#300-#296

#300. CHVRCHES - Leave a Trace (#32, 2015)

39th of 2015

I got radicalised pretty hard in the mid-2010s. I might side-eye anyone who says that they don't really think about politics (it translates to silent acceptance), but that was me for a long time as well. We'd all like to think that we're the good kind of apolitical, but in truth, I recently found some very poor taste jokes I made when I was a teenager. This can be treated positively. Nothing shows growth better than bearing witness to something you'd unquestionably never do again. I don't consider it a gotcha to find out about long gone misgivings of others.

I'm probably not alone in my experience. Atrocities were always being committed as long as I can remember, but they always felt distant, just poking out on the news and maybe casually in conversation with a tone that clearly put the wrongdoers in a different group. No one I know would ever do this, it's all politicians and stupid, hateful people. I probably had opportunities to wake up to it all, but it's all too easy to avoid things that don't directly affect you.

In 2015, one of the big talking points at least in my circles was Gamergate. It was a loud social movement that supposedly was about ethics in game journalism. If we want to put that in terms of things that people might get impassioned about, then let's say it's for games journalists receiving some kind of favour for positively promoting games. Maybe that's a feasible enough angle to get enough people to go along with what was really just a brigade of relentless hate against women. As someone who used to read gaming magazines in the early 2000s, this was simmering for a while. So much rhetoric felt backwards and exclusionary towards women for so long that it poisoned the minds of a generation, who saw women as casuals who encroached upon their passion. The heart of it all was from a position of mistrust towards women from men who couldn't possibly take their side on anything. For me, it was a point when I started seeing YouTube videos on both sides of the subject, and see dislike ratios that felt baffling. I'd never before found myself questioning the majority opinion like this before. Maybe it was a brigading effort but all it did was break my faith in the very system it was trying to uphold.

History has stayed on my side. Gamergate fizzled out, and is now more of a laughingstock than anything. The views contained within it still live on, but also feel increasingly antiquated. You're more likely than ever to be mocked for complaining about a game having a female protagonist. Gaming culture on the whole just feels much more inclusive now.

Unfortunately it's probably also true that the whole thing was representative of a much wider culture that has this mentality coded into it. If you know one thing about CHVRCHES outside of the music, it's probably that Lauren Mayberry is an outspoken feminist. She's never been shy about speaking out about her beliefs even at the risk of sabotaging her career (e.g. disavowing their Marshmello collaboration after he teamed up with Chris Brown). She wrote about her experiences in 2013 and subsequently became an even greater lightning rod for some utterly depraved and sometimes threatening messages. I implore you to look it up because nothing's more effective than seeing first-hand the kinds of messages people seem content to send to a moderately famous woman. It happened again in 2015 when the band started rolling out their second album with "Leave a Trace" as the lead single. There were more comments objectifying Lauren in the music video and she called out some 4chan users directly. My 30 minutes of fame mean that I too have experienced being derided in a 4chan thread and it's a soul-draining experience to spend too much time there. Just a hall of people so confident in their baseless assertions simply because they go unchallenged. While I was researching this, I stumbled onto a more recent thread there about CHVRCHES and it was only modestly more civil (some of the depraved language has cooled off, but the misogyny carries all the same). It's all coated in this pathetic notion that women being objectified is just a natural part of the process and it's on them to deal with it, rather than the dregs receive any kind of retribution for it. The notion that all of this is fine because your life sucks and you get pleasure out of seeing people who seem to have it all getting dragged down to your level. Fuck that nihilistic shit.

"Leave a Trace" is aptly a pretty righteous single to return on. Maybe you could blissfully ignore the lyrics the first time around, but now they're gonna have you singing along to some absolutely vicious words. It's a breakup song dedicated to a callous and controlling man and almost every line of it feels like a scathing takedown of an easily imagined archetype. She's reminding us that he's someone who's not only done wrong, but is incapable of recognising his mistakes, and is going to come out of it the hero from his side of the story. I can't claim to knowing the experience, but I've seen more than enough evidence to completely believe that they're one of many men who cannot possibly give an inch to a woman. Their masculine coding is ironically what won't let them leave a trace of a man.

#299. FISHER - Just Feels Tight (#86, 2021)

22nd of 2021

For a couple of years in high school, I was habitually looking at the ARIA Charts but my curiosity didn't extend much further than that. I would hear the hits here and there and have a good idea of what was going on, but it also meant that some songs would slip through the cracks. Seeing there's a Gym Class Heroes song called "Cookie Jar" on the chart for a while and expecting it to climb up because their songs tended to do that, but it stalls out pretty early and I just never heard it. On occasion lately I'll go on extended delays between catching up on what's charting and all you can do at that point is imagine what things might sound like. Nothing's too surprising these days so it doesn't affect the chart watching experience very much.

Sometimes you get it way wrong. Maybe there were clues I missed, but in the middle of 2009, "Riverside" by Sidney Samson debuted on the lower end of the chart. For some reason I focused only on the title and imagined some kind of folk/blues song sung by an old man, a Sidney Poitier kind of person. It climbed into the top 10 after a while and I still just never went out of my way to hear it, and it seemed to avoid my usual channels. Then one day at school I just hear someone playing it in the home room and I'm flabbergasted. A shock to the senses not just for the profane lyric, but for all the sounds that surrounded it. Just this unending feeling of tension with one of the most ominous melodies. Just hearing it invited an unrivalled feeling of despair. It was perhaps just heightened for the previous mystery factor, that it would be revealed in such a way to completely destroy the harmless image in my mind.

I find myself liking "Riverside" a lot nowadays. I don't think it's particularly well known nowadays, held back by only being a major hit in a small handful of countries. There are also numerous versions of the song and I suspect it's possible that many like me have trouble remembering which version of it they actually want. It's important for a song like this because there are all these slight variations in the drop and I find myself hunting an ideal version of it that may or may not exist. When you've sparingly heard so many iterations of it, it becomes a new mystery bag of what sort of syncopation are you gonna get. The basic riff is always there, but it's those little changes that keep the song fresh all these years later.

To me, "Just Feels Tight" is a more modern song working under a similar principle. This song is credited to FISHER but whether it's him or Chris Lake, they're both old enough to have grown up with "Riverside" in the club scene. Whether it's an intentional nod or not, I'm not sure, just that the structure is remarkably similar. Just a steady house groove that builds up to a single title lyric that leads into a drop that isn't always exactly the same. It has a blatant male gaze music video too so he knows what the mid-2000s were like. On the surface, it's probably completely disposable but I found an odd sense of affection growing in me. It's perhaps heightened by the initial lack of stakes, where this has all been its own long, drawn out build up for me to say that the final drop that comes in this song is one of my favourite musical moments in this whole list. It's only slightly different to the previous drop but by adding just a few more notes into the mix, it becomes this utterly disarming moment. The high only lasts for about 10-20 seconds but it just perfectly captures the best of what music like this is capable of doing.

#298. Hilltop Hoods - Cosby Sweater (#3, 2014)

35th of 2014

When I partake in trivia games, I find that one of the most useful skills you can develop is just remembering when things happen. For the sake of pinning questions (i.e. making sure there's only one correct answer), an easy method tends to be including years. It'll reward the more attentive players who are more easily able to rule out potential answers because they just don't fit the timeline. Don't try to name Julius Caesar if you're being asked about a Roman in the AD years for instance. Remembering years is very boring and tedious though, even if you live through those years. I once had to try and remember what year 'covfefe' happened and though I eventually figured it out, I just had no reason to ever remember it by year.

Sometimes music can help out with this. My perennial attention to charts helps me with the uncanny skill of knowing what year most songs come out. That's not always direct memorisation either. There are often some mental processes, trying to associate something with what was around at the same time until you can clue onto a safer bet, those unforgettable moments like "Gangnam Style" in 2012, or "Despacito" in 2017. There are flow on effects from this, because once music starts to permeate other parts of culture, it'll overlap. Most commonly you can use movie soundtracks to remember what year the movies came out. It's helped me on countless occasions. Now, I don't necessarily think you're ever going to need to know when the Bill Cosby SA cases were brought to light, but it's tremendously easy to do because it lines up exactly with when "Cosby Sweater" became a hit.

It's something that Hilltop Hoods have commented on numerous times, this unfortunate timing. In all fairness, it probably should have been more widely known long before 2014. Hannibal Buress mentioned it in a stand-up routine he'd been doing for most of the year without fuss until he made it to Bill Cosby's hometown where it caused more of a stir. It was always information that was out there, it was all just consigned in the past, pre-internet and in an era where powerful men rarely faced consequences. You have to remember the MeToo movement didn't start until 2017. There's a comment from Hannibal's partner in sitting down Eric Andre from the time that laments that this is the way justice was served. That it had to come from a male comedian instead of people just listening to his victims. The power dynamics are far from where they need to be.

It probably all looks a bit strange from the outside. A big hit song in Australia in late 2014 that's name-checking Bill Cosby. Just another classic case of Australia being lost in its own backwards world. I don't know if it needs to be said, but I don't think it should be read as an endorsement in any substantial way. It's all just pure Hilltop Hoods dad rap, in line with them writing "Clark Griswold" (#769) a few years later. At most it's just a strange divine coincidence that's just an interesting story in it all. We can laugh a little just at this aspect of it all because it's ultimately harmless and maybe is an extended excuse to shed more light on something terrible. To paraphrase Norm Macdonald, the worst part of it all wasn't the Hilltop Hoods, but the SA, and I'm not talking about their home state. While we're taking the song's subjects to task, Bobby Fischer was not a man who held stellar opinions about World War II.

If there's another shame to be had, it's that it takes away from everything they did get right with this release. Hilltop Hoods' career lives in the shadow of the fact that they dropped their career defining song over two decades ago. When "The Nosebleed Section" has been canonised as one of the greatest Australian songs of all time, nothing you can do is going to live up to that. It's fortunate that they were able to leverage it into an incredible career, anyway, scoring massive hits for years to come. At the time, "Cosby Sweater" was a contender as the biggest. It came out right around when digital sales were at their highest, so it was potentially the best-selling Australian rap song ever ("The Nosebleed Section" has probably overtaken it on streams now). They had everyone eating out of their hands.

It's not something they kept to themselves though. Hilltop Hoods have always been keen to shout out their idols and friends, and it's something they kept up on this release. If you watch the music video, there's a rapper you'll see getting a lot of screen time. I can't say who he is yet, but none of his entries had actually happened at this point in time. It's all a prelude to the song's ultimate moment in January 2015. triple j held their Beat The Drum concert to celebrate the station's 40th birthday, with numerous guest appearances. Hilltop Hoods were naturally among this, and they took the opportunity to do a full 9 minute version of "Cosby Sweater", extending it out by calling out a full rolodex of Australian rap. Mostly all names I've spoken about here already, Illy, Drapht, Horrorshow, Seth Sentry, Tkay Maidza, Thundamentals. Technically the closest we did get to a comment on the Taylor Swift situation came when Illy mentioned it in his verse, and just to make the non-endorsement clear, Drapht makes sure to say 'f**k Bill Cosby' multiple times. For me there aren't any weak links because the energy just feeds into everyone so well, but Tkay Maidza is the big surprise package. By far the youngest person on stage but doesn't let herself get intimidated. It feels appropriate that she'd end up being one of the biggest stars in the long run, and it's an added layer with her landing at #100 in the Hottest 100 that aired later that month.

I hesitate to call this the pinnacle of this group because I have too much affinity to their earlier work, but for their '90s Metallica era chart dominance, it's probably about as good as we're gonna get it. Just a nonstop party and worthy victory lap for the eternal titans of the Australian rap scene.

#297. Skegss - Save It For The Weekend (#31, 2019)

21st of 2019

I sigh and say 'ladies and gentlemen, "Save It For The Weekend"'. Skegss are coming into this off of what's probably the biggest hit of their career. The next single isn't gonna come close to that, but it's probably going to find its way in. Oh, actually it ended up pretty high on the list, I guess I put too much stock into my own 'Pretty good' assessment and need to remember that  the bar for being good enough for the fans is sometimes lower than it is for everyone else. Isn't the whole point of being a fan meaning that you're more likely to like something that doesn't mean anything to other people? Surely there's more to it than just being overly critical to the point of putting people off.

If you haven't seen the music video, it hits all the classic touchstones of self-deprecating humour. The band themselves become their own Beavis & Butthead as they point out all of their own foibles while watching a music video they simultaneously don't enjoy much but can't get themselves to turn off. I get so distracted that they purposely put a 'The' in front of the band's name that I didn't even notice they spelled it 'Skeggs', a mistake I might have still caught myself doing in 2019. There's something apt about the whole thing that just concludes with as little fanfare as it started. Just an utterly mundane 3 minutes in the life of Skegss. In the future, if you're lucky, you'll remember the little moments, like these, that were good.

I think the song is good too. If we're talking guitar riffs, then it's not necessarily as memorable as "Valhalla" (#394) but it's fun in its own way. Once the whole thing gets going, it's all just expertly crafted to be catchy at every turn. Great use of repeated lyrics, great release for the chorus, not much about it I'd really like to change. Maybe they could end it a little better, but I've watched so much Dexter and its spinoffs lately, endings are hard.

#296. Post Malone & Swae Lee - Sunflower (#27, 2018)

32nd of 2018

Sometimes you just want to know what the biggest hit of all time is. This shouldn't be an unpopular sentiment here; it's a more expanded version of what the Hottest 100 does every year and why it generates so much interest. You make a game out of the speculation, considering whether one song or another has done enough to pull it off. Maybe you'll be close but you just haven't quite lined up everything correctly. The wrong release date, the wrong competition, something like that. Maybe it's a fruitless pursuit because you're trying to compete with a cultural monolith that doesn't play by the normal rules.

These are all things to consider when you expand it to all-time music charts. It's always going to be subject to debates because there's no truly accurate way to merge together incongruent chart formats. Deciding how you want to prioritise it is just another way of trying to decide which time period deserves the biggest leg-up. Look up the biggest hits in any particular format and it'll often conglomerate around a certain period of time.

With that in mind, I bring it all up because there's an argument to be made that "Sunflower" is the biggest hit of all time in America. You won't find it riding high on Billboard's All Time Hot 100, but that's just because it's a song that didn't win the lottery of generous radio airplay. For whatever reason there was hesitation on this song. Perhaps the callouts weren't too great, or maybe there was less incentive to focus on it when Post Malone was already promoting his own album (and had another one on the way). The streaming public didn't seem to mind though, and that's what US certifications are largely driven by now. "Sunflower" became the first song to go 2xDiamond (or 20xPlatinum). Another song has since gone 21xPlatinum, but I suspect "Sunflower" is just an outdated certification away from taking the title back. That other song is an early career #1 hit by an artist who will eventually appear in this list.

The science of which songs perform particularly well in the grouped up numbers of streaming successes doesn't always make a lot of sense. It has a habit of carrying on perpetually in a way that makes it feel like the work of mindless zombies, especially if it doesn't align with your tastes. The idea that "Sunflower" could be so monumentally successful is a little strange, but then it makes sense too. There's something warm and inviting about it. It's over so quickly, and doesn't feel omnipresent so it's hard to get sick of it. I'd say the movie tie-in helps but it's a bit of a weird one isn't it?

I've spent the past year and a bit watching every Marvel adjacent movie I can. It's for cultural understanding and a bit of niggling fascination as well. I don't really have a favourite superhero, but if you wanted to ask me whose top billing gives me the most reassurance, then it's probably Spider-Man. It's something that's come to me late. I saw the early 2000 films and didn't register much appeal, but in hindsight there's a lot to like about them, fun popcorn movies that have since been bitten by the radioactive meme spider that permeates the whole run time. They've since rebooted the franchise a couple of times and it's always among the best that the MCU has to offer. Maybe it'll implode when they run out of ways to raise the stakes, but it's had my attention the whole way through.

Long before I watch pretty much any of these though, I watched "Into The Spider-Verse". It's still Spider-Man, but it's animated and focuses on a different iteration of him here in Miles Morales. I don't know what else to say but it's a really good movie. I think animation is an extremely underrated medium that doesn't get enough credit when it's done exceptionally well, mainly because Pixar tend to rule the roost while not being nearly ambitious enough to uphold their reputation anymore. They're often movies that could be live action and not lose much of the appeal. "Into The Spider-Verse", I couldn't say the same thing about. It captures the comic book energy perfectly and constantly steals your attention with just how much personality it carries. It is an enjoyable enough movie in its own right, but as someone who's tried to do animation many times before, I'm just in awe when people find new ways to use it to the fullest. The sequel was also pretty good but it's hard to say much about it when I'm still waiting for them to put out the last half of it. This is not an uncommon opinion I've seen. There are many people who have no interest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but love these movies.

I said it was a weird one though. The reason might be because it's not technically part of the MCU, or maybe it being animated without big name stars' faces to stare at. When it comes to Spider-Man on film in the 21st century, all of the live action films have done better at the box office than Spider-Verse. It's still done well, but it hasn't really done Spider-Man numbers, so it's a little bit strange that an absolute monster hit got tied up with this film. Far more people heard Chad Kroeger's "Hero" get belted out in the theatre than "Sunflower". If there is a point in its favour though, it's that the song is incorporated in a diegetic way. Sometimes you'll watch a movie knowing that it's been boosting a song and find out that they've absolutely rinsed it in the movie as if to make it look like a vehicle to make it into a hit. "Sunflower" just has the approval of the main character from the very beginning. It's a very elaborate way to say 'Hey, this song is cool. Don't you want to be cool? You better listen to "Sunflower"'. This could all backfire immensely if the song just didn't have the sauce, but they were thinking correctly when they handed it to two hook machines that were at the top of their game at the time.

I have a habit of calling this a Post Malone song because his name appears first, and because he's the big star with the name power to move units with ease. This probably should be a Swae Lee song first. This song lasts for two and a half minutes, and you won't hear Post Malone's voice until there are less than 70 seconds left. He doesn't even change it up much, just provides a second, less memorable verse, and then sings the same hook. Maybe there could've been an extended version where they try to harmonise on the chorus, maybe it'd come across as unintentionally queer coded, but you do end up with one of those early casualties in the world of songwriters just packing it in early. Maybe by ranking this fairly high, I'm validating their decision, and maybe the song could've been ruined if it got unnecessarily bloated. It's just the one thing that takes the shine off an otherwise generally enjoyable song.