#175-#171

#175. Juice WRLD - Robbery (#42, 2019)

13th of 2019

It hasn't been a long wait, but we're back with another pseudo-posthumous entry here. In some regard, you can probably cut "Robbery" a little more slack as it was already something of a hit on its own and maybe there's a chance it could have polled anyway, but the reality is that voting opened in the middle of December 2019, a week after Juice WRLD tragically passed away at the tragically young age of 21. There's no way it wouldn't be on anyone's minds at the time. All of his top 50 hits had just re-entered the ARIA top 50 on that very weekend. Still, he was just barely getting started at that point without many hits to his name. "Robbery" stands as the only Hottest 100 entry Juice WRLD actually got to release while he was still with us.

I touched on it a little when I got to him before, but at the pointy end of the list, I think it's worth acknowledging just how opposed I was to Juice WRLD at the time. I found myself thoroughly irked by his breakthrough hit "Lucid Dreams", with its tired sample, occasionally misogynistic lyrics and most of all, that stilted delivery where every syllable needs a metre of distance apart from each other in a clunky attempt to forge melodic rap. It didn't get any better, the more I heard from him, where his worst tendencies would just seem to grow into more unavoidable issues. I was ready to conclude that he had nothing going for him and I should just do my best to ignore him.

Then "Robbery" came along and you can absolutely bet that nothing in my opinion changed at all. Even for a lot of people who liked what he was bringing to the table, this was a bridge too far. An utterly unhinged song with production choices that don't seem to mesh and an over-the-top performance that doesn't compromise itself at all. It was the last straw, the sign that we've been on the Juice WRLD experience for too long. It became the one song that seemed to troll me every other morning. My alarm would wake me up, and "Robbery" was on the radio. My favourite song would get played, "Robbery" would follow. Truly, a gift and a curse that I could not reverse.

On the other hand, that's the funny thing that starts to happen. I couldn't help but laugh at the sheer absurdity of the circumstance. The way it happened with this song that shined a light on all of Juice WRLD's roughest tendencies, with the song somehow managing to be enough of a hit to justify it. Much like how you can't help but laugh at some point watching "Groundhog Day" when the barrage of "I Got You Babe" finally reaches a tipping point, "Robbery" did just enough in its accidental overexposure that I relished the opportunity. Then I started to enjoy the song and the whole thing spiralled out from there. "Robbery" went from a song that I couldn't imagine a worse version of, to something I might actively choose to listen to, and a song I grew to really love by the end of it.

Honestly just this one song went a long way for me to better understanding the appeal of Juice WRLD and what he offers. I'm still not particularly fond of some of his earlier stuff, but I can see a version of it where it all comes together. "Robbery" to me, represents the whole ideal seen out to its logical extreme. This is a song where the protagonist is not remotely in a good place. You can hear it in the things he says and the way he says them. It's the sound of someone who can't consistently string coherent thoughts, constantly getting side tracked and jumping onto new tangents. Truly throwing absolutely everything at the wall here. I don't know if anyone's ever pointed this out before, but by landing so close to Denzel Curry's "RICKY" (#347), we had two songs in quick succession that spin parental advice into something misguided. I just love every strange journey Juice WRLD takes us on. It's a song that's perhaps lucky to have been released when it was, because in hindsight, it sounds like a twisted version of Lizzo's "Truth Hurts", a song that belatedly entered the spotlight just a month after this song had its turn.

#174. Mallrat - Rockstar (#13, 2020)

9th of 2020

I don't like to speak in certain terms. It often means making promises that while I would do my best to make certain, all manner of things could potentially get in the way, and then I just don't like the pressure of it. Look at Nickelback's song "Rockstar", it's just full of all kinds of future tense in its imagined life of luxury. I'm not sure any rockstars can guarantee all of those luxuries. Mallrat has it figured out. She has a whole bunch of phrases of certainty, but she gets away with it by starting her chorus with the word 'Maybe'. Big '/s' vibes to this one.

You might not be surprised to learn that Mallrat has never actually won any GRAMMY Awards. She hasn't even managed an ARIA Award though she has tallied up to 4 nominations now. The one surprising international nomination she has managed is an MTV Europe Music Award for the oddly specific category of Best Australian Act. It's a fascinating thing to look at, seeing how an international audience looks at us. I have no idea where they actually pull the nominations from. It's strange to see 5 Seconds of Summer get two early wins but then they're left out in 2018 when they actually had a major hit (Tkay Maidza won that one). Every year since 2020, The Kid LAROI has gotten a nomination but hasn't won. They put the awards on pause in 2025 so I have no idea, but maybe it could've finally been his year. Just living the Diane Warren Academy Awards experience.

Anyway there's a certain irony to this because of all the 'Rockstar' songs we have, this is the one that doesn't position the artist as the potential rockstar. Yet despite that, it's also the only one where I would make the claim that they've actually pivoted into rock to complete the illusion. I'm not used to hearing actual guitars like this behind Mallrat. There's a big solo near the end and it's the most interesting part of the song, just a strange rejection of pop song structure, with some of the filthiest tuning going around. If Mitski could find her phone, then she would have taken notes. But then she still did it anyway. Are you telling me you can take notes on pen and paper?

#173. FKA twigs - Two Weeks (#45, 2014)

21st of 2014

One of the things that Jessie J laments in her song "Price Tag" is the current era of 'video hos'. Just remember that when anyone ever says 'Am I the only one...', they're unintentionally evoking one Jessica Cornish. Clearly she was too ahead of her time though. Maybe a couple of years later and she might have really been onto something, maybe I'm onto that act of leading on again. There aren't many songs left in this list and even less that have these kinds of foreseeable properties, so I have to relish the chances.

Funnily enough, if you watch the music video for that song, at the exact moment she delivers that line, you might see someone familiar. That is in fact Tahliah Barnett, soon to be formerly known as twigs as a backup dancer behind Jessie J. I can't speak in all honesty and say that the tables have fully turned, just because nostalgia streams absolutely pay the bills, but let's just say that both of these singers released albums in 2025 and one of them peaked at #3, the other at #19 in the UK.

People might have mockingly called Stormzy a backup dancer, but for FKA twigs, it was an honest reflection. She was in a small handful of music videos before her music career took off, notably including some blink-and-you'll-miss-it shots in an Ed Sheeran music video. It's something of a touchy issue for her after she gave up dancing and started making music. She'd get stopped in the street by people who recognised her from those videos and eventually she started just denying it. On her debut album, the song "Video Girl" is about those mental demons. It's one of the more memorable cuts on "LP1" that aren't "Two Weeks".

I always think about the big shift in the Hottest 100 that happens pretty much immediately after 2014. Double J has been introduced and gradually starts to take up the mantle for all kinds of blog-core or otherwise acclaimed but not chart smashing artists. Prior to this, you could usually find a little space in the countdown for those songs that are beloved on the internet but might register a shrug elsewhere. That's the space where you get Animal Collective or The National polling. I put FKA twigs in a similar grouping just because she's the portrait of an artist that I'd generally never expect to be in the conversation. 2014 didn't play by the rules though, so she ended up quite high for her first and only ever appearance. Maybe this was her one undeniable crossover that had all the hype going for it, but I'd be lying if I said she's never made anything else worthy of the same attention.

FKA twigs was something of a curiosity to me at the time. You hear a song like "Two Weeks" and it immediately calls to repel you. Its stiff, cold production in combination with a chorus that anchors itself around saying an expletive made me feel like she was filtering out her audience right there. She's not your typical pop star, nor is she trying to be. She's a bit edgy and a bit weird. I think I warmed to the song eventually because there was too much assurance that she was onto a good thing. I even bought the album and listened to it a bunch. I deemed that she was pretty good but didn't have a very high ceiling for me.

She kept releasing more music and I kept listening though. There were some stopgaps between albums for her that I was pretty positive about. I felt like I was finally rewarded for persistence in 2019 with a big advance single to her second album. You know what I'm talking about here, it's that show-stopping single "holy terrain" with Future. This is one of those classic cases of a polarizing single that gets re-assessed once the album comes out and suddenly the artist can do no wrong. We'll have some more of these on the list, and it's one where I saw the vision right away. Also before that she released her actual showstopper of a single "cellophane", the song I'm most likely to see get brought up by people who don't otherwise listen to twigs. That's a masterpiece obviously but I just didn't give it enough of a chance at first, which is more of a showing to how an artist can fall out of commercial favour without actually stumbling. I think a lot of people would like a second chance at a first impression with that one.

I don't tend to think about it as much as I used to, but if I was pressed for a choice, I'd say that "MAGDALENE" is my favourite album of 2019. It's the point where FKA twigs went from isolated moments of intrigue to just full on nailing the atmosphere from start to finish. Almost every song is good enough to be a single for me and it hasn't lost any of that shine 7 years later. There's an incredible range of ballads & bangers that slip in seamlessly together. "sad day" in particular, really resonated with me and probably demonstrates that contrast the best. It's a very beautiful and chaotic song. Ditto 5 years later with the title track to "EUSEXUA", just a marvel of crisp, pounding production and she's never sounded better as a singer.

The whole thing was just a huge revelation though. I wouldn't say I've completely gone back to "LP1" with that same enthusiasm, it's mostly still just pretty good. "Two Weeks" however, I'm much more open towards. There's a certain quaintness to it with all that's come after it, so I no longer feel fearful of it. It's a strange flirtation with making an anthem that largely works. The phrase 'higher than a motherf**ker' is a flip of the same line from Nicki Minaj's "Starships" but I'd almost completely forgotten about it now, and I'm wondering if my hesitation in 2014 was due to that being a more recent phenomenon at the time. As far as I'm concerned though, it's twigs' phrase now, she treats it with a lot more gravitas, the kind that feels rewarding when it wraps back around to it at the end. A great bridge also it must be said, she pulls off that tender tone better than anyone.

#172. DZ Deathrays - Shred For Summer (#67, 2017)

22nd of 2017

In a crucial blow for pretending that I can have diverse opinions, DZ Deathrays have stepped in with all three of their entries in the range of about 20 places. In some ways, I feel like I went out of my way to make this happen because if you'd asked me a few years ago, I'd probably have "Gina Works At Hearts" (#193) as the clear standout. It's just the song from the album I like a lot which can lend a lot of favours. Instead I've just come through here and elevated my opinion of their other two entries so they just end up in that same general area.

"Shred For Summer" is probably something you'd get from a DZ Deathrays song title generator. This is their entire vibe boiled down to one mantra. They did release it as early as August which might be jumping the gun, but sometimes you have to just have your cogs in place. Just like Tame Impala needed to get "Dracula" out in September to build up to Halloween. Only the way it's going right now, it might end up a bigger success for Halloween 2026 and absolutely solidify those cheesy playlists given how easy they are to crack. DZ Deathrays were ready, and for it, we had the album come out in summer, and everyone was doing air guitar when this landed in the Hottest 100, also in summer.

It's just a behemoth of a song though. You get a fake out at the start with this incredibly distorted riff, only for it to come through cleanly on the verses. I think there's some lineage in that other two piece band, Royal Blood. It's a little funny because "Figure It Out" has a thick guitar riff of its own that plays through the whole song. For DZ Deathrays, that's the bar they're hitting for the song's quiet bridge. It just goes to show that if Royal Blood wanted to make the Hottest 100, they should've gone harder, or been born in Australia, that's probably a boon for success in this, and only this metric.

#171. What So Not (feat George Maple) - Gemini (#90, 2015)

25th of 2015

I hope you're sitting down for this because this is a revelation that rocked me a couple of years ago. Back in the 1960s, NASA enacted Project Gemini as part of its space program, a precursor to the Apollo program that eventually put men on the moon. A lot of people don't know this, but when Project Gemini was operating, they were pronouncing the word 'gemini' with a soft 'i' at the end, in a way that makes the word rhyme with hegemony. Just thoroughly unpleasing to the ear, and a reminder that I, and many others my age who played "Jet Force Gemini" as a child take some things for granted. I have no idea if this was the experience for What So Not, Flume or George Maple. The word doesn't appear in the lyrics, and I can't find any explanation on why the song is called "Gemini". It's lost in the more pressing discussion of the song's release and the circumstances around it.

This is something I touched on when talking about "Innerbloom"'s remix by What So Not (#720), but it can't hurt to serve up a reminder a year later. What So Not was a duo with Emoh Instead and Flume. If you were really into Flume, it was your way of getting more beyond just the surface releases. They parted ways in 2015 with Emoh Instead taking up the What So Not name going forward, but before they did this, they put together one last song together, "Gemini". Maybe it's the Swedish House Mafia effect that made it the biggest What So Not song, or maybe in both cases it's just justified as obviously the song that would be the biggest just from listening to it.

This song is also our spotlight moment for George Maple. She has some tenure outside of this. She co-wrote Tkay Maidza's "Simulation" (#673), and before my cut-off period, she was on vocal duty for Flight Facilities' shining disco treat "Foreign Language", under the mononym of 'Jess'. I'm made to believe that she also sings on Hayden James' "Something About You" (#604). She picked up some strong associations via Future Classic and ended up on Flume's debut album, which might be why she's here. I thought her solo career was going to take off when her debut single "Talk Talk" did big opening numbers on SoundCloud, only to discover that doesn't amount to a whole lot. Great song, though. She'd keep it up until 2020 and has released two albums. I'm particularly fond of her song "Kryptonite", absolute banger.

I feel like "Gemini" gets us the best of all these worlds. George Maple does feel a little overpowered by the production, but she still provides an alluring base to structure it around. There's a little instrumental moment before the second chorus that feels like a call back to classic Flume, but it's all building up to that big blast of a drop. I think it's a little like what Flume would do on "Some Minds" (#637), these two songs were released about a month apart. "Gemini" just has the stronger skeleton, allowing the synth boops to feel more confident, and always a treat to come back to.