The Triple J Hottest 100 is a big annual music poll and radio countdown run by Australian youth station Triple J, where listeners vote for their favourite songs of the year and the top 100 are played in a marathon broadcast.

What it actually is

  • Itā€™s a listener-voted poll: people pick their favourite songs released in the previous year, usually via an online ballot before New Yearā€™s.
  • Triple J then counts the votes and plays the songs from 100 down to 1 in a full-day special broadcast.
  • Itā€™s been running since 1989 and has become a kind of annual snapshot of what younger, alternative-leaning audiences are into.

When it happens

  • In the early years it bounced around different dates in Januaryā€“March.
  • From 1998 it settled on Australia Day (26 January), then moved to the fourth weekend of January from 2017 to avoid the Australia Day controversy.

Why people care

  • The Hottest 100 has become a cultural event in Australia, with ā€œHottest 100 partiesā€ where friends gather, throw on the countdown, and argue about the ranking.
  • Artists can get a huge visibility boost from placing high, and songs that win often become tied to that year in peopleā€™s memories.

Variations and special polls

  • Triple J sometimes runs special versions like the ā€œHottest 100 of All Timeā€, where people vote for favourite songs from any year, not just the last 12 months.
  • Theyā€™ve also done themed counts like ā€œHottest 100 of Australian songsā€, focusing only on tracks by Australian artists.

Recent context

  • The 2024 Hottest 100 was topped by ā€œGood Luck, Babe!ā€ by Chappell Roan, which also set a new record for the most votes received by a winner.
  • Recent countdowns have sparked discussion about how streaming and social media (like TikTok) are shaping which songs dominate the list and whether it still reflects Triple Jā€™s core audience.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.