A wild #1 for another wild year.
Your Hottest song of 2021 comes from an iconic Australian band celebrating 30 years, covering a 2012 track for a beloved radio segment that’s been running for 17 years. That’s a whole lotta history packed into a single song.
For many, 2021 often felt like a bad rerun of 2020. The promise of a new year free of the burdens of the last, quickly dashed by the frustrating reality it would be more of the same. But in March, The Wiggles – Australian icons, The Beatles of children’s music – offered us some much-needed relief from our anxiety-inducing horrorscape with a very special Like A Version debut.
Featuring an enhanced line-up - namely current members Anthony Field, Lachy Gillespie and Simon Pryce, alongside the recently retired Emma Watkins, and Field’s OG Wiggles co-founders Jeff Fatt and Murray Cook – the supergroup recorded a cover of ‘Elephant’, the psych-rock stomper from Tame Impala’s 2012 album Lonerism, mixing in The Wiggles classic ‘Fruit Salad’.
Yummy yummy, indeed!
Loading...The result was so big that it’s stampeded its way to the top of the Hottest 100 of 2021, eventually triumphing over strong challengers like pop blockbusters The Kid LAROI, Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, and Lil Nas X, and even beloved triple j heroes like Gang of Youths, Spacey Jane, and RÜFÜS DU SOL.
The bizarre but beautiful novelty of hearing the world’s biggest kids’ act putting a family-friendly stamp on a stoner rock anthem had both an immediate and long-lasting impact.
Reactions flooded triple j’s textline and social media, coverage reached international music press, and memes, glorious memes redlined on Twitter and Sultanaposting (a Facebook group dedicated to triple j-tailored visual gags).
Many riffed on the musicianship and mild anarchy of the performance. Emma slaying the kit, Murray shredding, Simon’s bottom-end vocals, Anthony rocking an actual elephant outfit – it was its own kind of singular psychedelia.
It swiftly became a huge streaming hit, boasting more than 1.3 million plays on Spotify and over 3 million views on YouTube, making it the Biggest Like A Version of the year. No contest.
The Wiggles brand power. Tame Impala stans. The mammoth Like A Version factor - it proved a triumvirate too powerful for anyone at the pointy end of the Hottest 100 to overcome.
"We're very honoured to be a part of it," Anthony ‘Blue Wiggle’ Field told triple j on air after topping the countdown. "I think this is one of the biggest things to happen to us."
The ‘Elephant’ LAV led predictions to top the Hottest 100 for several weeks leading up to the annual countdown, with betting agencies and online commentators projecting The Wiggles to come in at #1.
“It’s bizarre, it’s just been this amazingly popular thing,” Lachlan ‘Purple Wiggle’ Gillespie told The Sydney Morning Herald in anticipation for Saturday’s (22 January) countdown. “In the end, it’s been a special experience for all of us.”
“It’s an absolute spin-out,” added Field, reacting to the prospect last week. “It’s not something we ever thought would happen. But we really did do the song out of love.”
Making Hottest 100 history
It may not come as a massive surprise that The Wiggles’ LAV has topped this year’s Hottest 100 but it is still hugely significant, making Hottest 100 history on a number of levels.
It’s the first cover to ever top the annual countdown and a rare instance where it has outranked the original (Tame Impala’s ‘Elephant’ came in at #7 in the Hottest 100 of 2012).
The Wiggles are also the first artist in 28 years to make their debut at the #1 spot – a feat that hasn’t happened since Denis Leary’s ‘Asshole’ surprise win way back in 1993, when the Hottest 100 pivoted from an ‘all-time’ format to a yearly countdown.
In fact, looking back over nearly three decades of Hottest 100 #1 songs, The Wiggles’ victory is closer in spirit to the ‘WTF!’ wins: the polarising ‘Thrift Shop’ in 2012 (from pop-rappers Macklemore & Ryan Lewis) and ‘Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)’ in 1998 (by The Offspring).
A look back at Hottest 100 novelty songs (and what they say about meme culture)The win would have an additional surreal sweetness for Wiggles Field and Fatt, who never enjoyed any Hottest 100 glory as part of The Cockroaches - the 1980s and early ‘90s pub rock band that was the precursor to forming the now world-famous children's act.
Perhaps most interesting of all is that The Wiggles now boast the highest-charting Like A Version in Hottest 100 history, snatching the record from Denzel Curry’s equally internet-breaking version of Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Bulls On Parade’, which reached #5 in 2019.
It’s become less of a surprise to see Like A Versions perform well in the Hottest 100. In recent years, they’ve become events and real signifiers for the year, and those that do big numbers online inevitably make their way into becoming Hottest 100 contenders. It’s become a less a matter of if they’ll make the countdown and more of where they’ll rank.
It marks a watershed moment in the cultural importance of triple j’s weekly covers segment.
The Like A Version legacy
From its humble beginnings in 2004 as a recurring segment from then-Mornings host Mel Bampton, Like A Version has grown from some fun Friday content to one of Australian music’s biggest platforms.
While it’s common these days, back then, it was rare to see voters making room for Like A Version in their Hottest 100 ballots.
Listmas: The 10 Biggest Like A Versions of 2021The first ever LAV to make a countdown was Regina Spektor’s version of John Lennon’s ‘Real Love’ reaching #29 in 2007. And though it would be four years until one would chart again, there’s been a Like A Version in the Hottest 100 every year since 2011.
2013 marked a turning point, with three Like A Versions making the countdown for the first time: Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ appeared twice, courtesy of the Pharrell-assisted original at #3 and San Cisco’s bongos-enhanced Like A Version at #39. Something For Kate rewired Calvin Harris and Florence Welch’s ‘Sweet Nothing’ to the rank of #68, and just ahead, Illy hit #66 with his Ausmusic Month Medley, mixing iconic cuts from Silverchair, Hilltop Hoods, Paul Kelly, Powderfinger and Flume.
2016 was an even bigger year for LAVs, with four in the Hottest 100, including DMA’S gorgeously stripped-back take on Cher’s ‘Believe’ at #6. It’s not only the Sydney trio’s highest Hottest 100 entry yet but it was also the highest-charting LAV… until Denzel Curry one-upped them by hitting #5 in 2019 with his roaring ‘Bulls On Parade’.
The Wiggles’ family-friendly rework of ‘Elephant’ may be the first time a Tame Impala cover has wound up in the Hottest 100 but Kevin Parker’s singular psychedelia has proven a consistently popular choice when it comes to Like A Version.
They’ve been covered eight times (ten if you include short samplings in performances from Sycco and Elk Road), and Parker is “extremely blessed” that so many artists – ranging from Arctic Monkeys and Meg Mac to close collaborator Mark Ronson – have used the LAV platform to interpret Tame Impala.
“I’m so humbled every time someone decides to cover my music… it’s just an amazing feeling,” the frontman told triple j in December 2020 (when Tame Impala took on Edwyn Collins’ ‘A Girl Like You’ - itself a Hottest 100 entry at #66 in this year’s countdown).
“Sometimes it’s difficult to listen to at first because I get self-conscious about my lyrics or anything like chords,” he laughed. “In the back of my head, I’m like ‘uh oh, they’re working out how simple it is’.”
However rudimentary it feels to its creator, ‘Elephant’ wasn’t so simple for the group behind hits like ‘Hot Potato’, ‘Wake Up Jeff!’ and ‘Toot Toot, Chugga Chugga, Big Red Car’.
Learning how to tame ‘Elephant’
“It’s an amazing song, and it’s deceptively hard… the guy’s a genius!” Anthony ‘Blue Wiggle’ Field told triple j while recording their Like A Version back in March.
“When we got into it, we didn’t realise how complex it would be,” added Emma ‘former Yellow Wiggle’ Watkins. During rehearsals, the group had underestimated the chugging tune’s tricky phrasing and shifting time signatures.
Emma even penned herself a ‘cheat sheet’ to stay on top of the drum part. “If you look closely, I’ve got a whole sheet of notes on the top drum because I needed to.”
“We’ve had a great time learning it because it is so different to what we normally play… We’ve seen Tame Impala a lot at the ARIAs. We’re not really ever had a meeting per se but we’re very much inspired by the band.”
The blinding success of ‘Elephant’ has prompted an upcoming double album of covers, titled ReWiggled. The project features the group taking on classics (think ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, Rolling Stones and Rihanna), and a host of Aussie bands reinterpreting Wiggles classics, including The Chats, Stealla Donnelly, San Cisco, Spacey Jane, DZ Deathrays and Polish Club (the latter two both also joining the OG Wiggles on tour next year).
The Wiggles knew they were keen on selecting an Australian song for their much-hyped Like A Version debut, and had reportedly been presented with a list of potential covers by ABC Music manager Nick Webb. Despite Tame Impala’s sizeable reputation, not every member was intimately familiar with their repertoire prior to the cover.
In particular, Lachy ‘Purple Wiggle’ Gillespie became a Kevin Parker convert after going through the challenge of learning and fronting the song, telling The Sydney Morning Herald: “Since then, I’ve listened to a lot of [Tame Impala’s] music, and there are some great songs.”
triple j listeners would thoroughly agree...
Tame Impala’s towering legacy
Starting from their 2008 debut, no less than 16 Tame Impala songs have been voted into the Hottest 100 over the years, including five in Top 10 positions.
That doesn’t include the four entries in triple j’s recent Hottest 100 of the Decade countdown, where ‘The Less I Know The Better’ was crowned the #1 song of the 2010s.
Why Tame Impala's 'The Less I Know The Better' won Hottest 100 of the Decade‘Elephant’ came in at #7 in the 2012 countdown (and ahead of ‘Feels Like We Only Go Backwards’ at #9), and at the time, was considered the connecting tissue between the acclaimed acid-soaked garage rock of Tame Impala’s 2010 debut InnerSpeaker and the more deeply trippy, melodic and melancholy Lonerism.
The track was also a bit of an anomaly on the album both in its burly riffage and lyrical perspective.
“The character I’m singing about, from the loner’s perspective… it’s how I always envisioned big, egotistical people who would march around,” Parker reflected in a 2019 interview with Beats 1. “It’s kind of how a loner might see a jock – like an elephant.”
It began life as just a fun riff to jam on, dating all the way back to the band’s earliest live shows as a trio gigging around Fremantle.
“It only turned into a somewhat conventional song making [Lonerism],” Parker noted when ‘Elephant’ was nominated (and won) Song of the Year at the 2013 APRA Music Awards.
Bandmate Jay Watson has a co-writing credit, for contributing “a few chords” and a descending transition that “accidentally ripped off” Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’.
It’s no wonder the track’s groovy, glammy riff took his mind to the prog-rock titans,: the fuzzed-out guitar has a timeless quality that recalls a whole history of chugging riffs (and curiously, tracks by Black Sabbath, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and Black Mountain).
That same swampy guitar lineage has continued through a whole wave of Aussie bands practising woolly psychedelic rock: King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, sister band Pond, ORB, The Lazy Eyes, murmurmur – just to name a few.
It proves that, for many, ‘Elephant’ was the gateway into Tame Impala and, more broadly, psych-rock past and present. Its accessible crunch had commercial appeal too, and the track wound up soundtracking commercials and scoring popular TV shows of the era (such as Girls, Entourage, The Vampire Diaries).
Despite being arguably the best ever grizzly stomper written to savage arrogant jocks, Parker didn’t think ‘Elephant’ was anything special, and much less a signature hit. He was almost embarrassed by its success.
“It’s a little bittersweet because, like, that song paid for half my house,” he lamented to Grantland in 2015, around the release of third album Currents, a fashionably un-rock album that embraced elements of pop, soul, funk, RnB, and actively regressed from the mantle of psych-rock saviour bestowed upon him.
“I always thought it was a bit shallow, a bit cringe,” he told Beats 1 in 2019. “But now I appreciate ‘Elephant’…”
Over the years, the song has become a long-standing fan favourite and a reliable mid-set climax in the group’s festival-topping live show. They continue to have fun with ‘Elephant’ on-stage, using it to springboard into spacey jams and dub-reggae jams to subbing in a new digital-disco breakdown to disguise the Pink Floyd similarity.
It’s that flexibility that’s allowed the song to evolve, and also why The Wiggles could so easily slip in ‘Fruit Salad’ and make it more like their own Wiggly output.
"I was told it was going to happen on the Friday for Like A Version and I remember thinking ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’," Parker tells triple j post-countdown. "It just seemed too out there..."
"I was still in disbelief when I was watching it. It took a while to sink in."
"Did they do it justice? Absolutely. I think they made it their own, which I guess just showcases the genius of The Wiggles. They really gave it a new personality.”
It's even changed the way he sees 'Elephant'. “I think I respect it more. It makes me realise a song can have different appeals. Like I never would have thought of the song as something that can appeal to kids or have a younger appeal.”
In the process, The Wiggles have likely introduced Tame Impala to whole new of audience of listeners, young or old, that have yet to be exposed to one of Australia’s most influential and universally revered musicians.
It’s that cross-generational quality that’s helped the song stand out in 2021, as triple j Breakfast co-host Bryce Mills points out.
“Watching people who defined your childhood stand in front of you and play a song from an artist that’s helped define your early adulthood is a really weird, but really joyous feeling,” he says. “A lot of people around the world felt the same way, and it resulted in a cover that not only triple j listeners loved, but their parents and younger [relatives] too. Not many covers can win over three generations at once.”
Toot Toot! Bryce and Ebony finally got through to The WigglesThe untamed #1 we all needed for a wild 2021
In 2021, virality is tantamount to popularity. And the strength of a song isn’t just about its quality but its potential to cut through our fragmented feeds to – if only for a moment – dominate the discourse.
For that Friday morning in March, The Wiggles doing ‘Elephant’ for Like A Version was the moment. The takes and reactions came in hot and hard, and continued to resonate precisely because it was a monocultural moment – a unifying signifier that set it apart from every song that came before and after.
It offered us a joyful distraction from the bleak reality bleeding into our online lives, an escape from the malaise.
A look at the pointy end of this year’s Hottest 100 shows it was a trend. We weren’t looking to songs that made serious commentary about our COVID-stricken times. We were looking for hook-laden expressions of timeless themes and emotions; frustrating relationships (‘Stay’, ‘Lots Of Nothing’) fiery break-ups (‘good 4 u’, ‘Happier Than Ever’), feel-good revelry (‘the angel of 8th ave’, ‘kiss me more’). But nothing this year came closer to not being about our pandemic lives than the nostalgic double shot of this Wiggles x Tame Impala crossover.
Whether conscious or not, ‘Elephant’ reminded us of simpler times. Memories of vibing out to Tame with a vast sea of humans (I think they were called… music festivals!?) or even further back, to our childhoods and our first ever shows with musical heroes - Dorothy The Dinosaur, Captain Feathersword, and a buncha finger-wagglers in matching skivvies.