The ABC has discussed all of the tracks that should’ve made triple j’s Hottest 100 over the years, but sadly missed out.
It’s December, so that means one thing folks; it’s time to get your Hottest 100 votes ready. With voting opened, it’s time to reminisce on the history of the countdown.
Yes, remember when the Foo Fighters’ ‘Everlong’ made the countdown in 1997? When the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ ‘Maps’ was voted into the 2004 countdown? Or when Oasis’ ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ made the cut in 1995? Oh my, those were some good times.
Except, there’s one little problem. Those songs never made the countdown.
That’s right, despite the inevitable cries of, “wait, how can that be?”, it turns out that plenty of classic tracks never quite made it over the line back in the day, and sadly missed out on a placing in the ubiquitous countdown.
That’s where Matt Neal comes in. Teaming up with Australian music writers Patrick Avenell and Tyler Jenke, the team constructed a list of the Hottest 100 songs to never make the Hottest 100.
When the list went live on Tone Deaf in 2018, Neal had a chat with the ABC about how songs get left out of the countdown, and how the list was constructed.
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Speaking to ABC Radio Darwin’s Rebecca McLaren, Matt Neal opened up about why some songs managed to never make it into the Hottest 100, despite their obvious popularity these days.
“There’s a lot of reasons, and it depends on the specifics of the song,” he explained. “As we went through and wrote this, the three of us found different reasons for different songs.”
“Some of them are songs that didn’t really resonate with people until later on, they became hits a bit later. But then there’s things too, like hip-hop took a while to find its place in the Australian music industry.”
“And there’s songs that were maybe released as singles maybe too late in the year for the Hottest 100 countdown, and they’d sort of lapsed out of the memory banks of most people when voting came around.”
Of course, while tracks like Muse’s ‘Knights Of Cydonia’ had been released a full 18 months before it pipped Silverchair’s ‘Straight Lines’ to the post in 2007, other songs – such as The Offspring’s regrettable ‘Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)’ – managed to top the charts with just a record two months of airplay.
Check out Muse’s ‘Knights Of Cydonia’:
Having put together the idea of constructing a list of the tracks that never quite made it, Matt Neal contacted a pair of Aussie music writers to float the idea of making such a notion into a reality.
After months of shortlists, democratic voting, and ensuring that every song had a fair crack, the full list was released.
With the likes of No Doubt’s ‘Don’t Speak’ finally getting the recognition it deserves, and Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’ being relegated back to the 12th position after the controversial decision to snub it in 2014, the ‘Nottest 100’, as the ABC have dubbed it, finally recognises all those tracks that never went down in Hottest 100 history like they should have.
Voting for this year’s Hottest 100 is open now, but if you’re keen on checking out which songs should have made triple j’s countdown over the years, you can check out the full ‘Nottest 100’ here.
Check out a Spotify playlist of the ‘Nottest 100’:
