By now you’ve deadset seen more than your own fair share of Hottest 100 votes from either yourself or your mates; the slow trickle of sharing suddenly turning into a torrent once everyone cottoned on to the fact that voting for this year’s list was now open.
But bless our feisty hearts, it simply wouldn’t be a Triple J annual event without a little controversy, now would it.
A.B. Original stormed home with a wet sail late in the year to drop their stunning, powerful, and incredibly important album ‘Reclaim Australia‘ very late in the year, seeing it shoot up to the apex of a lot of Best of 2016 lists in the process.
Their track ‘January 26‘ – a track that pulls no punches as to where both Briggs and Trials stand on the issue of changing the date of Australia Day – quickly became the subject of a grassroots campaign to push it up the Hottest 100 as high as possible.
The campaign, being run through a Facebook event page, was met with widespread attention from media (Including us! G’day!), support from people in favour of moving the date, and a bunch of pretty horrible rhetoric from people who either outright oppose the issue, or still don’t quite fully grasp the whole concept.
Aside: It’s a simple enough idea, really. Shifting the date to one that doesn’t treat Indigenous history as kind of a B.C./A.D.-type situation, and instead using the day to respectfully acknowledge Australia’s indigenous folk, their culture and traditions, and their troubled history with a British imperialist system that didn’t classify them as humans under law until 1967. In doing so, this creates a platform where future generations of Australians are taught the history of the ground they walk on, and knowledge and respect of Indigenous cultures becomes an equal and vitally important part of modern Australian multi-cultural society. Not at all unlike how Maori culture is represented in modern New Zealand. Then, on another day of national significance (let’s say January 1st to mark the day Australia was Federated as its own nation, for example), you can all go get righteously pissed and blast some Cold Chisel. Everyone wins. Changing the date isn’t about creating more division, it’s about acknowledging the First Nations when they say “Hey, this is a bit shit,” and making a change based on respect and commitment to growth, rather than shouting and doggedly protecting the status quo, which is wilful ignorance. Not bad ignorance. Just wilful.
I digress.
Of those who have voted for the song in response to the protest movement thus far, some have expressed trepidation due to the great Taylor Swift phenomena of 2014/15.
You’ll all no doubt remember the brouhaha from back then, wherein a certain bee-like media organisation spearheaded a campaign to get Swift’s megahit ‘Shake It Off‘ to the number one slot on the list, despite Triple J not actually playing the tune once throughout that calendar year.
The song was ultimately disqualified from the voting process, even though it received enough votes to put it in the Top 20, because it’s Triple J’s damned list and they can do whatever they want. Also there was the tiny fact that commercial brands latched on to the campaign and began using it as promotion, which is a big no-no for the Government-backed Aunty.
But this afternoon, the organisers of the campaign have moved to assuage everyone’s fears that the push might lead to the Js bringing down the banhammer on the tune.
In a Facebook post on the movement’s event page, organiser Simon Bags spoke thusly:
Seems fair enough, right?
The short version of it is this: Even if Triple J actually wanted to disqualify the tune, under their own rules they don’t really have the grounds to. Or, at least, this campaign doesn’t give ’em cause.
Really though, it’s their decision at the end of the day. And after having A.B. Original on multiple times, including a belter of a Like a Version just a few weeks ago, they’d be damn well silly to do it.
So vote away, friends. Free of fear. And you should strongly consider it, too. The tune is a fucking belter.
Source: Facebook.
Photo: A.B. Original/Facebook.
