Showing all posts about music

Good Luck, Babe! by Chappell Roan tops 2025 Hottest 100

29 January 2025

American pop singer and songwriter Chappell Roan’s 2024 track Good Luck, Babe! was voted the favourite song of 2024 by Triple J listeners in this year’s Hottest 100 music poll.

In taking out the top spot, Roan collected the most number of votes ever for a number one song:

The number of votes clocked isn’t the only landmark fact about Chappell’s win. ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ was her only eligible track for voting and her only song in the countdown, which makes her the first solo female artist to win a Hottest 100 with her sole entry.

There’s also good news for Swifties in the 2024 countdown, Taylor Swift notched her first ever entry into the Hottest 100.

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Australian alternative music radio station Triple J turns fifty

22 January 2025

Australian alternative music radio station Triple J, originally known as Double J, launched fifty-years ago, on Sunday 19 January 1975. Here’s footage of their first few minutes on air (Instagram page), with DJ Holger Brockmann behind the microphone.

With a predominantly youth audience, Triple J especially has struggled with declining ratings in recent years, as large segments of their audience turn to social media for music listening, and discovery. The jays however have been making inroads through podcasts, and their Instagram and TikTok channels, which have sizable followings.

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Demolishing the AC/DC house, and what little rock history Australia has

18 January 2025

I’m not really a fan of the band that was formed in Sydney in 1973, and is still going strong, but it seems odd that the house where founders, brothers Angus and Malcolm Young used to live, and founded AC/DC, was not worthy of preserving. For those not in the know, AC/DC are probably Australia’s version of the Rolling Stones. But last month, the residence, in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Burwood, was bulldozed to make way for a high rise apartment block.

This might sound like over-development on steroids, but many parts of Australia, including Sydney, are experiencing accommodation shortages, and high density housing is one of the solutions. While numerous people, including the local municipal council, were aware of the house’s history, this was not enough to spare the property. Mind you, I’m not sure how the house could have been kept, and somehow integrated in the much needed residential development.

For more about the story of the “AC/DC house”, and its demolition, check out this short YouTube clip by Sydney Morning Herald writer, Tom Compagnoni.

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Voting open for the 2024 Triple J Hottest 100 music poll

2 January 2025

The annual Hottest 100 countdown is part and parcel of the Australian music scene. Hosted by Australian indie radio station Triple J, since 1978, the poll gives listeners the chance to vote for their favourite music of the previous year.

The countdown itself takes place on Saturday 25 January 2025. I don’t always listen in on the day, in fact I’ve struggled to listen to much radio this last year, but the chart is great for new music discovery.

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Tranquil Motion, a new album from All India Radio

31 December 2024

I’m talking about the Australian downtempo electronica music act, not the public broadcaster of India. In the hubbub of the silly season, I forgot to mention a new album, Tranquil Motion, was released earlier this month. Track it down on Bandcamp, or your favourite music streamer.

I could use some tranquil motion right now…

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I’ll just be asking for you… Telstra’s 2023 Christmas advert

23 December 2024

Let’s flashback a year. Australian telecommunications company Telstra might have hit the right note with its Christmas theme advertising in 2023, by way of this ninety second commercial. The song excerpted in the ad is Oh Christmas, by Brisbane based duo Zefereli. Listen to the full length version here. It may not happen often, but sometimes the big corporates get it right.

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The music has stopped for musicians and their support workers

6 November 2024

Just as it is becoming near high impossible to make a full-time living as an author, unless a writer’s work is regularly topping best-seller lists, the same increasingly goes for musicians. And their support teams. Gone are the days road crews, stage hands, recording studio workers, and the like, can make a full-time living in the music industry.

And Hua Hsu, writing for The New Yorker, notes that the word gig, which once chiefly referred to a music show or concert, has found greater relevance in the on-demand work sector, or gig-economy. Doubtless many music industry workers, and I dare say, one or two authors, supplement their income through on-demand work, in response to fewer opportunities to make a living in their preferred occupation.

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Oasis regroup, this is not the second coming we were waiting for

30 August 2024

Backbeat, the word is on the street, Oasis, the old nineties Britpop act — that was, in the words of co-founder Noel Gallagher — bigger than the Beatles, is set to play a series of reunion concerts. Honestly, I was more excited when in 2011, the Stone Roses, an even older act, announced they were* getting the band back together after an acrimonious falling out, fifteen years earlier.

This despite the fact I knew next to nothing about them. The Roses were, somehow, possessed of an alluring enigma, which made their reformation all the more intriguing. I can’t say the same for Oasis though, and nor can Ben Coady, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald:

Cool Britannia is over and Britpop is over, lads. In hindsight the Oasis v Blur battle was never a fair fight. Blur’s mid-90 albums stand the test of time — Oasis’ releases are stasis, stuck in amber like a mammoth’s turd.

Aye, spoken a like true Gallagher. I did see Noasis, an Australian based Oasis tribute/satire band perform locally once. They were good. But I won’t be amongst those waiting with baited breath to see Oasis when they take to the stage again.

* the Stone Roses had disbanded again as of 2019.

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Who needs LinkedIn when you can network at music festivals?

7 August 2024

Networking tips for music festivals, by Harry Carr:

Don’t make the mistake that most people make and switch off as soon as you reach Paddington. Maximise your train journey by reaching out to your extended network, to see if they are going to Glastonbury Music Festival. If there’s a speaker or business guru you admire on the conference circuit, there’s a good chance he’s being dragged along by his girlfriend, who is half his age. Drop him an email and ask him if he wants to meet up for coffee. You should aim to send between 100-150 emails on the train.

Via Things Magazine.

AND… also seen at Things, London Flipped, said to be the first full-size map of London drawn upside-down. It might seem weird, but there’s nothing strange about it at all: this is what London looks like from Australia, don’t you know…

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I like your old music better than your new music

3 July 2024

I might say that of U2, whose music I once really liked, especially the stuff they did in the nineties. Achtung Baby. Zooropa. Pop. Even 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind. These albums mostly represented their electronic music phase. I’d have them on loop for days at a time.

I drew the ire of friends though who told me I needed to listen to their real work, their earlier stuff. From the eighties. Of course: the eighties. The only decade real music was made, apparently.

But back to U2. I tried to get into their really early stuff, but it wasn’t quite the same, as their… (then) newer stuff. Though I still spin (is that the word I’m meant to use?) New Year’s Day (nothing changes on New Year’s Day…), from time to time, usually in late December. Today though, in 2024 — not 1985, or whatever it was — U2’s more recent music, is worse than their older, nineties, stuff.

Since 2000, nothing by U2 has excited me. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, no. No Line on the Horizon, ditto. Songs of Innocence (remember the iTunes release?), forget it. Songs of Experience, nope. And if I hadn’t have looked it up, I wouldn’t have known U2 released a new album — albeit a re-working of earlier songs — called Songs of Surrender, in 2023.

In contrast, I pre-ordered All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and was outside the music shop before opening, on release day. The guy behind the counter, who (coincidentally) was Irish, and a U2 fan, told me this album was different from their previous three, and would take a few listens to enjoy.

And he was right. I did come to enjoy it. But that was over twenty-years ago. Today though, I barely listen to any U2 (except while writing this). None of it, however, fits into the category of being “gold”, as Nick Heer writes, compared to the new music being recorded by other artists in 2024. A lot of old music might be good, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better than contemporary work.

But the bashing of recordings made in 2024 goes on. It’s noise. It’s garbage. It’s getting worse. It’s too easy to make. Whoever said that has obviously never tried to record a song. In any era.

This is the reason I continue listening to Triple J, which predominately plays new and alternative music. It’s an Australian radio station, but I think anyone, anywhere, can stream it. The main point being, it is none of this “hits and memories” stuff. These are the good old days, not some past decade. They’re also more Billie Eilish than Taylor Swift, if that makes a difference.

But look, if you can’t stand today’s music, I suggest you lock yourself away with the songs of, say, the Mama’s and the Papa’s, a sixties act, and whose music is surely “golden age” enough for you. Please do so immediately, so the rest of us can go about enjoying today’s new stuff.

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