Everything you need to know about the Hottest 100 of the Decade

Triple J will count down its Hottest 100 of the Decade on Saturday. Here’s everything you need to know, including the song most likely to take it out.

Natalie Brown

@natalieisbrown

3 min read

March 12, 2020 - 3:30PM

As if one Hottest 100 countdown per year wasn’t stressful enough, Triple J has tasked Australians with the near impossible endeavour of selecting their 10 favourite songs from the past decade of music.

“It is definitely a challenge to pick 10 songs to vote for from 10 years,” Triple J content director Ollie Wards told Radio Today.

The countdown, which kicks off on Saturday, will take listeners on a journey of Australia’s favourite songs since 2010.

And after this year’s history-making 2019 countdown, which saw 18-year-old Billie Eilish become the first woman and the youngest person to ever win the poll, the list of the decade will no doubt keep us guessing about the winner until the very end.

Here’s everything you need to know.

Rock band Violent Soho are predicted to take out the top spot. Picture: Kiel Egging

WHAT TIME THE COUNTDOWN STARTS

While Triple J has been counting down the Hottest 200 songs of the decade since Tuesday, you can listen to the Hottest 100 from noon on Saturday if you’re in NSW, the ACT, Victoria or Tasmania.

If you’re in Queensland, you’ll tune in at 11am, 9am in Western Australia, 10.30am in the Northern Territory and 11.30am in South Australia.

HOW TO LISTEN

The good news is, you don’t have to be in Australia to listen to the broadcast.

For those at home, you can tune in by radio (check the ABC frequency finder here to find Triple J) or flick your TV to channel 28.

And if you’re overseas or on the move, you can enjoy the tunes via the Triple J mobile app (available for both iPhone and Android).

You can also listen live via the Triple J website.

WHO WILL WIN?

As usual, website 100 Warm Tunas has sussed out who could take out the countdown.

The site, which updates daily, trawls the internet and collates votes that have been posted on social media, and then uses them to post its guess of the Hottest 100 positions.

Although we won’t be completely certain of how Australians have voted until this weekend, the site has a solid track record on predicting the winner, having picked the No.1 in 2017 and 2018.

At the moment, the winner of the countdown of the decade is likely to be a song released before 2015, with one hit in particular – Violent Soho’s Covered In Chrome – predicted to land at No.1.

The song, released by the Brisbane rockers in 2013, didn’t even make the top 10 on the 2013 Hottest 100 countdown, coming in at number 14.

And, considering it’s a bit left-of-field, the chances of the track taking the top spot isn’t set in stone.

Another likely contender to snag No.1 is Gotye and Kimbra’s global smash Somebody That I Used to Know.

Nostalgia likely played a big hand in how people voted, and few songs have been as iconic as this Grammy Award-winning hit. Released in 2012, it went on to spawn countless parodies and earn a swag of awards, and has been used as the backing track for many a dramatic moment on screen.

The other song we could see win is Gang of Youths’ Magnolia, from the band’s debut album in 2015.

While it only charted at number 21 in the 2015 countdown, it’s become the much-loved Sydney group’s defining song. And, as of 100 Warm Tunas’ predictions, there are less than 100 votes between Covered in Chrome and Magnolia, which sits in second place and is a far less polarising potential winner.