Hottest 100 votes 2014

After giving it some thought, here are my final votes for the 2014 Triple J Hottest 100.

Top Fives - Artists never to make the Hottest 100

A cursory glance at almost every list I've published yields some link to Triple J's Hottest 100. With voting now open for 2014, before looking at which songs made my shortlist, I've decided to revisit five artists that have never placed in the top 100.

Ground rules: they need to be artists that I have actually voted for, in the annual countdowns, at a time voting was limited to 10 songs. Bands like Machine Head (I didn't vote when songs from Burn My Eyes would have been eligible, and their most recent work hasn't been on Triple J's shortlist) miss out for this reason (my notes around my voting history go back to 1998 (and while I can be held accountable for "Got the Life", I directed no votes in the way of "Pretty Fly" that year)).

Top Fives - Album closing tracks

A while back I listed my favourite side one, track ones. As it's been a while since I put up a list, I decided to go with a variation of a theme and go with closing tracks. A few rules here... no bonus songs (for example, "No Shelter" on Battle of Los Angeles), hidden tracks ("Mr E's beautiful blues") or live albums ("Where did you sleep last night?" from Nirvana's Unplugged).

Top Fives: Australian Hip hop

I'm not really the biggest fan of rap/hip hop/whatever you want to call it as a genre (my tastes run more towards the alternative rock side of things), but hearing Iggy Azalea almost everywhere over the past few days has got me thinking about some of the other Australian artists in the genre. As such, here are five Australian hip hop songs that I prefer. As stated not being deeply grounded to the style, there's likely very talented artists I've missed, and as to be expected, this list runs very much towards a Triple J style taste.

NRL Fans survey

Seriously, not including North Queensland as a response to the question "Who do you think will win this year's grand final" in the NRL Fans survey, when they are currently embedded in the top 8, and would go to fifth with a win this weekend over Penrith? Edit: remain 7th after their one point loss. After being wronged in the finals the last couple of years, does this just mean foregone conclusion, write the Cowboys off now?

Top Fives - Musical moments in The Simpsons

After having The Simpsons Flintstones parody in my head all day ("... he's about to hit a chestnut tree"), I figure this is a worth while topic for a top five. There's plenty of similar lists around, but meh. For the purposes of this, I'm omitting things like the use of "The Hardest Button to Button" which is more of a video parody, or "Hens love roosters, geese love ganders..." which isn't really featured in an episode, being more of a tack-on. None of these are likely to be surprises but, it's my list so who cares?

Top Fives: Hottest 100 #100s

Looking back at the history of Triple J's Hottest 100, a number of songs/artists are missing from the lists, when one would have expected them to make it at some stage (the likely subject of a future Top Five, and an excuse to link to more music of The Drones). It's worth celebrating then, those songs which have just cracked the list, placing at number 100. Some of these songs have been corkers, others not so much ("Neutron Star Collision", I'm looking in your direction).

In any event, here's a top five - songs that have placed at #100 in the annual hottest 100 countdowns.