Five Embarrassing Hottest 100 Moments

The triple j Hottest 100 is always a topic of great and sometimes heated debate, and sometimes there is very good reason for that. The thing about the countdown is that it's the public that vote, so we have to feel at least a little responsible for what the countdown ends up looking like.

Sometimes, looking back, you just can't help but cringe.

Boy Bands Welcome!

Okay so maybe we should be talking more about Dennis Leary's Asshole being the first proper number one on the Hottest 100 countdown, but we can't look past East 17's Deep making it into the list back in 1993. If you don't remember the band, they were a bunch of lads from north east London who wore hilarious headwear and were a big hit with teen girls who liked clean cut bad boys.

Granted, Deep wasn't the group's worst song, with its almost trip hop feel and smooth rapping throughout, but we couldn't imagine One Direction's hippest track making it into the Hottest 100 in 2014, even if they do through some trap or dubstep breakdowns in there.

All The Girlies Say…

I recall on Australia Day in 1999 there were a flurry of calls to triple j announcers from people who had voted for The Offspring's Pretty Fly (For A White Guy), begging for their vote to be retracted. The song, which was released in November of 1998, attracted a flurry of votes upon its release, but things got nasty after a while.

The Offspring had scored spots three and four five years earlier with their anthemic Come Out & Play and Self Esteem, so how were we to know that they were going to become what they did? The song didn't just age badly, it aged quickly, and, by the time it was announced as the number one song on the triple j Hottest 100, it was detested by most of the uber cool triple j listening public.

The Fifth Greatest Song Of All Time

Don't get me wrong, Andy Prieboy is great. Wall Of Voodoo, who he joined towards the end of their initial time together, were a kick arse band and totally underrated; go deeper than Mexican Radio and you'll realise that. On top of that, Prieboy released some pretty great songs as a solo artist. But, in 1991, listeners decided that Andy Prieboy's only quite recently released Tomorrow Wendy was more than just pretty great, it was the fifth best song ever written.

Now, these best songs ever countdowns are always a bit disastrous – do people really think Hilltop Hoods' The Nosebleed Section is a better song that, say, The Beatles' Hey Jude? – and, fact is, this probably isn't the most embarrassing song the Australian public has voted for in the countdown. But it looks pretty silly 23 years on.

Isn't It Ironic?

In 1995 there were plenty of pretty strange inclusions that, with the benefit of hindsight, probably wouldn't be in there today. But one particularly strange occurrence was the appearance of Canadian pop-rock superstar Alanis Morrisette in the countdown no fewer than three times. Nothing too strange about that, except for the fact that she was almost never played on the station through the entire year.

While we do not have access to data to completely verify how much airplay she received, it is believed that her track You Oughta Know, which ranked at number 39 on the countdown, was the only one of her songs that got any airplay at all. Hand In My Pocket appeared in the countdown at number 85 and All I Really Want managed to take out 90th spot and, as such, she – along with TISM, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Live (lol), You Am I and Green Day – had the most number of songs in that year's countdown.

Leaky Lion Man

Forget about the Warmest 100, a good old fashioned proper leak of the Hottest 100 winner happened courtesy of the ABC Shop back in 2010, as they accidentally published the winner – Mumford & Sons' Little Lion Man – online days before the countdown had happened.

It was simple human error that revealed a winner that most people were predicting, but it would have been absolutely crushing for all those people who wait with such anticipation at hearing who will win each year and probably would have made whoever made the mistake feel really dreadful for a long time.