Take me to numbers 81-90...
91. Avant Gardener - Courtney Barnett
triple j’s love affair with Courtney Barnett still has a few albums left in it. In the meantime, expect her rather excellent 2018 album Tell Me How You Really Feel to yield a stack of entries in this year’s countdown, to go with the four off her previous album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit. But where were the votes for tunes off her “double EP” A Sea Of Split Peas?
A lot of people did vote for this track in the 2013 countdown, but it wasn’t enough. Avant Gardener landed at #140 and we can’t help but feel that in years to come, future Hottest 100 devotees will wonder why the brilliance of Barnett wasn’t noticed earlier and why this didn’t land higher.
Bonus points for turning the word “emphysema” into a verb. - MN
92. Moving Out - West Thebarton Brothel Party
An ode to share-house living probably isn’t the first thing that you would write a song about, but then again, there are very few bands who take an approach to music like Adelaide’s West Thebarton (formerly known as West Thebarton Brothel Party). Self-described as a “seven-headed soul-rock hydra,” West Thebarton (and no, it’s not pronounced ‘The Barton’) burst onto the Aussie rock scene a few years back, playing intense live shows supporting the likes of Bad//Dreems and Courtney Barnett.
Serving as the first single from their debut album, Different Beings Being Different, Moving Out captured the feelings of generations of young Aussies as they go through that rite of passage which sees them living with friends, hoping for those unrealistic mates rates, and always looking forward to better accommodations.
Bolstered by fuzzy riffs, pounding drums, and the powerful, soulful vocals of Reverend Ray Dalfsen, Moving Out occupies a relatable corner in the Aussie indie-rock world, easily becoming an anthem for today’s youth as they head out on their own. While a mere glance at their live shows confirm they’re one of the most intense and beloved young bands on the scene today, it remains a mystery as to why it was overlooked by triple j listeners. - TJ
93. iFly - Ball Park Music
In the seven years since their first album, these talented Brisbanians have scored eight songs in the Hottest 100. That debut record Happiness And Surrounding Suburbs even scored two tunes in the 2011 countdown (and another at #196). But rewind even further and you find their second EP and this little pop delicacy, which earned a five-star review from Richard Kingsmill on Unearthed.
And who are we to argue with the King? There was certainly a good amount of people in agreeance with him regarding iFly - it was voted in at #130 in 2010. But that’s still not good enough. Listen to the King, people. This is a five-star song. I haven’t done the math on how many songs Kingsmill has given five stars on Unearthed, but I can’t imagine that happens too often. - MN
94. No Diggity - Blackstreet (feat. Dr. Dre & Queen Pen)
If Chet Faker can get a guernsey with this song, why couldn’t the original? It’s smooth AF and features Dr Dre (another rap legend largely overlooked by the Hottest 100) and some cool rhymes by Queen Pen. Plus there’s a serious lack of new jack swing in the history of the poll (there - I said it).
Take a look back at the ‘96 countdown and this wouldn’t have been out of place. Hell - nothing was out of place in a year when the top 10 boasted Tool, Allen Ginsberg and Babybird’s You’re Gorgeous. There’s also a few songs that could’ve been bumped to make way (I’m looking at you, Matt Trapnell & Trapazoid).
But, yet again, timing is everything. The song only poked its head into the ARIA top 50 in December ‘96, which is too late for Hottest 100 voters. But it would spend 23 weeks in the charts, peaking at #21. Having said that, I don’t recall it getting played on triple j at that time, much like a lot of (now influential) hip-hop of the era. Hindsight and Chet Faker have 20/20 vision. - MN
95. West Coast - FIDLAR
It’s rare that a song can so perfectly encapsulate the feelings of hanging out with your mates and doing whatever the hell you want to, but that’s exactly what Los Angeles’ FIDLAR managed to do with West Coast. As laid-back and easy-going as the phrase their name is derived from (an acronym for ‘Fuck It Dog, Life's A Risk’), West Coast describes the band cutting school and going out on a booze-cruise so legendary that they just had to write a song about it.
Hitting #157 in the 2015 Hottest 100 countdown, this track resonated with fans enough to almost make the list, showing that singing about your mates while revelling against the dreaded nine-to-five workday is more than enough to become a hit in Australia. - TJ
96. The Way - Fastball
It’s hard to tell sometimes why one emerging band and its catchy riff makes the j-grade and another doesn’t. Whereas triple j likes to own the infrastructure for local artists through its outstanding Unearthed project, when they foster and promote talent they haven’t, err, unearthed, we are more beholden to their nebulous whims, especially when it comes to international acts.
The Way is a sublime piece of guitar-based narrative pop-rock, penned solo by Fastball lead singer Tony Scalzo, complete with a delicious period of silence for sing-alongers to navigate, but it was largely overlooked from triple j’s playlist in 1998 and, as a result, that year’s Hottest 100.
That year’s countdown alone featured similar one-hit wonders and one-hit wonder-adjacent ditties like #21 Sex and Candy, #34 One Week, #35 Flagpole Sitta, #38 The Impression That I Get and #78 Shimmer. Maybe there is some barely visible line of artistic merit those songs are breaching that The Way just falls short of, but it would only be just. — PA
97. Violet Hill - Coldplay
Viva La Vida was the first Coldplay album released after triple j started sending back their albums to the record label un-opened and un-played. An importunate pity, really, because VLV was a return to form after the ghastly X&Y and a proper indie rock LP, even if one does suspect it was overproduced in order to sound so underproduced.
Violet Hill is a small mound near Lord’s in London, unmemorable to tell the truth, but the song Violet Hill with its talk of rime-crusted limerence and dearly beloveds rendered mute is redolent of some of the darker Nick Cave murder ballads that have not aged particularly well in these woke climes.
While it is hard to imagine Chris Martin killing someone and turning all that beautiful white snow scarlet, colour me problematic because I much prefer him dark and brooding - “you better lie low” - to whatever the opposite of heroic couplet exemplified by “if you try your best but you don’t succeed / when you get what you want but not what you need”. Fix You was #26.
Violet Hill fixed Coldplay’s reputation but they were never to chart in a Hottest 100 again. - PA
98. Braided Hair - 1 Giant Leap (feat. Speech & Neneh Cherry)
Before the popular music industry became dominated by producers working with a variety of vocalist to create genre-bending LPs that sounded like self-contained 100% Hits compilations - think Disclosure, Flume, Rudimental, Snakehips, Major Lazer, etc, etc - there was Duncan Bridgeman and Jamie Catto (late of the parish Faithless), two electronic artisans who created a multimedia music project (mere seconds before Gorillaz) called 1 Giant Leap.
The pair recruited some true A-listers for their self-titled debut, including Robbie Williams (at his apogee), Michael Stipe (only in partial decline), Michael Franti (during one of his bearable phases), fellow Faithless fellow Maxi Jazz, and the always magnificent Neneh Cherry.
The standout track was Braided Hair, featuring Neneh and Arrested Development (not that one) frontman Speech. These two nonpareil vocalists have championed social causes throughout their careers, never afraid to leverage their own experiences to connect with audiences about their journeys, which are typically full of twists and turns that braid like hair.
It’s a song that bursts with enthusiasm for celebrating your uniqueness no matter the obstacle. The sort of message that shouldn’t be diminished by the work’s relative obscurity.
At one point during the denouement, Neneh background ask-sings “what’s it all for?”. It’s for all us. - PA
99. I Believe In A Thing Called Love - The Darkness
Sadly, it never really resonated with Aussie audiences (it peaked at #40 on the ARIA charts), though its predecessor, Growing On Me hit the 2003 Hottest 100 despite charting six spots lower. To paraphrase Chuck Berry, it goes to show you never can tell what will crack the Hottest 100. - TJ
100. Can't Hold Us - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (feat. Ray Dalton)
Australian ARIA #1 hits have a rich history of success in the Hottest 100 - it’s the mode peak position of the 25 annual winners - and, alongside success in triple j’s own album poll, success on the sales chart is the strongest predictor of Hottest 100 success. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis scored two Hottest 100 megahits (#1 Thrift Shop and #15 Same Love (with Mary Lambert)) off their debut LP The Heist but by the time their third Australian #1 single was dominating commercial radio, the powers that be at triple j had slowed down their rotation and voters had become exhausted of the duo’s (well, Macklemore’s rally) schtick.
Thrift Shop had the novelty factor and Same Love was a powerful, prescient tune, but Can’t Hold Us is actually the standout rap-pop track off The Heist, overcasting its omission with a characteristic Pacific Northwest rainshower. The same love that propelled Mack & Ryan to the top of both charts would blossom again via Downtown (#18) and Glorious (#52; sans Ryan, avec Skylar Grey), both huge hits on the sales charts, proving that mainstream success doesn’t have to be a barrier to entry, unless you’re Linkin Park. - PA
101. This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race - Fall Out Boy
Because we’re nothing if not completists, here’s the song that just missed the list of songs that just missed the Hottest 100.
Legend has it this song got played once on triple j. Would it have been out of place on their playlists back in 2007? Unlikely. The year before, a similar brand of pop-punk/emo-rock cracked the Hottest 100 with the annoyingly punctuated Panic! At The Disco (#91 for The Only Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Coverage) and AFI (#45 for Miss Murder and #67 for Love Like Winter). Oh, and My Chemical Romance were a big thing on triple j at the time, scoring Hottest 100 entries in 2007 and 2006.
So it’s hard to say why this dual-speed collection of witticisms and woo-ooo-oohs didn’t make the cut. Was triple j emoed out? I’d take this tune over anything AFI put out, that’s for sure. - MN
No comments:
Post a Comment