

30th of 2016

Listen to the song "Carousel" by New Zealand singer Paige. It's just an absolute masterclass in blatant buffoonery, jovial jest and blunderous balatro. It's carnival music is what I'm saying. It comes from an album called "King Clown", and even includes a short snippet that sounds very similar to Fučík's "Entrance of the Gladiators" (if you don't recognise that name, you absolutely know it, and now you know that it has an ill-fitting name). It's a tried and true formula for me. I can't say for sure if it draws on my experiences with Lemmings 2's circus levels but if we're to believe that everything is foundational, then why not? I love whimsical sounds like this. Not something that I think is often set out upon to make, but in the quest for invigorating melodies, we just can't help but fall back upon it.

I am unsure if SAFIA are intentionally in this trade but they have done it more than once so I will cast a suspicious eye towards them. "Over You" has some plausible deniability. Maybe they just wanted a nice little riff to tie a bow around this one, but it can't help but dance around in a circle in a funny way. It'd be a nice bit of meta-commentary on the song, whose central thesis is a chronic inability to get over their ex. I see the niche meme forming. It was funnier in my head at least.

A nice little treat to see this one get in though. I don't think it's a favourite for many, but it's a catchy little pop song that isn't trying to do much more than that. They even play the classic gambit of sending us straight to the chorus at the very start. That's the money shot right there, why try and do anything else?

#276. Future - Mask Off (#95, 2017)

30th of 2017

It's now time for one of those fun narrative tricks where we tell the same story from a different perspective. This time we start at 2015. Future's been in the game for a while now. He's established himself and scored some hits that might be a little surprising considering his vocal stylings don't seem the most obvious for crossover success. Think a lot of vocoder mumbling that's not always interested in stepping into the foreground. He's about to have the biggest successes of his career so far. First he releases "DS2" and it becomes his first ever #1 album. He'd follow it up with about 10 more #1 albums, but this is the start of that. It's also pretty well acclaimed, and that's only increased in the decade since. Depending on who you ask, it might just be the definitive trap album, alongside Travis Scott's "Rodeo" that was released a couple of months later. Drake jumped on board, and later that year they released a collaborative mixtape, "What A Time To Be Alive". It does reasonably well and nets them both a catchy viral hit in "Jumpman", a song not about Super Mario.

I've spoken about the next part already. Not long after this, young upstart Desiigner releases his first single, "Panda" (#324), and it's huge. #1 hit huge, something Future's never gotten particularly close to getting ("Jumpman" peaked at #12). Comments started flying out when this happened, either remarking the injustice, or poking fun at Future for not being able to do something that the new kid seemed to do without trying. It bordered on straight up biting, given that a lot of people (myself included) genuinely thought they were listening to Future when they first heard Desiigner's voice. It doesn't help that Desiigner is from New York but claims to have broads in Atlanta, Future's hometown. I think a lot of people wanted to stoke up beef but it didn't really happen. There's no way Desiigner was going to jump in on it, and Future was mostly not going to act threatened by him. He took a couple of small pot shots at Desiigner during some live shows but that was about as far as it went. Desiigner didn't stay relevant for long enough to get any mileage out of it.

Future's career certainly flourished after this though. Interest around him was higher than ever and he tended to chart by default from this point on. In 2017 he released two albums in back to back weeks. It allowed him to be the first artist to ever debut #1 albums in back to back weeks, and probably made Guns N' Roses slap their head for not thinking of it at the time. The first of those albums, "Future" is the relevant one here because it gave Future his biggest ever solo hit "Mask Off". It was the song that proved that Future's schtick could even work in a pop context, or that he'd just gotten so big that it was inevitable. It still couldn't get to #1 though, stalling out at #5 in America and making the #1 position feel even further away as a pipe dream. I'm going to fast forward a lot further to say that it's no longer an issue. Future has three #1 singles now, two of them with help from Drake (though I'd say Tems is a bigger factor on "WAIT FOR U"), and one of them in a diss track to Drake, funny that. Future's career looks to be in good stead as it stands, so perhaps another one is forthcoming.

The part I've left out of here is how strange it might feel that Future has this kind of following. His music doesn't exactly tend to offer the insights associated with parasocial engagement, largely because it's so hard to decipher usually. I found myself thinking some time ago that he has to be one of the most famous musicians that I know next to nothing about as a person. It's just not what he does. With that in mind, I had an interesting experience recently listening to "DS2". If you catch it on Spotify, you'll see a track tacked on the end called "Like I Never Left", and it's just shy of 26 minutes long. It's not actually Future's "Bohemian Stairway To November, I'm Dying Of Thirst" but it's a 5 part documentary from the making of the album. It's mostly Future talking about the success he'd had up to this point. About how he made the music he wanted to make and was so happy to see people were into it. It was weirdly just the first time I'd seen Future as a real person and not just a mysterious vessel for trap bangers. Maybe I would have just skipped it if I hadn't been halfway into a Rocket League game when it started, but I like hearing interviews from people you don't normally expect to get them from.

As for "Mask Off", it's probably the most streamlined version of the Future experience we've ever gotten. Not necessarily the best (I've got a soft spot for "Move That Dope"), but it's definitely the starter pack entry. One where you can't possibly accuse him of resting on the laurels of his collaborators. Well, maybe you can still look at Metro Boomin and his sample of Tommy Butler's "Prison Song" (no relation to System of a Down) providing the unforgettable flute sample and everything around it. I'd still mark down Future as the biggest part of the song though. He takes queues from QOTSA's "Feel Good Hit Of The Summer" and makes a hook out of 'Percocet, molly, Percocet'. It just works. He manages to do what I can only dream of and thrive in both a mask on and mask off mentality. He has the sheer confidence to rhyme 'liability' with 'adrenaline' in what remains my go-to example of a ridiculous slant rhyme. In Australia, Future is one of those middle card rappers who can't really get hits off the ground if one of the big 4 aren't attached (though oddly he did manage a solo #1 album in 2022 despite never otherwise hitting the top 10), so I was glad to see it for this one, and glad to see it part of the Hottest 100 canon.