As triple j gear up to launch their latest retrospective Hottest 100 countdown, the attention of most voters has now turned to Nick Whyte’s Warm Tunas website for info on who might just top the poll.
For eager followers of the countdown, the Warm Tunas site is not unknown. In fact, it’s been around for the last few years, collating votes to provide a semi-accurate representation of what voters are indeed picking as their winner. Though the predictions for 2016 and 2019 were incorrect (but only by one position), the site correctly indicated that both Kendrick Lamar and Ocean Alley would top the poll in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
Now, after opening voting for triple j’s Hottest 100 of the Decade recently, Warm Tunas has once again returned for another round. Though the predictions have been live for a week now, the positions have been shifting so significantly and frequently that it’s taken a while to stabilise.
At the current time, the top ten spots are filled very heavily with tracks from the first half of the decade, indicating that a lot of these tracks have had plenty of time to resonate with listeners.
Currently, Brisbane’s Violent Soho are topping the list with 2013’s “Covered in Chrome”, while Gang of Youths follow closely behind with 2015’s “Magnolia”. In fact, one has to go all the way down to #15 to find the first song from the latter half of the decade, with Flume’s previous chart-topper “Never Be Like You” making an appearance.
Similarly, every #1 place-getter from the 2010s is currently featured, including Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” at #5, while Billie Eilish’s most recent winner “bad guy” is the lowest at #93.
Currently, Kanye West is slated to feature the most times in the countdown, with six of his tracks (including one with Jay-Z) making the list of predictions, while Gang of Youths and Childish Gambino follow behind with four each. If Kanye does indeed appear six times, he’ll match a record not seen since Wolfmother achieved the same in 2005.
Interestingly, a handful of songs that never made the annual countdowns are also predicted to appear, including Azealia Banks’ “212”, LCD Soundsystem’s “Dance Yrself Clean”, Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own”, Trophy Eyes’ “Chlorine”, and RÜFÜS DU SOL’s “Innerbloom”, though the What So Not remix of the latter did feature at #30 in 2016.
Finally, the countdown could potentially attract some attention from listeners due to the possible inclusion of Sticky Fingers. Though triple j has made no official statement on the matter, the band appeared to have been silently blacklisted from the station following frontman Dylan Frost’s controversial interview with Hack in 2018.
At the current time, Warm Tunas predicts two of the band’s songs – “Gold Snafu” at #89 and “Australia Street” at #32 – to make the countdown, meaning that triple j are potentially on track to play Sticky Fingers’ music for the first time in almost two years.
Of course, it’s worth noting that – by Warm Tunas’ own admission – the current sample size of votes is approximately 0.62%, meaning that there is a very strong chance that these songs and their positions will change between now and when the countdown takes place on March 14.
Warm Tunas’ Hottest 100 of the Decade Predictions:
10. ‘Let It Happen’ – Tame Impala
9. ‘Midnight City’ – M83
8. ‘Runaway (feat. Pusha T)’ – Kanye West
7. ‘Breezeblocks’ – Alt-J
6. ‘It’s Nice To Be Alive’ – Ball Park Music
5. ‘Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra)’ – Gotye
4. ‘The Less I Know The Better’ – Tame Impala
3. ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ – Arctic Monkeys
2. ‘Magnolia’ – Gang Of Youths
1. ‘Covered In Chrome’ – Violent Soho
