Kristen's 2015 Hottest 100 Picks

A belated Happy New Year to all you lovely folks out there. Big news today. I've just managed to finish sorting out my short list for the Hottest 100 this year.

Phew. That only took me 30000 hours. Holy moley, this one was tough. I was studying my music choices and loves over the last 12 months harder than I studied for my exams.

Why must I be so particular, why does everything need to be just so? Why do I have to only pick 10? The truth of the matter is, I don't have any other hobbies. Literally, the sad truth of my existence is that when I'm not eating, sleeping, or working, I'm 100% mucking around with music and making playlists. My eclectic and somewhat strange tastes have dazzled my friends for ages, I am not known for my great taste nor my ability to form playlists that remotely tie in together well. My friends just know me as the chick with the playlist that has Coolio next to Alt-J. So, I feel that my shortlist this year accurately represents the range of my weirdo tastes.

Well, it's 1am, I feel my last ounce of sanity is slipping away. So here's my picks for this year's Hottest 100.

1. Brandon Flowers -  Can't Deny My Love
2. Grimes -  Flesh Without Blood
3. Tame Impala - The Less I Know the Better
4. Florence and the Machine - Queen of Peace
5. Disclosure - Magnets 
6. Florence and the Machine - How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
7. CHVRCHES - Clearest Blue
8. Macklemore - Downtown (feat. Eric Nally, Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee)
9. The Weeknd - Can't Feel My Face
10. Vance Joy  - Fire and the Flood

That's it. I'm done. The ordeal is over.

In other news, I'm off on holiday tomorrow afternoon! I'm gone! I'm jet setting away from all the hustle and bustle of the city to go visit the tranquil oasis that is New Zealand. However, I shall be in the country to listen intently for my favourite tracks from midday (AEDT) Tuesday, January 26th with the rest of the country. As per usual, here's a little playlist I put together to commemorate my picks for this year's Hottest 100. 

So, have you got your votes in yet?

Lukewarm 100

So, in case you actually have been living in a bomb shelter somewhere completely impenetrable by any type of radio waves, you would have known that the season is upon us.

Voting for Triple J's The Hottest 100  is open now guys! And every man and his dog is getting their votes in and telling the world about it. So I guess its my turn now.

I feel a bit like I'm behind on the times though. I still haven't narrowed down my Top 10 yet whilst all my friends have put up their votes and are relaxing and waiting for the big countdown. I've spent the last few weeks deliberating, and choosing and shuffling my lists around. In fewer words: stressed out! In all honesty, I am surrounded by little scraps of paper with different short lists for tracks that I've jotted down whilst at work, eating dinner, out with friends etc. It's been music central over here, my car has become a sounding board for my thoughts on what should be on my Hottest 100 list, with my passengers the official voting panel of judges. I've been desperately trying to relive and remember which songs I LOVED and which songs I kinda liked in 2015. Luckily this blog has been useful, and in my official Hottest 100 list you'll definitely see some of these songs that I've written about.

So let's talk about the songs I haven't written about.

This week's post is going to feature the songs I won't be voting for, not because they were especially bad, but just because they weren't good enough to make the cut.

So here's  my Lukewarm 100

1. Of Monsters and Men - Empire
2. Vance Joy - Red Eye
3. The Wombats - Your Body is a Weapon
4. Halsey - Hold Me Down
5. Courtney Barnett - Pedestrian at Best
6. The Weeknd - Losers (feat. Labrinth)
7. Jarryd James - Do You Remember
8. Elliphant - Love Me Badder
9. Troye Sivan - EASE (feat. Broods)
10. Last Dinosaurs - Apollo

Shout out to Justin Bieber, One Direction, and all the stupid mainstream pop songs and artists that I loved this year but couldn't vote for.

And because nobody has time to listen/watch ten YouTube videos, I've made a little Spotify playlist for you to check out.

Stay tuned for Part 2 when I actually make up my mind and decide on my real Hottest 100 playlist. Until then, I hope you enjoy!


Kristen

Dreams and the pretense of study.

Yeah, it's mid-November. That time of year where students Australia-wide increase their caffeine intake and start questioning everything that they've ever done to get them to the stage that they are now. Personally, I've decided I should probably quit university and forgo my dreams of getting a degree. Instead, I'll open up my own cafe somewhere in a trendy spot in the city. I can picture it now. Exposed brick, and industrial counter tops. There will be tea cosies, and little cross-stitched signs with swear words on them. I want little cacti in teapots as center pieces on tables and a chalkboard feature wall. Something sweet and cute, but secretly punk rock.

I start designing my menu and picturing the little elements of my cafe coming together, including my potential regular customers and the conversations they would have in my cafe. At this point, I realise my exams start in approximately three days. Now, I'm not ready to let this dream to die yet, so I've started thinking about what sort of music that would be the ideal playlist to feature in my extremely trendy cafe, and then I found it, hidden within my "study" playlists (I say "study", but let's face it, I am not doing any), something emerged to the top and probably sounded exactly how I wanted my cafe to feel. Tuka's Like a Version cover of "Big Jet Plane."

There's something about Australian music that has a distinctive feel to it; it feels like long drives home and warm sun on your back. The kind of feeling that crunching through fallen Eucalyptus leaves and the smell of the ocean gives you. It feels like coming home. This song is the home I want my imaginary cafe to feel like.

Tuka 

We all know Tuka from the Thundamentals, an awesome Australian hip-hop group from just outside Sydney. Honestly, they have killed their Like a Versions in the past, so it's no surprise that this cover sounded so awesome. Tuka's smooth mixing of rap with Angus and Julia Stone's "Big Jet Plane" is something unto itself. After the other week's Allday disaster (I shan't mention it again, it's too painful), I am happy to say that Australia's hip hop game is still up there. Mixed so effortlessly with Thelma Plum's crooning vocals its gotta be one of my favourite Like a Versions of the year. I can picture it now, mid-morning  at my cafe with this song on the sound system. The smell of coffee beans, the clinking of cutlery on plates and the hum of voices as people enjoy their brunch with their loved ones.

Ah well. It'll be a dream I'll cherish long into the future. But for now, back to pretending to study.

Cheers folks!

Good luck with your studies (or lack there of)!

xx Kristen

Florence and the Machine: What Love Feels Like

Okay, so this is a bit of a different post today. I'm going to get personal, I'm going to get emotional, and just a bit sappy. This post had to be made, though. I couldn't ignore this one and save it for another week. I'll ask for forgiveness in advance, because I know this is going to cause a lot of cringing and eye rolling. If we can get through it, let me tell you I have a lot of fun stuff hanging out in my queue, just hold on. It'll be over soon. To start off with, I'm going to ask you a question.

Do you believe in soul? 

Well, another question if you do: Have you ever felt like the your soul rise? Like some great crescendo of spirit rising from within and with an exhale just being released into the sky? You feel your heart lifting and your ribs expanding and there's like this warmth rising from within. Soon like you're tingly all over and its like this calmness descends.

I think it's such a weird sensation, there's very few experiences in life that make you feel that way.

Perhaps falling in love, or the first time you see snow, or maybe even seeing a baby being born. Soulful moments, heart wrenching moments, moments in your life where nothing matters but what is occurring before you. These moments drag you out of the past and the future, and push you into the present.

Music makes me feel that way. Some songs in particular, they just strike this weird heart chord with me that reaches within and twists and turns and just stops me in my tracks. That's why I find it so hard to listen to music and talk to people, because every now and then I'll hear a song and I have to stop, and I have to listen.

For this reason, I never listen to Florence and the Machine unless I know I can give my full attention to Florence Welch and her band. This is because to me, her music feels like love and her lyrics feel like heaven; there are no other musicians I have ever listened to who have caught my soul in such a manner.

A bit dramatic. But I digress.

When Florence and the Machine's "How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful" world tour named Perth as their first Australian tour location it was a given. I had to go. It was non-negotiable. Exams be damned, I missed seeing her last time, I couldn't let that happen again. This woman with the flame red hair and soft, whispering voice understood me more than any human on the planet. Her music wasn't just "relatable", no, Florence and the Machine pretty much summed up everything I couldn't say, all my thoughts, all my dreams, all the things I had been feeling for the last five years and laid it bare through the power of song. So I did it, I bought my tickets and the date was set. The 7th of November inched it's way along through the year, and finally. Yesterday, it happened. I saw my Queen. I saw the only woman on the planet who understood me, and it was euphoric.

How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful

I think I've talked about teenage crushes before. But Florence isn't just a crush for me, you see, it's pure love. I know nothing about her background or who she is as a person. To be honest, I couldn't care less. She could be wearing a sequinned, spandex, morph suit and it wouldn't even matter to me. All I know is her music, and all I know of that music is that there's something about it - whether it's the lyrics or the beats of the drums that resonates in my core.

Florence tells stories in her music; about her life, her emotions, her past. The years have passed and the stories have changed. From Lungs, to Ceremonials, and How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful the theme has changed, the songs have changed, but, the words still ring true. She opened with What the Water Gave Me (which caused my sister and I to grasp each other in awe, we have been singing that song in the lead up to the concert non-stop, almost psychic there). From then the music kept flowing, she reached out and sang every song we knew, every lyric that fell from her lips were echoed on ours. We were spell bound and dizzy from her voice echoing within us.

Entranced, even from the nosebleed section.

Some artists are pretty hit and miss with how they sound on the album and how they sound in live performance. Not Florence and the Machine. This band was MEANT to be heard live. Florence's voice was powerful, stunning, and non-wavering throughout the whole performance. It was stronger in performance, there was passion and fire there that you can't hear on the album. Faultless. She pirouetted, danced, ran and jumped. Her voice remained strong, pure, and perfect. The audience was spellbound, when Florence began to sing, there was silence - soon everyone would start singing with her. Our hands raised in the air, and our bodies swaying. We had nosebleed seats, yet we danced and sung like she was no more than a few meters in front of us. How could we not? I think what made it was Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up) Florence took a lap of the audience. She stopped to embrace her adoring fans, raising their hands up to her. It was unbelievable. Without skipping a beat, she was singing, she was perfect. How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful featured in the middle, inspired from the place with the "biggest, bluest skies I've ever seen". She reached into the audience, a roar erupted from the crowd. If she didn't have us before, she had us then. You could see the hands reaching from the audience, you could see them absorbing every single word she spoke like it was a drink of the coolest, clearest water. We were silent when Florence spoke, we erupted with joy when she sang.

The most beautiful moment, however, was towards the end. Florence and The Machine exited the stage for a small break. Soon, the whole audience were holding their phones out. A sea of twinkling lights. In the dark it was like looking at the night sky. Just magical.

Twinkling stars

I think last night cemented something in my mind that I'd been feeling for years and years. I was allowed to let music be something more than what I hear on the radio; I was allowed to let the music wash over me and make me feel the happiest I had felt in years. I danced like an idiot. I sang even louder. Heading into work with a husky post-concert voice was worth it. Last night was incredible.

Thank you SO much Florence and the Machine. That was the most amazing performance I have ever witnessed. The music on the albums I have owned for all those many, many years will mean so much more now. The songs have life now. Definitely one of the greatest highlights of my year.



 x Kristen

*Beautiful photography provided by my considerate younger sister, I was too enamored to take any*

What the Funk?!

So, just in case you haven't been tuned into Keeping Up With Kristen's ridiculous music taste for a while you may have missed that huge funk obsession I went through earlier this year with Jungle. I thought it was over, I thought I had moved onto bigger and better things. But give me a slap bass line and I can feel The Funk rising up again.

So when Triple J and world renowned bae, Chet Faker, released his new funky single a last week in collaboration with London producer Marcus Marr I just about lost the effing plot.

*insert fangirl squealing here*

Unless you've been living under a rock over 2014, you no doubt would have heard of Chet's soulful style. The velvety rumblings of his vocal chords had entranced the entire nation and our hero took out the top of Triple J's Hottest 100 for 'Talk is Cheap' earlier this year. Well ladies and gentlemen, he's back.

Faker (actual name Nick Murphy) announced earlier this month that he was to release a new collaborative EP some time in December. This short and sweet four track EP is called Work and is going to be the resulting love child of a long musical crush between these two musical masterminds. The newly released track Trouble With Us has set my head into a tizzy, and I'm telling you now. You HAVE to hear it. It's so unlike anything that Chet Faker has produced before, this fun, upbeat, funky track has pretty much slap bassed all over my heart strings.

It starts of so simply, the track's sound is very clean and fresh. When you hit that chorus you're bopping already. It's a nice build up and release of a crescendo of funk. I think what I love the most about it is that it's so easy to sing along to, as well as the fact its so completely different to everything we've heard from Chet Faker's studio album Built on Glass. At the same time, I love when a musician shows us this kind of range. I mean, it still sounds like Chet Faker -  it is his distinctive vocal velvetiness that I'm fawning over, but Marcus Marr's sweet, sweet, bass line almost shows us a different side of what collaboration could mean. It's like when artists do covers and mess around with different types and styles of songs; we learn that they're more than just pretty faces, these guys have talent. What the best thing about it is, it's such a fun track, I love dance driving to this one, and I'm sure the people at the traffic lights appreciate my sick moves too.

So, if you see me around bopping to an unknown beat, be assured, this song is exactly what's been on my mind. Check it out, tell me what you think.

For more information and tour dates, check out the Triple J website.



Kristen

Oh Lordey!

I think I'm getting to that stage now where I find it really strange to see younger people everywhere becoming more successful than I ever could be. For a long time, people younger than me were children, mere babes freshly out of the womb and exploring the world with wide eyed curiosity and lack of fine motor skills. Child prodigies aside, it's been weird over the last few years noticing kids that seem hardly out of diapers doing fantastic things.

Lorde is one of those said toddlers out on the rise, creating some amazing, unique music, and to be honest, I'm really jealous, but really proud as well. Who says our generation is full of talent-less hacks? They're wrong. We've got oodles of talent, and I'm quite content saying that someone younger than me is more talented when that person is Lorde.

Oh Lorde

Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor (Lorde for short) is only a year younger than me, and if I'm perfectly honest she is going to reach heights that I will never even closely accomplish. The talented Kiwi songstress is only 18, yet for the last few years her songs have topped charts globally and dominated my playlists. Her latest collaboration with the electronic duo Disclosure has been on my mind and my lips for the last few weeks.

Magnets by Disclosure featuring Lorde has been a real hit all over the airwaves since it's release. Despite the backlash coming from the music video depicting some mature scenes, I feel like this is the next best step for Lorde, she's growing up - why can't her music grow up too?

I love this song, and the music video. There's something magical about it. Plus, it contains some saucy video footage of Iddo Goldberg, my big crush from the Secret Diary of a Call Girl days. Regardless, I find the musical integrity of Lorde's unique style is never compromised in this particular track. The lyricism and the soulful purring that is the sound of her voice makes this sound like it's a Lorde track, not a Disclosure track. The only tell-tale sign of a collaboration is the electronic beat, and some of the repetitiveness. Although, to make any song popular in mainstream media, you're going to have to employ both those elements to reach that wide audience. Despite this, my favourite lyric so far has been the "pretty girls don't know the things that I know", that coupled with Ella's kooky dance style in the music video has endeared me to this song wholly.

I love Lorde for many reasons, for one, her hair is very similar to mine! I do admit, I've felt really quite inspired and have been leaving my thick, wavy, locks out in all their frizzy and voluminous glory as a sort of homage to Ella. She's young, she's talented, and to be honest, she is definitely our next "it" girl. All eyes are on Lorde now, she's definitely going to be creating many waves with her beautiful music over the next few years. I'm quite excited for what the future brings.


xx Kristen

Crushing Hard

I think for most of us who were teenage girls, we fondly remember that celebrity crush that we went crazy for. It's just a part of growing up. Like you see those tweens with their crushes on Justin Bieber or One Direction, it's something to be expected. Your heart beat quickens when you hear one of their songs, you get a massive grin spreading across your face when you watch a music video.

For me, it was Jesse McCartney with Beautiful Soul. I still belt that song out every moment I hear it on the radio.

But now, as I get older, I rarely feel that oom-pah-pah in my heart about any music. You know that feeling? The one that makes your soul feel like its flying out of your body or that grin that slowly spreads and fills your body with warm happiness.

Well, that was until I laid my ears on Vance Joy.

Look at that face! Who wouldn't be in love with this total babe?

His 2014 album Dream Your Life Away has been the soundtrack for the past year of my life. What can I say, I'm crushing. Hard.

Basically, if you haven't heard the album yet or want a taster of what it feels like to fall in love, check out this song. It's my current favourite.

Although, to be completely honest, I discover a new favourite song from the album each week. There's something about the lyricism and  the shakiness in his voice in some of the lines that just gives me shivers every single time. I feel as though he sings to your soul, they're love songs all of them, and for some reason I feel like he's singing them to me.

He's also a complete babe, if you haven't seen his music video for "Fire and the Flood", what have you been doing?  All those dreamy stares down the barrel of the camera.... ah, my love.

As far as teenage heart throbs go, you wouldn't be hard pressed to find me pining over this guy had he been around and popular 5 years ago, holy moly, I'd have pined so hard.

Vance Joy is a gift to girls everywhere, and his music is a gift to the soul. If  you've watched these videos I'm 100% sure that you'd agree with me.

As far as heart throbs go? What's been pulling on your heart strings as of late? What music has been giving you that oomph that only a realllyy good song can?


Lots of love,

Kristen