Tag: JJJ

For those who were unaware, this year is the 20th anniversary of the Triple J Hottest 100. To celebrate they’re going back to the original format which wasn’t just the best 100 songs of the last year, but the best 100 songs of all time (they abandoned this after a few years since the same songs kept coming up in roughly the same order every time 🙂

So this year, in addition to the normal Hottest 100 back in January, those of us desperately trying to cling to our youth by listening to JJJ despite being well out of the target age bracket get to vote all over again, this time for our ten favourite songs ever. Voting opened today, and naturally I was right in there like a tiger.

(Like a TIGH-ger!)

So, what did I vote for? My final list is below in mystery YouTube link format, along with country of origin and year for each track. Of course these aren’t actually my absolute favourite ten songs, they’re a representative sample of the best songs of the last few decades, carefully selected on the basis of impact, personal significance and what sort of chance they actually have on getting in. So, without further ado…

• UK – 1976
• USA – 1978
• UK – 1979
• UK – 1985
• AU – 1986
• USA – 1987
• USA – 1989
• AU – 1990
• UK – 1992 (1983 originally)
• UK – 1995 (best version I could find on YouTube…)

There we go. What’s the betting that they all get pushed out by Pearl Jam and Powderfinger? 😀

Late 2010

I assume at some point some of those links will stop working. So I’ll be able to look back at this entry when I’m old and decrepit I’ve added an actual list of the songs below…

Anarchy for the UK – The Sex Pistols
I Wanna Be Sedated – The Ramones
London Calling – The Clash (Came in at number 73)
How Soon is Now? – The Smiths (Came in at number 71)
Wide Open Road – The Triffids
Sweet Child o’ Mine – Guns n’ Roses (Came in at number 49)
Debaser – The Pixies
Lock It – The Falling Joys
Temple of Love – The Sisters of Mercy
Girl from Mars – Ash

So, it’s that time of the year again when loyal Triple J listeners vote on their top 10 tunes of the year. After some heavy thinking on Boxing Day I went ahead and voted for the following tracks, conveniently arranged in order from my least favourite best song of the year, to most favourite best song of the year. This year I’ve also included some thoughts on where each track will probably come in the countdown, so tune in on Australia day to see just how wrong I was!

10 This Boy’s In Love – The Presets: The presets have been getting a lot of press lately about how fantastic they are, and how they’re the saviors of the Australian dance/rave/electronica/doop-doop scene. Being a massive contrarian this would usually make me hate them, but they’re actually not bad, as this track ably demonstrates. Apparently the singing in the chorus was meant to be a guide track for another vocalist they were going to get in, but they liked how it sounded it so much that they kept it – not unlike the whistling in that Young Folks song from a few years back. Should do very, very well. The Presets have been going gangbusters all year.

9 Graveyard Girl – M83: I don’t know what it is about this song, but it grabbed me the first time I heard it, and has since refused to let go. The video clip (which I hadn’t seen until looking it up for this entry) is a weird emo-goth-teen dead-pet romance story, which frankly detracts from the song – making it sound like some kind of weird emo-goth-teen dead-pet romance story. Frankly for all I know maybe it is – I don’t care, I still like it. An eclectic song that will be limited to the 80s or 90s if it makes it in at all.

8 Naughty Girl – Mr G: This song is very, very, very stupid, which is why I like it. It’s a parody of creatively bankrupt dance music so effective that it is – effectively – creatively bankrupt dance music. It derives of course from TV’s Summer Heights High and if you’re not familiar with the show then it won’t make a lot of sense. The video clip – chopped together from videos submitted by fans – will make even less sense. Could be a sleeper and end up in the top 10, or fail to make it in at all. Hard to say.

7 Kids – MGMT: I have no idea what – if anything – this song is about. But I like it. MGMT have also been going gangbusters, so this could easily make it into the top 20.

6 That’s That – Cass McCombs: There seems to be some debate in the comments about whether this clip is actually of Cass McCombs or not. There’s also some weird jumps and lip synch issues, but it’s still the best version of the song I could find on YouTube. In any case it’s a catchy although plaintive little tune with a good baseline and that’s all that really matters. May make it in around the 50s – probably a bit subtle for the common palate.

5 Geraldine – Glasvegas: This song has three things going for it. A good – although simple – tune, a thick Scottish accent, and a twist in that it sounds like a typical love song, but isn’t. It’s also less cloying than Glasvegas’ other current hit Daddy’s Gone. Showed up late in the year so has a good chance to do well.

4 Guess Who Batman – Lily Allen: The first time I head this song I just managed to catch the last chorus. I had two thoughts. One – “that sounds like Lilly Allen”. Two – “that pretty sums up the way I feel about George W. Bush”. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the song is actually about George W Bush (as indicated by the initials of the title). I suspect that Lilly Allen and I may have some kind of deep psychic bond, that must somehow be exploitable for profit. (Note: Whoever transcribed the lyrics apparently has never heard the word medieval). Lilly Allen is a little bit too mainstream for the average JJJ listener. On the other hand songs with the f-word in the chorus traditionally do well, and she’s laying the boot into George W. Bush. As a consequence it’s impossible to say where this will end up.

3 Oxford Comma – Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend seem to specialise in catchy, cheery sounding songs, the meanings of which are completely impenetrable. This is no exception with lyrics about Lamas, Little John and lying about coal. The video clip is notable for two reasons – it’s directed by Richard Ayoade who plays Moss in The IT Crowd, and it’s all done in a single shot. Bet you didn’t notice that hey? Vampire Weekend have been doing well all year, however their vote could well end up split between the five or six eligible songs. Will probably show up in the 30s at the very least.

2 Now – Mates of State: My second favourite song of the entire year. Funnily enough there doesn’t seem to be a copy of the official recording on YouTube, but I’ve linked to a live performance, which is almost as good. May well slip into the background of all the other tracks available to vote for and not show up at all.

1 Det Snurrar I Min Skalle – Familjen: This Swedish song is not only my absolute favourite of the year, it has one of the best video clips I’ve ever seen, all cut together from black and white footage of some sort of revival meeting (sometime I’ll get around to making an animated gif of that accordionist’s creepy smile). Apparently it won a Swedish Grammy, or a Grammy in Sweden – I’m not 100% sure on the details. In any case, if I had my way this would be number one. Will probably do very well. A good bet for the top 10.

So that’s my votes. There’s at least one other song that I would have fitted in there somewhere (probably at number 4, pushing the Presets off the bottom of the list) if I’d actually been aware of it – apparently JJJ have been playing it for several weeks but somehow I managed to miss hearing it entirely. This is Help I’m Alive by Metric. The first few times I heard it I actually mistook it for the Breeders – to my ears at least Emily Haines sounds remarkably like Kim Deal. It’s a great song and I feel kind of sad that none of my ten votes will go to supporting it.

Some other songs that made my shortlist include…

• You Don’t Know Me – Ben Folds Featuring Regina Spektor: Clip features two well known American comedians I’ve never heard of.
• Hiroshima (B-B-Benny Hit His Head) – Ben Folds: Looks like the video was done by Adam and Joe.
• Burn Bridges – The Grates: The Video makes as little sense as any Grates video.
• 2020 – The Herd: Must see video clip.
• Ice Cream (JJJ live acoustic version) – Muscles: The normal version sucks so I’m not linking to it.
• The Switch And The Spur – The Saboteurs: Don’t I mean the Raconteurs? No! 🙂
• Inner City Pressure – Flight Of The Conchords: The Conchords go Pet Shop Boys.
• Let Me See You – Girl Talk: Mashup madness. MIA + Cranberries = Awesome.
• In Step – Girl Talk: More of the same. Dee Lite + Nirvana = Awesome.
• Dusk Till Dawn – Ladyhawke: Kiwi rap.
• Two Doors Down – Mystery Jets: You’d swear the clip was made in 1985.

So that’s it. Go make your own entertainment!

(It should be noted that this entry has been modified and annotated through the day as the results have come in, so if there’s some weird inconsistencies, that’s why 😉

Once again we find ourselves celebrating that most important day of the year, the Triple J Hottest 100! (Hmmm, I have a vague idea that there’s something else on today, something to do with the founding of a country. Austria maybe? I’m not sure…).

In any case this gives me a great excuse to post my list of the best music of 2007. And because this is the 21st century and we’re all Web 2.0 and such, I figured I’d link each song to that pinnacle of video excellence, Youtube!

(I’ll also annotate each song with where it came in the countdown – if it gets in at all).

So with no further ado, here’s the 10 songs I voted for – by default the 10 best songs of 2007…

Bloc Party – I Still Remember (Number 40, what!? Just 40!?) – As far as I’m concerned this track tied with Silverchair for the title of best song of 2007. An instantly recognisable guitar riff, a great tune and arrangement, and a clever video clip involving trains (remember the trains, they become important later). Bravo Bloc Party!

Chemical Brothers – The Salmon Dance (Number 21) – Fish rap. That’s about the only way to describe this. The video clip is one of the best ever made, with a beat-boxing blowfish and Busby Berkeley style fish choreography, and did you know that fish pay attention to the moon? Probably the third best song of 2007.

Decemberists – Yankee Bayonet (Didn’t get in, what’s wrong with folk rock I ask?) – A folk rock duet about the American Civil War. There doesn’t seem to be an official video clip, so here’s a live performance.

Jamie T – Sheila (Didn’t rate, even with the monkeys) – White rap wonderboy Jamie T and monkeys! Monkeys!! What more do you need to know!? (Oh, and Betjeman of course, how could I forget him?).

Joanna Newsom – Sawdust & Diamonds (Didn’t get in, too subtle for the common palate) – This is the kind of song that you either love, or hate. It drones on an on with bizzare lyrics about bells and wells and stairs and hares and taxidermy. But every now and then she jumps up an octave and it’s like a sledgehammer in your heart. Great stuff.

M.I.A – Paper Planes (Number 17) – A song that courts controversy because it features gunshots and M.I.A is the daughter of a leading Tamil Tiger. But it’s actually (or so she claims) about getting through US Border Control. In any case I don’t care because it’s got a great tune 🙂

Muse – Invincible (Number 58) – An over the top love anthem with one of the best video clips of the year and an awesome, over the top guitar bit in the middle. Knights riding dinosaurs fighting robots baby!

The Shins – Phantom Limb (Didn’t get in, another victim of the great folk rock boycot of ’07) – A sweet song from the masters of whiney folk rock. The video clip features possibly the best school play ever with Aztecs, cannibals and Joan D’Arc.

Silverchair – Straight Lines (Number 2) – As far as I’m concerned this is tied with Bloc Party for the best song of the year. And the video clip features trains. You see! It all makes sense! Trains = Kickarse song! Rocking. 🙂

Vampire Weekend – Mansard Roof (Didn’t get in, I suspect Argentinean involvement!) – A late but extremely catchy contender with lyrics that seemingly make no sense at all. Unless maybe there are a lot of mansard roofs in the Falklands…

Here Endeth the Votes. Now we’re onto the songs that still rocked, but I had to cut from my list because Triple J limits you to just 10. Bah!

Architecture In Helsinki – Heart It Races (Number 19) – A Caribbean influenced song that I didn’t like at all the first time I heard it, but which seriously grew on me. The video clip is just insane – the band dancing around Mexico wearing muppet suits – but what do you really expect?

Clare Bowditch & The Feeding Set – When The Lights Went Down (Number 90 but deserved much better) – A really catchy song with an extremely slick video clip. In fact it’s probably the slickest Australian video clip of the year.

Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip – Thou Shalt Always Kill – Another one of those songs where some guy just rants and rants about things. But it’s got a good beat behind it, and I agree with most of his points (although what’s he got against the OED?).

Dizzee Rascal (Feat. Lily Allen) – Wanna Be – I’ve always enjoyed Dizzee Rascal’s work because he has such a ridiculous voice. He’s like Shaggy, except that you can actually understand what he’s saying most of the time. He’s also got a good ear for backing music, as this piece shows. Throw in Lilly Allen and a bunch of lyrics totally deriding the gangsta lifestyle and you’ve got pure musical gold (but apparently no video, so you’ll have to put up with a karaoke vid put together by someone who can apparently neither spell nor type).

DJ Eurok – This Is DC – A hard hitting piece of hip-hop about corruption, racism and other such problems in Washington DC. Not available on Youtube, no doubt due to censorship by the Man.

Feist – 1234 (Number 34) – A simple, yet catchy tune with “whoa-oh-ohs” and expert choreography.

Hilltop Hoods – Recapturing The Vibe (Restrung) (Number 26) – Like many other acts before them (or at least Metallica) Adelaide hip-hoppers the Hilltop Hoods got together with a symphony orchestra and re-recorded a bunch of their tracks, including Recapturing the Vibe. The end result is fairly awesome – although the only clip I could find of the full recording (including the sort of overture thing they put on the front) is some home made Kingdom Hearts thing.

Josh Pyke – Fed And Watered – Josh Pyke is really rather good. It’s a shame I couldn’t squeeze any of his songs into the pitiful 10 JJJ allow us. Not only does this song feature the lyric “They can keep you around like a head on a stake, I guess the industry found a use for my namesake” (get it?) but the video clip features the coolest race day ever.

Josh Pyke – Lines On Palms (Number 79) – Another great one from Josh Pyke, with a fairly awesome video clip. I seem to recall hearing somewhere that it was all actually done with strings and cardboard cutouts, not with CGI, which makes it even more impressive.

Kaiser Chiefs – Ruby (Number 13) – Nothing special to say about this one, it’s just a good, old fashioned rockin’ track.

Kenneth Bager (Featuring Julee Cruise) – Les Fleurs – A strange song about filthy hippies featuring some woman from Twin Peaks. I like it just for it’s weirdness frankly. Hmmm, would you believe I can’t find it on Youtube? What is this!? The Middle Ages!?

M.I.A – Jimmy – Bollywood/Tamil cheesy disco. How could I not like this song? 🙂

Missy Higgins – Steer (Number 53) – I wasn’t hugely keen on this one until I heard a live version that JJJ recorded. I had a look to see if I could find that performance on Youtube, but couldn’t, so here’s a live version from Rove. I find that Missy’s work always sounds better live – studio production seems to kill it somehow.

Muse – Knights Of Cydonia (Number 1! By an incredible 13 votes out of 700,000!) – This one is so crazily over the top that you can’t help but like it. Epic silliness with an epically silly video clip to match.

Puscifer – Queen B – Dirty funk with an incredible, chess based video clip. Youtube rates it as “adult content” (not without cause) so you need to log in to see it.

Red Jezebel – Kicking Deadly Sins – A catchy rock tune from Perth’s own Red Jezebel.

Regina Spektor – Better – Well this is one of my favourite songs from the last year, but as far as I’m concerned it came out in 2006, so I cut it to make room for some more recent tracks. But if they’d let us vote for 11 rather than just 10 songs, this would be a shoe in for number 11. (The eternal optimist that I am, I put my faith in the listening public and trusted that enough other people would vote for it. I was wrong but she did get in with two other songs so that’s OK 🙂

Reverend And The Makers – Heavyweight Champion Of The World – Great song about how pathetic life really is. A bit like the musical version of Fight Club (that is the book more than the movie).

The Shins – Turn On Me – As far as whiney folk rocks goes the Shins are pretty good. This was only just edged out of my main list by Phantom Limb, but it’s just as good – although all the oiled wrinkly flesh in the video clip tends to overpower the music (not in a good way!).

Soko – I’ll Kill Her (Number 9) – I can’t seem to find an official clip for this one, so the one I’ve chosen will have to do. As songs go, it’s pretty strange – the homicidal rantings of a dumped French stalker – but it’s so crazy I like it. This probably says far more about me that it does the song 🙂

White Stripes – You Don’t Know What Love Is – A good old fashioned rock and roll song from Meg and Jack, with a video clip shot in Iceland. Or maybe Finland? I forget to be honest, but somewhere cold and rocky anyway.

The Bumblebeez – Doctor Love (Number 93) – Fat (or maybe even “phat”) funky rap with a video clip full of fat (phat?) men with interesting tattoos.

Bloc Party – Flux (Number 48) – I head somewhere that this was originally written for Kylie Minogue, but can’t find any confirmation of it anywhere, so it’ll have to remain a supposition. In any case the chorus allegedly features the line “We were hoping for some romance”, but it sounds a lot more like “We were hoping for some Romans”, which is a much more entertaining lyric. Throw in a video clip featuring Cthulhoid monsters and a giant Cylon, and you’ve got great entertainment all round.

And so there we go. Hours (or at least minutes) of listening pleasure!

Of course we can’t sum up the year without mentioning the worst music as well. Not listening to commercial radio I no doubt missed the most aurally offensive stuff, but there was still a few songs that really put my teeth on edge (I’m not going to link to Youtube versions – why should everyone else suffer as well as me?)

If You Keep Losing Sleep – Silverchair (Number 30) – I think Daniel Johns had this really great idea for the beginning of a song, then couldn’t come up with anything to put after it. So he just kept on playing the intro over and over while singing things like “badaba-daba” and “Oo-oo-oo-oo!” over the top. I can’t think of any other way such a monstrosity as this could see the light of day. The video clip is just as bad – the basic idea seeming to be to shove as much weird stuff and special effects (smoke! electricity! blue mascara!) in as possible to try and distract from how awful the song is.

Foundations – Kate Nash (Number 101, which means it just missed out on the countdown, ha ha!) – Have you ever had the kind of friend who gets drunk, and then tells you all about their latest break up in excruciating detail while breathing beer fumes in your face and blocking the way to the bathroom? Well neither have I, but I don’t need one now because I’ve heard this song. It’s a drawn out, boring as hell story that no one wants to hear, yet Kate Nash seems driven to put it all to music – possibly because no one would listen otherwise. She’s got quite a nice voice and I’ll keep an ear out for anything else she records, but this track makes me want to gouge my eyes out with cocktail swizzlers.

So, in the end mighty Muse stole the crown from favourites Silverchair by a mere 13 votes. That’s 13 votes out of about 700,000 – or 1.7 thousandths of a percent! The result managed to totally gobsmack me three times, first when Silverchair came in second, second when they announced the 13 vote difference, and finally when they revealed the winner was Knights of Cydonia. I was literally walking around with my jaw hanging open in amazement.

Best Hottest 100 result in years! 😀