Every year since 1993, Australia’s national youth broadcaster triple j has held an annual countdown of listeners’ 100 favourite songs of the year, as voted by the public. It has become so much more than music. It’s beaches, barbeques, and bonfires. It’s joy and despair, drama and debate, friendship and community. This book is a fun retrospective: an insightful, light-hearted and deeply respectful celebration of the colourful history of ‘the world’s greatest musical democracy’. Taking account of the thirty annual countdowns, the book traces the social, musical and cultural impacts of the Hottest 100 over the decades. This is the definitive account of the Hottest 100, a chronicle and a love letter – it’s the complete picture from Augie March to Ziggy Alberts, ‘Amazing’ to ‘Zombie’.

Tom W Clarke is the author of Shoulda Been Higher: A Celebration of 30 Years of Triple J’s Hottest 100, published by Melbourne Books. He is a comedian and writer, fresh off a run of comedy shows at the Adelaide Fringe and Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Tom can usually be found shouting about the superiority of instant coffee, thinking too hard about pop culture, and splashing inelegantly in the ocean.

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