CUT TO THE CHASE - HERE'S THE LIST!
I'm a big fan of triple j's Hottest 100. I've listened to it and voted in it pretty much every year since 1994. In recent times I've written articles predicting who was going to win (with pretty solid accuracy, if I may say so myself) and dissecting the results with admittedly disturbing enthusiasm. My wife and I hold a day-long party to coincide with the countdown each year, and I'm the one that organises the sweep.
Why the obsession? Well, for me (and thousands of others), each and every Hottest 100 is a time capsule. I can remember where I was when Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out surprised exactly no one to win in 2004, or the stunned looked on people's faces when Muse pipped Silverchair in 2007, or when Augie March seemingly came out of nowhere to win in 2006. I recall sitting in 40-degree heat in a Brunswick backyard when QOTSA's No One Knows took out #1, the tenterhooks of the final placings of 2013, and being appalled when The Offspring won in 1998.
But beyond the personal, the countdown represents exactly where triple j and their listeners were at every year. This in itself summarises a pretty big slice of young Australia and the alternative wave that runs through youth culture, as well as the musical tastes of a nation as perceived through the ears of those most plugged into new music.
But the people who vote for it aren't perfect (and neither is triple j, bless its cotton socks). Which brings us to the songs that missed out.
Back in February of 2018, about a month after the most recent edition of the Hottest 100, I found myself pondering the songs that had missed the list over the years. I knew Everlong missed out back in the day, and that The Flaming Lips had never made the countdown outside of a Chemical Brothers cameo. So what other amazing songs and bands hadn't polled in the world's biggest musical democracy?
As I pondered this question and began my own preliminary list-making, I realised this was a job too big for one Hottest 100 superfan. Out of the blue, and trying not to sound like a total fucking nutjob, I emailed the two other biggest aficionados of the countdown that I could think of.
The first was Tyler Jenke who runs this super-impressive database of all things Hottest 100. His site is my bible when I compile my prediction/dissection articles every January. The second was Patrick Avenell. He's the guy triple j calls when they want someone to go on air to talk about who polled where in what year. His brain is a thing of wonder.
I had never met either of these guys (and still haven't) and they most likely had no idea who I was. But they were immediately on board. As mentioned in this interview on ABC Darwin, we began creating a list of every song we could think of that was potentially worthy of our attempt to rewrite history.
(And yes, I got a few exact details wrong in that interview, such as when Knights Of Cydonia won. That's why triple j calls Patrick Avenell and not me.)
The "omissions masterlist" is close to 400 songs. From there, we voted on what we thought should make the cut - the songs with a vote from each of us were put into a final 101. Then we drew up our own Hottest 100s from those 101 songs, and mathematically squeezed them into a final order. Voila.
I'm very proud of this list. The blurbs we each wrote are illuminating I think, and the list itself is a pretty killer playlist that flows like a regular Hottest 100.
I'm yet to hear from Richard Kingsmill about it (and for the record, as an ABC employee, I did offer this article to Double J and triple j but they politely passed, which is totally understandable and also the reason as to why it ended up on Tone Deaf) but I hope he and his crew take this list with the love it was created with. It's meant to be a quirky celebration, a loving retcon, a nostalgic re-writing of history, and the missing piece that completes this wonderful institution.
Anyway, enough waffle. Here's the list of the Hottest 100 (plus a bonus 100) songs that missed the Hottest 100.
And here's the Spotify playlist.
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