Over the course of the week, triple j has been counting down the Hottest 200 of the Decade — as voted by listeners — in anticipation for the big Hottest 100 countdown set to kick off this Saturday. This morning, the countdown featured an entry that stuck out like a sore thumb, Sticky Fingers’ ‘Caress Your Soul’.

Sticky Fingers have not been played on triple j since April 2018, following that trainwreck interview on triple j’s Hack segment, where frontman Dylan Frost defended himself from allegations of violence and threatening behaviour with the nail-in-coffin line “boys will be boys”.

Since that fated interview — Sticky Fingers bassist Paddy Cornwall has taken multiple hits out on the radio station, calling them out for their double standards and cowardice for omitting the band from playlisting.

In May last year, Cornwall took to Instagram Live, to unleash on triple j. “Triple j, fuck you and your fucking artist repertoire,” he said at the time. “We don’t fucking need you. We don’t want you because you play your fucking bullshit and you’re a bunch of fucking maggots.”

Then in November, Cornwall called triple j out again after it was rumoured that they blocked an Australian artist from Like A Version for planning to cover Sticky’s song ‘How To Fly’.

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In a since-deleted post, Cornwall slammed triple j for not “fronting on fact versus allegation”, claiming they are “setting a bad example for our future”. In the post caption, Cornwall demanded that the station “make a statement, you pathetic cowards.”

Whether or not Sticky Fingers were going to be featured in the Hottest 100 of the Decade countdown was always going to be a point of contention. The band have been “cancelled” by the majority of the music industry and the greater media landscape, despite this, it is undeniable that they are one of the most popular bands in the country.

It’ll be interesting to see how the rest of the countdown pans out, though ‘Caress Your Soul’ is one of the band’s most beloved tracks, its popularity pales in comparison to tracks like ‘Australia Street’, ‘How To Fly’, ‘Rum Rage’ and ‘Gold Snafu’. At this rate, it looks like the band are poised to dominate the rest of the countdown.

We’re intrigued to see where triple j goes from here. Will they continue to not play Sticky Fingers now that they’ve broken their silent blacklisting? Or will they take my approach to breaking New Year’s resolutions, say “fuck it” and start flogging the airwaves with the band’s tepid blend of psych-reggae? Only time will tell.

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