The ABC’s youth broadcaster Triple J has found a home for its archive of 30 years’ worth of its beloved annual music countdown – a whole new radio station.
The station, Triple j Hottest, will play on repeat the songs Australians voted into the hottest 100 since it began counting down the most popular songs of the previous 12 months in 1993.
Launching next Monday, listeners can relive songs from the past three decades that were once favourites but may have since faded from memory, including Denis Leary’s Asshole, which won the first countdown.
Other songs featured in what’s been called the “world’s greatest music democracy” have stood the test of time, like Powderfinger’s My Happiness which won the countdown in 2000, Gotye’s Somebody that I Used to Know which won in 2011, or Radiohead’s Karma Police which placed 9th in 1997.
Some entries marked a cultural moment, like Mashd N Kutcher’s Get on the Beers which came 12th in the 2020 countdown and paid homage to one of Victorian premier Daniel Andrew’s Covid lockdown press conferences.
Or the 2017 countdown, which was topped by a person of colour for the first time with Kendrick Lamar’s Humble. It was also the last countdown to be held on Australia Day after debate over the appropriateness of holding it on a day that marks the beginning of British invasion and colonisation.
The new station will probably appeal to an older generation who can relish in listening to the songs that soundtracked years past.
In 2021, Triple J was lampooned after sending an “insulting” tweet that read: “did it hurt? when you aged out of the youth radio station”.
But a radio ratings survey from last year found Triple J had shed listeners in its core demographic of 18- to 24-year-olds. In 2014, the youth broadcaster launched a spin-off station, Double J, to cater more to an adult audience.
