#100

#100. Tame Impala - The Less I Know the Better (#4, 2015)

16th of 2015

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There's a whole lot you can take away from after this song was released. I might just be peaking exceptionally earlier as it's possibly the most notable song in this whole top 100, so either I'm doing this exceptionally poorly, or this is the ultimate mood setter. I don't think any of us really knew what we were in for with this song when it first came out. What was originally just a late cycle single from a nonetheless pretty major release has spiralled into a massive conversation about the state of indie music in the 21st century, and has netted some serious business for all involved. I'm writing this while Tame Impala is inexplicably entrenched in the top 10 of the actual music charts and this is just part of a new normal that this song has brought us, so let's take things back a step first.

Our story begins not with Tame Impala, but with a completely unrelated punk band from Melbourne named The Peep Tempel. They're a band that has never truly broken out in a major way though they were getting some attention in the mid-2010s. It was mostly the release of their second album "Tales", which housed a song called "Carol" that'd end up getting shortlisted for an APRA songwriting award. It also reached #128 on the 2014 Hottest 100, so it was reasonably known. It's an engaging tune, the opening chords set the tone and it doesn't let up. You might remember it for one particular lyric which gets repeated numerous times: 'I don't think Trevor is good for you, Carol'. It stood out a lot at the time, even if there was nothing to particularly tie it to. I often mistakenly believe the song came out in 2015 because it makes more sense with the events in my head.

I can't prove that The Peep Tempel really influenced Tame Impala on this. It might just be a coincidence. On the other hand, when "The Less I Know the Better" mentioned another Trevor getting in the way of the protagonist's dreams, it was very immediately brought up as a connection to "Carol". What might also just be a throwaway line that gets little attention became the height of memes. Commodified to the extent that you could eventually buy official 'F**K TREVOR' shirts. While I'll readily accept that most people who have heard this song, are not familiar with the other one, I do feel like it's that first overlapping group who built up this meme and allowed it to breach contextual containment. The Peep Tempel portray Trevor as more of a pox than Tame Impala does anyway.

When we're just in the box of 2015, this is a reasonably noteworthy single. It's 4th down the line for "Currents", but it asserts itself as the album's hit all along, landing narrowly ahead of the album's leading single in the Hottest 100. At that point, we get a repeat of the 2012 countdown, and the song reaches the ARIA Chart for the first time ever in the aftermath of this, at that point extending Tame Impala's peculiar record for top 100 hits without making the top 50. The song is 10xPlatinum now in Australia, which if nothing else, shows that a supposed monster hit can be staring us down in the face and it's still not enough to really get over the line in the moment.

I feel like there was a major changing of the guard in the late 2010s for who was calling the shots in popular music. The most interesting thing about it for me is the way Gen Z have seemingly taken artists that were firmly in the niche indie asylum and turned them into seriously hot property. Tame Impala might just be one of the biggest examples because it's been an incredible shift in just how much attention seems to be gathered. It was first noticed around 2019, when this song started to creep back into the streaming charts (it is worth noting that in 2016, the song had surprisingly strong longevity, it just didn't amount to anything). The song seemed to catch fire on TikTok, and there was a mashup with "SexyBack" that started doing serious numbers, either reminding people of the song again, or sticking that riff into their heads for the first time. It was well timed because when triple j did their Hottest 100 of the Decade in 2020, "The Less I Know The Better" came out on top, which also gave the song its needed boost to finally become a top 50 hit, with enough longevity that it ended up on ARIA's End Of Year chart as well. It's still hanging around in 2026, solidifying itself as a generational anthem for people who weren't necessarily even listening to it when it came out. I won't say that they weren't alive yet, but we are getting there.

That's had an interesting effect on the way the song is perceived. When the song was new, it was being processed by people for whom Tame Impala is a very known quantity, so it's compared to what's come before in that sense. In that sense, it was just another winner, probably afforded the best opportunity from "Currents" because it was the single that delivered on the most straight-forward path. It's breached so far beyond this, that the song is probably bigger than Tame Impala in general. I feel like if this is the only Tame Impala song you ever listen to, it has to end up feeling like some kind of novelty in whatever context it's in. There just aren't really other major hit songs that sound like this, with so much focus on a bass line that overpowers the mix and becomes the main draw. There's a further unique part to this appeal because it's the kind of song you can hear from any starting point and immediately lock in with it. Try just skipping into random parts of the song if you don't believe me, it works.

I have never really been able to escape my initial perceptions of this song. I recognise the heightened significance the song has gained, but I remain locked with finding it a very solid late single that doesn't evoke strong adoration. I think my favourite thing about it is the inclusion of bells towards the end of the song, as there's a strong clarity in the mix that certainly reminds me of his previous work on "Melody's Echo Chamber". I think watching this song become such a monster hit has been very interesting, but I do wonder how I'd feel about that if I hadn't already mentally put the song and its potential bar for success in their place. It's not often you get to have such a long, still-developing arc like this.