Folks, the optics on this are not good. As I’m sure you’re well aware, late last month Triple J announced that, as of next year, they would be moving the Hottest 100 from Australia Day, thanks to the increasing debate around the significance of the holiday. The sensitive souls over at Triple M, instead of seeing this as an opportunity to reflect on what a day like Australia Day means to Indigenous Australians, they saw it as a power vacuum that needs to be filled with the sort of music your neighbour plays shirtless in his garage with the door open.
As The Music is reporting, Triple M sent out an emailing to subscribers making the announcement and taking a jab at the “hipsters” of the Hottest 100:
So, the taxpayer funded FM has decided that there’ll be no soundtrack for Australia Day. Let’s face it, that’s usually full of hipsters or kids making music on a Mac.
At Triple M, we’re going to give you what you’ve asked for. The perfect Australia Day soundtrack.
We want “Triple M’s Ozzest 100” to include all the songs that define Australian music. That’s why we need your help to build it!
Tell us about your favourite Aussie songs. We don’t care about a Top 40 chart position. who wrote it, or even awards. it’s just got to be Aussie.
Simply tell us the title and artist of your top 3 by clicking the big orange button below. Don’t delay, requests close December 31st. The Triple M Team “Triple M’s Ozzest 100” built by the Triple M Club. Australia wide, Australia Day 2018.
Finally, someone taking a swing at the mighty hipster institution that is the Hottest 100, a countdown that has featured Skrillex no less than four times.
Somehow, instead of just being tone deaf about the date, they managed to make it even worse. A large part of the controversy surrounding the date is that it’s touted as a day that all Australians can get behind, but it actively celebrates the beginning of colonial occupation, which saw countless thousands of Indigenous Australians killed, cultural groups and languages wiped out, and traditional landowners driven from their homes. It’s a day for every Australian to celebrate if you believe that the impact on Indigenous Australia is a trifling footnote, not a deeply disturbing act of violence.
By trying to make it explicitly a celebration of being Australian, it’s just reinforcing the idea that Indigenous Australia isn’t part of ‘real Australia’, propping up the cultural supremacy that allows us to overlook that what we’re celebrating was the beginning of at least one genocide and over two hundred years of violence, mistreatment, neglect, and racism.
But have fun cranking Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again? on the day, by all means.
