Hottest 100 winners throughout the years

[tommo]

So, in my last post I said "Sex on Fire" was the least interesting #1 since "My Happiness". After posting, I wondered if it deserved to rate lower than Alex Lloyd's "Amazing", Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" or Bernard Fanning's "Wish You Well", three more truly snore-worthy tracks. That got me to thinking "Jeez, is the number one ever particularly good?" Well, lets have a look:



2008: Kings of Leon - "Sex on Fire"
2007: Muse - "Knights of Cydonia"
2006: Augie March - "One Crowded Hour"
2005: Bernard Fanning - "Wish You Well"
2004: Franz Ferdinand - "Take Me Out"
2003: Jet - "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?"
2002: Queens of the Stone Age - "No One Knows"
2001: Alex Lloyd - "Amazing"
2000: Powderfinger - "My Happiness"
1999: Powderfinger - "These Days"
1998: The Offspring - "Pretty Fly for a White Guy"
1997: The Whitlams - "No Aphrodisiac"
1996: Spiderbait - "Buy Me a Pony"
1995: Oasis - "Wonderwall"
1994: The Cranberries - "Zombie"
1993: Dennis Leary - "Asshole"

Hmm... really not too crash hot, is it? Personally I think the Muse and QotSA tracks are pretty awesome, and Franz Ferdinand and Augie March are decent. There's some nostalgia-value in Dennis Leary, The Cranberries and Spiderbait, but that's about it. I'd say out of those 16 songs, at least 6 just plain suck.

What do other people think of these choices?

Comments

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

While I find it a bit annoyingly overplayed and not to my personal taste, No Aphrodesiac is a good bit of songwriting. Buy Me A Pony is as solid a bit of Aussie rock as you'll ever get, and thoroughly deserves its win IMO. I agree with you that Franz Ferdinand track is very good, though not really my personal taste either.

I hate Powderfinger. and Bernard Fanning by extension. They are a plague on the land.

I hate novelty joke songs beating actual music, so I dislike Leary and Offspring winning.

[tommmo.livejournal.com]

I didn't mind Powderfinger too much in their Internationalist and Double Allergic days, but everything they've done since then seriously blows.

"No Aphrodisiac" has always left me completely uninterested, although it's not a song I actively dislike.

Yeah, I have to admit that "Buy Me a Pony" is pretty awesome. Sometimes I think I only like it for the nostalgia, but then I play it and it really does rock.

And novelty songs winning is kinda sucky. I remember the year Offspring won, everyone was already sick of the song by the time it came out. People were actually calling in during the countdown and asking if they could take their vote back.

[accy.livejournal.com]

I quite like powderfinger, always have. Never really understood the hate that is out there for them. Then again I have an irrational dislike of Morrisey so go figure.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Morrissey is supposedly on the verge of retirement, so then you can have a little party.

[accy.livejournal.com]

Not until the fucker apologises for his career and I convince the entire world you can get herpes from just liking his music. My hate runs deep.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm sure in reality he'll be around for another five years or so anyway. But he's supposed to be having a farewell tour in the UK this year.

I think you're daft for hating him with such vehement hate, but then I would, wouldn't I? I'd be interested to hear you justify, or at least explain your position in a full length blog entry :-)

[accy.livejournal.com]

Easy He is a PETA supporting emo whiner with a really annoying voice, who on some visceral and emotional level irritates me intensely. Don't think I left anything out.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Oh, you bitter, bitter man!

[wintal.livejournal.com]

Surely you can have a go at his pseudo-asexuality as well. You just aren't trying hard enough.

[accy.livejournal.com]

I could but I choose not to.

[loic.livejournal.com]

tall poppy.

[miss-kittylix.livejournal.com]

I agree with you Dave. No Aphrodisiac and Buy me a Pony are the only noteworthy ones on there. I do like Franz Ferdinand, but number one? Not really.

Oh wait, I did like the Cranberries in 1994, but I was 15, and haven't really listened to them since then at all.

[tommmo.livejournal.com]

The Cranberries aren't too bad, but "Linger" > "Zombie" by a mile.

[girliejones.livejournal.com]

But this is just like any other award decided by a majority. You vote for what you like best and the common denominator, usually the thing everybody likes second best, wins.

[thanners.livejournal.com]

I quite like "Knights of Cydonia".

As for the rest, I really don't mind most of them, and even like some of them. But probably not enough for a #1 position.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

The #1 will always be something with broad appeal, something that appeals to conventional tastes whilst perhaps having some distinctive characteristics. Can't see it ever being a step sideways musically. It will always be a pardy choon, probably something that goes well with alcohol and singalongs.

In terms of my liking for the #1 artists above, I think it's notable that they're almost all on the downward slope of my preference by the time they get voted in. Cranberries, Oasis, Whitlams, Offspring, Powderfinger, Alex Lloyd, Augie March, Muse and Kings of Leon. In the case of every single one, I preferred their old stuff to the #1.

This leads me to hypothesise that anyone who listens at all closely to new music might feel that a H100 #1 artist is a little overexposed by the time they reach that peak of popularity.

I agree re novelty songs, and anyone who would vote a joke as their Song of the Year has problems. Joke of the Year, maybe?

On the subject of Powderfinger, I think "These Days" is a significantly worse song than "My Happiness". The former really is just a shambolic, meaningless ballad, at least the latter is relatable to a real experience. And while "My Happiness" does induce a weird combination of nausea and sleepiness, I also recall several Powderfinger singles that I didn't dislike back in the day. Bernard Fanning's solo "music" can go fuck itself though!

Alex Lloyd had really jumped the shark by the time "Amazing" won. And it got used on the obligatory car ad afterwards. Also, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" doesn't suck IMO, even if every tiny little other thing Jet has ever done, does.

[tommmo.livejournal.com]

The "downward slope" thing you mention is a good point. I'd have to agree with most, if not all of the cases you've given. Muse are an exception, since I think the music on Black Holes and Revelations was a significant step up from Absolution, and something of a revitalisation of the group's style. It all pales in comparison to Origin of Symmetry, though.

Hmm, I used to like "These Days" quite a bit back in the day, but now I'm totally apathetic about it. I definitely prefer it to "My Happiness", though. Powderfinger definitely had some solid singles before that, though - "D.A.F", "The Day You Come", "JC" and "Hindley Street" are all pretty decent, imo.

I agree with what you say about the song with broad appeal winning, although I think there's been more of a trend of "selling the artist" on triplej recently that's also having a major effect. I get the feeling from the older H100s that voters were more concerned with the best/most popular songs of the year. I dunno, it could be a shift in how I perceive it between then and now, but I keep getting the impression that triplej listeners get a bit too fannish about the demographic's "cool artists" these days. Hence the predictability of expected big names making the Top 20 every year.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, I liked Show Biz. I must have a thing for first albums, even when they're not very polished or arguably not as good as their successors.

They do make a point of promoting albums on JJJ, I've noticed that. Not that I listen to it much, but they mention their feature albums a lot in their song breaks. But broad appeal ==> rock ==> rockism ==> albumism / artistism, you might say.

I actually heard some typical rock fan (think the type of person who goes on about the Arctic Monkeys' creative new direction) say "well, Kings of Leon are the Best Rock Band on the Planet at the moment" (capitals mine) as if they had formally received the title from Oasis or something.

On "promoting the artist", I dimly recall that when QotSA won the H100 they had pretty much the entire tracklist of Songs for the Deaf in the top one hundred.

[tommmo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember that ridiculous run of QotSA tracks. Not quite the entire album (which is something like 17 tracks long, after all!), but there were about 6. And only 2 were singles, iirc. Now THAT'S voting for the artist!

Actually, that was the year that Dave Grohl featured in over 1/10 of the countdown, between QotSA, Foo Fighters and the late-release of Nirvana's "You Know You're Right".

Ignorant, ridiculous, sweeping statements like the one you've mentioned always bring a smile to my face.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Damn! I'd forgotten the Foo Fighters existed until you mentioned them. Fuck Dave Grohl.

[marnielouise.livejournal.com]

'Sex on Fire' was so predictable! I thought "ho hum". I would have liked to have seen 'Empire of the Sun' take it out.

[tommmo.livejournal.com]

*shakes fist*

Haha, just kidding :)

[tommmo.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I reckon Empire of the Sun would've been a better winner than Sex on Fire, even though I'm not a fan.

[trs80.ucc.asn.au (from livejournal.com)]

Knights of Cydonia was arguably a 2006 song anyway. Did you see the 101-200 list? http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/kingsmill/playlist/s2475563.htm

[tommmo.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to say that a 2007 single from a 2006 album is allowed to count as a 2007 song, provided it didn't make the 2006 list as well (which has happened at least a couple of times).

Man, that list doesn't look much better, although it's nice to know that Beck and TV on the Radio got reasonably close to the main list.