#180-#176

#180. RÜFÜS DU SOL - On My Knees (#9, 2021)

8th of 2021

As far as I can recall, if you look at the Hottest 100 through any reasonable statistical model, what you'll find is that Kanye West is probably the most successful artist who has never made the top 10. There's one slight exception to this as he has a producer credit on "INDUSTRY BABY" (#439), which is an entry here where I've started it off with the same fact. It's relevant again because I think he's very 'lucky' to still hold that distinction. It's something RÜFÜS DU SOL could easily have taken away. They're very good at polling well and polling often, they just had one stroke of luck when they finally got rid of that hoodoo on their 4th album. "On My Knees" is the only RÜFÜS DU SOL song to ever make the top 10. Okay, "Innerbloom" made it for one of the special countdowns, but there's something that can be more noteworthy about the ability to so quickly win that respect. "On My Knees" was released in late September 2021, so it was just a few months they had, while it was already fighting an uphill battle being the third single released from "Surrender".

I'm not sure if it's the most likely contender, but "On My Knees" became something of a crossover hit, the kind they hadn't really had since "You Were Right" (#274). That's momentum you can carry to the bank and something that's stuck the landing. "On My Knees" remains one of their most popular songs to this day, always impressive for an artist that was arguably well past their commercial peak. All the more impressive too for its finish in the Hottest 100. In one of the more US pop dominated years, they managed to take up one of those underdog Australian slots.

To me, this all makes sense. "On My Knees" is a culmination of everything I want from RÜFÜS DU SOL, and packaged in a relatively pop friendly context. I'm reminded of The Presets' big hits from "Apocalypso" in 2007. There's a sinister darkness in the sound of it, but it never feels at risk of frightening you off. You're drawn in by the light at the end of that tunnel. On top of that, they're a group that have fully honed their craft in a way that can't help but sound big. Every synth stab, every drum pound, it's all working together to create this monster of a song. I wouldn't call it Tyrone's best vocal performance, but the pleading tone works well with this backdrop. There's a nice, underrated moment on the bridge where they briefly reel it back in and I'm reminded of the very early RÜFÜS DU SOL days, the RÜFÜS days if you will. It sounds so pretty before building back up to a completely earned climax. I think on the surface I just liked this song for being catchy but the more I go back to it, the more I just admire the craft of it all.

#179. The Amity Affliction - I Bring the Weather With Me (#67, 2016)

21st of 2016

The album "This Could Be Heartbreak" is the black sheep of The Amity Affliction's discography. It's absolutely one of their most successful albums, released at the height of their popularity, but it's been pushed aside in the years since. It's the necessary follow up to the big commercial breakthrough, with all the classic trappings. You'll listen to it and just get something that sounds similar to their previous album, "Let the Ocean Take Me". For the many people who jumped on board with that album, it's probably close to what they want, but it's hard to justify picking it up first after the thrill is gone. I listen to "Tearing Me Apart" and I can't escape the clear similarities to the last Amity Affliction song I'll be talking about in this list.

This isn't just the view from the fans though, by all reports, it's felt even more strongly by the band themselves. Gleaning from interviews, Joel & Ahren both weren't a fan of the album, and it's possible Joel associates it with a time when he was going through an alcoholic relapse. Generally though, they accepted that they leaned too hard into what they'd done before and ended up with some of their cheesiest songs. It's an album that gets very little coverage in their modern setlists. The one song that seems to have survived is "All F**ked Up" (#827), and even that song fell out of favour for a while when they had just released "Not Without My Ghosts", taking up the mantle for a while as the token softer song in the metal setlist. By comparison, their most recent setlist has had them typically playing 2 songs from "Chasing Ghosts" and 3 from "Let The Ocean Take Me". I don't think many people are lamenting the lack of "Some Friends" to be fair.

The only other song from the album that still got a reasonable shake is "I Bring the Weather With Me". They haven't played it in a while, but they stuck with it for a pretty long time, so there's always the chance it comes back. On an album full of attempts to find the next hit, this might just be the one that makes that most clear. I wouldn't say it's the most derivative, but just the song that's always felt like it packs in the most hooks. It always feels like it's ramping things up to a good pay off, and I think having Joel sing the title line works better than when Ahren does it. Just a very well put together effort.

#178. DZ Deathrays - Like People (#47, 2018)

19th of 2018

I was blessed a while back when someone brought this song up while I was researching for my entry on San Cisco's "Reasons" (#495). They seemed to think that both music videos were filmed at the same venue. It's something I couldn't get myself to confirm (I spent a lot of time looking at windows). If there's a similarity to be noted though, it's that both videos do start with fairly long cuts (36 seconds for San Cisco, 27 seconds for DZ Deathrays). Both videos abandon this style afterwards.

This was an important entry point to this because it introduced me to a music video I'd either forgotten about or never seen before. I'm now willing to put in all my chips and say that the music video is a strong contributor to how "Like People" did so well. Maybe it wouldn't have been a convincing take in 2019, but we've got some added evidence in the 2020s to suggest what we probably should have already known. People who listen to triple j just love The Wiggles. I love to imagine someone catching the video on TV on a late night and having the slow revelation as a man emerges from a bathroom stall wearing a suit and puts on his glasses. Maybe you recognise him or maybe you don't, but then a minute into the video he re-emerges in a red dress shirt and you realise you're looking at Murray Cook. What an absolute legend. I watched it multiple times before I realised he grips a steaming potato because he's making a Wiggles reference, I just thought it was neat. It all just feels like a full circle moment. DZ Deathrays are about the right age to be some of the first fans The Wiggles ever cultivated. Murray would go on to play the song with the band at Splendour In The Grass that year, and also join in on a cover of AC/DC's "Highway to Hell". This was clearly hinted at when Murray mimicked the Angus Young guitar dance in the music video.

"Like People" comes from DZ Deathrays' 3rd album "Bloody Lovely", which after the breakout success of "Black Rat", earned them much more attention. They went from a #23 charting album to #4. They outsold Shannon Noll if you can believe it. I don't know if the band ever quite captured the exuberance from that release again, but in its place is just the mother of all chunky, chunky actual guitars. They were definitely playing around with distortion effects before, but it all combined with the drums to just make the songs feel more danceable. Here they just smash you over the head with an enormous guitar riff and leave you to pick up the pieces. The chorus is just classic DZ Deathrays release, that's a knack I'm not sure they've ever lost.

#177. Gang of Youths - Let Me Down Easy (#2, 2017)

23rd of 2017

Recently in the world of petty, silly internet drama, there's been a lot of focus on the TV show Breaking Bad. In most places you can look, it holds up a pretty significant mantle as a common go-to answer to the question of 'What is the best TV show ever made?'. Whatever the real answer to that question might be, it's not really important, it's just that the show has more fans willing to stake the claim than anything else. Maintaining that status quo is of highest importance to them.

It's so important that they're willing to tear down any potential threat to this. There's a Game of Thrones prequel of sorts that recently came out. It's getting very good reviews. I've pretty much memorised every word of the trailer that plays every time I try to watch an HBO show. In fact, one episode of the show even managed upon release to reach a 10.0 rating on IMDb, the highest rating you can get, and one that has been held exclusively by an episode of Breaking Bad for over a decade. I should clarify firstly that a 10.0 doesn't really mean it's the obscenely high approval of rounding up at least from 9.95, because the site heavily filters perceived trolling. Secondly, it's a reasonably common thing in pretty much all websites like this that scores start off high and then find a more realistic chasm in the days and weeks following, as people come to check out the hype and don't have the same enthusiasm as the day one die hards. That didn't stop Breaking Bad fans from attempting to right a perceived wrong and put Game of Thrones in its place. They succeeded, and dropped the new episode down to a 9.8 or something.

Once this happened, it opened up a war worthy of both TV shows as suddenly everyone got tired of Breaking Bad fans pushing them around, and fought back. That Breaking Bad episode that had been sitting at 10.0 for over a decade? It's now down to a 9.5. So laser pointed is the targeting that it's been bumped below about half of the episodes from the same season. The fans have truly lived the experience of being Walter White. Their need to be on top getting in the way of swallowing their pride and causing a cataclysm in its wake. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy Breaking Bad a lot, it's definitely worth watching, but its fans are just so obsessed with an impenetrable status they want to foist on it that it can't possibly live up to. They make me want to dislike it out of spite. Nothing wrong with passion (lest I be the blackest pot), but rein it in before you turn into everyone else's villain, all awaiting your downfall.

I mostly find all of that to be pretty funny and it doesn't affect me, but it's a good way to lead into an issue I've had with Gang of Youths ever since they became demonstrably one of the most popular bands in the country. They've brought along with them that exact kind of insufferable fanbase. It's probably helped them in the long run. By all accounts, you need fans who have no qualms about bringing up your music in conversation with others. Enough so that you can be looking around online and just see the name pop up over and over again, enough to convince you it must be important. For Australian artists, this is even more important because it's very easy for our local music to feel insignificant without the global reinforcement. How nice it must be to be able to talk about an Australian band who are actually very good, and not just a watered down, less inspired version of something that could be found in the US or UK. These are the people who have turned Gang of Youths into some kind of international sensation. They're also the people that very much damaged my feelings for the band's music.

It's something I've been grappling with every time the band have appeared on this list. That slight pattern emerging where their later releases have been working less for me than the earlier ones. Normally I wouldn't find this weird, but I see so much enthusiasm for the later stuff that I can't help but feel like the problem rests with me, where I can't muster as much myself because on some level I just don't want to. None of this is fair to the band themselves who have done nothing wrong in this regard, which itself bothers me. Now that all the players are on the field, it's easier to finally explain this one.

Ever since 2005, triple j have been giving out J Awards. It's the big climax of Aus Music Month every November, where we find out among other things, what's been judged the best Australian album of the year. It doesn't hold quite the same level of interest as something like the Mercury Prize does in the UK. Historically, you can't really see the needle moving much from hype. It might have helped on a small intangible scale in the past, where you could look at any belated success of The Panics being bolstered by that little conversation-starter. I've always been interested in it, but that's just me.

The one time that it certainly did make waves was in 2017. Gang of Youths were of course nominated and it made sense: They had everything going for them. Huge acclaim, huge sales and a plethora of certain hits just waiting to be canonised. It even could serve as belated gratification for anyone who thought their first album should have won back in 2015. Gang of Youths did not win the J Award. They lost to A.B. Original's album "Reclaim Australia", an album whose most famous song will eventually appear on this list. The "SICKO MODE" (#229) incident had not yet happened, so as far as I was concerned at this point, I'd never seen a more utterly inane outpour of the 5 Stages of Grief on full display from everyone who was not content to let this stand. Clearly the mood was akin to Skin on Skin (#288) for them, 'If it ain't Gang, I'll burn them bridges'. For months on, I'd just keep seeing variations on the same comments that were so clouded by their personal judgement that they'd try to apply unnecessary logic. Suggestions that everyone knows Gang of Youths should have won because their album sold more (people whom I suspect would not cede then that Bliss N Eso would have deserved it over Gang of Youths considering their album sold even more). They'd boast that the ARIA Awards actually got it right by giving their equivalent to Gang of Youths, and following the Hottest 100 which saw three songs by Gang of Youths in the top 10, start laughing at the fact A.B. Original had nothing to show for it. Top it off with a lot of barely disguised racism (which is odd, coming from fans of a band like Gang of Youths), and they just created the most toxic fanbase in Australia. My instinct tends to be that I never want to publicly side with anyone when they make an arse of themselves like that. Gang of Youths probably did put out my favourite Australian album that year, but I've also never listened to the whole thing since November 2017. I just can't give them the satisfaction.

Obviously, the situation sucks. Gang of Youths have done nothing wrong by me, and anything I say about a terrible portion of their fanbase doesn't change the fact that I've encountered no shortage of fans who aren't like that, and are just willing to enjoy a band that makes music they greatly resonate with. Given the volume of their songs still to be seen in the pointy end of this list, I probably still am one of those fans myself. I just feel like I'm holding onto old memories of when there was palpable excitement on all accounts. Why must Icarus always keep flying higher?

The J Award was just the first time they'd fall short after seemingly having conquered everything. Something, if treated right, could be a means to stay humble. A reminder that there's always more to learn, and to not get complacent. Sometimes we all need a Jackie Chun (this is a Dragon Ball reference, not a spelling error), or whoever'd keep beating Ash at the Pokémon League. Two months later and it happened again. Gang of Youths had a mighty haul in the Hottest 100 no doubt, but they were stuck the bridesmaid. "Let Me Down Easy" finished at #2. Suddenly the popularity argument doesn't work anymore, they were beaten, outnumbered. You can make excuses for this (I might save some up for when I talk about that song), but some of the things I saw made me all the happier for the result. I don't think I could take in those dangerous, volumetrically compressed volumes of smug if that brigade truly had things go their way. There's just no way my opinion of "Let Me Down Easy" would have lived to tell the tale.

With that all being said, I have always felt a little odd with this particular song. I guess I just can't really pin down its audience, and what in particular it does to be the de facto hit from this Gang of Youths album. I hesitate to call it their biggest hit because some other songs make a strong case, but when they were at the peak of their powers, this was the song that drove most of the votes. It was something I found puzzling. I found it easier to imagine passion and excitement elsewhere, but this was just a bit perfunctory with its best crossover appeal elements feeling insufficient. Like, it feels like it's the most easy-going song, it has a title that doesn't feel like it's a learned literary reference. I just couldn't muster up that extreme enthusiasm so it was hard to place in general.

It's unfair to this song to say it's just the simple, radio friendly single. It still clocks past 5 minutes, and while you can maybe take a way a pleasant, simple mantra out of the hook, this is a song that isn't pulling any punches for being just as lyrically dense as any other Gang of Youths song. I don't think anything else resembling a hit song has ever used the word 'solipsism' before, although funnily enough JAY-Z used 'solipsistic' on the song "Caught Their Eyes", which came out just a month after "Let Me Down Easy".

Maybe I pine for something more exciting, and thrilling, which we get in other Gang of Youths songs. I will be perfectly fair to this one though, it's not without its moments either. There's a subtle touch to it that plays off well. Maybe the strings aren't doing anything exciting, but they do accentuate the mood and give it a good lift in the chorus. What I really love is that little synth that comes in afterwards though. It's this little magic touch that veers on the side of goofy, but gives the song a real 'floating in the air' vibe. I like to think that's what they were going for. I also feel like I should shout out the song "Rainbow Kr**t" by The John Steel Singers. I enjoy the steady guitar riff in this song but I think it's in part because it reminds me of that song, which does something similar.

#176. Bloc Party - Ratchet (#36, 2013)

33rd of 2013

When I was a teenager, Bloc Party felt like one of the biggest bands in the world. It wasn't entirely unfounded. Their quick turn around on releasing albums at the time meant that from my perspective, they were the band that got played the most on triple j for a while. I used to check the old JPlay website which would re-affirm this. They had memorable music videos, they made the Hottest 100 most years, everything was coming up Bloc Party.

The irony in all this is that like many cases alongside them, I missed the boat when it actually counted. Bloc Party are more than anything, the band that made "Silent Alarm", their debut album. It's a wall to wall selection of extremely tightly made post-punk revival that might just be the flag bearer for the entire sub-genre if Interpol weren't also around to make a case. At the same time though, they found a way to make it just a little more crossover friendly with extremely danceable tunes and guitar riffs that weren't content to just set a steady pace. That's not even acknowledging the band's true secret weapon in original drummer Matt Tong. One of the first things you hear on the album is his contribution to "Like Eating Glass" and he single-handedly sets the pace for the whole album. It's not unreasonable to say the band haven't quite been the same since he left in 2013.

This is all to say that I did eventually get around to "Silent Alarm" mostly through gradually picking up songs I'd hear from place to place over the years. I absolutely love it. In 2025, Bloc Party went on tour for its 20th anniversary and I immediately snapped up tickets because the album does mean that much to me. It ended up being a bit of a misnomer as the band didn't actually play all of the album, but it ended up being a mix that not many could really argue with. I didn't realise when they played it, how rare it is for "Two More Years" to end up in their set.

I've gotten a certain thrill out of seeing less obvious songs converted into the live experience. Any song that doesn't just sound like a typical four piece band plugging it out with their instruments. One that stood out to me is "Mercury". It's the lead single to their third album, the one where things started to go a bit off the rails for them. I remember at the time they had the most songs on the Hottest 100 voting list that year but then none of them made it. It was an album with a strange roll out and strange songs that people didn't know what to do with. I have a certain fondness for the singles from then, and the main thing I remember was how surprisingly "Mercury" came through in the live setting. It just came alive in an unexpected way. Even more than that was one of their much more recent singles "Traps". That's one of those songs that I think with its studio version had a lot of people scratching their heads at what had become of this band. When they sneak it into the setlist though, it's surprising just how much it fits in regardless. I was grinning through the proverbial window with my SICKOS shirt as they snuck 'cute like Bambi' and 'lick, lick, lick' into the set.

The whole experience could have been a great bit of research for this blog, only they let me down by leaving "Ratchet" out of their set. Maybe on the surface it shouldn't be surprising, as it's just a standalone single and in the same standing as "Two More Years", but Bloc Party do have a knack for those. It's an odd quirk that they've only polled songs from their first two albums in the Hottest 100, but their first 4 album eras all had non-album singles that got through, with "Ratchet" being the last one. It's also a song that they generally include in most of their sets. I feel it's a song that would absolutely soar in this setting. A song where any moments of emptiness are filled out by everything going on, giving it every opportunity to sound better than it does on the studio recording.

It was odd at the time to see Bloc Party turn back the clock with this one. Overall, they've only ever had three charting singles in Australia. "Ratchet" managing to do so in a time period where it was difficult to break through was all the more surprising. I couldn't tell if they were preaching to their core audience or had tapped into something that went beyond it. There isn't a global bat signal that says 'Hey, Bloc Party have got their shit back together', and even if there was, I'm not sure "Ratchet" is the song to do it.

"Ratchet" feels quintessentially like later period Bloc Party. The kind where Kele puts strange things into the lyrics that can be distracting, and the whole core of the song just sounds so strange from a band that got famous for being so tightly locked in. From what I've seen, the whole situation can be a little touchy and it's something I can't help but notice with any rock band with a black singer. Whether it's Living Colour or it's TV On The Radio, there's this weird expectation that they're supposed to fit in and not express themselves fully, lest it be seen as an incoherent mess. It's something that Kele has spoken about in interviews before, this idea that he's a novelty that doesn't fit in with his contemporaries. This only got more relevant in 2010 when Kele came out as gay. To me, it's all part of the package and I'm not sure Bloc Party would have stuck around quite as long as they have if they conformed and just made "Silent Alarm" over and over again. I love hearing him having fun on this song.

On the whole, it plays out like a strange experiment though. There's no foundation to anchor in the guitar so it just feels like it's revving up on its own, and then becomes a loop to bring in and out of the song. Shout out also to the loud siren that plays just before the chorus. It's an experiment that mostly works though, Kele goes a long way towards sending it all soaring.