What should win Triple J’s Hottest 100 of Australian Songs? The choice is obvious

In celebration of 50 years as Australia’s national youth radio station, Triple J will count down the 100 greatest Australian songs of all time. We listeners were brutally asked to narrow down a half-century of music into just 10 votes each – heroes, all of us.

Our reward is a wonderful wander down musical memory lane: dodging glasses in the rowdy pubs of the ’70s, bouncing in the sticky-floored warehouses of the ’90s dance scene, sweating and shouting at the massive stages of the Big Day Out, cheering as 2010s indie giants blow up online and make waves overseas.

Triple J is counting down the top 100 Australian songs of all time, and the arguments have begun.Credit:

Inevitably, the top echelon of this special Hottest 100 will be dominated by classic Aussie anthems such as My Happiness by Powderfinger, Khe Sanh by Cold Chisel, Back in Black by AC/DC, and Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again? by the Angels. It will be fun, undoubtedly. It also might be a bit … predictable.

But the Hottest 100 is not supposed to be predictable. From its inception, the Hottest 100 has been a musical celebration primarily governed by chaos (lest we forget top-three finishes by Denis Leary, Chumbawumba, the Tenants, and Justin Bieber beaten only by the Wiggles). The novelty is part of the charm – the power of democracy to surprise, delight and horrify.

More importantly, Australian music is so much more than the pub rock sound we were defined by for so long. The winner of this Hottest 100 should be representative of the world-shaking, boundary-pushing music that Australian artists have proven capable of. It should be exciting. It should be weird. It should be Frontier Psychiatrist by Melbourne electronic pioneers the Avalanches.

There could be no more perfect winner of the Hottest 100 of Australian Songs than a groundbreakingly experimental, absurdly fun, enduringly influential and utterly bizarre breakout hit, a song so powerful it launched Australian music into the 21st century and set the tone for an era more creatively diverse and internationally renowned than any that came before it.

The most unexpected breakout hit in Australian music history, Frontier Psychiatrist is a work of insane genius. It kicks off with a horse whinny, then barrels into a story about a psychopathic school kid. It cuts up western movies and old comedy routines and wildly diverse musical bits and pieces, and somehow transforms them into a relatively coherent piece of manic surrealism. It’s hilarious, unexpectedly epic and disarmingly danceable.

It also has Hottest 100 pedigree: it finished at No.6 in the 2000 countdown, and No.27 in the Hottest 100 of the Past 20 Years in 2013. It was track 13 on the Avalanches’ debut record, Since I Left You, which was voted No.9 in the Greatest Australian Album of All Time Hottest 100 in 2011.

Musical pioneers: The Avalanches pictured in 2000.Credit:

It was met with international acclaim and recognition on its release in 2000, and fundamentally shifted the trajectory of Australian music. Frontier Psychiatrist changed the way we thought about music. What can be popular? What can be played on the radio? What can Australian music sound like, feel like, taste like? The Avalanches refused to be limited by conventions, weaponising their encyclopaedic knowledge of pop music to break it down note by note and build it back up in their own glorious, twisted image.

And it became the ignition point for the subsequent explosion of Australian dance and dance-adjacent music in the 2000s. Suddenly, bands such as the Presets, PNAU and Cut Copy were plastered across billboards and festival lineups. Disco soundtracked Kylie Minogue’s glorious comeback. Australian hip-hop blew up for the first time. The world of Aussie pop was lit up in spectacular technicolour.

The influence of Frontier Psychiatrist can still be felt rippling through Australian indie acts – in the freewheeling dreamscapes of Tame Impala, the technical wizardry of Flume, the perfectly plotted dance epics of Rüfüs Du Sol, the ominous funk permeating beneath Genesis Owusu’s energetic flow.

This is a Hottest 100 of grand ambition and scope. Controversial and exciting, it has created a revitalised vigour around Australian music. It deserves a winner just as exceptional and energised.

A magnificently deranged, singular vision by one of the most fascinating, pioneering bands in Australian history, Frontier Psychiatrist is a one-of-one. It should be No.1.

Triple J’s Hottest 100 of Australian Songs broadcasts on Saturday from 10am.

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