Triple J Hottest 100 Countdown Countdown: 1993, #70 - 61

Now on to entry #4 of my attempt to review every song in every Triple JJJ Hottest 100, from 1993 to the present day (not counting the first few, which were beautiful catalogues of classic alternative music taken from multiple different years, and which tended to repeatedly leave the same songs clustered toward the top each year). This is is a response to the cyclical whinge about the Hottest 100 having lost the plot at some vague point in the distant past (usually since the mid-90s - my vote would be between 1997 and 1998). The idea is that by actually examining each song in detail, I would learn more about the cultural moment and general range of music when many of us believed the Hottest 100 to be actually good, and also about my own tastes and the degree to which they may or may not be informed/affected by nostalgia.

So far in this series, I have been both positively surprised by the depth and variety of music in 1993's countdown, with more reggae than I remember being on the radio during the period and a lot of interesting alternative rock (like #71 on the last post). However, there has also been an unfortunately sizeable contingent of unpleasantly of-its-time pop-EDM, and a Cruel Sea, if you will, of soft, upbeat alt rock, comprised of various shades of creamy beige mediocrity. What exactly did twenty-something Gen Xers get out of this, I've often found myself thinking, while trying to regurgitate a couple of paragraphs about some proto-indie R&B-rock zephyr that blew in and out in less than three minutes, like a splash of acid rain on a carpark somewhere in Adelaide. And also: will anyone actually read this, apart from the struggling indie musicians from the list in question, who are now in their fifties and sixties and have a bandcamp, trying to remind contemporary audiences of their existence while probably working as a SOSE teacher in high school or something?

 

70: "Sleepy Head (Serene Machine)" - Ed Kuepper

 

This is a good, deep, melodic indie rock song. I would put it a couple of notches ahead of the standard indie rock I've covered in this series so far, mainly because its tone actually has depth and isn't completely flat and upbeat, and also because (perhaps as a consequence) I actually enjoy listening to it. I've never heard much by Kuepper before, or from the Saints, and Sleepy Head is a pleasant surprise. His slightly off-key singing voice reminds me of the affectations in a lot of indie rock from the early 2010s, but there's more depth and heart-feeling in his delivery here. It doesn't feel put on. Lyrically, there doesn't seem to be much going on here, just some embittered ruminations directed at an ex, maybe some vague sociopolitical commentary. He sings about "sweet talkers with gems for eyes" and "two cent friends with their pretend faith." There's enough cynicism to give the song depth, but it's vague enough to keep the general tone of the song cerebral. 

Triple J Hottest 100 Countdown Countdown: 1993, #80 - 71

 And now on to entry #3 in my attempt to go through and review every song on every Trip J Hottest 100 Countdown, from 1993 to the present. The intent has been to find the exact point, if possible, where alternative music in Australia started fall into vague, atonal, apolitical, syrupy irrelevance - or when JJJ started to push it in that direction (you can read more about the rationale here). So far, it's been an interesting step back into nostalgia, while also casting a sharp light on my preconceptions of what alternative music was like during this time. I'm hoping the general eclecticism continues - there's been an decent sampling of non-mainstream genres of music so far - and I'm hoping the run of generic, middle-of-the-road alternative rock (with strong Australian representation) gets a bit more interesting and more vital than it has been so far. I'm also curious to see if there are any more entries that are just outright bad in the same vein as "Three Little Pigs" by Green Jelly. You can read my previous entry in this series, which covers #90 - 81 in the 1993 Hottest 100, here.

 

80: "Rooster" - Alice in Chains

 

This is solid grunge from the period, with a strong, meaningful subtext. The music video has plenty of graphic violence, and perhaps the lyrics are also slightly on the nose, but the passion and general directness give these other qualities a justification. This got plenty of radio play back in the day and, until I started looking at the song in preparation for this post, I didn't have any conception that it was a social issues song. Maybe at some level it seeped in. Jerry Cantrell based "Rooster" on his father, who was a Vietnam War veteran and whose trauma had contributed to a rift in the family that led Cantrell to be temporarily homeless. As Yates notes in the Louder Sound article, when you realise this, it makes the ambiguity of Cantrell's perspective in the song interesting. He approaches the subject matter sympathetically, but with a certain amount of critical distance. I wonder if it was weird for him to play this in front of large audiences while touring, or if it was therapeutic. He does trot out the popularly believed (and promoted) narrative that Vietnam veterans were spat on and insulted by anti-war protestors upon their return, which apparently has little basis in reality. You could read into that more ambiguity, or maybe it has something to do with culturally-mediated perceptions past events. Lots of material here for the sort of essay a high school English teacher might dole out to get the student body interested in textual interpretation. I see enough Gen Zs in town wearing Nirvana t-shirts for it to be conceivable that some teenagers today might have heard of Alice in Chains as well.

Musically, "Rooster" is strong and appealing, though a little too crisp. When Layne Staley (who performs the song - Cantrell wrote the lyrics) yells during the chorus he sounds like he's going for something like what Kurt Cobain does, but he ends up sounding more like Axl Rose doing an impression of Eddie Vedder. I never really thought much about how much the trashier arena rock of the eighties bled into or influence the alternative rock of the early 90s. Nirvana and the Smashing Pumpkins both developed their own sound, and drew from a lot of other sources to do that, so listening to them makes it sound like there was a clean break. But Alice in Chains sounds more of its time. The feedback, the lyrical content, the quiet-to-loud Nivana/Pixies thing, the more drawn out and thoughtful pacing place it comfortably within the alternative rock of the period, but they don't totally escape the kind of music that was charting a few years earlier. Cantrell himself started in a local Seattle glam rock band, then moved into the kind of music being played by his contemporaries in the city. None of this is meant critically. It's a good, powerful, personal song (and it's nice to have something with enough depth to write paragraphs about with ease). The backing vocals are nice as well.

Triple J Hottest 100 Countdown Countdown: 1993, #90 - 81

 This is entry number 2 of my attempt to go through every song of every Triple J Hottest 100, starting with 1993, in the process figuring out exactly when Triple J died on its arse (figuratively speaking). For at least ten to fifteen years now this particular countdown has elicited a lot of criticism and general negativity among the public, and this year has been particularly bad. I started writing this series as an attempt to do something more than just complain, to better understand what alternative music used to be in this country and what it has become. You can see the previous entry in this series here, and a general overview of the rationale behind it in this introductory post. In this entry, I'll go through the songs that came in from 90 to 81 in the 1993 Hottest 100.

So far, I've been pleasantly surprised. The glasses I was wearing to view the past turned out not to be especially rose-coloured - though the general run of songs covered so far were, overall, more upbeat and generally happier than the mental image I had of alternative music in the early 90s (comprised of grunge and EDM, mainly). None of the songs I've covered have been ones that I completely hate (though some definitely inspire more cynicism than others). There's been a good range of genres, including a lot of light indie rock, some folksy or bluesier numbers, and more reggae than I remember being in the charts at that time. Looking ahead now, I'm hopeful that this diversity of musical styles is going to continue for the next ten songs.

90: "For Tomorrow" - Blur

 

Finally, something with a more pronounced low end. Apparently "For Tomorrow" was one of several songs Blur wrote as a reaction to grunge, which was enough of a trend amongst alternative rock bands that it became its own genre (post-grunge). If you can get past Damon Albarn's accent, the awful chorus (Albarn just singing 'la la la la la' on repeat), and the absence of anything else of significance in the lyrics, this actually quite a good song. The beat is good, I like the string section that chimes in and out. A song like this should sound more vacuous and corporate than it does. The lyrics are just vague and London-y, like they were going for something that sounds like it could have been written by Paul McCartney, with maybe just enough hints of subtext and metaphor that it could have been used by Tony Blair's election campaign a few years later. I think that's the most fitting way to describe it: New Labour post-grunge.