We take a torchlight to the Top 5 songs of this year's Triple J Hottest 100. Note: Yes the list is regarding the Top songs from 2010, but it is voted on and announced in 2011, hence our more news-friendly headline.

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5. Boy & Bear - "Fall at Your Feet"


Boy & Bear - 'Fall At Your Feet'

Do cover songs count? I guess they do. I can't help but imagine that an artist rating so high for recreating a song they had little to do with, is a mite bittersweet. Like when Stephen Bradbury polishes his 2002 Winter Olympics medal. Or when the wedding DJ surveys his vast collection from his deathbed. Or Youth Group.

In 2010 Sydney band Boy & Bear surfed on the ripple effect created by Bon Iver (great) and especially Fleet Foxes (great) before them; not to mention a fair whack of the same plough pushed by Mumford and Sons (bad). With strong voices and tasteful instrumentation, Boy & Bear do a fine job of nailing the body and animating the heart of such a genre, but - much like Mumford & Sons - are yet to inject a distinctive purpose into their brand.

But that judgement is levelled at the band's own work (of which 'Rabbit Song' landed at a respectable Number 45): 'Fall At Your Feet' is indestructible. One of the greatest pop songs ever written by one of the greatest pop songwriters going. There. Boy & Bear's business card should be so high in the Hottest 100 for not fucking it up.


4. Birds of Tokyo - 'Plans'


Birds of Tokyo - 'Plans'

Perth's Birds of Tokyo go all ballad-y and hit commercial paydirt with a song toting perhaps the year's greatest clanger of an opening line. "We made plans to kiss the sun at night". One wonders if even the Presets would have been so bold. Fortunately for singer Ian Kenny, his distinctive voice is one of the best in a business, and will keep him on the artistic roll-call for years to come. Certainly to fans of it. A rousing arena-song about big feelings, in the spirit of Kings of Leon, Powderfinger, Coldplay and any other band that has become successful summoning U2's ghost.


3. Ou Est Le Swimming Pool - 'Dance The Way I Feel'


Ou Est Le Swimming Pool - 'Dance The Way I Feel'

Whichever way your neck hairs flare when it comes to the late '00s version of "electro", UK ex-band Ou Est Le Swimming Pool's addition to the canon is entirely reasonable. The synths groan rather than shimmer, the beat is thin and harsh; in short, it sounds at least like good electro should. Necessary rather than calculated. Somewhat primal.

On 'Dance The Way I Feel', singer Charles Haddon manages to take the hackneyed call to arms of "to dance", and spins it interior:"Well I just dance the way I feel", he shouts. "Stop breathing / imagine none of this is real". It's a dark, selfish version of the classic trope of "losing yourself" on the dancefloor, and it's one now perpetuated by Haddons sudden - and very public - suicide at the Pukkelpop Festival in Belgium last August. The singers tragic death, in the apparent wake of Haddon seriously injuring a fan after stage-diving, now makes lines such as "I'm crashing down on all the people in my way" even more ghoulish. An off-note that strips some of the cheese from the original but, no doubt, keeps it burning in the hearts of fans perhaps long after its proper shelf life.


2. Little Red - 'Rock It'


Little Red - 'Rock It'

The only song here with a legitimate claim to outliving the era. (Not withstanding Crowded House's original at No. 5 of course). Yeah. I've said it before; while critics fuss and hipsters groan, 'Rock It' has the architecture of a classic. Whatever your taste for Little Red, you can imagine Elvis doing this - Presley or Costello. The Beatles. The Afghan Whigs. Hanson. The "modern" production nod that takes over in the chorus and breakdown is a misstep, nearly burying the song's humble roots in a sheen that has already dated. But the snap of just drums and bass at its beginning (which so calls to mind Spoon's 'I Turn My Camera On' every time), before the piano line falls in behind, is the kind of template from which a great pop song would have to actively attempt to derail.

Perhaps only one song a year pervades the public consciousness as much as this. One that it is accepted by the mainstream, celebrated by the indie scene from which the band came, and decried by everyone else. 'Rock It' is it.


1. Angus and Julia Stone - 'Big Jet Plane'


Angus & Julia Stone - 'Big Jet Plane'  live at Rolling Stone

(EMI don't make money if the original video is embedded, so bear with us).

In 2007, journalist Carl Wilson authored a book in the excellent 331/3 series about Canadian superstar Celine Dion, titled Let's Talk ABout Love: A Journey To The End Of Taste. In it, he tried to analyse his hatred of Celine Dion's music and fathom her immense popularity. In an interview with the Birmingham News a few years later, he surmised his result thusly: 

"It's not cool, dark, subversive, dangerous, edgy music. But there's a place in the world for sloppy sentimentality. It's not a bad thing to express now and then."

Sloppy sentimentality in music also has another outcome - it can shear off critical faculties. Humans like to think they're discerning when it comes to personal choices. But like new car smell, "smart" water, and the last three Star Wars films, products are sometimes able to override such barriers to acceptance by playing to our emotions. We associate the new car smell with fresh beginnings and status; we imagine water in a bottle to be "better" for us, somehow; we feted George Lucas for once expanding our personal universe. And so never suspected that he might then take a shit on it. And us.

In this way, 'Big Jet Plane' by Angus and Julia Stone is genius. With the harmless features of the dippy duo by now seared into the memory banks of even the most punctual offshore miners, 'Big Jet Plane' arrives shorn of any barbs that might parry its entry into consciousness. Freely avoiding individuality, it serves as a simple, nude alternative to versions of the genre that do require attention - it leaves it all up to you. It's a similar anti-artistic tactic that explains maybe why Celine Dion is one of the biggest selling artists of all time. It's why André Rieu is at the top of the charts every Christmas, why Nickelback make money. And it's why Angus and Julia Stone continue to garner acclaim for a song that reads like magnetic letters on a fridge. Like the criticism levelled at the AMP Award's granting Lisa Mitchell the top spot last year, winners of polls are rarely The Best, per se, as much as often the ones that create the least friction, and so go unexamined the longest.

So. A great many people - it can be reasonably said - will accept quiet singing over an acoustic guitar. (As opposed to say, Muse). Even more so if it hints at some sentimentality, for quiet acoustic guitar is traditionally one of the most successful vehicles to parlay such emotions. Musically 'Big Jet Plane' is gentle, primed for projecting or to be projected upon. The curious might have already found their hook in the melancholy suggested by the opening chord cycle. That's OK.

Good folk music - OK, "folk-pop" to be pedantic, here - at this juncture, might then inject lyrical consequence into proceedings. Personal insight, drama. Life. (Folk music's very name, of course, comes from the term "folklore" - a sharing of tales, knowledge, narrative, tradition, legend, emotion. Instances.) Here is the rub: lyrically, 'Big Jet Plane' does not operate the heavy machinery. It bears no inference to its creators. It refuses to develop. And, I suspect to many adults, is whimsical to the point of adolescence.

If 'Big Jet Plane' (its reductive title alone raises a flag) were indeed a folk-tale told around the campfire, here's how it might roll:

A: Angus Stone
S: Santa

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S: So tell me what happened?

A: Well, she said "Hello". I felt sexual. She smelled like flowers, you see. I suggested that I could take her for a ride on an aeroplane. And that she should love me, for I thought she was a river. If she agreed, I told her I would lift her up - metaphorically. But also literally, on a plane. Where I too could have a seat and keep her safe by kissing her. There's not much else.

S: Christmas is cancelled.

'Big Jet Plane' is the straight, spare stretch of musical road - free of obstacles, features or tension that might draw attention to itself. As an artistic statement - and art is nothing if not a statement - it serves as a potent reminder that sometimes listeners prefer you just get out of the way.


SEE THE ENTIRE TRIPLE J HOTTEST 100 LIST
READ LAST YEAR'S REVIEW OF THE TOP 5 SONGS IN THE TRIPLE J HOTTEST 100