Five things learnt from Double J's 1998 Hottest 100 redux

Youth broadcaster triple j and their grown-up sister station Double J have had a bit of fun lately, stretching the Hottest 100 party out for a full week and a half. In the wake of the official countdown, triple j has played the songs that came 101-200, and replayed the full countdown from 100 to 1. Meanwhile Double J replayed the Hottest 100 from 1998, and then announced they were going to have a re-vote on it.

It wasn't going to change the official 1998 result, but it would be an opportunity for the masses to overturn one of the more controversial results of Hottest 100 history - finally, we could right the wrong that saw The Offspring's Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) top the poll! The do-over results were both incredibly surprising, but also very unsurprising.

It appears unlikely that Double J will release the whole list, but here's what we know (original 1998 positions in brackets):

1. The Offspring – Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) (#1)
2. Regurgitator – ! (Song Formerly Known As.) (#6)
3. Rob Zombie – Dragula (#75)
4. TISM – Whatareya (#36)
5. Garbage – I Think I'm Paranoid (#57)
6. Metallica – Unforgiven II (#67)
7. Beastie Boys – Intergalactic (#25)
8. Josh Abrahams & Amiel Daemion – Addicted To Bass (#16)
9. Rage Against The Machine – No Shelter (#66)
10. Marilyn Manson – The Dope Show (#44)

And from Twitter we have learnt the following:

12. Massive Attack - Teardrop (#23)
20. Hole - Celebrity Skin (#4)
29. Radiohead - No Surprises (#55)

So let's break it all down, and see what it means (because I'm somewhat obsessed with the Hottest 100).

Pretty Fly? Again?

Despite The Offspring even tweeting that they shouldn't have won in 1998 (and urging people to vote for The Living End's Save The Day in the redux), in hindsight it was probably inevitable that Pretty Fly would win again.  This is because three key voting groups were always going to vote for it again - 1) the genuine fans of the song, 2) the trolls, and 3) the weird people who didn't seem to get the idea that this was all a bit of a lark and not officially rewriting history (seriously, there was a surprising number of comments on Double J's Facebook page along the lines of "how dare you rewrite history?"). The bad news is that with the masses confirming the 1998 result, it's probably unlikely Double J will bother doing this again, as fun as it was. With more than 65,000 votes and The Offspring apparently "clear victors (winning) by a truckload of cargo shorts", it seems the people have spoken. Again. And said the same thing.

Couldn't we have at least picked this far superior Offspring song, which came in at #62?

Metal forever!

There's more metal in this re-voted top 10 than most Hottest 100s in recent years. Seeing Marilyn Manson's Dope Show at #10 was a genuine surprise, but Rob Zombie's Dragula up #72 spots had me picking my jaw up off the ground. Throw in Metallica and Rage Against The Machine, and it seems the voters are sending a clear message - Double J needs more metal. And preferably retro metal (probably). What's Andrew Haug doing these days?

At least we've still got a sense of humour

I'm fairly certain Pretty Fly being re-instated at #1 shows the voters have a sense of humour. But if you really needed confirmation, TISM landing at #4 with Whatareya? nails it. Given the huge amount of songs with a touch of the comedic in the 1998 Hottest 100, especially compared with, say, the oh-so-serious 2018 countdown, it was always likely some jokier numbers would be among the reduxed 1998 top 10. Add in Regurgitator, who always loved a gag (pun intended), and it's good to see those of us who were voting again still think humour belongs in music.

Aussie, Aussie... wait, what?

The re-voted top 10 saw the number of Aussie entries drop from seven to three. What's really fascinating about this fact is that some of our biggest '90s legacy bands (Powderfinger, Jebediah, You Am I, The Living End) were tipped out to make way for underdogs such as TISM, Regurgitator, and Josh Abrahams & Amiel Daemion. TISM and Regurgitator certainly have their fans, are iconic Aussie bands, and their top 10 entries come from landmark albums, but this somehow feels like a win for the little guys.

No Surprises? Nah, lots of surprises

Pretty much everything about the new-look top 10 was a surprise (which is great). It's hard to say what was the bigger surprise. Beastie Boys, Regurgitator and The Offspring make sense to me in some way, but it was genuinely surprising that people had such undying love for Rob Zombie's Dragula, Metallica's Unforgiven II, and Marilyn Manson's Dope Show after all these years. Especially those latter two songs, which came at points in their respective careers when these bands supposedly jumped the shark (Metallica cut their hair and Manson went glam). The whole thing was an exercise in nostalgia, so these songs obviously speak to the teenagers hidden inside the 30/40/50-somethings who have migrated from triple j to Double J. And that's what made this whole thing so great.