Ben Lee Thinks the Hottest 100 Is Broken – but So Is His Plan To Fix It

Yesterday voting closed on Triple J’s much talked about Hottest 100 of Australian Songs, dubbed by the station as a countown of the tunes that “defined the sound of the nation and echoed across generations”. The countdown is set to air on all of Triple J’s channels on July 26.

One artist with a shot at the ranking is Ben Lee, for his 2005 earworm Catch My Disease, but the singer-songwriter has mixed emotions about the whole thing.

“I’ve been getting very nice notifications of people voting for my songs in the Triple J Hottest 100 Songs of All Time,” he said on Instagram. “But I can’t help but feel that this initiative … is a little bit of a bandaid for a deeper conversation we need to be having about what role Triple J should be playing in fostering Australian music culture and supporting new Australian talent.”

Lee went on to propose something he freely admitted “a lot of people are not going to like”.

Here's his take: “I reckon the Hottest 100, every year, it should only be eligible to vote for Australian songs. There [are] enough platforms out there around the world to vote for international music. I reckon [the Hottest 100] should be only Australian music. This is an idea which would be deeply unpopular with major labels in Australia and that’s okay. But it would force the hand for the rest of the year, the programming to really get behind and expose a huge amount of Australian music for Triple J listeners.”

Triple J has a mandate to play 40 per cent Australian music, which the station says it exceeds by 10 to 15 per cent.

Lee then went on to tell the Sydney Morning Herald that the current Hottest 100 format would be better suited to a commercial radio station and hosts like Kyle and Jackie O. The government-funded Triple J should be solely focused on highlighting homegrown talent.

He then posted again on Instagram, “to clarify” his comments in SMH “for those who were confused by this clickbait headline,” (It was originally “Give the Hottest 100 to Kyle and Jackie O”.)

“Despite the unresolved sexual tension between myself and Jackie O that you may have witnessed on The Masked Singer, I’m not suggesting handing them the keys to the kingdom lol. What I’m saying is let commercial radio handle servicing multi-national major labels – that’s their job. Triple J is taxpayer-funded and I think those funds would be better used almost exclusively supporting Australian artists and culture,” he wrote.

“Billie Eilish doesn’t need the support of the Aussie taxpayer, R.M.F.C. for example might … JJJs were instrumental in shaping my career.”

Lee is no stranger to the Hottest 100 countdown. His breakthrough single, “Cigarettes Will Kill You”, took out second place in 1998, with Catch My Disease also landing at number two position in 2005. Since the current format was adopted in 1993, 16 Australian artists have topped the Hottest 100 including Flume, Tame Impala, Gotye and The Wiggles. Powderfinger and Flume are the only local acts to have topped the chart twice.

Lee said he hoped his suggestion would be taken “with the passion and love for Australian music and for Triple J that I am intending it with”, but many commenters have pointed out that one key consideration was missing from Lee’s solution: while Triple J is the national youth broadcaster, many young Australians don’t listen to the radio, with 87 per cent of people aged 18 to 34 listening to online audio content, while only 13 per cent of that cohort reported listening to digital radio at all in the past week.

A straw poll of the Broadsheet office backed up the sense that most young people only turn on the radio to listen to the Hottest 100. That’s one day out of 365. So even if Triple J adopted Lee’s plan to play new Australian music throughout the year, most young people wouldn’t hear it. Most Gen Zs and millennials consume music exclusively via streaming services.

There probably isn’t a single person out there – of any age – who wouldn’t want to see young Australian artists have their time in the sun. Likewise, there must be a way forward that doesn’t involve giving Triple J’s strongest programming event of the year to Kyle Sandilands. Please.