Triple J Hottest 100: Annual Aussie tradition has become a musical mystery tour

If you’re listening to Triple J’s Hottest 100 on Saturday and wondering why you’ve never heard of Ninajirachi or Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers, it might be tempting to launch into a “back in my day” rant.

What happened to the days when this beloved annual tradition was dominated by acts we all knew, such as Powderfinger, Oasis and the Hilltop Hoods?

Foo Fighters. The White Stripes. Red Hot Chili Peppers. Fatboy Slim. The Prodigy. Muse. Blink-182. MGMT. Hottest 100s of the late 1990s and early Noughties were legendary. What a time to be alive.

When did it become a countdown of obscure artists, who exist primarily on Spotify playlists and produce what sounds suspiciously like background music for TikToks?

And who the heck is sombr? Is that a musical act or a mindfulness app?

You may be more familiar with Olivia Dean, the UK neo-soul artist favoured by Sportsbet to take top spot this year, with her chart-topper, Man I Need.

Just like Billie Eilish winning in 2019 with Bad Guy, you’d have to be living under a rock to miss it.

But other top contenders this year, such as Playlunch’s bogan-funk breakthrough, Keith, may be relatively unknown to a mainstream audience.

You might assume it’s simply because you’re out of touch with the music played on the Yoof Network, and, while this is probably true, there are bigger forces at play here.

From the way our brains develop over time to the inexorable disintegration of culture and identity in the streaming age, there are reasons the Hottest 100 will sound alien to most listeners above a certain age.

So, how did we get here?

The public broadcaster launched what it has come to describe as the “world’s largest music democracy” in 1989, polling listeners via postal votes on their favourite songs of all time.

It was both crucial marketing and market research in the year the station first went national, although the limitations of the concept quickly became apparent when Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart won in 1989 AND 1990, and finished second in 1991, behind Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.

After a hiatus, the Hottest 100 returned in 1993, but now was restricted to songs released in the previous calendar year, and was, rather embarrassingly, won by US comedian Denis Leary and his novelty song, Asshole.

It beat all-time classics such as Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name and Creep by Radiohead, and is often cited as a Hottest 100 low point along with other dud winners, such as Amazing by Alex Lloyd (2001) and Macklemore’s Thrift Shop (2012).

Over the years, voter turnout increased as the voting mechanism evolved from postal to phone-in to SMS and, finally, online, peaking at more than 3.2 million votes cast in 2019, as the annual countdown became a bona fide cultural institution.

An institution that was initially synonymous with Australia Day, as the nation gathered on a public holiday, in inflatable pools at backyard BBQs, to drink their way through 100 increasingly popular tunes.

But that changed in 2017 when Triple J announced it was responding to listener feedback to move the countdown away from January 26, a divisive date for Indigenous Australians, to the fourth weekend in January, starting in 2018.

It was the biggest controversy the Hottest 100 had seen since the #Tay4Hottest100 social media campaign led to Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off being banned from contention an hour before the countdown began in 2015.

According to the station, the song received enough votes to finish 12th that year.

Even for those who don’t regularly listen to Triple J, the annual poll sees punters from all walks of life post their 10-song ballot to social media.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who never misses an opportunity to show off his music knowledge, is backing Olivia Dean in the poll.

WA Premier Roger Cook highlighted Whateverrrr by Spacey Jane and Tame Impala’s hit, Dracula, as examples of the rich talent coming out of the West.

Indeed, those two acts are at prohibitive odds to land at least four songs each in this year’s countdown, which is expected to see a dramatic uptick in Aussie representation.

At least that’s what Triple J must be hoping for, after last year’s Hottest 100 — won by US singer Chappell Roan’s Good Luck, Babe! —saw the worst showing for Aussie acts (just 29 of 100) in nearly three decades.

A far cry from the 66 Australian entries in 2016, so it’s no coincidence Triple J added a new feature to its voting platform this time around to allow users to search exclusively by local artists.

Hottest 100 success can be a game-changer for local acts, according to the Jungle Giants frontman Sam Hales, whose band has had 11 songs appear in the poll over the years, including Top 10 finishes in 2019 (Heavy Hearted) and 2020 (Sending Me Ur Loving).

“There was a direct translation to the Hottest 100 exposure, and then people (buying tickets to our shows),” Hales said.

“It helped us build and gain more fans. The Hottest 100 is an amazing thing, and not just for Australia — people around the world tune in, so I love it. I’ll be tuning in.”

But, for those tuning in as a continuation of an annual tradition that started in the aforementioned glory days of the 90s and Noughties, vast swathes of the countdown will sound decidedly foreign.

Cut yourself some slack, though, because ageing brains actually find it harder to seek out and absorb new music.

A 2015 study by neuroscientists in the UK found our brains become less able to perceive differences in unfamiliar music as we get older.

So, when you say, “Who the heck are all these artists in the Hottest 100, and why do they all sound the same”, it’s partly a product of neural temporal coding in the brainstem.

Numerous studies have also shown music taste begins to solidify in our early teens, before new music discovery peaks around 24, when what we listen to is heavily influenced by our social lives.

For most of us, getting deeper into our 30s and beyond is accompanied by a significant slowing of said social lives, with partying replaced by grown-up stressors around careers, child-rearing and mortgages.

Studies have shown that, when faced with such stressors, our brains prefer to seek out the warm embrace of nostalgia — fire up These Days by Powderfinger — rather than the discomfort of unfamiliar music, which may involve determining the difference between Skegss and the Dreggs.

Curiously, our brains treat TV shows and podcasts differently, making us more willing to seek out new narrative-driven content as opposed to music, which is more sensory-driven and reliant on repeated exposure for enjoyment.

If it makes you feel better, it’s also increasingly difficult for young people to keep their fingers on the pulse, too.

Back in 1996, when Spiderbait became the first Aussie act to top the poll with Buy Me a Pony, there was a clearly delineated path for discovering and consuming music.

You heard it on Triple J. You watched a music video on Rage. Or you bought a CD (remember those!).

Napster wasn’t even a twinkle in the eyes of Metallica’s lawyers back then, let alone Spotify, so exposure to new music was determined by gatekeepers, which ensured culture was centralised.

Genres, from grunge to hip-hop, were defined within distinct boundaries, because the high bar for entry to the music business gave record labels control of which acts had access.

These genres, in turn, shaped the identity of those listening to them, creating huge global communities.

This continued, relatively unchanged, until a few years after the arrival of Swedish streaming giant Spotify in 2012.

The democratisation of music publishing and the shift from gatekeepers to algorithms combined to gradually erode genre boundaries to the point they have now all but collapsed.

Case in point: 2021’s Hottest 100 winner, the Wiggles, a band of children’s entertainers, topping the poll with a cover of Tame Impala’s psych-rock hit, Elephant.

As genres have collapsed, so have the associated fanbases, with new micro-communities springing up in their place, flourishing in weird little niches of Spotify and social media.

With listeners increasingly discovering music via Spotify, Triple J has evolved from tastemaker to a reflection of streaming habits.

An example of this in action is Keli Holiday’s hit, Dancing2, which sparked a TikTok trend last year and is currently second favourite to win the poll according to Sportsbet.

This is despite Keli Holiday not featuring in the station’s Top 50 artists played last year.

The segmentation of both the music industry and music consumption will make this more common, so don’t blame yourself if the name “Keli Holiday” only rings a bell because of the controversy in November surrounding the singer and Blue Wiggle Anthony Field dancing to the former’s song, Ecstacy.

Ultimately, the Hottest 100 is a popularity contest, but even winning it is no guarantee of future success.

It was a bright moment in the sun for Augie March’s One Crowded Hour in 2006 and Vance Joy’s Riptide in 2013, but neither act has done much of note since.

And Chet Faker winning in 2014 with Talk is Cheap, a year he dominated the poll with three entries in the Top 10, was followed by years in the wilderness and a decision to dump the stage name “Chet Faker”, only to reinstitute the moniker in 2020.

Combine that with Leary’s colourful Hottest 100 winner and it’s apparent a percentage of songs each year are destined to be disposable, or, more charitably, a product of their time.

It’s just the percentage those songs represent in the overall poll is inevitably becoming larger as music gets more disparate and culture becomes more transient.

Heaven help us when Gen Alpha is driving Hottest 100 voting, and endless iterations of Skibidi Toilet brainrot “songs” dominate.