Yeah, it’s that day of the year again. Australia Day has passed, that controversy has quietened again, and we can all get down to doing what REALLY matters: pissing and moaning about The Young People and why Triple J’s Hottest 100 sucks now compared to whenever we old farts were The Young People.
I know when I stopped listening to the J’s, i.e. after Merrick & Rosso left for commercial pastures at the end of 2000, but I’m not sure when I stopped actually caring about the Hottest 100, which I still did for a few years; I still explored new music, I just found it in different ways, it was the oughts and I had community radio and Internet forums and so forth… then Angus & Julia Stone inexplicably won it one year, then the amount of stuff I actively disliked started outnumbering the stuff I liked, then eventually I stopped actively disliking stuff on the list cos I realised almost none of it was worth getting passionate about one way or the other. Even the stuff I thought was good wasn’t really worth getting worked up about.
I was old.
And Triple J no longer needed old people…
This infamous Twitter outburst would be followed the next day by this:
Ouch. The criticism they copped for sniping at us whiny old people complaining “it aint like it used to be in the 90s” while being kind of ageist regarding some of the artists (particularly female ones) it played, or rather didn’t, is something I can’t really comment on being a non-listener and all that, but the question still needs an answer beyond just “fuck you, ‘youth’ radio station which is part of a network whose Group Music Director turns 59 tomorrow”.
And that answer is… not really? It was one of those things that just happened. I got older, Dig and the revived Double J which emerged from that proved more to my taste by playing stuff that was more like what I used to like (and still did, and still do), and I don’t even listen to that any more. It didn’t hurt. Far more painful things related to age assail me every day. The Hottest 100 was for other people, and I didn’t need to care about it.
But then this happened:
The Wiggles—THE FUCKING WIGGLES—winning the 2022 contest with a Tame Impala cover was probably not something anyone expected. When it did happen, it was magnificent. Not only was their version of the song actually pretty good in its own right, the whole situation was just screamingly funny; it was the best thing of this sort to happen since the La La Land/Moonlight debacle at the Oscars. And much like the Oscars should’ve just quit after that cos they would never be anywhere near as interesting or entertaining again, the Hottest 100 should’ve ended on that wiggly note. It could never be so much fun again after that.
And, well, this year it wasn’t, the winner being some bit of r&b electro meh of no particular distinction that I could see by Flume. If that actually was the best 2022 had to offer (and I don’t know, maybe it was) then, well, I have a lot of older music I’ve never heard before that I might actually give a shit about. Leave me to that.
One thing that does puzzle me, though, is the antipathy towards Beyonce Knowles making two appearances on the list,e.g.:
30 years ago, when they topped the 1992 Hottest 100 of all time (the year before the J’s started limiting the competition to the best of each year), Nirvana were on Geffen, which was not only a label but a goddamn big one, with distribution by Warners and MCA. Labels have never NOT had control of the industry. Personally I find Beyonce tedious as hell, obviously got the technique but it’s kind of empty, so I wouldn’t vote for her myself but that’s just me… I just find it interesting that people are snarly over her and not, say, Billie Eilish, who’s on a major label as well. And I actually do kind of like her, I think she has a bit more going on than most of the other modern plastic poppers… but she’s still on a major label. I don’t think that’s an argument either way, and I’m more persuaded by the argument others make about why JJJ considers Beyonce acceptable but not, say, Taylor Swift…
You must be logged in to post a comment.