Triple J's Hottest 100

The Triple J Hottest 100 is, for me at least, a big deal. I have been a big fan of it and have looked forward to it every year since I started regularly listening to Triple J a number of years ago (with the slight exception of last year when I was preoccupied with spending all my available time flying down cold mountains on 2 bits of wood/metal/plastic/fibreglass). I think the reason I love it so much is because there are songs I hear throughout the year that I really do like, but never get around to obtaining and the Hottest 100 tends to put most of those songs into a big collection. It also is a representation, albeit a skewed one, of what Triple J listeners believe to be the best songs of the year.

I take the voting fairly seriously, I try to go through and remember all the songs I liked during the year and put them in the list. This is generally done by looking through the A to Z of artists and seeing which artist and song names jump out at me and then finding them on youtube and reminding myself what they sound like. This year, after carrying out this procedure I had a list of the following songs.

Drapht – Falling
Josh Pyke – New Year's Song
Josh Pyke – The Lighthouse Song
Lily Allen – Everyone's At It
Lily Allen – The Fear
The Rapture – No Sex For Ben
The Killer – Human
Weezer – Pork and Beans
Kate Nash – Foundations
The Herd – The King Is Dead
The Herd – Zug Zug
Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! - War Coward
Pez – The Festival Song
Blue King Brown – Moment of Truth
Emiliana Torrini – Jungle Drum
Cut Copy – Lights and Music
Flight of the Conchords – Inner City Pressure
Flight of the Conchords – Business Time
Flight of the Conchords – Hiphopopotamus Vs Rhymenocerus
Glasvegas – Geraldine
Ida Maria – I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked
Ladyhawke – My Delirium
The Presets – This Boy's Love
The Presets – Talk Like That
Something With Numbers – Stay With Me Brighteyes
Sparkadia – Too Much To Do
Ben Folds – You Dont Know Me (Ft. Regina Spektor)
Ben Folds – Bitch Went Nuts
Ben Folds – Dr Yang

The above list is by no means all the songs I liked from 2008, it is not even just all the songs I liked that Triple J played in 2008. I am sure beyond any doubt that there are some awesome ones that I have left off, I am willing to bet that in the days after I have voted I will be listening to the radio, hear a song and think: “Oh cock.” I am also sure that while looking through the song list, I skipped something because I didn't make the connection between artist/title and the song itself.

After a bit of thought I cut the above list of 30 tracks to the one below of just 14 before getting thoroughly stuck.

Shorter List
Drapht – Falling
Josh Pyke – New Year's Song
Lily Allen – The Fear
The Rapture – No Sex For Ben
Kate Nash – Foundations
The Herd – The King Is Dead
Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! - War Coward
Pez – The Festival Song
Emiliana Torrini – Jungle Drum
Glasvegas – Geraldine
Ida Maria – I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked
Ladyhawke – My Delirium
Ben Folds – You Dont Know Me (Ft. Regina Spektor)


After a lot of agonising I got to the final cut below and the reason I cut the final two; No Sex For Ben by The Rapture and I Like You So Much Better by Ida Maria is because I feel they'll do fine without my having to vote for them. It was the only way I could think of to get down to 10.

Final Cut
Josh Pyke – New Year's Song
Lily Allen – The Fear
Kate Nash – Foundations
The Herd – The King Is Dead
Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! - War Coward
Pez – The Festival Song
Emiliana Torrini – Jungle Drum
Glasvegas – Geraldine
Ladyhawke – My Delirium
Ben Folds – You Dont Know Me (Ft. Regina Spektor)

So there they are, my top ten songs of 2008. What are yours? Don't forget to vote!

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On a small side note; this has been my first post in a long time and while I created it to try and publish a few of the thoughts that bounce around my head I'm continually finding that I don't have time to write up such deep and meaningful discussions on human existence etc etc as I would like. So from here forth I'm going to attempt to chuck up smaller things more often.
I imagine the whole process will be easier now that i have a laptop and can work on thing like this on the bus as well as at home.