#150-#146

#150. Ocean Alley - Touch Back Down (#20, 2021)

6th of 2021

Ocean Alley have done a tremendous effort to try and restore the year by year balance. The latter years are very quickly running out of contributors, but here they are, absolutely flooding the market and saving their best for last. Hearing "Touch Back Down" was such a revelation that I never could have seen coming, and to make matters better, it still isn't their last entry here, as an even later song is still to come. I think we're all used to generally liking an artist's earlier material the most, but I suppose when you're a little more ambivalent to begin with, there's more possible range to do the opposite. They've come through with some pretty solid additions in the last two countdowns as well.

"Touch Back Down" came out during a pretty pivotal period. Ocean Alley had already experienced their big breakout on "Chiaroscuro", and followed it up with a pretty popular, but ultimately less successful follow up. The next album after that had a chance to sink them down to being yesterday's news, or just 2010s nostalgia. In that regard, it probably filled its role, quickly asserting itself to land in the top 20 for the Hottest 100 despite being released very late, in the middle of November. I wonder if they delayed the album a bit too much after that though, and didn't have another big hit to back it up, so it's certainly their least successful album. Their most recent album, "Love Balloon", has probably steered the ship back on course, but it has an admittedly misleading chart run as the first Ocean Alley album to come out in an era with heavy restrictions on the album chart. It's spent considerably more weeks in the ARIA top 50 than all other Ocean Alley albums combined, which doesn't feel like it's speaking to any particular truth. You take the opportunities you get though.

If you're used to the adage that Ocean Alley make the same song over and over again, I don't know if "Touch Back Down" challenges that assertion at all. To me, it felt like a revitalised version of the band, maybe initially lulling you into familiar territory, but with the secret weapon of perhaps the band's best hook. It all just comes together, the guitars, the 'ooh', the assertions that it won't be long until they touch back down, and how they would very much like to touch back down. It became something of a joke to me at the time, going out of my way to turn it into a prompt and response whenever Ocean Alley came up in conversation, and maybe sometimes when they didn't. I'm glad that this is their second highest entry here. I can't promise you that it won't be long until they touch back down, but they will assuredly touch back down at some point.

#149. Thelma Plum - Better in Blak (#9, 2019)

11th of 2019

I'll start by answering the question that might have risen immediately upon seeing this song title, 'Why Blak?'. It's not a mistake. It's a term that's been around since 1994, when an Aboriginal artist (who passed away in 2024) insisted on the spelling for an art exhibition, 'Blakness: Blak City Culture'. Her reasoning came from the way she had frequently experienced white people using the phrase 'black c***s' and decided she wanted to remove the 'c' from 'black'. It serves as a unique signifier when talking about the racial discrimination experienced in Australia to differentiate it from similar, but different cultures and experiences in other countries.

When it comes to any country's history with regard to European settlers and how they interacted with the native population, the story is never particularly a shining thing to look back on. It's all just a stark reminder of the dehumanising things that were readily normalised and acted upon by a ruling class that bestowed greatness upon themselves. For Australia, it doesn't get much worse. You can talk about invasion, colonisation, genocide, and feel some distance from it because it largely happened hundreds of years ago alongside very distant relations. All history looks pretty bad back then. The thing that always stands out to me with regard to Australia, is just how recently these incredibly horrible things were happening.

I think specifically about the Stolen Generations. There was a policy enacted by the Australian government for most of the 20th century to take Aboriginal children out of their homes and integrate them into white families, with the primary objective to breed the colour out of them. I'd always thought of it as the Stolen Generation (singular), but in reality, this was happening for about 60 years. Through this awful program that was recent enough to still have living 'participants', they've done irreparable damage to the very national culture and identity they were supposedly trying to strengthen. We have an incredibly diminished population of Indigenous Australians now, one that increasingly has lost that distinguishable image. It makes me so mad, the way Indigenous Australians are treated even today, where those negative racial stereotypes continue to filter down to the younger, current population. One of the lines that infuriate me the most is that empty retort to anyone who speaks out on any of these issues because they're not black enough. I'm not someone who speaks in expletives and derogatory language very often, so I don't feel qualified to conjure up the right words to succinctly say how much I wish the people who say that could fuck off.

"Better In Blak" continues the legacy of famous songs that express this experience, alongside "Took The Children Away" and "Treaty", among others. Thelma Plum voices her frustrations with both the system and the individual, the kinds of things that would just never come up for a white singer. It's always worth remembering that this came out a couple of years after the controversy surrounding Sticky Fingers (#705), where Thelma Plum's version of events was so often dismissed. Just that triple whammy of institutionalised sexism & racism, alongside the way that the discourse tends to side with the more popular artist with the most fans in their corner. Whatever really happened, there's no justifying the response she got, certainly not 'calls in the middle of the night, saying 'You're not worth it, you deserve it''. In her own words, this song was born from that vitriol, and she absolutely owns the moment. To make matters better, it's become her signature hit, a double platinum single, and a top 10 finish in the Hottest 100. Not everyone can do that.

I love the lyric, 'But if I keep quiet, I'll be the one who's lying too'. I don't think anyone would necessarily put the two actions on the same level, but it's flexing the personal strength to overcome the moment. A lot of people have never experienced anything close to the level of fame that causes that ugly side of things and probably think they could tank it. Once you're in the public spotlight though, it changes everything and you're no longer always able to shrug it all off, or respond the way you really want to. Your image, career and well-being can be under threat if you're ever caught giving any sort of response to it. Fortunately Thelma Plum was able to turn it into a great song.

#148. Nothing But Thieves - What Can I Do If The Fire Goes Out? - Like A Version (#72, 2018)

17th of 2018

I voted in triple j's Hottest 100 of Like a Version back in 2023. By that point, I was very set on my mission to complete this list, and so when it came to posting my vote online, I made sure to censor it for the relevant information. Most of my votes weren't really a going concern, but I did have to omit two songs that were going to appear in this list. If you've been keeping count here, you might notice that including this one, there are just two Like A Version entries left in this list. I did not vote for this cover. I actually voted for "Dumb Things" (#208) instead. Whether that's a failing on my part for being inconsistent, you can decide for yourself, but I don't think this was really on my radar in those terms. I did vote for the last Like A Version though, that was a safer bet.

Maybe that was a reasonable course of action to take at the time. This particular cover probably represents the more uninspired side of the segment. It's not always really up to the artist, but audience metrics so often tell us that it's most lucrative to just cover the popular song from a year or two ago. Everyone seems to be more than happy enough to just vote for the same song twice (I may have done this once myself, but that's a story for another day). The song is still fresh in everyone's head, and you don't necessarily have to find yourself competing with it by taking a little more time, a win-win for all. It does make it a little strange when I do this list and I find myself having to talk about a cover of a song that I will also talk about at a later date. You know, that Gang of Youths song that Nothing But Thieves covered.

This is not the only time Nothing But Thieves will appear here, but it is very belatedly the first. Nothing But Thieves were building their profile and almost settling into a residency in Australia, 2018 being the third consecutive year they stopped over. Funnily enough, it was actually back in London where the connection comes from. Nothing But Thieves got asked to do a UK support slot for Gang of Youths and got fairly acquainted, something that seems strange to me because I can't think of a time when Nothing But Thieves haven't been more popular than them in the UK.

I'll readily admit that if you're hoping for hugely transformative experiences that become essential counterparts to the originals (or maybe a replacement?), then I don't think you get it here either. That's been pretty apparent early on which is why it didn't really register for me when thinking about my Like A Version votes. It was just one of those surprise packages that came along with making this ranking list, where once I'd give it the time and listened to it, I was always hooked. Maybe it's just that other easy adage where it's very easy to go along with a cover of a song you already like. If there is something I want to highlight about this version though, it's that it's cutting the lengthy original song to a brisk 3:18, and they meld it into their own sound. Not to the point where I'd say it's better (evidently), but the way they ramp up the energy just hits a little bit differently, and Conor's distinct falsetto stands out as well.

#147. Billie Eilish - you should see me in a crown (#46, 2018)

16th of 2018

Depending on where you look around for this information, the word 'flop' is often a dirty word. It's a fun word, certainly. One that has come about and can perhaps be dished out retrospectively for anything that didn't measure up to its potential, or the potential that was there if the music was more resonant. The problem is that once you're aware of it, it begins to hang around in the air as a spectre. You want to spot the early signs, because you've done this dance before and see where it's going. It's no longer done just retrospectively, and it's now a social media race for just how quickly something can be declared a flop to a frankly insensible level. Even though very few songs will have reached even 1% of their total lifetime audience reach at that point, the arms race of first day streaming numbers can have it chucked out after one day of anything short of chart-smashing numbers. I can understand the draw to doing this, especially in an era where negativity is such an easier outlook to post online, but I can't think of a time when I, or anyone, has ever had to go back to an older post and praise someone for their insight in calling the flop in record time. Making fun of someone for absolutely blowing it though? I guess negativity begets the negativity it deserves.

When you break things down, the life cycle of any song, hit or otherwise, is very similar. It gets released on a Friday to good (for that artist's reach) streaming numbers, it dips heavily on the weekend, and then gets a slight second wind on the Monday (because people just like listening to new music on that day of the week). You'll perhaps get additional boosts along the way with an album release, a tour announcement, or if the single gets tacked onto the next single's track list. Otherwise it's mostly just days of steady numbers that don't amount to much in a sea of the rest of the world's music doing the same thing, unless the song goes viral for whatever reason.

I find the album release week to be the most interesting part of it because it's had a history of giving songs the extra boost they've always had in them. When an artist releases so many loose singles along the way, not everyone has time to prime themselves on release week, and maybe it will just flounder from there, but when the album comes out, we get a better picture as to whether everyone was just skipping the song, or if it never got the exposure it needed in the first place.

"you should see me in a crown" is always the first example I think of with this phenomenon. It was released in 2018 to a pretty muted response. Billie Eilish was still getting established, but even in Australia where she'd just had a top 5 hit (it'll be on this list), it struggled to limp into the top 50 and was out of the conversation completely about a month later. You start to wonder if those early adopters to Billie Eilish singles had a certain sound in mind for her which this song just wasn't satisfying. I don't think it's a new sound for her really, as her previous EP had occasional moments like this (see "COPYCAT"), but the version of Billie Eilish that was on the charts at the time wasn't like this at all. There was a missing link in the chain that meant maybe a lot of people who would have liked this from her, just didn't hear it.

The song's fortunes were considerably reversed when the album came out. It wasn't just a single week moment, but for several weeks, this song specifically was outperforming its initial peak in 2018. It's something that might still get lost from a chart observing space, because at the end of the day, it's still a song whose first and second chart runs look like victims of gravity they can't defy, but if you do that enough times, you tend to accumulate winning numbers. This song doesn't have the exciting jumps into a lot of global top 10s like "wish you were gay" (#993) and "bury a friend" (#206), but on lifetime numbers, it's rubbing shoulders with them. Sometimes you have to just escape your pre-conceptions and trust the numbers, because they continue to tick up even if you've decided they're not worth the concern anymore.

Early Billie Eilish is occasionally on the edgy side of things. She was pretty early on the boat of uncapitalised titles that lack correct grammar after all. This is probably not her most edgy entry, but that's for another day. It might be the most sinister though. I always think of that sharpening knife sound effect to set the mood, as well as how much extra weight it has on the song's promise. When Billie Eilish is ruling, you'll be the first against the wall. Good thing we don't have to worry about that. Now I'm just going to take a nice sip of coffee and look at the next Hottest 100 result after this one.

#146. Vampire Weekend - Unbelievers (#90, 2013)

30th of 2013

Vampire Weekend cut their teeth not on necks, but on making quirky, if a little obnoxious songs. They're the "A-Punk" band, and though that was quite a long time ago now, it remains true. It's not necessarily a bad thing either, I like "A-Punk". I don't know if I could confidently pin down why it works sometimes, and doesn't other times, but it's something I've wrestled with ever since "Unbelievers" came out. I've spoken in praise of "Modern Vampires of the City" before, and I'd do it again, with its really nifty arrangements that make for beautiful motifs. On the other hand, I generally just really like this quirky upbeat number.

It was a fruitful time for Vampire Weekend here, capable of polling with the third single on their third album, just continuing to rack up the entries in a short space of time. On these terms, this is actually the last Vampire Weekend song to ever appear in the Hottest 100. They're just not the same band without Rostam. It's technically not the last Vampire Weekend adjacent song on this list, and if you want to talk about chronology, then you'll get into an inconclusive split regarding single and album releases.

"Unbelievers" is actually a song that takes a little while to hit its stride. Generally, I found myself vibing with it for the perky chorus. I love those little staccato notes. Over time though, I've found myself liking it for all the more subtle moments as well. Often times, the band lock in together with nothing really sticking out, but it all coming together neatly. It lets you focus on all those little details, like that rising synth in the background. It comes to a great finish on the song's coda. I'm a big fan of the bridge to "Obsession" by The Cairos, and I feel like Vampire Weekend somewhat beat them to the punch by a handful of months.