The winners and losers of theHottest 100

JODY MACGREGOR picks out the winners and losers of yesterday’s triple j Hottest 100 – from hip-hop to maths geeks.

Loser – The entire nation of Australia

There were 42 Australian songs in the Hottest 100 and that number is only achieved by cheating and counting Kimbra. The previous year there were 44 Australian songs in the list; obviously our nationalism is beginning to slip. An even bigger warning sign is that none of the top three songs were by Australians or even Belgian-Australians, which has not happened since the dark year 2008 when Kings of Leon, MGMT and Kings of Leon again held a foreign stranglehold on our top three. Is it true? Are we slowly beginning to get over our flag-waving patriotism when it comes to music?

Winner – Unoriginality

Matt Corby’s cover of ‘Lonely Boy’, recorded for “Like a Version”, landed at #69. Thundamentals’ version of ‘Brother’ by Matt Corby, also recorded for Like a Version, was #49. The Calvin Harris remix of ‘Spectrum (Say My Name)’ by Florence + The Machine was #32 and the Flume remix of Hermitude’s ‘HyperParadise’ made it all the way to #18. Seriously, give up on writing new songs now, we’ve obviously got enough to last.

Winner – St Jerome’s Laneway Festival

Bat For Lashes, Alt-J, Alpine, Chet Faker, Flume, Of Monsters & Men, MS MR, Snakadaktal and The Rubens all did very well and all of them are playing at the Laneway Festival next month. Expect to hear a lot of complaining about triple j fans showing up and lowering the tone in the Laneway audience this year.

Winner – Commercial radio

Feel free to use my “the real winner of the Hottest 100 is Nova who get a whole new playlist!” joke from 2004. It’s vintage.

— Brendan Maclean (@macleanbrendan) January 26, 2013

The big winner out of the Hottest 100 is commercial radio who will use government funded music research to formulate their 2013 playlist.

— Scott Dooley (@scottdools) January 26, 2013

Loser – Japandroids

One Laneway act did unexpectedly poorly out of the Hottest 100 and that was Japandroids. In spite of their song ‘The House That Heaven Built’ making it to #56 in the Warmest 100 and also being totally amazing, they were a mysterious absence from the countdown.

Loser – Haim, Cat Power

On the subject of mysterious absences, LA’s Haim had two songs in the Warmest 100 (#89 ‘Forever’; #66 ‘Don’t Save Me’) neither of which made it in. And although Cat Power didn’t make it into the statisticians’ predictions that doesn’t stop the fact she didn’t make the cut from being completely baffling. What is wrong with you people, didn’t you listen to ‘Cherokee’?

Click through to the next page for more winners and losers