HEY GUYS, GUESS WHAT!
Summer’s just about here, which means Triple J – the magnificently devious lot that they are – are gearing up to launch unto us all their glorious annual pissing contest, the Hottest 100 – AKA the one and only thing that threatens to tear the fabric of our country apart on a yearly basis, reducing us all to naught but braying wolves, snapping at the necks of those who dare not get jiggy to Hotline Bling.
If you recall correctly, the last countdown was a particularly spiteful and loud affair, largely thanks to online captioned GIF gallery Buzzfeed and their weaponised spite machine that was the #Tay4Hottest100 campaign. Truly the work of a bonafide megalomaniac, that.
Well meaning inter-media-organisational chiding aside, the inevitability of the Hottest 100 brings with it one other certainty – people with a far greater knowledge of numbers than you or I will attempt to dissect the process and predict the outcome.
And this year’s first prediction has arrived before even a single vote has been cast by the Australian public.
A blogger simply known as “Patrick” has studied the statistical patterns of past Hottest 100 lists and come up with not only a prediction of the top 10 for 2015, but also made the bold statement that it could be the year that a record falls.
Through analysing the performance of previous top 10 placed artists, and looking at the list as a whole, Patrick has come up with a number of interesting stats.
- Placing second in the Hottest 100 is a virtual death knell for chart-topping aspirations, with zero entries in history having gone on to conquer the mountain.
- Artists with multiple contenders in a single year have a far greater chance of moving up the list than artists with only one single entry.
- Only three times has an artist top the Hottest 100 with a single entry on the list – Dennis Leary, The Cranberries, and Augie March.
- The voting public, by and large, exhibits a favouritism or patriarchal slant towards male voices and male-populated bands.
In addition, he suggests that it’s Courtney Barnett, Tame Impala, The Wombats, and Florence & the Machine that have the greatest chance of scoring multiple entries into this year’s list – even going so far as to suggest that Florence & the Machine could be in line to break Wolfmother‘s record of most entries in a single Hottest 100. Wolfmother set that particular bar in 2005 with 6 entries; this particular prediction suggests Florence could top that with 7.
The predicted Top 10 for 2015 is reasonably difficult to argue with. But, y’know, it’s still only just a prediction.
But with that said, it looks like this:
- Lean On – Major Lazer, DJ Snake & MØ
- Downtown – Mackelmore & Ryan Lewis et al
- The Trouble With Us – Marcus Marr & Chet Faker
- Do You Remember – Jarryd James
- Hoops – The Rubens
- Let It Happen – Tame Impala
- Can’t Feel My Face – The Weeknd
- Say My Name – Peking Duk & Benjamin Joseph
- Hotline Bling – Drake
- King Kunta – Kendrick Lamar
If you feel like having your brain caved in by statistical metrics, the entire blog post is actually a pretty damned interesting read. Get well amongst it over here.
In the meantime, start prepping your long and shortlists for voting, which is due to open at any moment now. You can begin tearing each other apart for everyone’s clearly inferior taste in music whenever you’re ready.
Photo: Dominique Charriau via Getty Images.
