#215-#211

 #215. Vera Blue - All the Pretty Girls (#26, 2018)

24th of 2018

We're entering a strangely vast but also lucrative world with this one. Vera Blue released her first album under the moniker in 2017. I've been on about it a couple of times (#728), (#715). The album was pretty successful. I'm actually surprised it wasn't nominated for any ARIA Awards. Maybe it was released too late in the eligibility period to build a stronger case. Did you even know she put out another album after that? Maybe it's easy to remember because of the distinct artwork, but it also really fell by the wayside. That previous album got to #6 on the charts, and then she could only get to #61. It was released in late 2022 so it could be one of the newest things I get to discuss here, except none of the songs on that album actually polled.

Vera Blue released many singles between these two campaigns that just didn't end up on the album. These include some of her most popular songs, and they easily could've been tacked on as bonus tracks to boost the sales. I have to respect the integrity but it does make for a pretty unfamiliar track list when they're not there. The voters absolutely turned up for these though so we're gonna come back to this well a couple more times, and see the different kinds of carefree, pleasant indie pop she was peddling with these loosies.

"All The Pretty Girls" is a song that's inspired by Fleetwood Mac. She's tangoing so much in the night with this one. It's a good way of experiencing many of the best parts of some songs that I think we've all probably heard more than enough for one lifetime. At least for me it felt revitalised. As someone who wasn't massively enthused by what she was doing on that previous album, this felt like a return to some of those folksier sounds where she's more at home. It was my favourite song from her in quite a while. I would not necessarily say she stuck on that path but it does leave this as a song that stands on its own. It hasn't been outmoded by those later singles even if I do prefer them.

#214. Paramore - This Is Why (#45, 2022)

11th of 2022

In 2007, Fall Out Boy released "This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race" as the second single from their third album. It was released right around when the term 'emo' had caught on as a catch-all term for all manner of anthemic pop rock and pop punk that was coming out at the time, regardless of how little it had in common with the genres past flag-bearers. It's always felt a bit weird to me. "The Black Parade" is just too much fun, outside of "The End", "I Don't Love You" and "Cancer" and I have trouble thinking of it as sad boy music. It tended to be the case with all the big names. They weren't getting on the radio unless they made something crossover friendly.

The Fall Out Boy song expresses frustration with the growing trend. Particularly as they were relatively veterans of the scene and seeing anyone and everyone starting to hitch themselves to the already full band wagon. I've always thought of it as being allegorical for the way audiences responded to it as well. Even if the music wasn't always deeply emotional in those associated ways, the fans certainly were. Many people who may have grown up during the boy band wars were at it again with a slightly more mature flavour but heightened stakes to make it all the more intense. Maybe for some people who just liked the music, they were all for it all, but I always felt like it was very likely that liking one band meant hating another. 'These aren't the charts, they're a [censorship of choice] arms race'.

It's a perspective that seems to lose out in the long run. Music audiences get more fractured and there isn't always enough space for that nuance in the discussion. After living through those years and feeling instructed to like some artists and dislike others, it never fits right to pretend that I feel positively on all of them as a representation of that emo phase I must have had. Certainly, it reflects my own feelings now, as is often the case. But I just refuse to believe that all AFI and Paramore fans got along. Heck, it wasn't even just confined to the scene. Easy to forget that what was for a long time Tyler, The Creator's most famous song basically outright said 'F**k Hayley Williams'. I have no idea if they've ever patched things up but I'll bet they have a lot more overlap in fans nowadays.

I'm not entirely sure where I was influenced in all of this. It's an easy answer to say that it was triple j and their policy of playing X but not Y, which I trusted enough to go along with, but it feels like it sells my own genuine reactions to the music out of whack. Fall Out Boy felt like a guilty pleasure as I kept finding more of their songs that I liked even when I felt they were the incredibly uncool top 40 band, but then there was Paramore. They weren't really on the charts but they seemed to come up in discussions a lot and I was hesitant on them. I'd hear their music and be very underwhelmed and/or irritated. I won't deny I was probably stuck with some subconscious sexism. That boys vs. girls mentality gets stuck into you at an early age and it's hard to challenge it.

In a similar sense, I think often triple j gets locked into these kinds of editorial decisions for a very long time that can linger on well after they stop making sense. That's why it's very interesting to see Paramore in this list with "This Is Why" being their only ever entry. This isn't a matter of them pre-dating the cut off. They were a band that had been around a decade and a half only just getting the tick of approval for the first time. Everything about it screams of new faces in the editorial department finding the very old 'Don't play Paramore' clause and getting confused by it. I can vaguely imagine it's something such a long time coming that was just waiting for an appropriate opening. In that great big war of the late 2000s, Paramore came out of it just about the best, managing to reinvent themselves in more than a few ways and stay in the conversation. While many of their contemporaries never saw it as good as they had it then, Paramore scored their biggest hits well into the 2010s, earning a fanbase that stuck by them, and perhaps winning over some of their early critics. It's me, I'm the early critics.

It's a strange kind of arrival here. Not long afterwards, triple j had Kylie Minogue back on the radio after scoring a relatively big hit by her modern standards, but "This Is Why" is not Paramore getting too big to ignore. It's not really one of their big hits at all. I almost wonder if it's something that just felt like a no-brainer in the 2022 context. My Chemical Romance had just released a new single for the first time in many years, newsworthy for sure. Then Paramore did the same thing, and under a 2022 context it just doesn't make sense to use the X and not Y rule anymore. It just feels like accepting that they've never really been that out of place on the station. For anyone who had a soft spot for Paramore, this was finally the chance to put them in the Hottest 100, and of course it's going to happen. There was enough excitement around the comeback that the album of the same name also went to #1, the first time they'd done so in nearly 10 years.

I'm quite fond of this modern iteration of Paramore. The potential's clearly always been there, but in a lot of their early work, they're so stuck in the mode of sounding like everyone else that it leaves a little to be desired. "Riot!" sounds so incredibly stuck in 2007 and suddenly sounds like they're putting on a costume to be a different band. Not entirely untrue though given the band's significant personnel changes that have taken place since then. Here, they just sound livelier and more exciting. Doing more with the guitars than just providing a sound bed and maybe the obligatory riff on top of it. I hear something that manages to be jagged and unpredictable but without sacrificing any appeal. There's a vitality to "This Is Why" that you very rarely get from bands that have been around so long. It's not just 'Listen to this because it's the new Paramore', but rather 'Listen to this because Paramore are cooking with this one'. Maybe my belated revelation I'm having here is that I hear a lot of early Metric in the album. Songs like "Poster of a Girl" and "Combat Baby" feel right at home with "Running Out Of Time" (oh hey, that's also a Tyler, The Creator song title) or "C'est Comme Ça". It's not even that weird when you consider that Hayley Williams is still only now roughly as old as Emily Haines was when Metric had their big breakout success in 2009. There are a lot of ways that seemingly contemporary artists can be so vastly different despite the similarities on the surface.

#213. Birdz (feat Fred Leone) - Bagi-la-m Bargan (#30, 2020)

13th of 2020

For the 2020 countdown stats page, triple j noted that there were 6 songs on the list by Indigenous artists, which was a record at the time. It wouldn't hold as the record for long. By my count there are 10 in the 2022 list, though a large chunk of them are repeated artists (King Stingray had 4 just by themselves), as well as artists who we're generally used to seeing. Not a single one was a debutant artist. The 2020 list seems more noteworthy because aside from Thelma Plum, all of these entries came from artists who had never polled before, with a diverse cast you might not necessarily pick out if you're not clued in. 2020 also has the neat moment where two showed up back to back, quite high in the list. This song, and another that will eventually appear on this list, 2020 really was the year for back to backs.

Birdz is a rapper from the Northern Territory with heritage in the Badtjala region around southern Queensland and northern New South Wales. He'd been releasing music for a number of years, first getting significant triple j airplay with his song "Rise" with Jimblah. In a very Australian declaration, he cites watching late night 'rage' and seeing the brief part of it when they'd show US rap videos as what made him fall in love with rap music. Fred Leone is Birdz's cousin, with similar heritage but a very different kind of performer.

"Bagi-la-m Bargan" means "Fighting Boomerang" and is a song written from the perspective of an Indigenous Australian upon the arrival of the First Fleet in the 1700s. It's a raw depiction of the hypocrisy that comes from colonisers and their warped perspective. As soon as you unilaterally consider yourself to be above someone else (through a framework that is shaped in your best interests, of course), you're simply unable to see eye to eye. That's the polite way of saying they internally justified their own genocide of a civilisation that had lived unabated for thousands of years.

The song went about as viral as you can in the 2020s under these circumstances. I think Fred Leone is an important part of that package. I couldn't tell you what he's saying, but there's so much gravitas in it that I can't help but be moved. Birdz is a contrast to this with his rougher delivery, but he's definitely landed on an engaging performance of his own. It's one of those songs that you're a little surprised to see here at first, but then there's enough in the way of hooks that it's not actually that unusual. As well as that, it highlights just how important it is to support our local music scene because these are the kinds of stories that you cannot just offload to higher budget international stars. There's undoubtedly something lost from the streamlined 'perfect' rendition of the popular music scene.

#212. Illy (feat Anne-Marie) - Catch 22 (#23, 2016)

25th of 2016

Many years ago I was sequentially writing about ARIA top 20 hits as part of a forum game. It stalled out around 1996 but it came with an ominous promise I had made. Once I got up to "Catch 22" by Illy, I would spend a ludicrous amount of time going completely off topic to instead talk about "Catch-22", the 1961 novel by Joseph Heller. I had recently bought it on strong recommendation because I was going to be on a 24 hour plane trip to Minnesota and needed something to pass the time. This turned out to be a very bad idea because "Catch-22" is an incredibly dense novel that is difficult to read if you're stuck on an uncomfortable plane seat. I maybe got through half a dozen chapters for the whole trip, but then I eventually got through it after I got back home. I hesitate to say that it's my favourite novel that I've ever read because I just haven't read enough for that statement to hold weight. I just struggle to think of something I'd put above it. Anyway, it's been about 6 years coming. It's time for that tangent.

I'm going to assume you're familiar with the titular phrase. I just wrote it several times in the above paragraph so that goes without saying. "Catch-22" is a novel primarily set during World War II and looks at the lives and experiences of a US army air squadron. The main character is bombardier Captain John Yossarian who spends most of his time doing anything he can to get out of flying more missions, becoming a constant source of metaphorical black-eyes on the record of his colonel. The titular phrase is most famously invoked early on, as a contradictory restriction that keeps pilots from being grounded. It's about how any pilot deemed not to be sane can't be sent on missions, but they must make an application to declare it. Since anyone who'd willingly fly missions must be insane, anyone trying to not fly must be sane, therefore they cannot successfully apply to be grounded. It occasionally re-emerges in other contexts, but the core principle always tends to keep those of low rank perpetually at the whims of their deranged superiors.

"Catch-22" is a highly satirical anti-war novel. Joseph Heller served as a bombardier during World War II, from which he drew inspiration for the novel. Supposedly he didn't experience the same cast of clowns that Yossarian did, and didn't feel anywhere near the same level of existential dread, but many people who did have found solace in the novel's depiction of war. The war in the novel is one that depicts the villains as the bumbling superiors whose vain, narrow perspectives convince them to put everyone's lives in danger. They're not usually depicted as being downright evil, but completely incapable of empathy, with their priorities focused completely on their own bureaucratic gains. Colonel Cathcart frequently expresses disdain for Yossarian not because of his insubordination on its own, but because his insubordination promises to reflect badly on him. He's frequently willing to give out a medal of commendation simply because it will look better on his record, even though he's incensed by the very same act.

The thing I've been leaving out from all of this is why I enjoy the novel so much in the first place. I can get sociopolitical satire anywhere I look, but rarely is it so disarmingly funny. In amongst all the characters that act in contradictory ways, is narrative prose that revels in doing the same thing. A line will be set up only to be countered immediately after. You're set up to be comforted by some sense of understanding what's going on, only to have to re-adjust constantly. It's just that profoundly human experience of being internally inconsistent everywhere we go. The kinds of things we might seek in others to put them below us while we're both aware and unaware of how guilty we are at the same time. The novel is just teeming with seemingly insignificant details, mundane actions from one character that are interpreted another way by someone else. The very first chapter of the novel has Yossarian in the hospital, being made to censor letters, which he gets increasingly bored with and starts turning it into a joke. Completely destroying the contents of the letters, and then signing it as Washington Irving, or Irving Washington. Multiple CID men are sent to try and figure out who is doing this and eventually they find their way to the wrong man who sees the signature and recognises the handwriting but still doesn't turn him in. At no point do they ever get close to finding the real source of something we've known for all of 500 pages. One character is logged for being on a flight they weren't on that crashed, so they're assumed to be dead even to people they're talking to. They send a letter to their wife to clear it up, but she also receives letters from the military insisting that any evidence he's alive is clearly forgery, and she moves away with no return address before he's ever able to clear it up.

There are several chapters dedicated to my favourite character, Milo Minderbinder, the mess officer. Someone who's incidentally promoted to the role and begins to take the whole thing far too seriously, concocting a full scale trade network across Europe that sells at a loss to make a profit, and begins to get paid by one side of the war to prevent attacks that he was also paid to conduct. Eventually he ends up bombing his own squadron but ends up being commended for it due to how profitable the venture was. He steals important military and first aid equipment for his ventures but always leaves an earnest note to say that it's for everyone's good. It's all just this comical venture of the always rising demands of capitalism being met by someone who genuinely thinks they're acting in everyone's best interest. Just one of many characters who are repeatedly rewarded and never punished for doing the wrong thing.

All in all though it's also a very tragic story. One where basically everyone is a flawed character but of those who are easier to root for, very few seem to get what they want. It's an unceasing tale of people being mistreated, scapegoated and abused by those above them in power. It's realising in real time alongside our main character how awful the circumstances of war are down to every detail, and reaching clarity upon eventually unravelling just what has made him this way. The very silly novel stops being silly eventually.

I think there are many things you can take away from the novel; it's quite dense, after all. What I find myself thinking about the most is the way a sense of progress can be considered more important than actual progress. The way so many parts of our society are built around putting people in permanent positions of power and/or employment that need to do things for the sake of justifying the fact they've been put in that position. The way that you feel pressured to keep up with something that's only keeping up to distance itself from the negative association that staying put brings. On a micro-level, it can compel people to do things just because they have once needed to be done, and because re-assessing your trajectory can be more taxing or consuming than just doing the same untaxing thing that provides increasingly little value. Maybe these situations won't be as hyperbolic and absurd as the novel describes, or even as drastic as I'm making it sound, but they're all absolutely there once you start thinking about it.

I think about what's been accelerated in the past decade in the music industry. We're in one of those spirals where previously safe bets have been gradually pushed out by a simultaneous algorithm & paradigm shift. The way we've never been more in communication with people overseas, overlapping their culture. It's never felt more like there's an inscrutable force that keeps the gap between the top and the less top growing.

I begrudgingly follow the @chartdata account on social media. I've done it for long enough to remember when the original user retired and let someone else take over. It's hard to distinguish them because they both have had an uncanny ability to post things very promptly, becoming a first source for many people even though they're rarely actually breaking the news. I suppose if nothing else, I respect their accuracy. It's possible they'll post something with a provocative lean to stoke engagement, but if I just treat it as an account that updates me on the charts, they're very useful.

I'll admit though that I find myself disagreeing with the general vibe of the account. There was another Twitter account I used to follow, @YTMilestones. It was just a bot account that did exactly what it said on the tin, automatically tweeting out milestones of a factor of 100,000,000 views on any music videos on YouTube. The account was created by kworb, the person whose website is another indispensable source of chart information beyond my wildest dreams. I had a bit of a 'seeing how the sausage is made' moment with this, because I would inevitably see a YouTube Milestones tweet pop up, and then at some point after, there'd be a Chart Data post that said the same thing. I knew that Chart Data followed this other account, but I had to see that for myself. At no point did I ever see their account cite the smaller account it was getting its information from. It's a policy that's also seen by the owner of that website now. Citation is clunky and it's just so much more profitable for your brand to do the dog act of stealing someone else's content as long as you don't draw attention to it. We disillusioned few aren't enough to stop it, and it would only punish me if I unfollowed in protest. Wrong behaviour being rewarded, correct behaviour being punished, it's all starting to sound like some "Catch-22" business here.

Another thing that stood out to me about that though is that Chart Data obviously was not going to tweet out every single milestone that arrived. There are just too many of them and they're not all that relevant or interesting to most people. So they'd pick and choose, no doubt prioritising the videos that are more likely to get engagement. It's not the first time they'd done something like this either. The account used to be a bit more adventurous. Taking the time out to observe international charts and trends. Nowadays they're just so focused on America and the Global charts that the usually very interesting question of 'What are people listening to in different parts of the world?' just doesn't enter the equation. This account used to tweet ARIA Chart information shortly after it was revealed. They'd even do the one song, one tweet method that they notably do with the Billboard charts. Only, they didn't really. That same selective policy would shine through again. It wouldn't be about the intriguing, unique parts of the Australian charts, but instead reinforcing that which we already all know about. I could never forget when in July 2016 they posted the whole top 5 of that week but left out the fast rising song at #2. You know, the only one that was Australian, the only one that wasn't charting around the world, the only one that would be guaranteed no engagement. They went out of their way to reveal that "M.I.L.F. $" by Fergie had climbed 8 spots to #37, but the song that had gone from #37 to #8 to #2 in its first 3 weeks never got acknowledged once. That song was "Papercuts" by Illy, of course (#857).

It's just so hard to not see any of the bad faith results of everyone looking out for their own best interests. I wrote all this before learning that this account also makes sponsored posts to promote unregulated online gambling, so it hasn't gotten any better. It becomes the ultimate dilemma for us all. Why do the right thing, which goes unappreciated if doing the wrong thing is easier and you're often rewarded for doing so. Before you know it, we'll all be doing it, and suffering the unstoppable feeling that the whole world is just one great big Prisoner's Dilemma filled with a whole lot more Betray than Ally. I guess the main thing that motivates me is the good feelings I'm wired to have when I do these things, even if they're not going to be seen or acknowledged. So often just setting up an internal system of mental rewards can do a lot of good. I'm not always very good at committing to one thing for an extended length of time, but if I cycle through them, I can create a system that works for me. I knew roughly 2 weeks ago that I was going to have to write this entry, and I buckled down to simultaneously pace forward with this blog but also re-read "Catch-22" at the same time. I'd alternate chapter and entry with an appropriate ratio such that I literally finished the book right before I started writing this entry.

Maybe it's a misguided version of merit. I'm not necessarily doing much good by putting this all down here. It's mainly for me as a way to collect several thoughts. I'm not convinced very many people will ever read it, but that's okay with me too. Sometimes just one person having a kind of profound response to something I wrote can mean the world to me. Sometimes I end up being that one person anyway. In a world where miscommunication and misunderstanding are as rife as it is in the novel, sometimes just putting our thoughts out, as unfocused as they may be, can provide a net good as a means of trying to communicate what makes us, us. Meanwhile, I'm also aware that it would be deeply inappropriate after everything I just said now to treat this Australian song as a vestigial fragment from which to make a point centred around an American novel. I will attempt to remedy that now.

The interpretation of the phrase 'catch-22' that Illy uses in this song is more about looking at life as a whole. Perhaps it's borderline nihilistic, but offset with a more optimistic outlook. If this is all it is, then why not seize the moment. Find ways to make yourself and those around you happy, instead of just spitefully trying to burn it all down. While I wouldn't necessarily say it's fully in the spirit of the term, Illy does echo the novel by using a lot of contradictory phrases. Plenty of antonyms offered as contrasting choices.

You might think that I resonated with this song because of its title, but in reality I didn't read the book until several years after. No, instead it's Anne-Marie that gets those honours. It was just an instant thing that clicked with me in her hook. Between her and M-Phazes' production, it was an undeniable ear worm that I couldn't stop going back to. I do think Illy does a good job as well, steering it along. Even the singing on the bridge is oddly endearing to me. The real tragedy of it all is that the song landed at #23 in the poll, and I may be partly to blame for that, if I remember to bring it up again in a future entry.

#211. Foo Fighters - Something From Nothing (#84, 2014)

28th of 2014

The game has changed so much. It's times like these, you learn to look back and see how we got here. For a long time, Foo Fighters could have been seen as the face of the Hottest 100. They had the most entries and so Hottest 100 success could be attributed to how closely you resemble the Foo Fighters package. Maybe it goes back further than that. In the last year that the countdown was an all-time vote, Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" was unseated by those new upstarts Nirvana with "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Hard to imagine what it was like at the time as history is written by the winners, but for anyone who did see it as an overly eager generation propping them up too quickly, they reinforced it both times since then with the same format, winning in 1998 and 2009. triple j listeners were so obsessed with Nirvana, that they took the drummer's side project and rallied behind them for another two decades. Maybe Dave Grohl has done enough to not have it be seen as a side project. He is after all, the only member of Nirvana to ever play a show at the Rivoli. We're in the presence of greatness here.

That's the Hottest 100 story up to 2014 though. After that, Foo Fighters stop contributing to the story, and it continues on without them. Their tally of 22 entries stood tallest then, but they've since been overtaken by Hilltop Hoods, Billie Eilish and G Flip. Lime Cordiale will follow suit. If you're one of the people who shaped that tally in the first place, it might be hard to stomach this. One more holdout no longer for rock to still feel like it's atop the mountain. Some grumblings about either music release patterns or kids these days. If I do think back to 2014 though, all I can think of is how even by that point, how out of place Foo Fighters felt.

There's an implicit conversation when you deal with artists at different stages of their career in these lists. It's hard not to see diminishing returns and resign yourself to the fact that they might just be past it. In theory, that's just a matter of audience response, but maybe it's also warranted on its own terms. Maybe they're just not as good as they used to be. Here, Foo Fighters aren't so far off the peak. They actually got their highest Hottest 100 entry just 7 years and 2 albums before this one, with "The Pretender" reaching #6. You might be surprised to learn that it's one of only two Foo Fighters songs to make the top 10, after "Generator" in 2000 (though if you want, "Everlong" made an all-time top 10). They might not have had that cultural grip anymore, but they were still a huge album seller. 

Actually there's a funny quirk with it. Around 2014, the ARIA Charts had a unique property with regard to pre-orders. Albums would often release 'instant grats', songs (not necessarily promoted singles) that would be available to download on iTunes for anyone who pre-ordered the album. They'd been around earlier in the decade, but they were mainly visible for their property of erasing the sales of songs once the album was released. I first observed this effect in 2011, when the release of Britney Spears' new album caused lead single "Hold It Against Me" to register net negative sales on that week and drop on the Billboard Hot 100 from #52 to #75 (radio airplay keeping it somewhat afloat) before climbing back up to #59. We also had this happen in Australia. P!nk's "Blow Me (One Last Kiss)" fell out of the top 50 for a week in 2012 when the album came out, and despite otherwise probably registering its best sales week, Muse had "Madness" drop out without a fuss. There's also the ever noteworthy story with The Voice Australia in 2012, where all of Karise Eden's singles suffered heavily, including the previous week's #1 which is now saddled with a significant showing for the biggest drop off from #1 ever (a record it might still have, just not as starkly). Then again, if Christmas music never comes back to the charts, then that's Mariah Carey's record to hold forever.

I don't know exactly when it happened, but the script was flipped in 2014. It was no longer about those sudden one week sinks, but rather about offloading instantaneous sales that slyly made a mockery of the charts in a way that's not even obvious on the surface. Much like pre-orders would make songs instantly shoot towards the top of the iTunes chart, now you'd also get it for individual songs that were less specifically sought, and these sales counted to the chart. All those alt-J songs from 2014 I talked about here made the ARIA top 100, thanks to people who might not have even realised they downloaded them. Sia accumulated top 50 hits that didn't remotely feel like hits, and 5 Seconds of Summer scored a top 10 hit with "Amnesia" before it was actually pushed as a single. It didn't make it back to the top 10 (it stalled at #11), but it didn't need to, I suppose.

Foo Fighters' most recent top 50 in Australia was "Wheels" in 2009. If not for "Everlong" returning and scoring a new peak in 2022 after Taylor Hawkins died, they'd have their entire top 50 hit chart history confined solely to the '90s and '00s. It wasn't for lack of trying either, because in the 2010s, they managed 5 more top 60 hits. A mix of short lived hype on first week downloads, and genuine crossovers that just couldn't quite get there. "Something from Nothing" was one of the closest calls, getting to #53, but that was just the start of the campaign, and we knew the album was going to sell a lot. The instant grats took effect and Foo Fighters actually had two songs that spent a day at #1 on iTunes, "Congregation" and "What Did I Do? / God as My Witness". Popularity bars at the time alerted me to the possibility that Foo Fighters were going to score a very uncharacteristic top 20 (maybe top 10) hit with the former, but then it never appeared on the chart. ARIA seemingly pulled the plug on that loophole and Foo Fighters just missed the cut off. Another layer to their perpetual misfortune in Australia, unable to book a slot in the ARIA top 50 singles chart, no matter what zany schemes they had.

Maybe that's not a big deal. I was mainly rooting for it to happen because I love when the ARIA Charts serve up oddities like that. I wouldn't look back at those as vital, essential Foo Fighters songs. With that being said, I find myself making an exception for "Something From Nothing". Back in 2008, Metallica also had their last Hottest 100 entry with "The Day That Never Comes" from "Death Magnetic". That's an album that actually did manage to muck around with the ARIA Charts in the day, though with genuine purchases of the singles. I point it out because while Metallica were equally out of place (they were sitting next to Kanye West on the list), it was a great send off with a late career single that felt like it was justifying itself on its own. A slow burner that goes wild towards the end, reminding me of both the best and worst parts of Metallica, but landing on the side of positive. "Something From Nothing" is Foo Fighters' version of "The Day That Never Comes". It's a similar kind of odyssey that starts off slowly but builds to a monster climax. Even the guitar riffs towards the end sound a little similar. You thought I'd stop it at that, but it's me now also noting a strong resemblance to Dio's "Holy Diver" earlier on. Obviously Foo Fighters are still around, but this is the sound of a band at the end of their spotlight period absolutely relishing the chance to go all out. Genuinely one of their best singles right here.