What I dub ‘beach-vibes indie rock’ is doing pretty well as an Aussie export. I’ve heard Gang of Youths and Spacey Jane played particularly in the UK and it’s always conflated with Australiana.
I’m a little biased in that I quite like it.
I feel like Flume hasn’t really evolved since Never Been Like You to be honest, so I felt disappointed Say Nothing got number one. But I guess a lot of 18-22 year olds are experiencing that kind of music for the first time and voting for it, which is nice.
2022 was a bit of a weird year for music. No major hit really stuck out - not like in previous years anyway - and that’s likely because musical tastes are so varied now, and because a lot of bands were busy touring for the first time since the pandemic.
Except the resurgence of Kate Bush’s Running Up that Hill thanks to Stranger Things, but that song is not eligible to be in the Hottest 100.
I agree there was no new song that stood out and could be called the song of 2022.
So many songs from Spacey Jane / Lime Cordial featuring every year in the Hottest 100 is just filler.
Dropping it from a great height there Mr. Egg Man! I wholeheartedly agree with all this; most modern stuff is just bland/uninspiring/derivative (or all three). It doesn’t grab you in the way a guitar solo from Led Zeppelin or the haunting vocals of Kate Bush do. Yes I’m approaching middle age but I think this is a common reaction, even among the yoof of today and even the musicians who are remixing and repackaging older stuff.
Well I grew up on a diet of alternative rock and metal so I guess I would say that
But as the direct comparison, and yes I know a lot changes in 20 years, but the replay of the 2002 countdown had Queens of the Stone Age edging out Grinspoon (with an admittedly slower track) for top spot. Can anyone imagine a punchy, hard-edged rock song like ‘No One Knows’ winning the countdown today? Not a chance - it’d be lucky for a mid-table finish if it even made the top 100.
Yes I’m old and curmudgeonly and you always look back at the past with rose-coloured glasses, but I just find it sad if that’s the best offerings the rock genre can provide for kids in this country. I love the genre and want to be excited by new music in it, but with this stuff I just can’t.
Anyway, sorry for the rant kids. I’ll go back to my nursing home now…
I’ve been saying to myself for ages that rock is almost a narrowcast format these days. Radio Caroline plays some decent new rock in the more melodic genres.
Alternative shot itself in the foot in the early 00’s by embracing male dominated sub-genres like nu-metal released on alt labels like Epitaph.
As a consequence, Modern AC stations in the US started picking up the lighter alternative female skewed artists.
By mid-late 00’s it came full circle, with Alternative now firmly in the female corner (their rock is now Imagine Dragons etc…) the harder alternative acts moved over to Active Rock.
You say there’s no rock, there was no pop/urban tracks in 2001 - eg end of year chart.
Alternative had an identity crisis & it killed off a lot of iconic stations:
That list shows one of the reasons why the genre died off - it became incredibly broad and a mess, that list runs from some pretty soft stuff (Coldplay and U2) to decently hard (Tool, Disturbed) and everything in between - not to mention Dean Pelton (I mean Moby) who had one song that fell outside of his normal genre
Alternative rock as a genre is functionally complete. There just aren’t many new ways for it to evolve.
I love DMAs and Violent Soho but can I say their stuff is markedly different from Powderfinger or Foo Fighters? Not really. DMAs’ top song in this weekend’s countdown was in the mid-80s. Its been surpassed by other genres.
Yeah that’s a great point about its inability to evolve, and one I’ve heard made about it too - you can’t keep doing the same thing over and over and expect it to keep engrossing and attracting new listeners.
Flume was already a certified Hottest 100 favourite. But for the second time in his career, the Australian producer has topped triple j’s annual music poll – this time for his track ‘Say Nothing’ featuring MAY-A. Not bad for a guy who got his start using software from a cereal box (but more on that later).
Flume – or Harley Streten as the internationally renowned Sydneysider’s passport reads – has long seem liked the most likely to pull off this rare feat. He’s a heavyweight contender in any year he releases music.
Not only has the electronic auteur now charted an impressive 17 total tracks in the Hottest 100 since his 2012 debut (21 if you include his remixes of Eiffel 65, Lorde, Disclosure and Hermitude) but he’s the only act in the countdown’s history to rank a song in every position of the Top 5.
Most significantly, Flume is the second ever artist to top triple j’s annual Hottest 100 twice, and more than two decades since Powderfinger did it back-to-back in 1999 and 2000.
Whereas Powderfinger had momentum on their side, there’s six years dividing Flume’s occupation at the top Hottest 100 spot. It’s an arguably more impressive feat, especially in a country where tall poppy syndrome thrives.
It’s more difficult than ever for artists to sustain mass appeal over the course of a decade, yet ever since emerging on the scene in 2011, Flume has maintained the kind of profile most musicians only dream of.
Say Nothing by Flume ft. May-a went from 113 to number 4 on the ARIA Singles Chart this week. No other song from the Hottest 100 seems to have made a big move.
