In a 2006 issue of Meanjin, ex-triple j presenter Lawrie Zion gave an account of the first Hottest 100 (or Hot 100 as it was then known) on 2JJ in 1989.^[i] Zion had suggested the station run a poll of listeners’ favourite songs as a counter to the typical ‘greatest albums’ lists produced by magazines such as Rolling Stone, lists that glorified the usual tired sixties rock suspects and ignored newer, different music. This first poll was a great success, but was a poll of only Sydney listeners. It was broadcast in early March, prior to the period of upheaval at the station that saw it move from being a Sydney broadcaster to a national one, and many of the Sydney-based announcers were removed in the process, causing uproar among loyal listeners.^[ii] By the time the poll was run in 1991, triple j was being broadcast in most capital cities, and when the Hottest 100 of All Time was broadcast in 1998, triple j was describing itself as a truly national network, having expanded into many regional areas as well as the capital cities, and votes were being cast on the station’s website as well as via more traditional methods. By 2009, the station claimed to be reaching 98 per cent of Australians when listeners were invited to vote for the twentieth-anniversary edition of the poll. Listeners were asked to vote online during June for up to ten songs, and the 100 songs that received the most votes were broadcast over a week in early July.

While the 2009 Hottest 100 of All Time 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 on 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’.^[iii]