OP-ED: No, Actually, The Hottest 100 Shouldn't Be All-Australian

On July 15th, ARIA Award winner and future first-ballot Hall-Of-Famer Ben Lee shared a video to his social media accounts that got tongues a-waggin'. 

In reference to the upcoming Hottest 100 of Australian Songs, which is being held to commemorate 50 years of triple j, Lee described the countdown as “a band-aid solution” to January's 2024 countdown – which saw the lowest amount of Australian songs voted in for nearly 30 years. 

“[There's] a deeper conversation we need to be having about what role triple j should be playing in fostering Australian music culture and supporting new Australian talent,” he said. From there, he espoused a suggestion: The annual Hottest 100 should be open to Australian artists only.

The Hottest 100 is not imperceptible to changes, of course. Lest we forget it spent its first three countdowns being open to literally every song ever written, before ultimately shifting to the year-in-review format circa 1993. 

So, too, has the day on which it happens changed – once held on January 26th, the countdown has since remained in the late January window but was shifted from the divisive date in what has since been deemed a net positive for the countdown as a whole.

By eliminating any and all international presence from the Hottest 100, however, you may well be creating more problems than you are solving.

Firstly, let's analyse what the Hottest 100 itself is. 

In its essence, since it shifted into the annual format over 30 years prior, the countdown is intended to reflect the tastes of its listenership at that particular period. Consider it a time capsule, opening it up to find out the way we were in a bygone era. There's something deeper going on as well, of course.

In his excellent book Shoulda Been Higher, writer Tom W Clarke describes the countdown as “more than just music”. “It's joy and despair, drama and debate, friendship and community,” he wrote. “[It's] a national institution. There is no better measuring stick of Australia's musical taste over the last 30 years.”

The Hottest 100 is, by its own billing, “the world's largest musical democracy”. Would it really be that much of a democracy, then, if we're enforcing even more rules? 

An all-Australian Hottest 100 is, frankly, one that's insincere and dishonest. Its victors going forward would forever have an asterisk next to their names – as if to say yes, you did write the most popular song of the calendar year... but only within the confines of the island you were born on, and absolutely no further beyond that. 

If you focus the list solely on one country, you throw the baby out with the bathwater and lose some of the key narratives from countdowns across the years. 

Do you remember Gus & Frank? It's very fair if you don't, even if you are Gus or Frank. In any case, the fledgling and short-lived Melbourne folk duo came in at #56 in the Hottest 100 of 2003 with So Entertaining – two slots ahead of objectively one of the biggest bands of all time, Metallica, who donked their way in to #61 with the title track of their infamous St. Anger album. The twosome simply couldn't believe their little song had outperformed these Goliath chart-toppers. 

Cast your mind ahead to 2006 and 2013, where the ultimate underdogs – Augie March and Vance Joy, respectively – took out the countdown entirely ahead of era-defining hits like The Killers' When You Were Young and Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars for 2006, and both Lorde's Royals and Daft Punk's Get Lucky for 2013. 

Even as recently as 2021, we saw a proper shocker at the countdown's halfway point when a then relatively-unknown band from Sydney called The Rions hit #51 with only their fourth-ever song, Night Light – sailing past global megastars Cardi B (Up, #52) and The Weeknd (Take My Breath, #53) in doing so. 

These instances are littered throughout the history of the entire countdown: proper underdog stories of artists proving they can hang in the big leagues. Take away your Metallicas and your Cardis and, well... not “so entertaining” now, is it?

By making the list strictly antipodean, you're not bolstering a sense of camaraderie with your fellow music-making countrymen – you're opening a can of worms to make things even more brutal and cutthroat competitive than they already are.

Hottest 100 placement is unquestionably a bargaining chip and a bragging point for labels, who will inevitably put out congrats posts to their clients that make it in. What, then, for those who don't? 

It's not impossible to imagine a label head in this country telling a band that, even with a considerable handicap, they couldn't get in the countdown and that's why they're being dropped. Bands have been let go for less. 

For those old enough to remember Tim Rogers confronting Mark Holden at the airport in 2003, it stemmed from the fact that You Am I – among others – had been let go from BMG to make way for a slew of Australian Idol alumni.

If an all-Australian Hottest 100 becomes a reality, those in the industry will inevitably be trained to not see other Australian bands and artists as peers, but as competition and as rivals.

Another talking point amongst those in favour of this change (not necessarily Lee himself) is that it means more to Australian artists to get into the Hottest 100 than it does to foreign acts. At the risk of using a conservative catchphrase, however, facts don't care about your feelings. 

It's been nearly 30 years since Oasis won the Hottest 100 with Wonderwall, and it's likely no-one ever told them.

So what? It was the biggest song of the year, and so it went. They earned that spot the exact same way their fellow countrymen Glass Animals did with Heat Waves in 2020 – who, by the by, celebrated their victory by getting Australia tattooed on their arse cheeks. Whether you alter your skin or leave the station on read, it doesn't matter.

The Hottest 100, it cannot be stressed enough, is a literal popularity contest. It's not measured on appreciation and sentimental value, it's measured on data. You don't have to agree with it – in fact, it's all the more fun if you don't.

Just like One Crowded Hour and Riptide were the most popular songs of their years, however, Doja Cat's Paint The Town Red and Chappell Roan's Good Luck, Babe! were the most popular of theirs. Because, once again, it's a musical democracy.

On the subject of Chappell and the controversy surrounding the Hottest 100 of 2024: At the risk of saying the quiet part out loud, why is the countdown's international presence now suddenly a problem now that it's more reflective of young women and non-binary people than men? 

These two groups made up 64% of the votes for the January countdown, after all. One can't help but feel that the domination of acts such as Charli XCX and Billie Eilish, not to mention the first-ever queer woman to win the countdown outright, has rubbed certain people up the wrong way. 

When it's an apparent outrage that people who “aren't even real artists” like Addison Rae are getting in the countdown, when it's the same countdown that both Denis Leary and Peter Helliar have gotten voted into (and won, in Leary's case) in the past, the double standards become increasingly glaring.

It should be made clear that none of this is an attack on Lee himself. He is one of the very few major figures in Australian music that actually attends shows that he's not on the bill for, and champions everyone from international contenders like Amyl And The Sniffers and Mallrat to those on the fringe of it like Party Dozen, RMFC, Radio Free Alice, and FVNERAL. 

There is, categorically, nothing wrong with wanting the best for Australian music – and putting your money where your mouth is for good measure. If the idea of what the Hottest 100 is truly meant to reflect is to remain intact, however, he's still going to have to lose the 1998 countdown to Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) by The Offspring. This is democracy manifest, people.