With the voting process for triple j’s Hottest 100 of 2018 opening today, it makes for a perfect time to reflect on the tracks that never quite got over the line.

To celebrate, three Australian music writers have come together to look back on all the classic tunes they think should have been honoured with a place in triple j’s ubiquitous music poll.

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The Hottest 100 is an Australian institution.

For 25 years, it has annually collated and capsuled a time in the lives of triple j’s listeners. Each countdown is a snapshot of where we were, who we were and what we were listening to.

But the best-of-the-year Hottest 100s that began in 1993 – like the people who voted for them – aren’t perfect. With hindsight, we can better see the trees in the forest. ‘Asshole’ isn’t a better song than ‘Creep’. ‘Straight Lines’ was robbed. The Cat Empire’s ‘Hello’ was not the sixth best (let alone the 60th best) song of 2003.

And then there are the songs that missed the countdown altogether. And this is where we step in. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the world’s biggest musical democracy, we’ve decided to right some wrongs, or at least acknowledge some oversights.

This is a list of the Hottest 100 songs that missed the Hottest 100. We wanted this countdown to read like any other Hottest 100, and to be reflective of the mix of gender, genre and general musicality that populates each year’s list. But most of all, we wanted it to stir a reaction along the lines of “you’re joking – how the hell did that song miss out?”.

As with every other Hottest 100, people will take issue with this countdown in some manner and we welcome the discussion. But, if nothing else, we hope people take this list in the spirit of appreciation, celebration and conversation that it was created.

Long live triple j, and long live the Hottest 100.

– Patrick Avenell, Tyler Jenke and Matt Neal

The Hottest 100 songs to have missed triple j’s Hottest 100 (#1 – 20)

1. Everlong – Foo Fighters

Foo Fighters are tied with Powderfinger for the most entries (22) in the annual Hottest 100s over the past 25 years. That draw looks likely to continue for some time. Powderfinger have shown no signs of ending their hiatus (it’ll happen) and Foo Fighters have officially shuffled off into “dad band” territory, more Double J than triple j these days. Case in point: the Foos’ most recent album, Concrete & Gold, despite being their best in a while, couldn’t muster up a single song in the 2017 poll.

All this makes the overlooking of ‘Everlong’ all the more disappointing. Dave “Nicest Man in Rock” Grohl and his ever-expanding line-up of bandmates could have been crowned the lone champs of the Hottest 100 before they were put out to pasture if only ‘Everlong’ had been acknowledged back in its day.

Its exclusion is baffling, and one that punters have tried to correct over the years. Since it missed the cut in ‘97 and ‘98 (other tracks from The Colour & The Shape polled in both those years), ‘Everlong’ has been voted into the annual countdown in 2006 (a sadly inferior acoustic version at #61) and into the All-Time Hottest 100 of 2009 (#9) and the 20 Years celebration in 2013 (#6).

So why is this #1 on our list? That’s simple. This is the (equal) greatest band in the history of the countdown, and one of the biggest rock bands in the world. On top of that, ‘Everlong’ has become their best-loved song – according to setlist.fm it’s the song they’ve played the most in their career by a hefty margin. It’s often a concert-closer. It’s the greatest moment on their greatest album.

“You know the funny thing about ‘Everlong’?,” drummer Taylor Hawkins told NME in 2015. “People consider that our biggest hit … but at the time is wasn’t really that big of a hit. It’s something that took (time). Dave did an acoustic version later, just by happenstance … and that got played more than the rock version at first. That song took years to build up the steam that now has become ‘the great ‘Everlong’’.”

The great ‘Everlong’ indeed, 21 years in the making – MN

Check out the Foo Fighters’ ‘Everlong’:

2. Hallelujah – Jeff Buckley

It took everyone else covering Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ for people to realise the late Jeff Buckley had already delivered the definitive version of the tune back in 1995 (there have been more than 300 covers of it recorded since 1991, according to one now-defunct Cohen fansite.

Even triple j listeners were slow to the fact. It wasn’t one of the two songs from Buckley’s Grace to make the Hottest 100 in ‘95 – that would be ‘Last Goodbye’ and the title track. Nor was it one of the three songs from Grace to make the All-Time Hottest 100 of ‘98 (add ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over’ to the list). It took the all-time countdown of 2009 for it to come to come to prominence – it was voted in at #3.

That was peak ‘Hallelujah’ – by the 20 Years countdown four years later it had dropped to #36 and been replaced at #3 by ‘Last Goodbye’.

But away from the multitude of versions by the plethora TV music contest singers who have done their best to bludgeon the song to death, it needs to be acknowledged that this is not only one of those rare covers that surpasses the original, but a supreme example of the incredible talents of a musician with a remarkable gift that was sadly taken away too soon.

Also, it’s a beautifully written song by one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived. What more do you need? – MN

Check out Jeff Buckley’s ‘Hallelujah’:

3. Don’t Look Back In Anger – Oasis

The first Oasis single to feature Noel on lead vocals was released straight after 1995’s Hottest 100 winner ‘Wonderwall’ and peaked at #19 during an 11-week run in the Aussie charts. Hardly groundbreaking stuff but since then, over the past 22 years, ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ has grown in stature to become Oasis’s signature song… in every jurisdiction but Australia.

The track’s Hottest 100 eligibility suffered from straddling the new year, making it kinda eligible for two years but ultimately unable to crack either. As a standout track on (What’s The Story) Morning Glory, released October 1995, ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ received airplay in 1995, alongside #13 ‘Morning Glory’ and ‘Wonderwall’. Then it was released as an actual single, back when that actually meant something, in February 1996.

Sometimes, this straddling of the years meant the song would feature in the latter year’s Hottest 100, such as when, say, #1 ‘No Aphrodisiac’ and #53 ‘You Sound Like Louis Burdett’ were included in the 1997 chart and then subsequent singles #37 ‘Buy Now Pay Later (Charlie No 2)’, #43 Melbourne and #56 ‘Charlie No 3’ were placed in the 1998 edition. Other times, however, the post-New Year singles fall into the Hottest 100 abyss.

Oasis and their contemporaries presaged a genuine cultural movement that came to be known as Cool Britannia. It comprised music (Britpop alums Blur, Suede, Pulp, Ash et al, but also popular artists like Spice Girls, All Saints and Robbie Williams), film (the Austin Powers and James Bond franchises, and the mind-boggling Spice Girls movie), sport (England at Euro96 and the rise of crossover celebrities like David Beckham), tragedy (Princess Diana’s death) and politics (the rise of Tony Blair and New Labour).

Eventually Cool Brittania fizzled out, maybe because we all grew tired of the Gallaghers’ antics or because Mike Myers found new artistic frontiers in the Shrek series or because none of the Spice Girls tended to have much personality when interviewed separately. (You can relive some of the more glorious highs of the era in the wonderful TV series Beautiful People.)

‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ would become something of a theme song for the era. NME readers said it had the most explosive chorus in UK chart history, it’s the second most played song live in Oasis’ gig history (behind ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’) and the romantic ideal underpinning the song — be nostalgic, sure, but never vitriolic — is how a lot of us approaching middle age tend to look back on our formative years. — PA

Check out Oasis’ ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’:

4. Fake Plastic Trees – Radiohead

To date, Radiohead’s The Bends is the only one of the group’s consistently exceptional albums to have not yielded a song in a Hottest 100 countdown. At a cursory glance, this can be chalked up to the band having too many great singles in the running for that year’s list, but when you consider that only one of the album’s five singles scraped into the ARIA charts, this mystery gets a little deeper.

Since then, ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ (the lowest charting single from the album on a global scale) is the only cut from The Bends to have been redeemed somewhat, eventually being voted to #28 in the 2009 All Time countdown.

Famously described as “pompous and bombastic” by guitarist Ed O’Brien during its production, ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ has since become one of the group’s most beloved songs. Often noted as the point at which Radiohead transitioned from riding the coattails of grunge to blazing their own trail, the tune had a rather laboured conception, with tensions rising in the studio after being told by their producer to record a follow-up to ‘Creep’.

However, the famous story for the track goes that despite the track beginning as something of a throwaway idea, after members of the band attended a Jeff Buckley gig, frontman Thom Yorke was so mesmerised by his performance that he returned to the studio, sung the song, then broke down crying in a mixture of frustration and inspiration.

Featuring Yorke’s world-weary lyrics and an instrumental performance that gradually matches the emotional intensity of the track, ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ is not only one of the most underrated songs in Radiohead’s oeuvre, but one of the most underrated songs of all time.

Why no songs from The Bends (which I maintain is the best album Radiohead have put their name to) never made it into countdown will always remain a mystery, but there’s no denying that ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ was robbed back in 1995. – TJ

Check out Radiohead’s ‘Fake Plastic Trees’:

5. Feel Good Hit Of The Summer – Queens Of The Stone Age

Sounding more like a junkie’s grocery list than a rock classic, ‘Feel Good Hit Of The Summer’ was the moment at which Queens Of The Stone Age broke away from their status as luminaries of California’s stoner-rock scene and earn their reputation as future leaders of the hard rock genre.

Having formed only four years prior following the breakup of Kyuss, Queens Of The Stone Age had big shoes to fill, and with 2000’s Rated R, the group proved they were well on their way, especially thanks to the anthemic nature of tracks like this.

However, ‘Feel Good Hit Of The Summer’ occupies a strange place in the annals of Hottest 100 history. Not because it wasn’t popular (it scored plenty of airplay and even hit #75 on the ARIA charts), but because of its honorary status as a member of the class of 2000.

See, when the Hottest 100 for 2000 was counted down in January of 2001, the track was sadly absent from the countdown. Sure, tears were shed and wiped away with fans’ tattered leather jackets, but when the annual CD release was unleashed later in the year, well, the track was included.

It wasn’t quite an oversight either, with Richard Kingsmill specifically mentioning the band by name in the liner notes, despite their notable absence. While plenty of fans couldn’t care less about the track’s inclusion, some wondered what was going on.

Did it barely miss out and reach #101? Was it excluded from the countdown? Or was it just an error that somehow made it through to the printing process? Either way, Queens Of The Stone Age were more than redeemed in 2002 when they ‘officially’ debuted in a Hottest 100, scoring five tracks, and taking out the #1 spot with ‘No One Knows’ – a fitting title for a winning track by a band whose earlier presence will remain a mystery. – TJ

Check out Queens Of The Stone Age’s ‘Feel Good Hit Of The Summer’:

6. Maps – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Rolling Stone called it the seventh best song of the 2000s, while Pitchfork ranked it #6 for the same era. Popbitch declared it “the single most influential song of the 21st century so far” (sorry, that link’s behind a paywall but it’s a good read). Anyway you carve it, this is a song that now has a legacy.

Its influence wasn’t visible when the song was released in 2003. At the time, triple j was more interested in Fever To Tell’s raucous first single ‘Date With The Night’ (which also missed the Hottest 100). Everyone got more excited about Yeah Yeah Yeahs three years later when Show Your Bones turned up, producing the band’s first Hottest 100 entries (‘Phenomena’ at #66, ‘Gold Lion’ at #24).

But when Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ career is summarised and celebrated years from now, ‘Maps’ will be the song that is seen as the zenith of their creativity, and the one that best encapsulates the band – the perfect combination of noise and heart. – MN

Check out the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’s ‘Maps’:

7. Banquet – Bloc Party

Only Wolfmother fared better than Bloc Party in the 2005 Hottest 100. Six songs from Wolfmother’s self-titled debut somewhat overshadowed the fact Bloc Party’s excellent album Silent Alarm had four in the countdown, including three in the top 45 (and yes, for the record, The Cat Empire also had four songs in there, but they were lower placed, and Wolfmother and Silent Alarm also went one-two in the triple j top album poll of that year while The Cat Empire’s ‘Two Shoes’ was nowhere to be seen on that list).

But what was really interesting was that just four years later, fans had moved away from those four Silent Alarm cuts that made the Hottest 100 – ‘Two More Years’, ‘Helicopter’, ‘Positive Tension’, and ‘Like Eating Glass’ – and gravitated toward a different song as their favourite from this album of riches. It was ‘Banquet’ that was voted in at #42 in the 2009 Hottest 100 of All Time, and at #57 in the 20 Years countdown in 2013.

Almost any track off Silent Alarm could have been voted into the 2005 countdown, and similarly, any track could have been championed later as the true hero of this near-flawless collection of post-post-punk/new-new-wave (or whatever the hell that mid ’00s spree of bands was called) songs.

Perhaps the reason this one has outlasted the rest is because it now sounds like the most quintessentially Silent-Alarm-era-Bloc-Party song of the bunch with its spiky left-right guitars, dry disco drums, and Kele Okereke’s diverse singing styles intoning his becoming-an-adult concerns. – MN

Check out the Bloc Party’s ‘Banquet’:

8. Back To Black – Amy Winehouse

‘Rehab (Remix)’ with Jay-Z at #67. That’s it for one of the most important, vital, tragic musical figures of the past 30 years. The original ‘Rehab’ was lifted from the album Back To Black, a cathartic, deeply honest collection of parables detailing Amy Winehouse’s substance abuse problems and her intense amour for the mad, bad and dangerous-to-know Blake Fielder-Civil.

Recalling the original soul girl groups that flourished out of Detroit during pop’s golden age, peppered with the blue-eyed soul ingénues that Winehouse no doubt listened to — Dusty and Patsy first among them — ‘Back To Black’ could have been just another break-up song in the mostly harmless mould that Adele has used to sell truckloads of records and hoover up Grammys. But because Winehouse always drenches her music with a raw, gin-soaked vulnerability, you actually hear the pain she obviously felt at that loser leaving her again for some past squeeze.

Winehouse’s decline has become a clichéd cautionary tale but listening to ‘Back To Black’ again while I tap this out, I can only wonder what might have been had she capitalised on ‘Back To Black’’s success by staying clean and making more magic rather going to back to Blake and fading out like so many other rare talents afflicted with a hole that only substances can apparently fill. — PA

Check out the Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back To Black’:

9. One Armed Scissor – At The Drive-In

In 2001, At The Drive-In had managed to become one of the biggest bands in the post-hardcore genre. Their powerful songs, featuring the incomparable vocals of frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala, struck a chord with fans all over the world, despite the fact that their songs were often so cryptic that they became almost impossible to decipher.

In September of 2000, the group had released their third album, Relationship Of Command, but this only signalled the end for the group.

In January of 2001, the group would play the infamous Sydney Big Day Out, which became notorious for the death of teenager Jessica Michalik during Limp Bizkit’s set. Hours earlier, the band had become a legend of Aussie music after they walked off stage having performed only three songs, as Bixler-Zavala bleated like a sheep at the crowd, criticising their dangerous moshing.

Under a month later, the group had performed their final show of their initial run, and broke up weeks later, all before their record had even left the Aussie charts.

By the time Hottest 100 voting came around later in the year, the band were still on everyone’s minds, with ‘Invalid Litter Dept.’ and ‘Pattern Against User’ placing in the countdown despite the latter having not been released as a single. Meanwhile ‘One Armed Scissor’, often cited as the group’s most popular track, was strangely absent.

While the tune featured heavy symbolism in its lyrics which dealt with tensions within the band, one could argue that triple j listeners weren’t quite ready for what this track delivered. While hindsight clearly makes this one a notable omission, we do have to wonder just what listeners were thinking back then. – TJ

Check out At The Drive-In’s ‘One Armed Scissor’:

10. Don’t Speak – No Doubt

triple j’s seemingly arbitrary line between their playlist and the mainstream is perhaps best illustrated by No Doubt’s break-up ballad ‘Don’t Speak’. The station was all over Tragic Kingdom’s previous two singles ‘Just A Girl’ and ‘Spiderwebs’ (the former was #25 in the ‘96 Hottest 100) but for whatever reason, ‘Don’t Speak’ was a bridge too far for the js.

The song would go to #1 on the ARIA charts (and in at least 12 other countries) and was the eighth biggest selling single in Australia in that year. But triple j drew a line in the sand on the band, and that line was exactly between ‘Spiderwebs’ and ‘Don’t Speak’. Rarely was the station’s self-regulated 1990s division between the alternative and the pop world so clearly defined.

But it denied No Doubt a second song in the Hottest 100. The band was never better than on Tragic Kingdom – a record that yielded a remarkable seven singles over three years, none of which were bigger and more powerful than this heartfelt alt-rock power-ballad. – MN

Check out No Doubt’s ‘Don’t Speak’:

11. All My Friends – LCD Soundsystem

In 2009, just two years after it was released, music website Pitchfork ranked LCD Soundsystem’s ‘All My Friends’ as the second-best song of the decade (directly behind OutKast’s ‘B.O.B.’, if you were wondering). The track was the second single from the group’s second album, Sound Of Silver, and showed a dramatic change for James Murphy and co.

No longer was Murphy singing about ‘Losing His Edge’, and how he had been the one to help break new ground on the music scene. Now, he was feeling pensive and nostalgic for the times gone by, and decided to pen what has since been referred to by some as a mid-life crisis set to music.

Coming at a time when James Murphy was doubting the future of his LCD Soundsystem project, ‘All My Friends’ features a simplistic piano and bassline that backs rambling, stream-of-consciousness lyrics that paint a picture of parties, drunken nights, and the realisation that you’re getting older.

As it continues, it approaches themes of loneliness and regret before it crescendos into the gorgeous catharsis of the question, “Where are your friends tonight?”. If ever a song was there to help you come to terms with the fact that maybe your best days are behind you, this it it.

But maybe this is exactly why ‘All My Friends’ was overlooked by listeners back in the 2007 Hottest 100. Sure, LCD Soundsystem were getting increasingly popular by this time, but they would not make a countdown until 2010, when ‘I Can Change’ peaked at #92.

But while songs like ‘Daft Punk Are Playing At My House’ were veritable party bangers, ‘All My Friends’ was a nostalgic look back at the prime of your life – not exactly the most relatable track for a station whose target audience are entering, or already in, that prime.

While listeners would indeed begin to appreciate the song much more when Gang Of Youths covered it for Like A Version back in 2015, but even then, a cover which has since been considered as one of the best in the station’s history was also overlooked. Maybe ‘All My Friends’ is destined to be one of the most overlooked tracks in the station’s history? – TJ

Check out LCD Soundsystem’s ‘All My Friends’:

12. Shake It Off – Taylor Swift

When we were compiling this Hottest 100 of omitted songs there was some disagreement over whether this track should be included. Most of the songs on this list are, broadly speaking, songs within the triple j audio wheelhouse, even if they did not receive much or any airplay on triple j during their time of prominence.

I don’t think anyone could argue that ‘Shake It Off’ is a triple j song — it clearly isn’t — but I fought for it to be among this collection of tracks because it is the only song that actually was voted into a Hottest 100 and then intentionally ruled out, at least that we know about. It’s at #12 on our list because that is where it apparently placed in 2014 before being chalked off.

At the time of the BuzzFeed-led write-in campaign for Taylor Swift’s #1 hit I was hardened in my opposition to triple j including it, as I detailed in a stupid-thousand word essay for my blog. My view has softened since then and I now think triple j should have included the song in that year’s countdown and played it between ‘Gooey’ (relegated to #13) and #11, ‘Faded’.

Perhaps it would have been harder for triple j to effectively stamp out campaigns had it relented that once. What we don’t want to see is the poll being reduced to some cheap stunt between socially-aware brands — think bookmakers and purveyors of fried chicken — all of them too clever by half.



Sexism was one of the criticisms levelled against triple j when it excluded Swift. Consider that triple j plays The Weeknd on high rotation, and he has twice appeared in Hottest 100 Top 10s, despite being a pop music superstar who works closely with super producer Max Martin.

Sure, his genre is more R&B-infused that Taylor’s country roots, but is it really that different? Listening to triple j in the four years since the ‘Shake It Off’ controversy, I thought I had noticed a significant effort being made to include more tracks from female solo artists, perhaps as a response to these claims of sexism.



I decided to conduct some research, going back through all the available details for feature albums since 2000 (the last year available on triple j’s website). This is hardly conclusive evidence that triple j is playing more female vocalists, nor is it definitive since bands with female vocalists (few though there have been) are folded into the Group category, but I think this gives a good overview of how sparse triple j’s support of female singers has historically been:

Group Male solo Female solo Compilation 2000 41 5 2 4 2001 32 12 3 5 2002 42 8 1 2 2003 50 6 3 3 2004 59 15 7 3 2005 38 16 2 2 2006 37 9 6 0 2007 45 10 3 0 2008 43 6 3 0 2009 34 10 7 2 2010 39 7 4 1 2011 35 9 6 0 2012 35 12 5 0 2013 39 7 2 0 2014 33 12 5 0 2015 31 12 5 0 2016 30 11 8 0 2017 29 7 13 0 2018 24 8 11 1 Up to Ziggy Alberts 716 182 96 23 1017 70 18 9 0.02

Essentially, twice as many male solo artists have been promoted as feature album artists over the past 19 years. While it is true there are some great bands with female leads or co-leads — say, Garbage, Hole, The Grates and London Grammar — to be featured down the years, the vast majority of the groups are also male-driven.



Take 2013, the last complete year before the #Tay4Hottest100 campaign, when only two solo females (Lorde and Gossling) were featured: of the 39 groups, 30 have exclusively males vocals, another five combine male and female singers, and only four (Thao, Austra, London Grammar and Haim) are exclusively female. Only 11 of 2013’s 48 feature albums included female vocals at any point.



Since then, the numbers have improved, to the point that in 2017, for the first time for which records are available (and, I am certain, ever) there were more solo females — almost twice as many — featured than men. (It’s worth noting, however, that of 29 groups featured in 2017, 20 had male vocals, six had both and only three were female.)



It is still a long way from anything resembling equality but it is a lurch in the right direction, and the turning point does seem to coincide with ‘Shake It Off’’s omission, meaning some good has come from the controversy and criticism, ironically because it seems triple j chose not to shake it off. — PA.

Check out Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’:

13. All I Need – Air

For the longest time, triple j listeners weren’t too keen on electronic music. While this attitude has somewhat changed in recent years, groups like Aphex Twin and Four Tet have never managed to truly resonate with listeners, despite the critical acclaim that they garner.

Back in the ‘90s when alt-rock was still at its peak, this attitude was even more prevalent, and a French electronic group called Air was destined to be overlooked.

While tracks from their debut album Moon Safari did score a bit of recognition, ‘All I Need’ was sadly overlooked in favour of more radio-friendly tunes, such as the admittedly infectious ‘Sexy Boy’ or the hypnotic ‘Kelly Watch The Stars’.

Featuring lyrics written and sung by US singer Beth Hirsch, and featuring music that had been reworked from an earlier song called ‘Les Professionnels’, the tune became a blissful downtempo anthem for chilled-out music fans the world over.

A luscious, immersive tune that is almost the epitome of the word ‘laidback’, Air well and truly brought this phenomenal style of music to the forefront for a brief moment in time, though its lack of loud guitars and singalong choruses ultimately hurt its chances of success among some of the more mainstream styles of music at the time.

While Air would gain themselves more widespread fame in 2000 as the musicians behind the stunning soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, nothing can compare to the beauty and majesty of ‘All I Need’. – TJ

Check out Air’s ‘All I Need’:

14. Disarm – The Smashing Pumpkins

Here’s one of the weirdest omissions in Hottest 100 history. Coming in at #90 in 1994 was The Smashing Pumpkins with ‘Dancing In The Moonlight’, a Thin Lizzy cover they’d dropped onto the b-side of the ‘Disarm’ single. And so where did ‘Disarm’ place in the countdown? Nowhere.

Let me say that again – the b-side was #90. The a-side, which happens to be one of the Pumpkins best known tunes, did not make the list.

For a band whose singles were playlist regulars on the js between the release of Siamese Dream in 1993 and their (temporary) break-up in 2001, the non-appearance of ‘Disarm’ is baffling on its own, let alone with its b-side registering in its place. Billy Corgan’s acoustic-and-orchestra lamenting of a difficult childhood is one of the most ‘90s things to ever happen in the ‘90s, as well as being one of the best things he ever recorded.

But the presence of a (not-that-great) b-side in its place suggests a mistake was made. We’re not going to point fingers, but consider that wrong now righted. You’re welcome, Mr Corgan. – MN

Check out The Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Disarm’:

15. Jerks Of Attention – Jebediah

Following the release of their debut EP in 1996, Perth’s Jebediah took the Aussie music scene by storm that year when they released their debut single ‘Jerks Of Attention’. Inspired by, and even name-checking, the likes of The Stone Roses and Archers Of Loaf (in fact some could argue this track is heavily inspired by the latter’s ‘Web In Front’), the group were well on their way to fame, charting within the top 100 on the ARIA chart.

Within a year, the group had become household names, with their debut album, Slightly Odway, peaking at #7 on the Aussie charts, and being voted in at #5 on the triple j album poll for that year.

However, by the time the voting for the Hottest 100 of 1997 came around, ‘Jerks Of Attention’ was nowhere to be seen. Sure, a total of five of the album’s tracks made it into the 1997 and 1998 countdowns, but what about their debut single?

The biggest issue here was more than likely the track’s release date. A December 1996 release date meant that it wasn’t eligible for the 1996 countdown, and by the time the voting period for 1997 opened, the version that fans were listening to was a re-recorded album version that lacked the guts of the original.

Of course, ‘Jerks Of Attention’ was somewhat vindicated in the 1998 Hottest 100 Of All Time countdown. Despite being held in August of 1998, halfway between the 1997 and 1998 countdowns, the single version of ‘Jerks Of Attention’ scored itself a nice placing at #81, and earned itself the reputation as one of the few songs to not make an annual countdown, but to be voted into the All Time polls. – TJ

Check out Jebediah’s ‘Jerks Of Attention’:

16. Doo Wop (That Thing) – Lauryn Hill

In 1999, ‘Doo Wop (That Thing)’ by Lauryn Hill became the first rap song by a female vocalist to hit #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100. The second was ‘Fancy’ by Iggy Azalea & Charli XCX 15 years later. The one-time Fugees frontperson wasn’t so much a pioneer and a lone crusader in a genre that has for decade prized men, manliness and machismo, if not outright chauvinism, as a shibboleth for acceptance and success.



Adding some extra credibility oomph, as if ‘Doo Wop’ needed it, Hill wrote and produced the track single-handedly, so she must have felt quite a thrill beating — and getta load of these losers — Aaliyah, Erykah Badu, Aretha Franklin and Janet Jackson to a Grammy the following year. Hill also won Album of the Year for Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, eclipsing another all-female (vocals) cohort of nominees (Sheryl Crow, Shirley Manson’s Garbage, Madonna and Shania Twain).

Curiously, Hill was also named Best New Artist, even though she had been a household name since ‘Killing Me Softly’ thrust Fugees into the mainstream in 1996.



And here’s the conundrum: why did triple j support ‘Killing Me Softly’, a fun and radio-friendly pop-cover that was getting plenty of spins on commercial stations, so much that it hit #35 in the Hottest 100 of 1996, but not Lauryn Hill’s solo career, which burst out with loads of authentic artistic merit? Was it merely sexism? I think that explains some of it, but not all of it.

There was certainly an element of genreism back then. Even using the broadest definition of rap, that particular style was barely played during the 1990s and early 2000s, and those artists that were played were invariably established male purveyors. A quick look through the Hottest 100 lists from the 90s shows a paucity.

Across the three Hottest 100 buttressing ‘Doo Wop’ — 1998, 1999 and 2000 — ‘Intergalactic’ by Beastie Boys and ‘It’s Like That’ by Run DMC vs Jason Nevins were the only two rap songs to feature. It really wasn’t until triple j started championing emerging Aussie hip-hop artists in the mid-naughties that overseas and female rap became prominent on the broadcaster and its annual countdown. — PA

Check out Lauryn Hill’s ‘Doo Wop (That Thing)’:

17. Hurt – Johnny Cash

Yep, it’s higher up the list than the original (see #64) – exactly how the great man (Trent Reznor that is) would have wanted it. “That song isn’t mine anymore,” the Nine Inch Nails frontman famously said, although Reznor admits Cash’s cover felt “invasive” at first and it was only upon seeing the film clip that Reznor changed his mind.

At the behest of producer Rick Rubin, Cash took Reznor’s super-depressing tale of self-harm and smack, and made it something greater. With his aged voice trembling with every word, the country music legend ironically breathed new life into this self-loathing masterpiece.

It would be the last single Cash released in his lifetime (it came out just six months before his death) and would prove to be not only his biggest hit in over a decade, but also a kind of epitaph for a flawed icon. In the All Time Hottest 100 vote in 2009 it landed at #60. – MN

Check out Johnny Cash’s ‘Hurt’:

18. Rearviewmirror – Pearl Jam

Considering how much triple j loved Pearl Jam in the early days (and indeed for much of the grunge survivors’ career), it’s strange that their second album Vs only yielded one tune in the 1993 Hottest 100.

It’s even stranger when you consider how massive Vs was – it sat atop the US Billboard charts for five weeks and set a record for first week sales in that country which stood for five years. In Australia it debuted at #1 and spent 68 weeks in the top 50, and triple j played the absolute shit out of it.

Yet only ‘Go’ seemingly enamoured listeners enough to earn a spot in the Hottest 100 (and a high one at that, coming in at #8). Given the breadth of Pearl Jam songs that would be voted into the countdown in future years (14 songs over 13 years), the omissions from Vs stand out even more.

This rocker about getting in the car and getting the hell out of town is perhaps the best of the bunch (but we snuck in another one at #21 … and another one after that). Voters also voted it into the All Time countdown of 2009 at #56 – one of four Pearl Jam songs to make that list. You do the math. – MN

Check out Pearl Jam’s ‘Rearviewmirror’:

19. All Is Full Of Love – Björk

Throughout her career, Iceland’s Queen of Music has regularly pushed boundaries, which has made her not everyone’s cup of tea. triple j has always been in her corner though, featuring her albums and spinning her increasingly esoteric singles. The listeners haven’t always gone along for the ride, and they stopped voting Björk into the Hottest 100 after her second “grown-up” album Post.

But that prevented this undeniably beautiful track a spot in the countdown in either ‘97 (when the album Homogenic came out), ‘98 or ‘99 (when it was finally released as a single). It’s even more surprising that ‘All Is Full Of Love’’s stunning film clip by Chris Cunningham couldn’t spur it into the Hottest 100, despite getting high rotation on Rage thanks to its selection by a steady stream of guest programmers.

That Björk has only had four songs make the Hottest 100 doesn’t do justice to her influence or the magnitude of her career. This song’s omission is part of that near-criminal oversight. – MN

Check out Björk’s ‘All Is Full Of Love’:

20. Stan – Eminem (feat. Dido)

In 1999, triple j was one of the first Australian radio stations to play Eminem, giving regular rotations to his breakthrough track ‘My Name Is’. Three years later, they were ushering three of his tunes into the 2002 Hottest 100, including the all-time anthem ‘Lose Yourself’ at #7. Somewhere in the middle of all that, the man born Marshall Bruce Mathers III dropped his affecting tale of a deranged fan named Stan.

While this is not only one of the best Eminem songs of all time, it’s one of the best hip hop songs of all time, dipping into a level of twist-in-the-tail storytelling rarely seen in the genre. Q Magazine called it the third best hip hop track ever, Rolling Stone put it in their 500 best songs and 100 best hip hop songs of all time, and the likes of Complex, VH1, The Face, LA Weekly and others have rated it among the greats. Literary critics and psychologists have analysed it. The term “stan” (meaning “an overly obsessed fan”) was added to the Oxford Dictionary.

But listeners couldn’t see fit to add it to the Hottest 100. The poll has always had a weird relationship with hip hop, perhaps best exemplified by the fact Eminem’s Stan never made the cut. – MN

Check out Eminem (feat. Dido)’s ‘Stan’:

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