Triple j's Hottest 100 of Australian songs is a rare and special countdown

The triple j Hottest 100 has been appointment listening for music lovers for decades.
The concept is simple: Australian music lovers vote for their favourite songs of the past year and triple j counts down the most popular 100 across a day of wild and wonderful radio.
On the most special occasions, triple j pulls out the concept for a themed edition of the countdown, and occasions don't get much more special than your 50th birthday.
As part of triple j's milestone celebrations this year, it's inviting us to vote for the 100 best Australian songs, a prospect that is filling us with equal amounts of joy and fear as we consider how we're going to choose our votes.
It's not the first time we've experienced a special edition of the Hottest 100. Let's reflect on the rare occasions the countdown has broken tradition and gone out with a non-annual countdown.
The Hottest 100 began as an "all time" countdown in 1989 and remained that way for three years. Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart took out the top spot in the first two years, only to be pipped by Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit in 1991, which was released just a couple of months earlier.
The "all time" format reverted to an annual countdown in 1993 (there was no Hottest 100 in 92) and has been brought back twice since.
In August 1998, triple j put out the call for the best songs of all time again, and the results were … well, a lot of them were pretty similar to what we saw seven years prior.
Just like the last one, Nirvana took the top slot, while Hunters & Collectors nabbed second spot (where they'd sat in both 1989 and 1990) with their anthem Throw Your Arms Around Me. Just like in 91, The Cure were the most-voted-for artist, with five songs in the countdown (down from nine in 1991).
So far, so much the same. But it wouldn't stay that way for long.
Surprise Entry: Pauline Pantsdown — Backdoor Man (#92)
Shoulda Been Higher: David Bowie — Heroes (#100)
To mark the Hottest 100's 20th anniversary, this edition mirrored the original's "all time" format … to controversial results.
Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit was voted number one for a third time (after topping the polls in 1991 and 1998), demonstrative of an outcome that was great for white men with guitars. But not so much anything else.
Voters leaned into rock music, with very little electronic in the mix, and no rap or hip hop besides The Nosebleed Section by Hilltop Hoods at number 17, the highest charting of 13 Australian acts.
Worse still, there was next to no women: zero solo female artists, and just seven acts featuring a female instrumentalist or guest singer. Yikes.
While half of the list was made up of songs that had never appeared in a Hottest 100 before (and in some cases, never would again), it reads more like a Rolling Stone albums list, reinforcing a vintage-rock canon: The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones.
Curiously, the youth were to blame! From the half a million votes, the 19-21 age group was the largest voting demographic. "Seeing their favourites, you'd think it was a much older demographic," then-music director Richard Kingsmill told The Australian at the time.
Surprise Entry: The Shins– New Slang (#72)
Shoulda Been Higher: Midnight Oil — Beds Are Burning (#97)
The only ever "albums" Hottest 100 was, in typical triple j fashion, a big old celebration of Australian music.
Powderfinger nabbed the top spot with their 2000 album Odyssey Number Five, retaining the hold the Brisbane band had over the Hottest 100 for many years. They were the only band to have two albums in the list's top 10, with their 1998 record Internationalist (which is a better album) appearing in sixth spot.
The list will make you marvel at the depth and quality of Australian music and, while there's a bit of recency bias (forgive me for claiming that not all of the 11 albums released in 2010 deserved a spot), the list is an enticing feast of Australian music that makes us wonder why we listen to anything else.
Unlike usual Hottest 100s, this one was broadcast over the span of two weeks to ensure listeners got a good sense of the depth of the records.
Surprise Entry: Gypsy & The Cat — Gilgamesh (#91)
Shoulda Been Higher: The Go-Betweens — 16 Lovers Lane (#84)
The first non-annual countdown to have a time stipulation saw audiences vote for songs released between January 1, 1993, and December 31, 2012.
You know what that means? No Teen Spirit, no Joy Division, no Hunters & Collectors, hell The Cure — who'd dominated early all time lists — didn't get a look-in …
It's interesting to see how the mood around certain songs and movements had changed over the years. Oasis topped the countdown with Wonderwall, but that song only managed to hit 12th spot in the 2009 count.
You can see the trajectory of The Killers's Mr. Brightside through these lists: It was number 13 in its year of release, 38th in 2009's all time countdown, and it landed in seventh here. Would it go higher today?
It wasn't the best showing for Australian songs, which made up a relatively modest 29 per cent of the countdown. Hilltop Hoods's The Nosebleed Section ranked best at number four, while of course Powderfinger scored two top 10 entries.
Surprise Entry: Not many surprises here! The Kooks's Naive (#87) didn't make the countdown upon its release in 2006, so we'll say that. But it has since become an anthem …
Shoulda Been Higher: Coolio — Gangsta's Paradise (ft. L.V.) (#85)
Not so fun fact: This countdown was broadcast on March 14, 2020, right before COVID-19 forced most of Australia into lockdown.
Pre-pandemic, it seemed the hardest thing voters had to contend with was choosing only 10 songs from across 10 years, rather than just 12 months. 2012 proved to be the "Hottest year", making up 20 entries in the poll, while 67 per cent of the list came out in 2014 or earlier.
Half the fun was comparing how tunes had gained favour — with 12 songs jumping up in rankings from previous Hottest 100 appearances — or fallen out of it, with 78 dropping down. That included all previous Hottest 100 number ones making way for a new victor: Tame Impala.
Kevin Parker's actually-it's-just-one-guy project had always performed well in the Hottest 100, including with four top 10 rankings from 11 entries, but The Less I Know The Better marked Tame Impala's first time at number one. (He'd return to the top slot in 2022, courtesy of a cover by The Wiggles.)
Beating out international heavy-hitters like Arctic Monkeys, Kanye West, Lorde and local favourites Gotye, Flume and Angus & Julia Stone, Parker called the win the "most important thing to happen" to Tame Impala. For the rest of us, this special edition offered a compelling portrait of young Australia's shifting music tastes over a rapidly changing decade.
Surprise Entry: Adrian Lux– Teenage Crime (#59)
Shoulda Been Higher: Azealia Banks — 212 ft. Lazy Jay (#68)
The latest non-annual Hottest 100 was a celebration of triple j's other big brand.
Swelling from its origins as a humble, mostly acoustic mornings segment in 2004 to a blockbuster, internationally renowned platform, Like A Version got the Hottest 100 treatment. And Aussie artists dominated.
Eighty-one songs in the countdown came from homegrown artists, the most of any Hottest 100 countdown. The likes of Lime Cordiale taking on Divinyls' biggest hit, A.B. Original rewiring a Paul Kelly classic, and King Stingray giving Coldplay a Yolŋu manikay makeover all reaching the pointy end.
The people's top choice? Sydney trio DMA'S, who had just two acoustic guitars, a tender vocal performance, some chewing gum, and a dream. But their stripped-back take on Cher's 'Believe' was the clear frontrunner of the 840 eligible Like A Versions.
Besides demonstrating how wildly the ingredients can vary to produce a successful cover, the LAV list shows how fun a themed Hottest 100 can be outside the tried-and-true recipe of voting on the year's hottest songs.
Surprise Entry: grentperez — Teacher's Pet (#91)
Shoulda Been Higher: Julia Jacklin — Someday (#79)
The Hottest 100 of Australian Songs happens on triple j, Double J, triple j Unearthed and triple j Hottest on Saturday, July 26. Get all the info here.

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