Take me to numbers 11-20...
21. Daughter - Pearl Jam
The daughter in Daughter has a learning difficulty. She’s trying to read but can’t so Mum lowers the shades to, I guess, beat her up. She’s not worthy of being called daughter. Dark and woke by the standards of the day, the Pearl Jam song with only half a verse and a two-line chorus has such a burrowing earworm it's not hard to spend half of first term in Year 7 muttering it into semantic satiation, much to your older sister’s chagrin.
Daughter was the second single off Pearl Jam’s second album, and their first released in the age of annual Hottest 100s. The first single, Go, which hasn’t really experienced a Pearl Jam canon canonisation the same way Daughter has, was #8 in the 1993 countdown but there would be no repeat success for this typically grungy song. Perhaps this was because voting interest in Daughter was swamped by #36 Spin The Black Circle, which was released in November 1994 as the lead single from Vitalogy, which came out merely 13 months after Vs.
This was a period of extreme productivity for the band. The Merkin Ball EP (#35 I Got Id) came out in 1995, then LPs No Code and Yield in, respectively, 1996 and 1998. You think the whole nation would be suffering from Pearl Jam fatigue but that was an ague only affecting Daughter. - PA
Daughter was the second single off Pearl Jam’s second album, and their first released in the age of annual Hottest 100s. The first single, Go, which hasn’t really experienced a Pearl Jam canon canonisation the same way Daughter has, was #8 in the 1993 countdown but there would be no repeat success for this typically grungy song. Perhaps this was because voting interest in Daughter was swamped by #36 Spin The Black Circle, which was released in November 1994 as the lead single from Vitalogy, which came out merely 13 months after Vs.
This was a period of extreme productivity for the band. The Merkin Ball EP (#35 I Got Id) came out in 1995, then LPs No Code and Yield in, respectively, 1996 and 1998. You think the whole nation would be suffering from Pearl Jam fatigue but that was an ague only affecting Daughter. - PA
22. Shark Fin Blues - The Drones
The Drones have gained a reputation as being one of the most criminally-overlooked Aussie bands of all time. Despite a career that goes all the way back to 1997, it wasn’t until 2013 that they scored a top 20 placing on the ARIA charts, and to date, they still haven’t appeared in a Hottest 100 countdown, yearly or otherwise. So what gives?
Following the Hottest 100 Of All Time countdown in 2009, triple j organised a poll of Australian songwriters in an attempt to find what they believe to be the greatest Aussie song of all time. The results saw The Drones’ Shark Fin Blues beating out the likes of The Easybeats’ Friday On My Mind, and The Saints’ (I’m) Stranded; no matter how you look at it, that’s a pretty strong endorsement. Described by Grinspoon’s Phil Jamieson as being like “having passionate sex on a boat in rough seas, all rolling and rollicking, missed kisses and missed holes”, the track has undoubtedly gained a cult following amongst Aussie music fans, yet has still not gained anywhere near the popular acclaim that it deserves.
Despite having won the inaugural Australian Music Prize for the album the track features on, Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By, it wasn’t until Missy Higgins took on Shark Fin Blues as part of her Oz album that The Drones received some chart success with the track. While Missy Higgins’ cover made it into the #71 position, we can only begin to wonder why it was that listeners have overlooked The Drones so blatantly over the years, especially when they’ve crafted a song that has been so critically-acclaimed as Shark Fin Blues. It’s a mystery to end all mysteries. - TJ
Following the Hottest 100 Of All Time countdown in 2009, triple j organised a poll of Australian songwriters in an attempt to find what they believe to be the greatest Aussie song of all time. The results saw The Drones’ Shark Fin Blues beating out the likes of The Easybeats’ Friday On My Mind, and The Saints’ (I’m) Stranded; no matter how you look at it, that’s a pretty strong endorsement. Described by Grinspoon’s Phil Jamieson as being like “having passionate sex on a boat in rough seas, all rolling and rollicking, missed kisses and missed holes”, the track has undoubtedly gained a cult following amongst Aussie music fans, yet has still not gained anywhere near the popular acclaim that it deserves.
Despite having won the inaugural Australian Music Prize for the album the track features on, Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By, it wasn’t until Missy Higgins took on Shark Fin Blues as part of her Oz album that The Drones received some chart success with the track. While Missy Higgins’ cover made it into the #71 position, we can only begin to wonder why it was that listeners have overlooked The Drones so blatantly over the years, especially when they’ve crafted a song that has been so critically-acclaimed as Shark Fin Blues. It’s a mystery to end all mysteries. - TJ
23. Get Ur Freak On - Missy Elliot
So back to the aforementioned “weird relationship” triple j has had with hip hop (see #20). The genre didn’t get its own show on the station until 2004 - consider the fact metal had its own show from 1990, experimental music had one from at least 2000, and dance music had The Groove Train since the early ‘90s. This all might go some way to explaining why so little rap made it into the Hottest 100 each year, and why it took 19 years for a hip hop track to top the chart (Thrift Shop in 2012).
And how else do you explain this banghra-infused banger from missing the list? This was Missy Elliot’s breakthrough single in Australia and was all over triple j in 2001. Yet it took a couple of years for voters to click and put “Miss E” in the countdown (Pass That Dutch and Work It polled in 2003).
Look back at the 2001 poll and the incredible lack of rap. It’s basically Gorillaz and Crazy Town. How does Crazy fucking Town make the Hottest 100 that year and Missy Elliot’s most popular tune (according to Spotify - 78 million spins and counting) doesn’t? - MN
24. Do You Realize?? - The Flaming Lips
By 2002, The Flaming Lips had already been around for close to two decades, making a name for themselves thanks to their loud, fuzzed-out music and general kookiness, so some fans had probably thought the band’s best days might be behind them. After a brush with success thanks to the hit She Don’t Use Jelly back in 1993 (so far their only track to crack the ARIA top 50), the experimental behemoth that was 1997’s Zaireeka, and the critically-acclaimed The Soft Bulletin in 1999, the group could have been forgiven for packing it in, having achieved all they needed to.
However, 2002 saw the release of the group’s tenth album, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. A loosely connected record with themes of science fiction, few would have ever thought that this record would contain one of the most existentially blunt, yet positively uplifting songs of all time, Do You Realize??. With lyrics that focus on the inconsequential nature of human life and the beauty of everything around us, frontman Wayne Coyne takes the listener on a whimsical journey that teaches us to appreciate everything, while not-so-gently trying to confirm, “Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?”.
Often cited as one of the group’s most popular tunes, it was even adopted as the official rock song for The Flaming Lips’ home state of Oklahoma for a while. Yet despite this popularity, The Flaming Lips have remained a notable omission from Hottest 100 ever since its inception. Sure, Wayne Coyne and multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd featured on The Chemical Brothers’ The Golden Path back in 2003, but for that to be their only entry while a gorgeous track such as this falls by the wayside? We have to ask triple j listeners; do you realise what you overlooked back in 2002? - TJ
25. Down By The Water - PJ Harvey
There’s a surprising (and quite frankly disappointing) lack of PJ Harvey in the history of the Hottest 100. She’s had just three entries in 25 years and two of those are duets (one with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and one with Violent Femme’s Gordon Gano).
It doesn’t do justice to an astounding and hugely influential career that’s produced nine albums (most of them amazing - hell, she’s the only person to win two Mercury Music Prizes). Really we could have picked any of her singles for a slot in this list of omissions (such as This Is Love, The Letter, A Perfect Day Elise, or Long Snake Moan), but Down By The Water is one of the biggest and best. It’s one of her best-selling songs in Australia and her most played song on Spotify, but it’s also the track that perhaps best exemplifies what makes Polly Jean so great. Dark grooves, cool sparse instrumentation, and a murderous tale spun with earworm hooks - what’s not to love? - MN
26. How To Make Gravy - Paul Kelly
12 Gravy Stains of Christmas
1. How To Make Gravy by Paul Kelly is supposed to be funny. It’s gallows humour, for sure (though no one facing the gallows is also a chance of parole come July), but it is a parody of the pitiable Australian male. It’s quintessential PK lyrical songwriting at its most wry, its most unifying. This is a song every Australian can relate to, whether you’re a Rose Bay type celebrating Christmas with the landed gentry or you actually are in the nick come the 21st of December.
2. Speaking of, I love that the legend of How To Make Gravy has simmered up such a long shelf-life for this cloying concoction. This song was not a hit upon release but the advent of social media has given rise to the date of this fabled phone call becoming labelled Gravy Day or Paul Kelly Day.
3. So why is this gravy keeping so well? Christmas songs do tend to come back into fashion for two weeks every year but How To Make Gravy has a bit more to it than, say, Michael Buble’s insufferable crooners. The steady stream of covers and re-releases certainly assisted, including Luca Brasi’s #127 Like A Version, which introduced the track to a new generation of fans.
4. The Like A Version concept has been a boon for Paul Kelly. His songs have been reimagined by The Panics, Illy, AB Original and Alex The Astronaut — perhaps not the most likely candidates — and the great man himself covered Rehab by Amy Winehouse on his appearance.
5. Unlike, say, Bernard Fanning, who has become increasingly irrelevant to triple j with each new release, Paul Kelly’s output among the cool kids is appreciating like some fine cooking wine. He’s made two Hottest 100 appearances, at #9 with the magnificent Every Fucking City, and as a guest on AB Original’s Like A Version, the #45 Dumb Things. These two entries were 16 years apart, which is a Hottest 100 record.
6. As part of his fresh appeal to the youngsters and new-fangled ways, Paul now hosts his own Yuletide mini-festival, of course it is named Making Gravy, and includes past, present and future Hottest 100 legends Angus & Julia Stone, Alex Lahey, DD Dumbo, Angie McMahon and Mojo Juju.
7. Apparently one of the questions Paul gets asked the most in interviews or chats with garrulous fans is “How do you make gravy?”. Folks, he gives the recipe (a real, family tradition): flour, salt, red wine, tomato sauce.
8. Joe, the lad spending Christmas in the carceral house, has previously appeared in To Her Door and Love Never Runs On Time.
9. I do take umbrage with Joe saying it will be a hundred degrees. Christmas is in Adelaide not Arkansas!
10. It’s easy for pathos to slip into bathos but Kelly keeps it together with some of the details extrapolated in How To Make Gravy. Thinking of Rita while “standing in line” on Christmas morning is tear jerking, and the repeated apologies, credulity-stretching promises of paying people back and dreams of making gravy again next Christmas are all desperate in a sympathetic way, it’s the naked truth that Joe considers making gravy his only essential skill — and remember gravy is a metaphor for something unnecessary festooned at the end — that is most lachrymose.
11. Did you know there is a mildly amusing response track by Benny Davis called How Not To Make Gravy? Look it up on your streaming machine.
12. You might think that simply by dint of these 12 points How To Make Gravy is my fave Paul Kelly song but it’s actually Before Too Long. - PA
27. The Scientist - Coldplay
triple j has had a love-hate relationship with Coldplay. Before their debut album Parachutes came out, they championed Shiver, and when the album dropped they featured it, flogging the singles hard, particularly Yellow, which ended up at #5 in the Hottest 100 of 2000, while Shiver was #63.
The second album yielded three Hottest 100 entries in 2002, including Clocks at #69, which was remixed by Royksopp and voted into #5 in 2003. The next album got a couple of songs into the countdown, but then, arguably just as their music was getting even more interesting, they stopped being a triple j staple, and the fourth album didn’t feature a single track in the Hottest 100 (something we’ve amended at #97), proving they were indeed the U2 of their day. It had gradually become cool to dislike Coldplay. Tall poppies and all that.
The biggest oversight in amongst all this is The Scientist. It’s their third most played song on Spotify, it was the second-longest-charting single off A Rush Of Blood To The Head in Australia, and it’s mercurial film clip is still their fourth most-watched on YouTube. But it’s also a timeless ballad, built on one of those immediately classic-sounding chord-melody combinations Chris Martin seems to deliver with freakish regularity. - MN
28. Ms. Jackson - OutKast
Denis Leary ruins everything. One of the records he holds is highest position by a Hottest 100 one-hit-wonder, and he’s held it since day dot and he can never be beaten. All we can hope for is for another of his dubious musical compositions to somehow crack an annual countdown, relegating him into the two-hit-wonder scrap and elevating OutKast to that position. Of course, trainspotters might interject that Big Boi and his pal Cutty hit #77 with Shutterbug. My gainsaying would be Hey Ya! was from the Andre 3000 half of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.
Directly before these two Atlanta rap gods did their split double album, OutKast released the more conventional LP Stankonia, which furnished their Aussie breakout single Ms Jackson. Strangely enough, Ms Jackson received more airplay on commercial radio than it did on triple j, meaning it was a rolled-gold chart megahit — four weeks at #2 behind It Wasn’t Me by Shaggy (incidentally, and a lot of people don’t know this, triple j used to play Shaggy; Boombastic was #65 in the Hottest 100 of 1995) — but not a Hottest 100 insurgent, despite being on the voting list, and the subject of a memorable parody by erstwhile brekkie gibberers Adam & Wil, who Weird Al Yankovicked, “I’m sorry Matt Hayden / you are for real / you scored centuries with some giant hits / so much better than Michael Kasprowicz” in a slightly less shameful Hottest 100 omission.
In addition to Ms Jackson being a sign of the exemplary quality still to come from OutKast, it was also a harbinger of the shift in rap supremacy from the northeast and west coast of the States to the south and, specifically, Atlanta. Trap and trap-adjacent rap is now lording it all over the old hot spots, with only the sheer genius of Compton’s classic rap’s Kendrick Lamar holding his own against the onslaught.
For those playing along at home, had Ms Jackson made the grade, and if Denis Leary were scrubbed, the highest placing Hottest 100 single-entrant would be shared by bronze medallists Coolio, Chumbawamba and The Tenants. Till then, please join me in a collective rapprochement with OutKast’s glaring omission — sing it with me — “I’m sorry Ms Jackson!”. — PA
29. All Apologies - Nirvana
It’s hard to explain just how important All Apologies would turn out to be for fans of Nirvana. While the group had already become Hottest 100 royalty thanks to their 1991 topping of the chart with Smells Like Teen Spirit, many assumed this would be an ongoing trend. When 1993’s In Utero was released, fans voted Heart-Shaped Box into the #20 spot, and expected many more great tunes to come. However, the very last song on that album, and the very last single released during the life of frontman Kurt Cobain, was All Apologies, which served as not only one of the last new songs fans would hear, but also as a rather fitting track for the group to say goodbye with.
Originally produced by punk icon Steve Albini, this haunting track was effectively viewed in hindsight as something of a final statement from Kurt Cobain, as he meditated on who he was and who he wanted to be - despite the fact it had actually been written years earlier while Cobain was in a much happier place.
While All Apologies was indeed a beloved song by the group, it was one of the few more accessible tracks on an otherwise rougher, and much grittier album from the grunge icons. While Heart-Shaped Box was arguably the record’s biggest hit, many have felt that All Apologies was looked over at the time in favour of something more in line with the alternative anthems that the group had previously composed by the band. No matter how you look at it, it’s a shame that Nirvana’s last record only ever had one showing in a Hottest 100 countdown, and that so many other brilliant tracks were kept off of the chart. - TJ
30. Say It Ain't So - Weezer
Despite the popular opinion that Weezer haven’t done anything good since Pinkerton in 1996, they’ve proven surprisingly enduring, slotting eight songs into the Hottest 100 over 15 years (six of those are post-Pinkerton, FYI). The only track from their debut, The Blue Album, to get voted into triple j’s end-of-year poll was Undone (The Sweater Song). No Buddy Holly, which could have easily made the cut here, but more importantly, no Say It Ain’t So.
Similar to how Pinkerton was derided on release by critics and fans alike but has been recast as a magnum opus, Say It Ain’t So was overlooked in favour of The Blue Album’s other singles. Unlike Undone and Buddy Holly, it didn’t crack the ARIA top 100 or have a Spike Jonze-directed film clip, yet Say It Ain’t So has become regarded as not only the best song on that record, but the best Weezer song of all time.
Like Pinkerton, Say It Ain’t So has a darkness to it most people didn’t initially associate with Weezer. Its tale of alcoholism is much edgier than the bad times buried beneath the ooh-wee-oohs of Buddy Holly or the party chatter of Undone. Maybe this is why it took a while to get recognised. Now we just need the unfairly overlooked post-Pinkerton albums to be redeemed and all will be right in the world. - MN
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