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The Triple J Hottest 100 of All Time 2009 and the Dominance of the Rock Canon

Catherine Strong July 20

Last July, triple j broadcasted its Hottest 100 of All Time list, as voted for by listeners all over Australia. The absence of women and of bands from different racial backgrounds, as well as variance in musical styles, was painfully obvious. In the June issue of Meanjin, Catherine Strong examines why our ‘best’ music is so homogenous, and how white men with guitars came to dominate the rock canon. A short extract is below, and you can read the full essay on our editions page.



While the Hottest 100 was a successful event for the station, with more than half a million people voting for 13,000 different tracks, the final chart was controversial. There were very few female artists or black artists. The songs in the list were mainly traditional rock, with major musical styles of the last decades such as rap and electronica being largely ignored. Questions were asked in the media, on blogs and on the station itself—what was it that had led the widespread and apparently diverse triple j youth audience to vote for such a restricted range of music, music reminiscent of the Rolling Stone lists for which triple j was trying to create an alternative? As the station’s music director Richard Kingsmill observed, although the largest voting group was 19- to 21-year-olds, ‘seeing their favourites, you’d think it was a much older demographic’.[3]

It seems that the classic rock ‘canon’—the songs and artists that have come to be regarded as the ‘best’ examples of rock music—has become so dominant that it has been internalised by audiences of all ages. The increasing dominance of the canon can be seen when earlier versions of the Hottest 100 of all time are compared with the 2009 poll, where artists such as the Beatles and Bob Dylan occupy more places in the chart than ever before. This is to the detriment of the indie and alternative staples of previous charts, and means there are few places for any artists who aren’t white males playing electric guitars. The canon has become more dominant, to the point that suggesting the Beatles might not be the greatest rock band ever, or that Nirvana aren’t really worth listening to, is akin to blasphemy. The worth of the canonic bands has become an almost completely undisputed truth in popular culture, underpinned by the documentaries on these bands, nostalgic magazines proclaiming their greatness, and the use of certain songs as the soundtrack to the golden past. Triple j has also failed to provide listeners with an alternative that they could draw upon when deciding how to vote. While much of the media and online discussion at the time the list was released concentrated on the lack of female artists, I’m inclined to think that the age factor and the ‘classic rock’ canon flavour of the list also help explain this omission, insofar as the rock canon has always neglected women.[4]



Notes 3. Mark Juddery, ‘And it makes us wonder’, Australian, 25 June 2009.

4. Catherine Strong, ‘Remembering and Forgetting the Women of Rock’, in B. Curtis, S. Matthewman and T. McIntosh (eds), TASA/SAANZ Joint Conference 2007: Public Sociologies: Lessons and Trans-Tasman Comparisons, Department of Sociology, University of Auckland, 2007


 

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