RÜFÜS DU SOL and What So Not give us two perspectives on the beloved electronic epic.

One of the heartening redemption stories of the Hottest 100 of the Decade is RÜFÜS DU SOL’s ‘Innerbloom’ climbing all the way to #5, half-a-decade on from limping in at #103 in the 2015 countdown.

Despite being overlooked at the time, it's steadily grown a huge following. It’s a fitting narrative for the slow-burning electronic epic, which closed the band’s second album Bloom, and the poetry isn’t lost on RÜFÜS DU SOL.

“The song itself has become a slow burn over time, that it’s now made its way into the Hottest 100 rather than making it in at the time,” Jon George – one third of the Aussie trio – told triple j’s Sally & Erica.

What makes ‘Innerbloom’ so beloved is how it takes listeners on an expressive journey every time they strap in for its 9-minute ride. Its length makes it unconventional - but it’s also part of what’s made the track a stand-out sleeper hit.

“We had a lot of chats with the label [and] radio people about how putting out a 9-minute song isn’t the usual done thing,” Jon remembered. “But we stuck to our guns and we were very sure we didn’t want to change the arrangement. It needed to be a slow burn.”

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Going against the radio-friendly dance-pop grain, it’s the most ambitious example of RÜFÜS DU SOL’s ability to meld the deep groove and mantric power of techno and dance music with the emotive core of a love song. Euphoric synths and sound design guiding the ear towards the tender climax, where vocalist Tyrone Lindqvist sings ‘If you want me/if you need me/ I’m yours’.

It was an experience that was capable of deeply moving audiences from the very start.

“I remember the first time we played it live, before it had been released, and seeing people cry as we were finishing playing the song.”

It was very special, to know that it had that sort of impact and its continued to have that impact, up until this day. We played it a couple nights ago, seeing people cry again as we finished that song. It’s a special song, it’s something very, very close to our hearts now.”

Hear RÜFÜS DU SOL unpack 'Innerbloom' in this 2019 episode of triple j's Inspired podcast.

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How What So Not made his ‘Innerbloom’ remix

‘Innerbloom’ may be a special song for RUFUS DU SOL - and from the Hottest 100 of the Decade, it’s clear it’s special to you too. What So Not’s remix also made the countdown at #64, marking the first time a song and its remix have both appeared in the same Hottest 100 countdown.

Criminally, the What So Not version came in #30 in the Hottest 100 of 2016 while the original did not.

What So Not, aka Sydney producer Chris ‘Emoh’ Emerson, says he was spellbound by the RÜFÜS track the instant he heard it via HypeMachine.

“I remember hearing the chords at the start – the foley, little crushes, and white noise – and thinking ‘oh wow, this record is magic.’”

He was instantly inspired to begin working on what would become his iconic ‘Innerbloom’ remix.

“I ripped it from Soundcloud, threw it into Ableton, and just started building around it,” he told triple j. “I just got to work on it immediately.”

He built the whole thing in about “an hour and a half”.Most remarkably, he did it without even having access to the stems.

“I’ve known the [RÜFÜS] guys for years, we used to hang out in Sydney here and do a lot of shows together… I hit them up ‘hey, can I grab the stems’ and I didn’t even use them. I used one part of the vocal stem. The whole original is [in there] almost untouched, I just built on top. Then the drop is where it’s all my own production, then it cuts back into the post-chorus with their vocals.”

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After that initial burst of inspiration, the remix sat in waiting on Emoh’s laptop until New Year’s Eve 2015, where What So Not performed at Californian festival, Countdown. During the long car trip to perform at the event, the producer’s managers heard the ‘Innerbloom’ magic he’d been working on and encouraged him to polish it up and throw it into his set.

He did, somebody filmed it, “put it on YouTube and in the morning it had 30,000 views or something crazy like that.”

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“I didn’t announce it, say anything about it. Played it again the next night, it went off again. ‘Oh damn, this thing is going pretty hard’,” Emoh recalled. “I either reached out to [RÜFÜS], or they even saw it had gone up and the rest is history, I guess.”

Hear how it all went down below.

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The meme push

As well as being an instantly adored Australian electro classic, ‘Innerbloom’ – like many blockbuster songs of the 2010s – also benefited from the attention generated through memes.

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Almost as soon as voting for the Hottest 100 of the Decade opened, the song was being championed by shitposters in Facebook groups.

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“We had a good chuckle,” Jon from RÜFÜS said, adding that the band can’t get enough of the online attention. “Let’s make some more memes. Not enough ‘Innerbloom’ memes out there.”

But perhaps strangest of all, is how the breakdown of ‘Innerbloom’ has affected man’s best friend. Here’s how Jon explained the phenomenon of dogs howling along to the track, and Dr. Karl’s scientific response. Listen below.

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