When the Triple J Hottest 100 is announced on Saturday it will make history no matter who wins: it’s the last Hottest 100 of the Richard Kingsmill era.
The influential broadcaster – who, fairly or otherwise, had a rep for making and breaking young artists’ careers with an iron thumb – left the station in a rumoured redundancy in December, after 35 years at the ABC’s youth station. He joined in 1988, the same year the countdown was born.
While “the King” hadn’t been music director since 2017, he had been overseeing music radio across the ABC, and still hosted Triple J’s new music show on Sunday evenings. And despite ongoing industry grumbles about a man in his 50s running a youth station, the outpouring of tributes showed the enormous love and respect Kingsmill commanded inside the organisation and in the wider music community.
The station still has an existential crisis to solve: it was brought into being to serve a demographic that seems to be abandoning it, at least in terms of actual listenership; and grew a loyal audience by championing “alternative music”, a phrase that doesn’t mean much amid the splintered genres of the 2020s.
But Triple J still reaches more than 2 million listeners each week – it’s actually holding on with its “aged out” millennials and Gen Xers – and as a national broadcaster is one of the last bastions championing Australian music, among commercial stations that eschew it. For the past decade reliably half to two-thirds of the ranked songs in the Hottest 100 have been by Australian artists (it had been 40% to 50% in the previous decade), in stark contrast to the Aria charts, which last year featured three times more songs by Taylor Swift than by any local artists – and no Australian songs that were actually released that year (Vance Joy’s 11-year-old hit Riptide remains an unkillable presence).
So who has fought their way to the top of the greasy poll this year?
Troye Sivan to win?
Of the locals, the data-driven prediction site 100 Warm Tunas – often right, sometimes wrong – is tipping the Melbourne-based star Troye Sivan to take out the top spot, as well as having two more tracks in the countdown; and the Melbourne-via-Darwin producer Dom Dolla is tipped to snag three spots, including one in the top 10. The only other Aussies in the top 10 tips are the Bundjalung artist Budjerah with the swooning, sweeping Therapy, and Kylie Minogue for her global hit Padam Padam – though G Flip, Genesis Owusu and Angie McMahon remain outside chances.
The predicted remaining spots at the top are filled out by the US supergroup Boygenius with Not Strong Enough, the New Zealand act Benee with Green, Doja Cat’s Dionne Warwick-sampling Paint the Town Red, Billie Eilish’s melancholy Barbie soundtrack contribution What Was I Made For, and two collaborative singles from the all-conquering British producer Fred Again … : Rumble (with Skrillex and Flowdan) and Adore You (with Obongjayar, who would be the first Nigerian act to feature in the countdown at all, let alone in the top 10). Fred Again …was the station’s most-played artist last year, followed by PinkPantheress and Skrillex.
Across the full poll, there are at least two likely appearances each for the Australian acts G Flip, the Rions, Royel Otis, Owusu, Lime Cordiale and Middle Kids. Speaking of kids: half a dozen predicted slots are now occupied by a gang of youth-themed local bands: Teenage Dads (three slots), Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers (two), and Teenage Joans (one). (Gang of Youths themselves took 2023 off.)
Pop matters
The #Tay4Hottest100 controversy of 2015 seems quaint now, with the barriers between the charts and the J-list more porous than ever – but the reigning queen of stadiums, sequins and still-being-a-billionaire isn’t threatening any upsets this year. While Swift’s Bon Iver collab, Exile, scored some low-key airtime in 2020, her 2023 album Midnights did not. But Dua Lipa, Eilish and Doja Cat are all likely to make the countdown, as is the impeccable 90s-jukebox angst of Olivia Rodrigo, who is tipped to appear four times. (Eilish still holds the record for most appearances by a female artist in a single year, clocking five in 2019.)
When it comes to the nebulous “mainstream”, it can be hard to tell when a “radio hit” ends and a “TikTok hit” begins – but many artists with an established profile may still get a leg-up from going viral on the platform. The US singer-songwriter Mitski looks a chance to make her first appearance in the poll with My Love Mine All Mine, taken from her seventh studio album, as do PinkPantheress and Ice Spice with Boy’s a Liar Pt.2. But one of the most inescapable songs on TikTok right now is the Australian schwag-rock act Ocean Alley’s hit Confidence, which topped the Hottest 100 back in 2019.
Could this be the queerest top 20 yet?
According to 100 Warm Tunas at least, LGBTQ+ artists and icons are set to take up several of the top spots. As of Wednesday the No 1 spot was comfortably occupied by Sivan with Rush, a breathless, sweat-and-poppers scented banger from an album that’s an ode to queer joy. Strong Enough by the sapphic supergroup Boygenius hovered at No 2, Eilish’s What Was I Made For was tipped for No 4, and Padam Padam, a rare Minogue hit with international cut-through beyond the UK, was sandwiching the top 10. (I hope I don’t need to explain why the hit from Our Kylie “counts as gay”.)
McMahon, who has publicly discussed being queer, and G Flip, who is non-binary, both clocked about as many votes in the Warm Tunas list as Eilish – but on Wednesday were sitting at 12 and 11 respectively. (Perhaps next year the world-conquering phenom G Flip can finally sneak a Swift song into the countdown – their mega-viral Like a Version cover of Cruel Summer was released well after the 30 November cutoff for eligibility.)
And in a full circle moment that should put the pop v Triple J debate to bed for good, Padam Padam will almost certainly see Minogue returning to the countdown for the first time since Did It Again in 1997, after nearly two and a half decades as Australia’s queen of pop. Her only appearance in the top 10 was in 1995, on the lugubrious Nick Cave duet Where the Wild Roses Grow. It seems only fitting that a year dominated by queer Australian pop should be capped off by Kylie, well, doing it again.
The Triple J Hottest 100 starts counting down at midday on Saturday 27 January
