Well there we go again. Whether you call it Australia Day, Invasion Day or just Hottest 100 day, 24 hours ago people all over the world tuned in to Australia’s largest musical popularity contest.
This year’s mix had it’s ups and downs. While largely dominated by festival-friendly EDM, the highest turnout of Aussie artists we’ve ever seen took place, as well as the fourth year running where we’ve had a local take the number one spot.
The triple j Hottest 100 of 2016 has taken place, naming Australia’s favourite music of the year according to over 2 million voters.
Flume earning the pole position was an easy prediction – even Sportsbet had that one right.
At 2,255,110 votes 2016’s countdown saw the highest user involvement ever, but this in turn reflects the tunes that dominated the chart. For years triple j has occupied a sweet spot between a true pop countdown and a weighted mix of emerging Australian tunes, but as the number of voters increases further and further, the trickling in of massive international artists will keep occurring (not that it’s a new phenomenon).
66 out of the 100 songs were Aussie reps, making for the largest homegrown turnout the countdown has ever seen.
The Hottest 100 raised a grand total of $234,247 for the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience. Almost $120,000 was raised on the day of the countdown alone.
This year’s Hottest 100 had a familiarly low female representation, with 14 female solo artists making it into the countdown and 12 women making the list as guest vocalists. In 2015 21 acts featured women in similar roles, and there were 24 entries in 2016 (but Courtney Barnett was four of them).
However this year seven songs out of the top ten saw women on lead vocals, a huge win for the ladies.
And most importantly, 11 songs from Happy’s top 100 songs of 2016 made it into the Hottest 100 – showing that our keen tastemaking powers are completely out of tune with the masses! We just don’t understand kids these days.
