Triple j’s Hottest 100 is a landmark event each year in Australian music. Revellers host weekend-long parties as the results are announced. Fans take their votes very seriously and furious debate between friends ensues over picks. There can’t be many countries this devoted to a radio station’s yearly music countdown. 

This year’s edition saw The Wiggles crowned champions for their cover of Tame Impala’s ‘Elephant’. Depending on your point of view, it was either a sweet mark of respect for an Aussie musical legend or an attempt at a joke vote that didn’t really work out.

The Hottest 100 has always been for the big names – the festival favourites, the superstar foreigners – which means a lot of talented lesser-known Aussie musicians miss out.

That’s why an alternative list for alternative music was started this year and of course it’s called the Wettest 100. You won’t find The Kid LAROI or Justin Bieber here. The Wiggles have no chance in this countdown. You certainly won’t get Abbie Chatfield ranting about Ketamine.

The first-ever Wettest 100 countdown took place on Instagram on February 19th, and the fun and chaotic experiment is a truly DIY event.

“Every year I’m like, ‘we should do a Hottest 100 alternative for the stuff that’s outside the genre-world of the radio voting lists’, and people get excited about it but it’s never come to fruition, so this year I decided to take a whack at doing it on Instagram,” the Wettest 100 creators explained.

It turns out they chose the ‘Wettest 100’ title not as a direct contrast to the Hottest 100 but because “when the wetness of an effect (like reverb or distortion) is cranked it’s more of an intense sound and my hope is that this countdown will be a place to celebrate musical extremes and outliers.”

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Fans voted on Instagram for their five favourite tracks from 2021, with the only conditions being that the artists had to be Australian and not be on the voting list for the Hottest 100.

And the countdown contained some serious underground talent. Melbourne electronic producer Prizefight triumphed with his glitchy and hypnotic track ‘Credit’. The rest of the top five was completed by experimental pop artist LOUV with the haunting ‘POWER’, singer-songwriter Sandy Hsu with the melancholic ‘Endless Summer’, fellow singer-songwriter Evie Lulu with the yearning indie pop gem ‘South Side’, and Australian-South Korean artist AnSo with the achingly cool ‘So Damn Loud’.

The top five albums of 2021 were also chosen, with Marcus Whale taking the top spot with his latest album My Hunger. The full Wettest 100 is available to stream now on Spotify (see below), while the official countdown can still be viewed on YouTube.

The creators are hoping to continue the Wettest 100 next year and beyond – it’s great to see a grassroots movement such as this offering support and clout to left field Aussie artists.

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