I'm not dead!

Just a quick post to say that I haven't forgotten about Hottest 100 Reranked. My personal life has been all of the crazy, and things are only settling down long enough for me to think about posting again.

Planning to have Say Goodbye by Hunters & Collectors reviewed either in the later parts of today or 14/10. It's #97 in the All-Time 1989 list.

"Man Overboard" by Do-Re-Mi

Reranked Position: #7

Last updated: March 09, 2014

Appearances

• All-Time 1989: #98

To be quite honest, I'm finding it really hard to "get" Man Overboard. The music is great - especially that bass line - and the lyrics have some impact, but when everything is put together, it doesn't really do anything for me.

Listening to other songs from Do-Re-Mi, such as Adultery, Happiest Place in Town and Haunt You, show that they had better songs. Yet, Man Overboard was their biggest hit.

I'm starting to think that I have absolutely no idea about the 1980s. Great songs get completely overlooked, and bands that should have been big never got out of the popular-obscurity stage.

The sound engineer Man Overboard has done a brilliant job - you could quite easily play it next to a song from today and still have it stand out. All the instruments have a really nice separation. Everything can be heard clearly. Deborah Conway's voice is very much the highlight of this song.

Even with everything going for Man Overboard, I still can't quite get my head around the lyrics with the music. I want to place it higher, I really do. However, this is too niggling for me to let it slide. Definitely go out and hunt down everything that isn't Man Overboard, though. Do-Re-Mi are a great band.

"The Cicada (That Ate Five Dock)" by Outline

Reranked Position: #2

Last updated: March 09, 2014

Appearances

• All-Time 1989: #99

(Special thanks to Mark Gibson of Australian Music History - your website is really something special... it's not only a great resource, but is allowing people that haven't seen each other for years to get back in touch and reunite.)

And of course a crazy-obscure Australian band had to show up at some point during this list... I just wasn't expecting it to be the third song in.

What the internet can tell me about Outline is fairly limited. They formed in 1979 and disbanded in 1982. Apparently one of the band members, Phil Rigger, joined Dee Minor and the Dischords for a gig at The Annadale on May 25, 2013. The song in question, The Cicada (That Ate Five Dock), was released as a single in April 1981, and included in their only album, Maybe It's A Game, in 1982.

Watch their PV:

I was most certainly not born in the 1980s (1990 girl here!), but I wish I grew up in the 80s. Naturally, I'm left with many questions...

• How how how how how the hell did Outline not end up with any mainstream success? Seriously! Cicada has all of the trademarks of a number one hit: catchy sound, notable lyrics that demand you screech and sing along to them (EEE EEE EEE EEE! EEE EEE EEE EEE! Cicaaaahdaaaah... cicaaaaaaahdaaaahh... Cicaaaahdaaaah... cicaaaaaaaaahdaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh... THAT! ATE! FIVE! DOCK!), around the 3 minute ballpark lengthand a decent enough PV definitely suited for television.
• Why Five Dock? Why Drummoyne? Why not Newtown or Redfern or Woolloomooloo or Darlinghurst or Glebe? I'm not a Sydney native, so I have no idea.
• (To anyone that was in Outline, should they ever stumble upon my little project here:) WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY DID YOU DISBAND? The fact that one of your songs was remembered eight years after it was released is a testament to your awesomeness. Also, why did you guys never consider reforming? Did you even know you were included in the Hottest 100?

It's little gems like this that make me want to reorganise my place so I have some room to set up a vinyl player and find fantastic music like this... Is it strange that I do have a small vinyl collection even though I have nothing to play them on?

Addendum @ 3:00 am 9th March 2014: OUTLINE HAVE REFORMED!!!!!!!! *arm flailing* I am much excite, and I need to internet moar. Find Outine on their official page (complete with mailing list!), Facebook and Reverb Nation.

"The Mercy Seat" by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Reranked Position: #3

Last updated: October 14, 2013

Appearances

• All-Time 1991: #88
• All-Time 1989: #100

I fucking love Nick Cave. The man is a genius of both the written word and music. I don't understand why more people in Australia don't love him... Wait, that's a lie.

See, I went through a goth phase for the bulk of my teenage years. Part of it probably stemmed from clinical depression, but a lot of it was my big "SCREW YOU!" to all the things that I should have liked and disliked to have people like me in the early teenage years.

I was introduced to Nick Cave through Uncut presents NME Originals. I had picked up the Goth magazine special. From what I remember, it had a compilation of reviews, interviews and news from NME and Melody Maker from the very late 70s to the early 90s. There was lots of content with Nick, either as The Birthday Party, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, or just on his own.

Massive crush alert on both Nick and Robert Smith of The Cure. It's just a shame they both didn't age too well... :(

But I digress. Nick Cave's work has always been a bit on the macabre side. Predominately falling into the gothic literary genre, he has a way of making death, sin and the grotesque sound breathtaking, if not beautiful.

Having said that, I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to place it in number one. Although The Mercy Seat is distinctive and deep, it's not exactly something that's going to be broken out on jukeboxes and karaoke machines by the majority of people. And unless you're a shoegazer, you're not going to be able to dance to it.

The Mercy Seat starts of at some semblance of soft and then just refuses to let up. The strings are what makes this song for me I think, along with Nick's lyrics and his vocal delivery. The thing is, that refusal to let up makes complete sense. The song is about a man that's going to be executed with the electric chair. There's also some reference to Christianity; I'm not sure how common this theme is in Cave's work, but his book And The Ass Saw The Angel explores religious themes in the context of a religious cult town.

What's eventually tipped me over the edge to giving number one to The Mercy Seat is the fact that Johnny Cash covered the song on his 2000 release, American III: Solitary Man. Nick Cave describes it perfectly:

"It doesn't matter what anyone says. Johnny Cash recorded my song."

Addendum (13/10/2013 @ 3:10 am): Doing blog stuff and the Live in Lyon version has just come on rage... HOLY FRAK THIS IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND AMAZEBALLS THING I'VE EVER HEARD FROM NICK CAVE! Yes, I'm in love with this version. Also, considering the time of morning, I think I'm entitled to be yelling at you. For reals. YouTube of this performance to follow when I can find it below because it's amazing and you need to listen to it.

"Wonderwall" by Oasis

Reranked Position: #6

Last updated: March 09, 2014

Appearances

• All-Time 20 Years [2013]: #1
• All-Time 2009: #12
• 1995: #1

Wonderwall is a song that has stood the test of time. Released in October 1995, it peaked at number 1 in Australia, New Zealand and Spain, plus number 1 on the US Alternative chart and Canada's RPM Alternative 30. In addition, it was in the top 10 charts for Norway, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and France.

This got played a lot at my primary school's disco nights. It also gets broken out at least once whenever I end up somewhere with a jukebox or a karaoke machine and there's alcohol involved. We still thought fondly of it in 2009, when it placed 12th in that year's all-time list. And in 2013, almost 18 years after its release, a lot of people still think it's so damn awesome it's the hottest song in 20 years.

There's certainly a case for it. Year-end charts for 1996 had Wonderwall placed at 19 in Australia, 26 in Canada and 56 in the US. I can tell you right now that I'll have this stuck in my head for a little while. It's not the most effective earworm (my brain won't just repeat lyrics or riffs like I do with other songs), but it does stick.

Wonderwall, however, is not the most technical song out there. Tripod, an absolutely brilliant musical comedy group, have this to say on the matter:

Other people have done it too - the quality and/or amusingness varies.

From a recording perspective, Wonderwall is pretty damn terrible too. Wikipedia tells me that the producer, Owen Wilson, used a "technique" called brickwalling to "intensify" the song's sound.

BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD. Here's what the waveform looks like:

MP3 compression stuff aside (I really should hunt down the CD so I can use a Wave file instead), that is one square waveform. Basically, there's no headroom. When you listen to it closely, it just sounds like there's no life in the mix. Also, it's very flat dynamically... The only intensity in Wonderwall comes from the cello and Liam Gallagher's (slightly off-pitch at times; not a bad thing in this instance) vocal performance.

Despite all this, Wonderwall is still a powerful and decent enough song to have meaning to a lot of people, even if Noel Gallagher is a douche and changes his mind about who the song is about. In a book called Oasis Supersonic Supernova by Michael Krugman, I found the following (pg. 99):

"It's about my girlfriend, Meg Matthews," Noel explained to NME's Andy Richardson. "She had a company which folded and she was feeling a bit sorry for herself. The sentiment is that there was no point in her feeling down, she has to sort my life out for me because I'm in bits half the time."

And here's his backtrack in October 2002:

"The meaning of that song was taken away from me by the media who jumped on it," said Gallagher.

"And how do you tell your Mrs it's not about her once she's read it is? It's a song about an imaginary friend who's gonna come and save you from yourself."

Wonderwall, regardless of where it finally ends up on my charts once all of this is over, will remain a song I don't mind listening to and might even sing along to really badly if I'm drunk enough. Just don't expect me to be "ZOMG OASIS ARE THE BEST!!!!!1!!!!!!1!!!!!!!ELEVENTY-1!"