Manbabies, ‘Like A Version’, And Us: The Winners And Losers Of The Hottest 100
Winner: Women. Loser: Manbabies.
The long weekend is over, and with it comes the conclusion of yet another Hottest 100.
With the vote-count record smashed yet again and the Australian quota equalled from last year, there were plenty of big surprises amidst the 22nd annual edition of the countdown.
As we’ve done for the past three years running, we’re going to take a look at the winners and losers of triple j’s mammoth music poll. Strap yourselves in, team — monkeys, bulls and bad guys abound.
Winner: Billie Eilish
Duh.
Okay, we won’t leave it at that, fun as that would be. Seriously, can you believe the couple of days that this wunderkind in the oversized hoodie has had? Less than 24 hours after topping the countdown (not to mention getting an additional four tracks in), Billie then backed a pick-up truck into the Staples Center and filled it with Grammys.
Oh, and she also topped the Hottest 200 as well — with another two extra songs from WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? in there for good measure.
That means, between last year’s countdown and this, 10 of that album’s 14 tracks have appeared in the Hottest 100 and 200. Did we mention it was also voted the album of the year in a triple j listener poll? Duh.
Loser: Tones And I
The stage was set for the fairy-tale moment. After opening Splendour, going number one in over a dozen countries, taking the ARIAs siege and becoming one of the most talked-about new artists on the planet, the busker-come-good narrative of Tones And I was on its way to perhaps the most inevitable win of the decade behind Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used to Know.’ It wasn’t long, however, until the tide began to turn against the tracksuit wearer.
The first waves came with her being usurped for the top spot on Unearthed radio’s most-played artist list by Cry Club. Later came the accusations of lying about her age in order to further push a feigned narrative. And how did her little song that could, ‘Dance Monkey,’ fare after all of that? It came fourth. It was beaten by a song that — at the time of writing — had 980,330,077 less streams on Spotify.
Winner: ‘Charlie’
Remember the song with 980 million less streams than ‘Dance Monkey’? That’s ‘Charlie.’ It was a stand-alone single from Brisbane singer Mallrat, AKA Grace Shaw — a 21-year-old who has graced the Hottest 100 a couple of times in the past but never at such an impressive peak.
It’s a warm, endearing and heartfelt song, powered by a simple piano progression, a set of vulnerable introspective lyrics and an understated, imperfectly-perfect delivery. The title refers to Shaw’s dog, who would faithfully await the return of family members regardless of the weather. What a good boy — and what a good song.
Loser: Charli
She may be one of the most beloved figures in pop music, with plenty of triple j crossover — see ‘I Love It’ from 2012 and ‘Boys’ from 2017. She’s even about to touch down in Australia for the fourth time in as many years to perform as one of the marquee acts on Laneway Festival.
In spite of that, not a single track from Charli XCX’s most recent album – the eponymous Charli — made it into the 100 proper. ‘Gone,’ her duet with French superstar Christine & The Queens, got a nod at 188 in the Hottest 200. Still, such trinkets don’t matter when you’re a London queen, right?
Winner: Slipknot
As we mentioned in our Hottest 100 trivia piece, Iowa’s finest (and perhaps only) nu-metal nonet were up for breaking the record of longest time between countdown entries with the single ‘Unsainted’ from their excellent 2019 LP We Are Not Your Kind.
Sure enough, the maggots came through and we voted the song in at number 88 — 19 years removed from them doing the same for the band’s breakthrough single ‘Wait & Bleed.’
While we’re here, here’s a couple more records for you: Slipknot are the first heavy metal band to appear in the Hottest 100 in 11 years, following on from would-be tourmates Metallica back in 2008. The song is also the first Hottest 100 entry in 14 years to feature the stick-breaking drum technique known as the blastbeat, last seen care of System of a Down’s ‘B.Y.O.B.’ in 2005. Hell yeah.
Loser: Tool
The last time Tool released an album back in 2006, they were one of the station’s most beloved and frequently-played bands. They scored two slots in the Hottest 100’s top 30 and 10,000 Days came third in that year’s listener poll for best album — all before they came out and headlined the 2007 Big Day Out.
In 2019, the Big Day Out is a history lesson and Tool have very much moved on to the Double J demographic as the band itself enters its fourth decade. They’re still incredibly popular, don’t get it twisted, but it’s not for nothing that Fear Innoculum is the first-ever Tool album to not spawn any Hottest 100 entries.
The album’s opener and title track wound up at number 189 in the Hottest 200 two days after the countdown. It’s a pity, too — if ‘Fear Innoculum’ had gotten in, it’s 10:12 runtime would have cleanly set the record for the longest song in Hottest 100 history. Looks like Green Day live to fight another…uhh, day.
Winner: ‘Robbery’ And Repeat Offenders
In a unique twist, this year saw three different song titles double up across six separate artists. ‘Robbery,’ for instance, was both a top-10 hit for Lime Cordiale and a posthumous entry for the late, great Juice WRLD.
Elsewhere, ‘Circles’ was the title of Post Malone’s ultimate Tame Impala tribute as well as the breakthrough single for Unearthed High winner George Alice. Lastly, ‘Sugar’ belonged to a Brockhampton single plus a collaboration between Hottest 100 faves Peking Duk and Jack River. There was a close call with Khalid’s ‘Talk’ and E^ST’s ‘Talk Deep,’ but it was E^ST’s descriptor that got her off the hook this time.
Now this was cute and all, but you lot have gotta start coming up with original song titles — or at least original spelling. Say what you will about Igor, but there were no other songs in 2019 called ‘EARFQUAKE’ now, were there?
Loser: ‘Robbed!’ And Listener Entitlement
As the countdown reached its pointy end, a lot of outcry came from fans of bands and artists complaining that their faves had been “robbed” of a spot in the countdown. Of course, it’s nothing new — “ya joking, shoulda been higher” is now a long-serving Australian millennial meme — but people getting genuinely upset that their specific taste in music doesn’t specifically align exactly with three million (read: three million) other people is such a bizarre sight to see.
As Cry Club (the aforementioned band who beat Tones And I in the Unearthed most-played list) pointed out when they were inundated with messages from people upset they didn’t get in: “We appreciate your support so much, but there were three million votes and the biggest following we have is on Instagram with 2.5 thousand people!”
It also doesn’t help that when artists inform their followers to vote for a specific song with the best chance of getting in, the comments section are filled with defiant fans voting for other singles or even album cuts. If the votes hadn’t been so split, maybe your faves would have gotten high. Ever consider that?
Winner: Women
What a remarkable year for women in music. Not only was the countdown won by a solo female artist for the first time ever — not to mention the youngest person ever to do it — a whopping eight of the top 10 songs featured women, ranging from lead artists like G Flip and Thelma Plum to exceptional features from Vera Blue and Ecca Vandal.
Elsewhere in the list, acts like Sofi Tukker and BENEE made impressive debuts, recent Foodbank Victoria volunteer Lizzo got a nod and even the strangest cover of 2019 — Lana Del Rey covering fucking Sublime of all bands — made its way into the list. That’s not even taking into consideration that over half the 3,211,596 votes submitted were from women — 56 percent, to be precise.
Loser: Manbabies
Yeah, we see you – moaning about how Billie Eilish isn’t real music and how your favourite rock band didn’t get a look in and how listening to the 1999 countdown on Double J made everything better because you can’t handle being out of touch and out of the triple j demographic. Grow up, shut up and fuck off.
Winner: ‘Like A Version’
Although it didn’t take out the competition entirely, Denzel Curry’s fiery take on Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Bulls on Parade’ did place at number five overall, beating out DMA’s for the highest-ranked ‘Like A Version’ in the history of the countdown.
Three further LAVs made it in, too: Lime Cordiale doing the Divinyls’ horny-on-main classic ‘I Touch Myself,’ Alex Lahey pre-empting the MCR reunion with ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ and Skegss giving a faithful rendition of the Pixies’ ‘Here Comes Your Man’ — a song that had gotten into the all-time Hottest 100 of 1990 in its original form.
This, however, marked the first time a Pixies song had ever gotten into an annual Hottest 100 — and just a couple months before they tour Australia, that’s surely a good sign.
Loser: Original Songs, And Us
When ‘Like A Version’ started appearing in the Hottest 100, it was more often than not a cute one-off novelty — something like Ben Folds doing a rendition of ‘Such Great Hights’ while triple j interns pounded on cardboard boxes for percussion.
From the 2010s onward, however, it has truly started to shape how the countdown plays out. Indeed, there have been instances where the ‘Like A Version’ of a song has outranked the original, or when a ‘Like A Version’ of a Hottest 100 entry the year before has ensured that it’s stayed in the countdown for two years running.
No-one is arguing that the ‘Bulls on Parade’ cover didn’t fucking slap. It did. The issue is that the frequency of these inclusions is starting to make the countdown seem less like a legitimate music poll and more of an insular operation.
Not even the most dedicated of homegrown music fans has ever genuinely said “You know what was the 17th best song of 2019? Some north-shore dudes doing an ironic Chrissie Hynde impression.”
It’s also quite back-handed to say to someone like Alex Lahey — who put out a perfectly good record of her own in 2019 — that the best thing she did that year was cover another’s song. It’s an issue triple j should genuinely look at addressing in the not-too-distant future, lest the countdown slip entirely inside its own gazed navel.
David James Young is a writer and podcaster. He’s one of the hosts of Hottest 100s and 1000s, a podcast which reviews every song that’s ever gotten in the Hottest 100. It’s back for its eighth season, and he’d love for you to check it out. In the meantime, visit www.davidjamesyoung.com for more information.