The changing sound of triple j's Hottest 100

Updated

Each year triple j pauses, takes a breath and grabs a cultural snapshot of the previous 12 months in music — the Hottest 100.

As it has done every year since 1993, the weekend's countdown offered a glimpse at the music young Australians were loving and served as a bookmark in time for people to reminisce on and, inevitably, argue about in the future.

But just how different was that countdown to those of years gone by? Well sit back, pop on some headphones and take a listen to the top three tracks of each year, from Asshole - Denis Leary to Confidence - Ocean Alley.

The colourful blobs below will grow and shrink as you progress through the years to match the defining features of that year's countdown. The top genres will change over time and the background colour will morph to the attribute best matched to the song you're listening to (yellow is a happy song, red is energetic, purple is a good song for dancing, aqua is slow and blue is a short track).

To power the timeline we collected data from Spotify on nearly every song that has featured in the Hottest 100 since it began counting down songs. It's the same data the streaming service uses to power its recommendations.

This data includes information about track length, genre, tempo and key as well as more granular information like a song's mood, its energy, how well you can dance to it or how acoustic a track is.

It revealed some fascinating changes in Australia's popular music culture.

The average speed of songs that make up the Hottest 100 is slowing. In fact, the weekend's countdown had the slowest tempo on record, dropping to an average speed of around 116 beats per minute (bpm).

To get a sense of that tempo change, Embrace - Pnau which came in at number 12 in 2008, was similar to that year's average tempo of 128bpm. By comparison, the average bpm in 2018 sounded more like Better - Mallrat which was around 116 beats per minute.

It's a phenomenon echoed across much of mainstream pop music in recent years, according to Tim Byron, a music writer and music psychologist at the University of Wollongong.

"About five years ago everything was pretty much 120-130 beats per minute. Almost everything by Lady Gaga, everything by Katy Perry was in that range," he said.

"There's been a definite decrease in that tempo. The tempo of songs now for some reason is much slower, people are swaying to them rather than dancing to them with real energy."

This dip in energy has been a notable feature of some of the more recent countdowns.

Spotify's measure of energy (0 is slow and mellow, 1 is fast, noisy and loud) revealed 2018 as the least energetic Hottest 100 since it began in 1993.

One of the results of popular music starting to slow down is that it can also feel sadder. It gives a song more room to breathe and express emotion, according to Tim Byron.

The Spotify algorithm gives each track a positivity score between 0 and 1. Songs closer to 1 are more positive, they can feel happy and cheesy like Walkin' on the Sun - Smash Mouth to the more euphoric like Let Me Down Easy - Gang of Youths.

On the other end of the spectrum, songs with a score closer to 0 can feel more negative, angry or depressing like When the Party's Over - Billie Eilish or About You - G Flip.

In the last decade, songs with this type of negative vibe have become more common in the Hottest 100. Since 2012, songs that feel depressing, sad or angry have outweighed positive tracks.

By combining this data point with Spotify's measure of a song's energy you can explore for yourself the changing sound of the Hottest 100. We've highlighted the tracks which came in at number one so you can see where they fit in with all the other years.

This dip in positivity has been found to exist more broadly in popular music. Researchers at the University of California analysed the top 100 pop tracks over a 30 year period and found a similar trend.

Byron said, just like teenage angst, popular music appeared to be going through its own sad phase. Sad music is fashionable right now and that could be why we're seeing the dip in positivity.

"Pop music is about novelty, it goes through phases where it's happier and phases where it's sadder," he said.

"Those novelties that people latch onto will have something to do will the culture that's around at the moment. I think there's more of a focus on sadness in pop culture in a bunch of ways."

In part, the tempo and energy drop point to one of the most interesting changes: the diversification of genres in the countdown.

The countdowns of the 90s and most of the 2000s were dominated by rock and punk music. In 1998, the year Offspring's Pretty Fly For a White Guy won, 80 of the 100 songs fell under the broad umbrella of rock.

Then, for the first time, in 2007 less than half the top 100 songs were rock or punk songs. By 2018, rock music was outnumbered by a number of genres including rap, indie and pop songs.

This is undoubtedly one of the key reasons the hottest 100 feels so foreign to music lovers who enjoyed the countdowns of the 90s. But it also points to a shift in audience attitudes towards the type of music that gets played on triple j.

"[In the 90s] there was much more of a sense of 'there's a mainstream and there's the alternative' and so in the 90s that alternative happened to be alternative rock largely. It happened to be Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden and a million other bands that were in that image in one way or another," said Tim Byron.

"But what's happened since then with the rise of YouTube and the rise of streaming services [they have] to some extent destroyed this distinction between the mainstream and the alternative.

"There's just so many different things going on, people have a bit more opportunity to find their thing rather than get funnelled into the triple j alternative thing."

Nick Findlay, triple j's music director, said the changing sound of the Hottest 100 was just a reflection of the music that was important to 18 to 24-year-olds in any given year.

"Music styles and tastes have changed dramatically since the 90s and what you hear on air has been a natural progression in triple j's sound in order to meet the wants of our key audience," he said.

The Spotify data also gives each track a rating of how suited it is to dancing based on a combination of musical elements including tempo, rhythm stability, beat strength, and overall regularity.

In 1995, the average danceability for tracks sounded like Everything Zen - Bush but fast forward to now and that average sounds more like Just Friends - Hayden James.

HUMBLE. - Kendrick Lamar, the 2017 winner, was the danciest track to ever win the countdown according to the data.

So tracks are getting slower, their energy is decreasing and the songs tend to feel less positive, but the Hottest 100 is much better to dance to these days … go figure.

Credits

Development: Ri Liu, Nathanael Scott

Design: Alex Palmer

Reporting: Mark Doman

Notes about this story:

In the timeline of Hottest 100 music over the years the blob sizes are determined by the percentage of songs each year that fit the following criteria: danceability: >= 0.6, energetic: >= 0.7, happy: > 0.5, short: < 210,000ms, slow: <= 110bpm.

You can learn more about Spotify's audio features on the streaming service's API reference guide.

Topics: music, arts-and-entertainment, australia

First posted