Triple J and its increasingly unfamiliar Hottest 100

Triple J Hottest 100 parties are an annual tradition to celebrate the year’s countdown.

Triple J’s iconic Hottest 100 returns for its 31st annual tradition on Saturday, the day after Australia Day following its 2018 shift away from the controversial holiday.

The count, which has become a cultural phenomenon for Australians, takes on an unfamiliar look for its 2024 edition - dominated instead by foreign acts. This is vastly different from the lists of the past, and seemingly the antithesis of what Triple J is traditionally about.

Just three Australians fall in the top 10 as far as Hottest 100 betting goes, with Dom Dolla, Troye Sivan and G Flip the only homegrown artists in with a shot of the gong. Only two more Aussies make the top 20.

Triple J changed the date of the Hottest 100 in 2017 so it was no longer associated with Australia Day.

Dom Dolla and G Flip are both expected to perform strongly with multiple songs on the list. G Flip, whose real name is Georgia Flipo, is one of the few artists who can be traced from Triple J’s heyday. The talented singer, songwriter, producer and drummer rings true to the indie pop genre that built a large part of the station’s listenership, and part of a bigger issue as to where that audience has gone.

G Flip is one of so few recognisable Australian artists on the 2024 list who wouldn’t be out of place in the Hottest 100 a decade ago. Gone are the days of DMAs, Gang of Youths, Flume and Tame Impala dominating the day, bands who cut their teeth on Triple J’s airwaves and at their small, alternative festivals. 

Dom Dolla, Australia’s best chance of winning the countdown (as far as odds go), is an indication of a genre-shift within the station. His name has become a mainstay at the top of festival line-ups in recent years due to a tireless work ethic and bubbly persona, but his domination of a list like the Hottest 100 shows Triple J has different priorities.

Georgia ‘G Flip’ Flipo will be one of the best performing Aussies during the countdown on Saturday.

The 2024 edition is one of the heaviest on record for electronic artists. Three of the top five betting favourites are from the house music sphere, including British sensation Fred again, who will likely have two songs near the top. Five DJs are expected to finish in the final 10, a significant shift from the typical garage bands and alternative singers you find on a Hottest 100.

Doja Cat is a strong favourite to win with her smash hit Paint The Town Red. It’s a hugely abstract song to win a Triple J countdown. Only four foreign artists have topped the list since 2010, with that spot usually reserved for someone fostered by the station. However, Doja Cat’s tune has become a TikTok mainstay and has nearly 180 million plays on YouTube. Several of the top songs on this year’s list can be linked directly to TikTok and Instagram, perhaps signalling Triple J’s attempts to latch onto a new format of pop culture. That is in fitting with Eliza Rose and Interplanetary Criminal coming in second in the 2022 with Baddest of Them All - off the back of the song being used by the popular Aussie content creators the Inspired Unemployed. 

Doja Cat is the favourite to take out the Hottest 100 gong.

Triple J has seen its interest wane in recent years as listeners tune out en masse from the radio station, but perhaps most worryingly it is within its key demographic. Former Saturday Night Live writer Mike Schur says everyone’s favourite version of the show is the cast from when they were 15 years old because that is the stage where they find their own comedic voice. The same can be said for Triple J when people are around 22-years-old, when the music is more relatable and the hosts are of the same age. 

The station itself has a specific mandate to reach Australians aged 18 to 24. However, Triple J’s audience share for that age group has been in free fall since 2015. A market share of 17.8 per cent in 2015 dropped to 13.5 per cent in 2021 and just 4.4 per cent in 2023. The people who align most closely with Triple J and its identity are leaving it.

So where did it lose its way? It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where the station went wrong, but there are any number of recent sagas that have put Australians off its once beloved local station. 

In 2015, Triple J reacted poorly to a public campaign to see Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off win the count. The song, which wasn’t part of the catalogue being played over the station’s airwaves, started receiving thousands of votes per day yet was not included in the list. Triple J made a comment an hour before its broadcast, saying it would not include it in the count despite “hipster lulz” and instead had bought a “one way ticket to Bansville”. The station confirmed it would have come in at 12th on that list if it had been allowed to poll. 

In 2016, Triple J staple Sticky Fingers were black-listed from the station after claims from another artist. The band have since become something of a pariah on social media, but their popularity has never been higher, selling out international tours, registering millions of monthly plays on Spotify and recently publishing a biography. Many of its loyal fans swore off the station after the axing, citing the hypocrisy of banning Sticky Fingers but playing other artists with criminal pasts. The ban was briefly lifted for the Hottest 100 of the Decade in 2021, but STIFI have not been heard on the station since.

Dom Dolla is one of three Aussies expected to rank in the top 10.

The Australia Day debate engulfed the radio station in 2017, with a review deciding to move the count from the public holiday and to the final Saturday of January - which sometimes falls on the same day. While many of its left wing listeners supported the move, others however felt it was unnecessarily injecting itself into politics. Listening parties, synonymous with the list itself, were much easier to organise on the public holiday given most people weren’t working. With it being pushed to a weekend, many of its younger shiftworking listeners now don’t have the same availability.

Perhaps its greatest export, Like A Version, has also been struggling for traction in recent years. The weekly Friday segment sees an artist, either Australian or international, perform one original and one cover, with the latter often making up the morning’s coffee conversation. The cover would be plastered across social media with people sharing the latest performance and comparing it to the best of the past. A weekly viral hit. While it was once appointment listening, Like A Version has since been rendered to nothing more than an option on the sidebar of YouTube.

Many of its most popular hosts have gradually left over the past decade, replaced temporarily by voices who don’t seem to stick. The morning show led by Matt and Alex ran through the mid 2010s and was responsible for the highest rating period for Triple J. Their show regularly had a million listeners per day, an astonishing figure for an alternative radio station, and much of the greatest Like A Versions came under their watch.

Australian music also appears to have had a disappointing year, given the representation on the list. It’s hard to tell whether Triple J prioritising international acts has had an impact, but with just 52 of the top 100 on the 2024 countdown being Aussies, it appears it has had some influence. 

As one of the last great Australian cultural traditions we have, everyone should get to their radio at some stage on Saturday and listen to one of the best produced pieces of entertainment in the industry. The compilation of the list may be foreign, unfamiliar and a vast contrast to the Triple J you grew up with, but there’s an unmistakeable nostalgia about the Hottest 100 that will always make it worth your time.