Hottest 100 Time

As all good Triple J listeners will note, voting for the Hottest 100 has just opened (triplej.abc.net.au). The agonising decision about which ten songs to vote for was even more difficult for me this year. I had about twenty songs on my shortlist, none of which I could really justify removing. In the end I did get it down to just ten. I thought I'd go through each song on the list and explain its presence (in alphabetical order according to artist).

1. Eskimo Joe, Black Fingernails Red Wine
I saw them live last year and they were great, but before then I'd already heard this song several hundred times. It's really catchy and might even win the poll this year.

2. The Grates, Science is Golden
It has a cute animated/live action video clip, but it's also very addictive and energetic.

3. Josh Pyke, Memories and Dust
I've discussed this elsewhere already but it's a great song so it was definitely going on my list.

4. The Killers, When You Were Young
Again, I've already discussed this being one of my musical highlights for 2006.

5. The Mountain Goats, Alibi
Cheerful, catchy and like a lot of their stuff it really sticks in your head.

6. The Mountain Goats, Half Dead
The fact that I saw them play this about twelve hours ago might make me slightly biased, but it's a pretty good song too. Not quite up there with their album The Sunset Tree, but still great.

7. OK Go, Here It Goes Again
The video clip for this is also extremely clever (carefully choreographed dancing on treadmills) but the song is one I can't hear too often.

8. Scissor Sisters, I Don't Feel Like Dancing
I've discussed this already too. Another highly addictive song.

9. The Shins, Phantom Limb
I can't say enough about The Shins and how good they are, so I'll save that for when their new album comes out in two weeks.

10. Youth Group, Catching and Killing
It was really hard to choose from the three great songs on their album- Daisychains, Let It Go and this one.