norwegiancharts.com - Vance Joy

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Just so as not to waste your time, I will be courteous this time and leave the song review portion of this above the contextually related observation. Feel very free to stop reading after the first paragraph. So anyway, "Georgia" is actually a pretty good song! I'm reviewing a Vance Joy song so I'm obliged to put in some snark and note that "Georgia On My Mind" is a better song, but then that's just Vance Joy (or the girl) having good taste. And this is a nice and tender tune with gently floating guitar strumming. The bridge screams of having no idea how to fill out the song, and it's rather out of place. It's not awful or anything, but I'd probably have to say that my favourite part of the song is just after it when the guitar returns to playing the intro tune. I'd say it surpasses "Play With Fire" as my favourite Vance Joy song. On a related note: Australian commercial radio is frequently put in an awkward position that I think they don't want to admit. This is because they function on the ideal that they want their listeners to keep listening. This throws in the always conflicting cycle of giving songs airplay that people want to hear. The problem with that is that there's a precious sweet spot in a song's life cycle they need to hit. For instance, when a song is new, people don't know it very well. They might be uncomfortable with listening to it as it doesn't give them the good feeling they get from hearing all their favourite songs. Of course, every song is new at some point, so this is just a hurdle that needs to be skipped over. A problem with this is that not every song truly clicks. Some songs are just naturally more appealing than others, and there's no scientific way to pin this down because as soon as a trick is overdone, it becomes a liability (except of course the C G Am F progression because it's not as on the surface I suppose?). For pop this is a good thing because it keeps things from going stagnant. So the underlying problem for radio is that they need to make sure they can devise which songs will resonate with listeners. I feel as though in the past all they had to do was follow the Billboard charts, but of course as of the 2010s, they are consistently behind everyone else, meaning Australia have to step up to the plate themselves! It just so happens that there is the exact form of market research they need right around the corner, in the form of triple j's Hottest 100 countdown. Because after all, triple j is very popular, and while it doesn't align with the other popular stations, it's still very listener friendly and easy to adapt (after all, you're far more likely to hear Foo Fighters on triple j than say GY!BE or Boards of Canada). triple j's Hottest 100 is at its very core, just people saying what their favourite songs are, it's a PD's dream. Especially pertinent that it's in January, traditionally the driest time for new chart hits. At least in theory it is, because if I go back to my first point, it's truly just an awkward position for radio. They want these songs, but there are two things they don't want: 1. Everyone to know that they're doing this because it'll be a PR disaster which will inevitably do damage if... 2. People will just go straight to the source anyway. Radio practically functions on no one knowing that there's an alternative out there (well that and the average person not paying their full attention to it). The way they get around this is being subtle about it, and often creeping something in under the radar. For instance did you know that despite being released in February 2014, becoming a top 40 hit instantly and being on a two week running #1 album that won a bunch of ARIA Awards, by the end of 2014, "Talk Is Cheap" by Chet Faker had been played less than 200 times by commercial radio? (For comparison, they played a Redfoo song released at the end of August nearly 7,000 times). "Talk Is Cheap" went on to be a huge top 10 smash hit, but radio couldn't truly embrace it because the song was so strongly linked to the Hottest 100 (I saw the album in the shops with a sticker on it reminding of that fact) that no one would be fooled. In a way it's a shame because so often there are songs with hits in their DNA that face value doofuses won't call a hit because of a low chart peak (hello "Latch"). So what they've done lately is pick up a low charting entry that perhaps a lot of people didn't even realise existed at the time and ride it for what it's worth. Last time it was Mikhael Paskalev, this time it's Vance Joy. In itself that's kind of amusing since radio seemed reluctant to let his previous single "Mess Is Mine" really get moving, and in fact played early 2013 released "Riptide" more times in the second half of 2014 than they did for that. Personally I'm chuffed because "Georgia" is a Vance Joy song that doesn't suck, and because "Georgia" has already placed in triple j's Hottest 100 at a lowly #93, and no amount of external promotion will be able to artificially push it higher. Heck, maybe Vance Joy won't even feel the need to release anything new this year, 2015 shaping up to be a great Hottest 100! Sub-note: triple j gets put in the awkward position too, like when people lug a big elephant into the room called "Shake It Off". I think the pressuring aspect of that was part of why it took off like it did. There is an anarchist in all of us and that's why the word schadenfreude exists.