Hottest 100 Of All Time

This week Triple J has been playing the Hottest 100 of all time as chosen by listeners this year. I was nervously anticipating Kings of Leon taking out the top spot, an abundance of hip hop and dance music and perhaps even the likes of Pez managing to make an appearance. But the music gods are watching over us, or perhaps, as some have asserted, Generation X has merely outvoted Generation Y. Or maybe Generation Y know that the best music doesn't all come from recent years and have been more broad minded with their voting.

There have been some surprises... Kings of Leon's Sex on Fire was at number 90, not top ten as predicted by some. Hunters and Collectors' Throw Your Arms Around Me has already appeared at number 23 when it was also thought to be a candidate for the top spot. The most pleasant surprise is the variety and the number of classic songs. There have been a couple of songs by the Beatles, a couple from the Rolling Stones, AC/DC and Michael Jackson, but it's not all a Triple M-listener voted list. There's grunge classics by Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins, recent stuff from Powderfinger, the Killers, Gotye and the Shins and predictable appearances from New Order and Crowded House. I was pleased to see Ben Folds Five make it, although Army was clearly not favoured over Brick as I'd hoped it might have been.

Before any further analysis can be carried out, the top twenty must be revealed. Will Kings of Leon score another song in the countdown? Will Nirvana take out number one, or will it be Joy Division... or something else?