#200-#196

 #200. Skegss - Up in the Clouds (#11, 2018)

21st of 2018

Once again I find myself looking at an artist's biggest hit and debating whether it's a worthy holder of that title, or it's just a case of good timing. Just being the song that's around when you're at the peak of your powers can do a lot on its own, then it just needs to be good enough to not halt that momentum. It's hard to say where Skegss fall in this line of thinking, and it probably just comes down to preference. That being said, for a band that's usually confined to the middle ranges of the list, to land all the way at #11 implies a sizeable crossover factor. It's a Skegss song that's reaching beyond their usual audience, I wonder why that is.

This was the puzzlement I had at the time. I might have accepted a top 30 performance, but once you reach this stage, there's significant scrutiny to be put on it. This better age itself to be the best Skegss song ever. They didn't get quite so lucky in that regard, but I found contentment with it. In case you're wondering, it's held onto this performance in the long run, and is the second most streamed Skegss song on Spotify, behind their early career single "L.S.D". Just another for the pile of Australian artists with an inexplicably popular early single that triple j didn't really play.

I think it's the crossover power I have most faith in here. The idea that you don't have to be a Skegss fan to get behind this one. I listen to "Up in the Clouds" and I hear a song that isn't bogged down with complexity, oblique lyrics or complicated passages. The part I always think to is during the first verse, where a tambourine is subtly added to the mix. It's a small but effective way to keep my attention, and makes the eventual burst into the chorus all the more satisfying because it feels less out of nowhere. It's a surprisingly short song, and the highest ranking song of the 2010s not to clock over 2 minutes and 30 seconds. It's the right length I think. Normally I'd lament a lack of ideas but I think they're best to stop it here and not bloat it out. It wouldn't be very chill surf rock of them.

#199. Briggs - Bad Apples (#87, 2014)

24th of 2014

Since 2005, the AFL has held an annual Dreamtime at the 'G game between Essendon and Richmond, which for most of that time has also been a key feature of Indigenous Round. Admittedly it would be a bit more exciting except the number of exciting, competitive teams in the fixture has only hovered between 0 and 1 in that time period. Still, it's a fun spectacle. I remember watching it in 2025 with some curiosity, as the pre-show entertainment was being done by Briggs. Australian artists often get a tough reception at these gigs, I have mentioned one before (#337), and this seemed like a very surprising choice. To those who know about him, Briggs is not a safe or popular choice. His music has always been very politically charged without much in the way of well recognised hits either (maybe one exception, it'll be in this list).

This was the night I learnt about BIG NOTER. It's Briggs' rap rock project. Somewhere in the range of Rage Against The Machine, Limp Bizkit & Refused. It's been a surprising revelation, something I never thought would have worked. I can't speak for the people attending the MCG but when I looked online I saw a surprisingly positive reaction to it all from people who certainly didn't know any of their songs. Maybe it's just saying that deep down, a lot of us who grew up in that era just miss this kind of thing. This had all left my purview until later in the year. I was seeing a live show for an alt metal band (the only one who would fit the sentence 'will eventually appear on this list') and saw BIG NOTER listed as the support. I forgot the name and had a revelation when Briggs walked onto the stage. I had so much fun with it. Briggs just absolutely owns the stage and I bet he won over a lot of people that night. None of this has anything to do with "Bad Apples", but I've been holding onto this for months and just wanted to say he earned a heightened level of respect from me.

This is also all to say that Briggs has been around for a long time and managed to stay relevant. As far back as 2005 he was a hype man for an Obese Records tour, and was signed by Hilltop Hoods on their label in 2009. From then on, he's been doing his specific thing which is to be very evocative and confronting on social & racial issues, both on social media and in his music. The biggest part of this has been his collaboration with Trials, A.B. Original, which I couldn't find a better way to bring up. They are things that I think our country can be very bad about so I love what he's doing. The worst people you could possibly know are the ones who hate him.

"Bad Apples" is his only solo entry here but it's highly potent. One of those songs that stood out to me for a long time just for having a catchy hook before I even began to pay attention to the lyrics, and I've since gone on to appreciate it even more. Something that always frustrates me is the way people talk about incarceration rates for Indigenous Australians. It's the sort of thing that gets used as a gotcha to prove statistically that Indigenous Australians are bad people not worthy of any half-hearted equity measures handed out. It's just an easy trap to fall for when you live a life in relatively safe luxury, where you're inclined to extrapolate your own morale decisions and be baffled that others, raised in different circumstances don't follow suit. Bigots just love to push people to the edge and then berate them for falling off.

"Bad Apples" captures this feeling succinctly. Talking about young kids who are born in rough circumstances and turn towards crime. It highlights the education system failing them because they just don't learn the same way. Not to say they're not intelligent, as there are intangible street smarts that get developed. This is where I mention HBO's "The Wire" depicting criminal organisations that frequently outsmart the police with their extremely cryptic communication. The song is so dense in double entendre that it's hard to pick a favourite, but I do really like the title lyric. Playing on the bad apple idiom and rhyming it with a literal interpretation. It's all just a vital message for anyone who's ever been yelled at on the street by a black kid and used that to justify institutionalised racism. An unfortunately timeless song.

#198. Jungle - Keep Moving (#89, 2021)

9th of 2021

Not long after this song came out, there was a new UberEats ad that used "Busy Earnin'" (#467). It's a pretty valid choice I have to say, but given the nature of the ad, I thought they'd also have a case to use "Keep Moving". Maybe they could use it on an ad for Uber in general. That could totally be Jungle's thing, the band whose songs are all perfect for these ads. Unfortunately their next Hottest 100 entry was "Back On 74" and I don't think that works as well. "Let's Go Back" though? Potential there again. What's the the YouTube URL for that song though? Just got 'slag' sitting in there.

I was an early adopter to this song, which is something that'll probably happen more often the higher up we get here. It's not that I was pining for new Jungle, but I usually just listen to so much new music that if something's gonna stand out in the right way, I'll be onto it. Quite rare that it's something that everyone else gets on board with though, so it's always a nice surprise. Jungle surprisingly scored their first top 10 album with "Loving In Stereo", a complete reverse in momentum after their last album charted lower than the first. I like to put it all down to "Keep Moving".

Just an incredibly catchy song. Feels quintessentially Jungle, but re-arranges their knack for catchy synth riffs into something that holds for the whole song. Mainly I think it enters the important canon of songs that remarkably use the word 'Oh!'. Think "Unbelievable" by EMF. It can't be a coincidence that it's also preceded by 5 syllables in this song. Love the way the music swells right afterwards too. Putting all of their eggs into this one basket and you bet they succeeded.

#197. Ruel - as long as you care (#45, 2020)

12th of 2020

We've finally finished the dynamic trio. It's been exactly a year since I brought it up for Lime Cordiale's "Reality Check Please" (#719), and I don't think I've encountered another one while going through the majority of the 2020 list. I'm willing to stake that this is the 3rd and final hotel lobby bell song. Maybe these are those boys that one singer is with in the hotel lobby, or more pertinently, this is what drew Ruel & Lime Cordiale to collaborate several years after this. I think I'm allowed to say that "Melodramatic Fanatic" is a pretty good song.

I wish I had a story for this song. They're the most interesting cases when they sneak up on you out of nowhere, songs you have no reason to believe are gonna have any importance to you. It wouldn't have been love at first listen, but I certainly had a big 'a-ha' moment here, one that was big enough to extend well beyond this song. I won't call myself a massive Ruel fan by any stretch, but you can probably trace his reasonably solid performance across the board here as a chain effect from "as long as you care". A song that just completely changed everything for me.

It's a funny song for that, isn't it? Just Ruel running on his standard affair with a song that isn't particularly distinctive. I find with a lot of blue-eyed soul, it's primarily about setting a mood and checking off boxes with the performance. Something you can probably admire as technically good but often for me, feel nothing from it especially. It might just be outing me as someone who likes a bit of a groove to settle it in place. "as long as you care" doesn't really show off in that regard, but it's ample gravitas that sells his passion well enough. I just like to imagine he's shouting out some music he likes. "Bright Lights"? Good song. Then there's...ah wait a minute, we're getting ahead of ourselves.

#196. Daft Punk (feat Pharrell Williams) - Lose Yourself to Dance (#17, 2013)

36th of 2013

Look, in 2013, Daft Punk released a world-beating song. It took over the world, it was the sound of the summer, and we're all just praying that it lands on the Friday side of my posting schedule. It didn't win in 2013 though. I guess it's hard to do that when you flood the market. Not only have you got San Cisco covering it (#635), but they also followed it up by saying 'hey, look at this shiny new song, it's a little like the last one, but it's slick & shiny'. I'm not gonna go that far with "Lose Yourself to Dance" but it is funny to imagine it'd be the first and only time the same song appears three times in the same top 50.

I actually don't know how much interest there was in promoting this song though. By all accounts it was the obvious second single, but my recollection at the time was one of complete disinterest from the label. Daft Punk were primed to roll through with more hits but they just didn't, and not only that, they never even bothered submitting the songs to the ARIA Survey. Daft Punk's last album has a #1 hit on it and nothing else that even charted in Australia. "Random Access Memories" has the same number of hits as "Human After All" and the "Tron: Legacy" soundtrack. Well, I should be completely fair about this. We were also in the early days of the Streaming chart, before it counted to the charts. On the week the album came out, the whole track list charted within the top 25 that week, including separate placings at #1 & #4 for that certain song. "Lose Yourself To Dance" was at #6 and by the power of being Track 1, "Give Life Back To Music" was #2. Certainly one of the more interesting albums to capture the nation's attention so thoroughly.

At this point in time I was gravitating very heavily to what Daft Punk were doing, and this song in particular stood out to me. I always felt a little weird for liking it so much because it felt like the magnet of cynicism. The other Pharrell collaboration that's anchored in a tight guitar groove while being very repetitive for about 6 minutes. I think I was very into The Neptunes at the time and had full belief that Pharrell made anything better by singing on it. I don't always think that now, but he's certainly in his element here. It's one of those songs I just get lost in, never wanting it to end.