Okay fam, it's happened - Glass Animals' Heat Waves has topped this year's Hottest 100, with Spacey Jane, Flume, Ball Park Music and Tame Impala rounding out the top 5! It was a super close countdown, with triple j revealing that at one stage, only 350 votes separated #1 and #2. Remember that when you go to vote this time next year!
The top 10 was full of some absolute bangers, including the huge Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion collab, WAP, at #6, and G Flip's Hyperfine at #7. While live music wasn't really a thing in 2020, we were definitely blessed with a heap of tracks to bop to in our living rooms - and we danced our hearts out!
Throughout the countdown, triple j spoke to some ~loose units~ celebrating the day in their own way, from writing their votes on a whiteboard as a drinking game, to a few adventurous punters heading to a skatepark (hopefully they don't end up hurting themselves).
This year's countdown was a fitting tribute to Australian music, with 66 tracks by Australian artists featuring in the countdown. This tied with the 2016 countdown for the most amount of Australian tracks. It might have been a hard year for the globe, but a great year for Australian music.
26 artists made their Hottest 100 debut, including Jack Harlow at #42 with WHAT'S POPPIN - and he jumped on the phone with Bryce and Ebony to give his Australian fans a shoutout. BRONSON (a collab between ODESZA and Golden Features) also made their debut with HEART ATTACK (feat Lau.ra) at #88, proving that you can't hold artists back, even when they're in different countries.
Last year's winner Billie Eilish featured again in the Hottest 100, with the upcoming Bond theme, No Time To Die, as well as her recent singles My Future and Therefore I Am getting into the countdown at #90,#79 and #10 respectively.
Elsewhere, Thelma Plum featured with her cover of a previous Hottest 100 winner, with her cover of Powderfinger's These Days coming in at #92. Joji was a big winner of the countdown, making his debut with 3 different tracks. Gimme Love, Run and Your Man all featured in the countdown, coming in at #59, #62 and #98.
There was even an Australian Premier featured, with Mashd N Kutcher's Get On The Beers (feat Dan Andrews) getting into the countdown at #12, featuring an introduction by the man himself. It was truly a fitting way to see off 2020, and by the sounds of it, there were more than a few listeners taking his advice to get on the beers!
In the end, Glass Animals' vow to get tattoos of Australia on their butts if they won proved too hard for other artists to overcome - and they've set the bar high for those who want to win the Hottest 100 in the future.
Congratulations to Glass Animals!
