Ready your picks: voting in Triple J’s Hottest 100 is under way, with the results of the 2015 poll to be announced on air on Australia Day.
The rules have been clarified after a campaign to include Taylor Swift’s Shake it Off, started by BuzzFeed Australia and enthusiastically jumped upon by Swifties and brands, derailed last year’s poll.
Shake it Off was not included in Triple J’s list of 2,000-plus songs played on air in 2014, from which voters were able to choose 10, but BuzzFeed urged fans to cast special votes for it en masse with the hashtag #Tay4Hottest100.
Last year’s rules specified that songs that have benefited from a commercial campaign could be disqualified: “Triple J reserves the right to remove artists from the list who have benefited from competitions or commercial campaigns that incentivise fans to vote for them.”
Though there was some confusion over whether this applied to BuzzFeed’s initial article, KFC’s endorsement of Shake it Off on Facebook seemed to be the final straw, and on Australia Day Triple J launched a website parodying BuzzFeed that listed its reasons for excluding Shake it Off from the countdown.
The ABC declined to release documents concerning the reasons for the decision.
This year’s voting guidelines specify that 10 songs can be chosen from the list provided by Triple J, or entered in by voters. All songs – including covers, remixes and live recordings – that were officially released for the first time between 1 December 2014 and 30 November 2015 are eligible, and only votes for eligible songs will be counted.
But separate to the “eligiblity check list” detailed on the site are points urging voters to “play fair”.
“Don’t troll the poll. Votes made as part of a competition that promotes a song or artist, or a campaign that undermines the Hottest 100, may be disqualified or ignored.
“We want genuine votes, from genuine listeners. If we feel something’s preventing that from happening, we’ll look into it for you and take appropriate action.”
The competition, a staple of Australia Day celebrations, has been criticised in the past for the lack of representation of women, with only four of the 22 winning songs having included female artists (either solo, or as part of a group) since the poll began in 1989.
This were Zombie by the Cranberries, written and sung by Dolores O’Riordan, in 1994; Spiderbait’s Buy Me A Pony in 1996; Angus and Julia Stone’s Big Jet Plane in 2010; and Gotye featuring Kimbra on Somebody That I Used To Know in 2011.
A solo female artist has never won the competition.
Patrick Avenell, a Hottest 100 enthusiast, has dissected the upcoming countdown and predicted that Lean On, by Major Lazer, DJ Snake and MØ, will win the competition.
Last month Lean On was named by Spotify as its most-streamed track of all time.
Voting in the poll is open until midnight AEDT on 22 January.
