#65

#65. A.B. Original (feat Dan Sultan) - January 26 (#16, 2016)

9th of 2016

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I think about the proverb about how the grass is always greener. There's some very serious truth to it. It goes hand in hand with the notion that no matter how comfortably successful someone becomes, there'll always be something they desire but can't have. Maybe money can make you happy so much as financial stability will do that, but do those super rich people you see ever look to be as mentally on top of the world as they are in a hierarchical sense?

This is something that can get weaponised through nostalgia. It's giving you a glimpse of greener pastures, perhaps ones you remember, dusting off the shakier parts of it, and re-selling it to you with the promise you can get back what was once lost. I'm not immune to the charms of this too, as I eagerly await a re-release of some old video games that are categorically worse than what came after them, but scratch a certain itch for the time frame they were in. I'm not so naïve to just say everything was better in a prior year, but maybe if you just take the good parts away from it, there's something to be salvaged.

One of the most eye-opening things I can ever recommend doing for any fan of music, if it's at all possible, is to specifically hunt down contemporary opinions on either the era or just specific, untouchable icons of yesteryear. History and marketing have a way of shutting out the dissent and glamourising the highs, but alongside every notable artist that never won a GRAMMY, or never had a #1 hit, sometimes the truth of the matter is that we've just had our perspectives clouded and the priority was never as strong as it feels now. It's always interesting to look back on things like this because it'll just feel like you've put a new filter on things, and you'll see people utterly disregard some all-time greats either because their potential hasn't been reached, or because they're in that moment staking the claim, and people have always been skeptical of the next big thing the way they are nowadays. The discussions are all very similar, just the names have been changed.

What I want to get into with this is culture wars. They're a frustrating reality, but one that can't really go ignored because it inevitably shapes the world view of everyone. Whether it drives passion, amusement or anger, the hold it has over us all is a big driving factor in global upheaval. All around the world, elections are staked, won and lost over this often incredibly petty part of life. I feel like it's the 'grass is greener' mentality that drives a lot of this. Someone will take something that is largely trivial to the greater populace, blow it up out of proportion, and incense a large swathe of the population into using it to drive their voting habits. Things like economic stability and infrastructure are almost certainly more important, but they're vague, hard to get a read on, and mostly just boring. What better way to motivate someone than to remind them of their own day to day hardships, and point the blame at a minority class who seemingly get everything handed to them? If you don't keep them in line, they're going to cut at your already crunched budget, or just get in the way of your own personal freedoms like being able to continue using those 'harmless' slurs you've been saying since you were a kid. It's an easy playbook. Just find any small bit of change, appeal to that sense of rejection to change, shrinkflation or otherwise and squarely blame those people who you already are at odds with for going too far yet again. In the age of AI slop proliferation, it doesn't even have to be something real, all too often I see sheer madness driven by something that was poorly explained, already resolved, or just flat out untrue in the first place.

The most apparent thing about all of this to me is the way you can see this way of thinking has lit a fire in the belly of people who were otherwise completely reasonable before. Like, it's all become a partisan battle that you're not allowed to ever concede on, lest you come out the loser. But more specifically, and this is another thing you can learn from looking at old conversations and writing, there are so many things that once went by without a whimper that now call forth outrage. Often times it can just make people unwittingly show their hand. When it comes to those culture wars, the unspoken part of it is that nobody can admit to being a bigot. It's one of those things that are just universally accepted as not okay, and will destroy any possible credibility one has, so there needs to be plausible deniability. Mind you, the bar for this is so low that certain world leaders and powerful people will freely refer to ethnic cleansing as a reasonable course of action, but it can so easily be waved away because they're just asking questions or whatever. Fascism or anything like it is just a fundamentally weak mindset that tries to reason with the idea that some people are just inherently superior, but completely undermined by those lesser than them. They'll never be happy because there's always a new problem. It should be completely untenable to all because if you tolerate this, the next target will land just a little closer to you.

The thing that I always find myself catching is just the more trivial sides of things. It's become something of a punchline to just conclude that something was done 'because of woke', on both a sincere and lampooning sense. Just the sheer lengths people will go to in order to keep up their one track mind (just don't ask them to define what 'woke' means). In the most trivial instances, it just ends up with someone making a fool out of themselves, and maybe in that sense they'll know better not to do it. I just can't help but think about the day of the year that triple j's Hottest 100 airs on.

For a very long time, triple j's Hottest 100 was synonymous with Australia Day, January 26th. Given that the school year tended to start a little bit after that, it was basically the only thing I ever associated with the date, as it had no real bearing as a holiday for me. If you want a quick history lesson, January 26th has been roughly associated with being Australia Day since 1935, but it wasn't locked in as the specific permanent date until 1994, meaning that triple j's Hottest 100 actually pre-dates it. For that reason, the Hottest 100 date has actually fluctuated a bit. In the earliest incarnations it was held in the middle of the year, but they changed it in 1991, delaying it to right at the end of the year. This proved to be pivotal to the result as Nirvana won that poll, having risen to prominent in the latter half of that year. I don't believe January 26th got locked in until 1996, which was also the first time an Australian band won it. From that point onwards, it actually gets difficult to verify because there isn't a lot of online documentation that's survived from before 2003. I did find a comment online from 2004 that suggested it wasn't quite on Australia Day a few years ago, but it's hard to say they're not just confusing it with the countdown that aired that year on January 25th.

I can readily believe that they missed the exact date in 2001 or 2002 because I know they did in 2004. It'd be for the same reason too, as a leg of the Big Day Out festival coincided with it, and triple j didn't want to divert their coverage of it. That's how easily they were able to break the tradition though, and so it was only from 2005 to 2017 that triple j consistently held the countdown on January 26th. A tradition to some maybe, but the main thing I found whenever the changed date was ever mentioned is that the biggest reaction you'd tend to get was one of slight bemusement. By today's standards, you should expect outright fury, but in a time where we weren't all being prodded at all angles to take a dramatic stand on everything, it just didn't happen. Since 2018, triple j have consistently held the Hottest 100 on a date that falls somewhere nearby January 26th, but never on that exact date itself. Righteous fury comes forth. This was the point of no return for triple j or something like that. Once again, short term memories that don't have all the facts in place start to override reality, and of course, empathy for the purpose behind the change. In reality it's much more reflective of contempt for that purpose. No one raises a fuss if a national touring festival gets precedent, but heaven forbid we listen to the plight and concerns of our Indigenous population. I'm sure they're not racists for this, just people who galvanise and reinforce the views that would be held by these theoretical white hoods.

If you're in the need for another history lesson, Australia was federated on January 1, 1901. It's a great date that's easy to remember, and would serve as a logical place to put the national holiday, if it wasn't already stuck in the calendar as a significant day that kicks off the year itself. After some discussion in the early 20th century, January 26th stuck as it marks the arrival of the First Fleet in Australia. This is a somewhat controversial decision to say the least, as while it is historically significant for Australia, it also marks the beginning of two centuries of genocide for the Indigenous population who had been living there for millennia. There was concern raised about this decision even back then, but given the way the self-appointed white government treated Indigenous Australians, it doesn't surprise me that they didn't waver on it. For many, January 26th is a day of mourning, and is often called Invasion Day. Recognition of this has increased in the 21st century, though it's admittedly a minority view that polls only about a third of the country as wanting to change the date, so neither Labor nor Liberal parties seem interested in pursuing a change that would inevitably cost them votes. As we've also learnt in recent years with the Voice referendum, there's no small part of the population who take pride in celebrating any form of progress being held up.

In 2016, A.B. Original jumped into this debate by releasing the song "January 26". It's a fairly pointed political track that makes their stance on the date clear. At the time, I felt like it was Hottest 100 nectar. What better way to send a message than to vote for this song, knowing it'll have to get a spin in the countdown on January 26th? I wouldn't have thought Briggs & Trials had the kind of notoriety to get that far, but sometimes these things can step beyond the music and end up on a different playing field. That's how we ended up with the song right at the pointy end of the list at #16, on what would end up being the last ever Hottest 100 held on the date.

For a good while after the song was out, I actually hadn't gotten around to listening to it. Sometimes when a song broaches a difficult topic, I can be hesitant to getting around to it because it can feel like I'm being suckered by provocative marketing, listening to something I'd never go near if it didn't have a bonus source of attention. My hesitation was born purely from not having heard the song, and once I heard it, it was a big remedy to it all. "January 26" is a protest song, first and foremost, but when you only look at it on that level, you miss the other vital aspect which is that it's just really good. This is a song that sounds like a hit on every level except for all of the provocative lyrics. It's short and sharp, never dawdles, and finds a great place for Dan Sultan to deliver a big hook.

Talking to people who have different politics to you is a frustrating ordeal. Sometimes the differences only have to be slight and that can still be too much to deal with. I feel like Briggs & Trials take turns here with two different perspectives. Briggs is direct, as he often is. Taking all the shit-slinging and throwing it right back, emphasizing all the tired, seemingly teleprompted responses people tend to give out. If his verse is a punch to the face, then Trials delivers it to the jugular, reminding everyone of their twisted priorities as they live in comfort provided by the very atrocities that they distance themselves from because they didn't directly commit or witness it themselves. It's important not to fall for all the classic trappings that the privileged parts of the country throw around to get away from any sort of reconciliation. They want nothing more than to ignore any sort of protest, leave it to only the small minority to be part of it so they won't have a loud enough voice to change anything. I'm well aware that I myself have a habit of wading out of difficult conversations because I don't always have the confidence to put up the right words to correctly convey myself and understand the situation. It is something that means a lot to me, and as I currently witness as the political opposition veers further and further right, it's not something I can just silently protest on with just my vote. There's no room for empathy when everyone's too busy looking out for themselves, or just having their strings pulled by the billionaire class. Fuck that.