It’s Been 30 Years Since Triple J’s First Hottest 100, Here’s How It All Came To Be
Listeners mailed or faxed in their votes, and before long, the station was overwhelmed.
Today marks 30 years since triple j’s inaugural Hottest 100. But long before it was the institution we know and love today, it was just an idea floating through the mind of staff member Lawrie Zion.
This morning, Zion popped on ABC Sydney radio’s Breakfast program to walk co-hosts Wendy Harmer and Robbie Buck through how the Hottest 100 got off the ground back in 1988, when triple j was known as 2JJJ, and exclusive to Sydney.
Zion got the idea to host a listener poll after reading a The Village Voice article criticising Rolling Stone‘s recently published 100 Best Rock & Roll tracks of all-time as an elitist canonising of music. He thought popular music belonged to the masses, and pitched the Hottest 100: a listener-based poll where they submitted their top 10 tracks of all time.
Votes weren’t restricted to the last year of releases. That would come in 1993, after Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ took out the top spot in both ’89 and ’90, and coming #2 to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ the next year.
People had to post or fax in their votes, and according to Zion, they weren’t ready for the massive response, and they had to rise to the challenge.
“At the start of the process, I was told, ‘If you get a good exercise book, you’ll be able to tally all of the votes’,” he said on Breakfast.
“It became clear after the first few days of voting, we had to find out a way to do this in a manageable way.. [We] actually wrote a program that would allow us to track the votes… It was a technological revolution as much as it was a musical one.”
Some votes arrived in less conventional ways: one listener sent in ten cigarettes with a track written on each one. Ultimately, voting took a long time to count, and it took until March 5 to announce the winner.
You can find the full list of 1989 Hottest 100 or listen on Spotify below, or look back at last year’s countdown with our review.
30 years ago tomorrow since the “one off” Hot 100 went to air. #hottest100 @triplej pic.twitter.com/Ytz3dWiEen
— Lawrie Zion (@lzion) March 4, 2019