What is the greatest Australian single of the last 25 years?

Idont know if the Liars count

my folks took a trek to engalnad for dad to work when i was in third form and i had to go to school (southbourne btw) and howzat was no.1 in england. i had to explain the meaning of the word "spunk" as i recall. to a guy named steve ridout. on a bus.

Unquestionably.

omg i love this song

The Stems - "At First Sight"
God - "My Pal"
The Triffids - "Beautiful Waste"
Plus what Alba said.

and rightly so!

wtf, bro? course i am!

best single and best cover in wetsuits = Say Goodbye by Indecent Obsession

I can see the bass player from Ch@d's Tree from my desk! if I stand up

-- QUeen Gonne love you for the rest of my night (da...), August 1st, 2005.
love this cd and the cover.were they sponsored by mambo for queensland tour ?

loved melodian records.

GoBs, 'Cattle and Cane'
Do-Re-Mi, 'Man Overboard'
Craven Fops, 'Mustard / When A Whiskey Buys a Whiskey'
Severed Heads, 'Goodbye Tonsils'
Australian Crawl, 'Reckless'
Tactics, 'Coat-tails'
The Church, 'Almost With You'
Thug, 'Dad'
Paul Kelly, 'Sweet Guy'

But, actually, the real answer is 'Samurai Stomp' by Samurai Trash.

this is a fantastic idea. who owns the rights to the black eye stuff?

Haitch OTMFMFFMFM!

in a better world, "dad" would have this status.

loose shoes, tight pants, mongrels and sheepfuxors

Yer H, giss the song! trayce at gmail thingy.

This was absolutely huge when I was in Australia in 1988-89. There are more annoying songs, but not many! (Noooooo! Make it stop!)

-- scriblerus

It has a good bassline, as I recall.

Tael of A Saeghors - TMOTDTF
Gargoyle - The Lighthouse Keepers
The Sad Clown - The Singles
Bitter Desire - Kids In The Kitchen
Charity - Sekret Sekret
Dancing In The Moonlight - Coloured Stone
A Long Story - Tactics
Witchen Kopf - People With Chairs Up Their Noses
Win Or Lose - Whirly Wirld
All The Birds Fly Past My Window - Smart Music
Taking Shape - The Flies
The Monster - Shower Scene From Psycho
Stumbling And Falling - The Introverts
Beautiful Waste - The Triffids
That's The Way - Deckchairs Overboard
The Trumpet Song - The Particles

I've been racking my brains trying to remember how 'My Pal' goes. Was God one of Ollie Olsen's projects?

you're thinking of No. God was Joel Slbersher, the late Tim Hemensley, and two other guys (one of which is apparently a very good teacher of various musical instruments)

and, I think it was the 'Once we were scum now we are gods' title which was making me confuse No with God.

Not sure what the best thread for this is, but from over the ditch it's interesting looking at the Triple J "top 100 Australian songs" thing in a way I think I'd find exasperating for the NZ equivalent* - media chatter about Anthony Albanese's list popped up here plus some NZ music journalists posting their lists. Was a nice excuse to revisit New Buffalo/the Paradise Motel/HTRK etc.

* (which would probably be all Six60/LAB and maybe Dave Dobbyn rather than the Flying Nun overseas people would vote for/expect)

I almost voted for New Buffalo's "About Last Night" but decided I should choose between that and The Avalanches' "A Different Feeling", and ultimately went for the latter in order to reduce the indie-heavy quality of my ballot (The Church / The Triffids / The Underground Lovers / The Paradise Motel). "Change In Mood" was my clear number one though.

Ooooh, had meant to at least consider voting. Still time, I see. (Then again, my recent Classic 100 ballot only helped get maybe 2 pieces into the aggregate 200 despite going actively populist, so maybe that's enough pointlessness for one year lol.)

Yay for "Change in Mood". I probably wouldn't have thought of it unprompted, but it's aging well.

Seems I commented on this thread when it was new. Bit scary that that 25 years now barely overlaps with the current 25.

Are there still Paradise Motel fans in this world?

My mind has turned again to potentially voting dammit. Most pointless gesture so far: creating a write-in entry for THIS.

i know they are kinda feted / commercially doing fine

but

i feel like maybe Models don’t get enough love -?

like, their run of singles up to about Cold Fever is pretty awesome, great post-punk / art rock / synth pop stuff (and even the big lunge for the charts has pleasing results)

I'm sympathetic to this view. People around Melbourne a decade+ older than me always seemed to speak in hushed tones about their early shows, and the belated compilation of demos and live-to-air performances ( https://www.discogs.com/release/3294584-Models-Melbourne ) was eventually my way back in. The early releases are all pretty good, if distinctly early-80s-sounding with more than a few mere sketches-of-songs. The nice succinct Cut Lunch is an actual masterpiece lol.

I don't even mind late high-gloss stuff like Hold On (actually amongst the first things I heard) on the increasingly rare occasions I hear it in the wild.

I distinctly remember being stoned and laying down with my boombox behind my pillow cos local and or general: great stereo album.

I would ride any day for “I Hear Motion”

Are there still Paradise Motel fans in this world?

God, I haven't listened to them in a long time. I'll need to dig out my CDs and have a listen.

In the end I did vote in the JJJ thing, for the first time ever. I eventually made it a game of creating the least worst ballot I could *without* any write-in bespoke entries lol. So far in the countdown, that has meant I helped "Streets of Your Town" and "Since I Left You" into lowly placements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_J_Hottest_100_of_Australian_Songs

It was startling how much the very start of the countdown felt like tuning in to MMM 30 years ago or something.

Even just reading the words “No Aphrodisiac” made me wanna gag

LOL. Can dig.

I think my true answer to this is Eternally Yours, my vaguely realistic worthy winner would probably be Under The Milky way or (I’m) Stranded

I wonder if Died Pretty will rate a mention

lol Screaming Jets

I arguably should have voted for "Eternally Yours", a more 'strategic' choice; I actually ticked the box on "Theme from 'Mad Flies...'" shocked that I wouldn't have to create a manual entry lol

I forget that Hunters & Collectors' "Holy Grail" exists. If *that* is the extent of their legacy for these purposes in 2025 I'll feel sad on their behalf.

such a dud song - surely ‘throw your arms around me’ will get a look in tho? neither song fit to hold a candle to the slab or talking to a stranger - or lumps of lead!! but so it goes

some dreadful songs in this list!

Under the milkyway too low!

"Horses" is possibly the most jarringly non-Triple-J-core entry yet lol. (And a Rickie Lee Jones cover just feels kinda RONG here.)

Can't get you out of my head: The gonadarche stimulus of the later-millennial Australian

speaking for a friend

there's no way "love at first sight" is placing higher than "can't get you out of my head" so truly what's the point

"Throw Your Arms Around Me" (emsworth OTM) earns a *phew* from me in this context even though I never need to hear it again.

No better (worse) way to ruin the walking on a dream high than Jet

i am reminded of a great radio moment some time in the slightly blurry 90s

as i remember it they were doing some kind of hottest 100 songs of all time

and the seemingly 12-year old presenter rang up nick cave in brazil (?) to ask him how he felt about the mercy seat coming in at 97 in the hottest 100 songs of all time!!!!

“Pretty shit,” says nick

nervous laughter from the presenter, who asks why he feels that way

“well,” explains nick, “can you think of 96 songs that are better than The Mercy Seat?”

and it all kind of tailed off after that

was reminded of this exchange seeing Spacey Jane at #36 in this cursed poll - like, it is cool and right that some tunes from the last 10 years should be there, but honestly, Spacey Jane????

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9464-shine-on/

xp that is so good. Nick otm

Speaking of which, all of the three (that's the maximum for every artist) NC/Bad Seeds tracks amongst their pre-formatted entries were mid-late 90s or so. I think we've seen two of them. I'm not sure why they build such a distortion into the voting process. Something like "Mercy Seat" required manual write-in and may well have been doomed before anyone cast a ballot?!

Has Smoko placed yet?

"the mercy seat" would never place in something like this to begin with

I still think a lot about the first time they did these all-time polls back in 1989/1990 - I think it was the 1990 one I had a little flyer-sized handout of the results and it was such a formative document for me

I am sure nostalgia bias plays a huge part but I still think it's a pretty cool list - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_J_Hottest_100,_1990

nb those polls weren't Australian-only obviously

I was just looking that! Part of me has to be reminded that the current pool of ~3 million voters bears no resemblance to them wot were responsible for the 1989/1990 lists.

<as if reinforce this, John Farnham appears lol>

as if *to* reinforce this

If Dance Monkey doesn't win this you've failed as a nation

Oh sorry, had my notes scrambled! I meant uh. If Somewhere Down The Barrel or You Let My Tyres Down doesn't win. Apologies for the miscommunication

I think I had the latter on my ballot, at least. (But I dare say we've failed as a nation regardless, tbh.)

Going to throw in Brando's Island "Auto Warfare"
Drums, synth, vibraphone and vocals. Couldn't have been made anywhere else
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nu5xd4oxCI
it was on bandcamp but that seems to have vanished

the countdown results:

https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/triple-j-hottest-100-of-australian-songs-updating-live-80578/

is… shivers gonna be in there somewhere?

like it feels equally likely to be in the top 10, or to not place at all

The Mercy Seat - will this be in the top 10?

look what's in at 10

Somebody That I Used To Know' - Goyte (feat. Kimbra)

Triple J Hottest 100 of Australian Songs - #10

'Somebody That I Used To Know' - Goyte (feat. Kimbra) | #Hottest100 #Hottest100OfAustralianSongs pic.twitter.com/3ov3tepK6o

— Hottest 100 of Australian Songs Updates (@hot100updates) July 26, 2025

9 the Mercy Seat
8 Win/Lose - Whirlywirld
7 Hot With Fleas - Severed Heads
6 Do The Job - Use No Hooks
5 No, Your Product - The Saints
4 Everybody Moves - Died Pretty
3 Sweet and Sour - The Takeaways
2 Too Young For Promises - Koo De Tah
1 Fuck your dad by Thug

I was about say that observers outside Australia may learn about the likes of Cold Chisel for the first time around this point, but CC appeared before I even finished typing lol.

is Release the Bats too alternative to feature in the top 10?

Too Young For Promises - Koo De Tah

Must refresh my memory of this. Memory trace sounds groovy inside my head.

countdown link:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-26/hottest-100-australian-songs-triple-j-live-updates/105568616

Lol ems.

Lil but true

Not in the top 10 predictions:

Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport

Streets of Your Town

"streets of your town" was already 84

Straya luvs a lesser Brisbane band several orders of magnitude more, frustratingly.

"untouched" at #3 is way way better than these usually go

^ and definitely more interesting more than Powderfinger, in case it was unclear which Brisbane folk I was dissing. :)

weird #1? Like, I didn’t know there was any great affection for that tune out there

i don't particularly care for "never tear us apart" (it is extremely well known though, it's not surprising to see it so high) but at least it wasn't hilltop hoods

Jjj always feels like music for tradies / building sites.

yeah i kind of think of it as a decent fourth single from a mega-hit LP but certainly not a high point of Australian music or anything- ah well it is an interesting result i spose, in a boring kinda way

Xp

Is there data on how much of the total vote anyone got? The list is kinda scattered.

i don't think they usually put that out unfortunately

re #1, I was a mad INXS fan up to The Swing and then fell away pretty rapidly, but I recently heard NTUA and thought damn, that really is a great song. So I can’t disagree. I found 2-4 very weird choices, the Crowdies are a Finn band and hence NZ despite pleading for the rhythm section, and Missy Higgins is one of my most loathed artistes. “Flame Trees” is another worthy top 10, a song you sing along to and suddenly find a lump in your throat without warning.

Too Young For Promises - Koo De Tah

Must refresh my memory of this. Memory trace sounds groovy inside my head.

― Nag! Nag! Nag!, Saturday, 26 July 2025 19:14 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

it is an absolute banger!

To think that this lame-o nation celebrates a song as vomitously bad as My Happiness when we have achieved this kind of greatness!

Crowded House were formed in Australia, three out of four members in their first few lineups were Australian*, they were a registered Australian business with an Australian management (in Sydney, and an official fan club in Melbourne), and all the members lived in Australia.

*Eddie Rayner’s stint on keys in 1988 was the only time they achieved parity, the 2020+ lineup with both Finn sons is the only time they’ve been majority Kiwi.

phew i guess it is settled now

Huh, wonder why e.g. the Easybeats or the Seekers don't make this kind of list but the Angels / Daddy Cool do.

Thought maybe Courtney Barnett or Cut Copy would have popped up.

Koo De Tah a total banger - very tempted to try and claim them as Kiwi, ha.

"eagle rock" and "am i ever going to see your face again" have longevity due to their meme status for lack of a better word. very little cultural legacy for most other stuff older than the 80s

Yeah, I feel like those two might still *just* get some rotation on the sort of oldies radio a medical receptionist might inflict on her waiting room. Alongside perhaps Bon Scott-era AC/DC, Skyhooks, Jo Jo Zep & the Falcons, '70s Billy Thorpe, and "Evie" (the almost-the-Easybeats track which just scraped in.) With boomers thinning out, the sixties is retreating into the mist now, for better or worse.

Amusingly, I just tuned to such a station to check the vibe. "Beach Boys coming up", they announced. The track turned out to be ... yep, "Kokomo" lol.

even the 70s barely placed at all in this

just realised (i’m) stranded wasn’t on this list and now i am angry

well that triangulates the voting demographic pretty tightly. For my part I can't believe that utterly mediocre pub rap came second overall.

With the voting pool bulging to several million people these days the likes of The Saints were probably always be going to be defeated by, like, Savage Garden and Daryl Braithwaite. Older music that sold by the truckload. (And a smidge more recently.)

I haven't checked that Ozzest 100 list MMM did when Triple J vacated Australia Day, but I wonder if we got something closer to that than something conspicuously Triple-J-inflected.

Yeah, a lot of overlap. :)

https://musicfeeds.com.au/news/songs-made-triple-ms-ozzest-100/

Wait, was Friday On My Mind really not on this list

Delete Australia

white Australia rarely been good at culture.

Honestly the Triple M list is better!

Go-Betweens at exactly #100 conveying delicious "grudging acknowledgment" vibes.

No Tina Arena, no credibility

Tina Arena is a French musician.

:)

I'm talking about the Australian one!

Same Tina Arena. I think sic is having a dig at me having a dig at the Crowdies.

interesting list, i knew a lot more of these than i thought i would, was admittedly surprised that Troye wasn't on the list particularly given his recent rise, and also surprised that Australia seemed to care about Silverchair long after everyone with sense had forgotten they existed.

It's the middlebrow dadcore/mumcore Harvey Norman demographic doing most of the voting. Nobody with adventurous taste listens to JJJ.

the few actual pop songs (kylie, veronicas) on the list got there because they were truly gigantic hits, sivan doesn't have anything that compares to those and is super recent

yeah, makes sense

Double J is counting down 200-101 in tiny instalments all the week.

The likes of "Don't Change", "Cattle & Cane" and "Blackfella/Whitefella" ended up in the #190-200 bracket. Oof.

Never knew what Triple J was, other than some live versions of songs I like from 'Triple J Sessions.' Streaming it now for the first time!

This is apparently where they'll incrementally reveal the rest of the #101-200, should you wish prolong the misery lol. (Should be 10 more after 4pm AEST.)

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/doublej/music-reads/features/hottest-100-australian-songs-200-101/104701408

Same Tina Arena. I think sic is having a dig at me having a dig at the Crowdies.

― assert (matttkkkk)

I was just goofing on my own defense of the Crowdies


also surprised that Australia seemed to care about Silverchair long after everyone with sense had forgotten they existed.

― czech hunter biden's laptop (the table is the table)

oh boy just wait until you hear about how America hangs onto caring about American bands that nobody else heard to begin with!

186. Helen Reddy — 'I Am Woman'

OMG. This didn't even cross my mind. Respeck!

The top 1000 aussie songs of all time!

Fuck I can’t believe that Triple M doesn’t have ‘Rain’ by Dragon, what is WRONG with this country (yes, quite a few things, I know)

*Triple M list

Dragon may fall on the wrong side of the, um, Split Enz/Crowded House divide. ie. Australian residents for significant spans of time, but formed in NZ, and key members tended to be NZers right through.

Because I seemingly can't go 5 posts without a Go-Betweens reference in thread, the above reminds me that Robert Forster found Dragon (Marc Hunter specifically) illustrative of one his amusing "rules of Rock'n'Roll".

I turn a corner and face a street with the slight curl of a horseshoe to its shape, lined with an impressive run of terrace houses. As I proceed, I see at the far end of the street, 80 or 90 metres away, a tall, thin man approaching. We are like two gunfighters in a Western, advancing from either end of town. The drama of this little scene reinforced by the fact that no one else is around. We keep on walking and when he is about 20 metres away, I realise that the person in view, sharing this early morning street with me, is Marc Hunter, the lead singer of Dragon. He is an inch taller than my six foot three, his black hair is short with a red streak, his high-cheek-boned, feline face is handsome and relaxed, and he is wearing a black velvet jacket, open shirt and tight jeans. He is ramrod straight and his chin is high. He looks fucking incredible. I have just had time to clock all this when he is upon me, giving a nod and a smile as he passes. I know that he doesn’t know who I am. Another realisation comes seconds later, a mental zap that he has sent from his mind to mine. I get it. Being a rock star is a 24-hour-a-day job.

He didn’t have to look so good so early – he just can’t help it. There could have been a stage and 10,000 people positioned at the end of the street, and he wouldn’t have had to break stride – a check of the hair, perhaps – to strut to the microphone and perform a full show with his band. He was prepared and it wasn’t just the clothing – it was something more important than that, easy to miss when blinded by the bling and clichés of rock stardom, the limousines, entourage, groupies, the tattoos and luxury hotels – it’s to do with attitude. A haughtiness, a regal grab at life, a mood, that doesn’t just come on at six o’clock in the evening when showtime is close. Rock stars are ready at breakfast. He was probably only going to the shop to get milk and the paper, and yet there could have been a gaggle of teenage fans waiting at the corner – the ego allows for that situation – or a passing stranger like me, and he wasn’t going to let us down; we’d get the full show too – even at 7 am. That’s the lesson he flashed in passing, and if I hadn’t have been there, he would have been looking as good, still happy to groove on his own aura.

I love that bit - is that the same article where he talks about how to have good hair?

Somehow never knew that Dragon were NZ! Thank you for educating me

some stats on votes

164. Tina Arena — 'Chains' !!!

Curious whether Danii Minogue and Jamie Redfern et al got any votes now.

oh my god, I just checked and there are songs by Jet and Wolfmother in the 100. Wolfmother. And Jet.

Chains is an incredible song sorry

OTM

Just quietly, I like to see Italian sisters doing well on principle lol. But really didn't anticipate her being *that* close to contention in a list dominated by tepid 21st century Triple-J-core and boomers wielding electric guitars.

Not super-enormously displaced from the 100, it turns out:

159. Troye Sivan — 'Rush'

But neither was:

147. Nikki Webster — 'Strawberry Kisses'

TIL the Bee Gees are not actually Australian

The triple J list is kinda bad.

As for my favorite Australian single of the past 25 years I’ll pick

Jack J - Thirstin

Or “something (on my mind)”

I fell for their scam and tuned to Double J for one bracket. 140-131 might be the blandest stretch yet. Haha, wait, actually "Smoko" is #131, finally saving me from coma, at least.

lol BlueJuice

the "long Howard Era" of Australian music has a lot to answer for

Literal LOL

Interesting to only now see these Lime Cordiale chaps show up. I'm mainly conscious of seeing them pop up a *lot* in the annual Hottest 100's, but they don't seem to have much of profile outside the JJJ ecosystem. (Or do they?) Perhaps not all that much durability within that context either? (Unless perhaps they reign over the mysterious #101-130 zone here lol.)

Google has noticed me paying way too much attention to this nonsense and pointed me to this thing on brand relationships that helped some tracks. I feel a little unclean now.
https://themusicnetwork.com/creative-placements-impacted-the-hottest-100-of-australian-songs/

124. The Saints — '(I'm) Stranded'

122. Archie Roach — 'Took The Children Away'

In a list created by committee (even a Triple M committee) these surely tick some boxes (first generation punk and indigenous anthems) and make your list look a bit less weird, at least. Nice that the masses placed them fairly proximate to the 100 here.

I'd like to think that Shannon Noll, like Nikki Webster, resulted from some sort of coordinated troll campaign lol.

So Sia and a (second) Kylie Minogue track are what *just* missed the 100. And apparently Skyhooks, the first band ever played on JJ(J), just missed the 200, at #201.

Mildly infuriating to finally confirm that nothing from my ballot appeared in the 100-200 range and in the process be reminded of the existence of that cloying-as-an-insurance-jingle Birds of Tokyo thing (#108) lol.

wow i mean i guess this exercise has been pretty informative to me inasmuch as i had no idea people were so enduringly fond of dire corporate landfill indie tunes in this country, but i guess people can be nostalgic for anything (says the guy who owns an uncomfortable number of Mondo Rock cassettes)

there's nothing triple j loves more than the direst landfill indie, sadly

My most unfortunate nostalgia is possibly for the period in childhood when they went national and seemed, for a time, like a decent adjunct to 3RRR/3PBS locally, which *still* inexplicably makes me *want* to give Triple-J the benefit of the doubt somewhat, but ... yeah. *shudder*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukNOaKeUEQY

this is still the most loathsome song triple j has ever exposed me to

Okay yeah, I probably like some of the gawky antecedents of this sort of silliness admittedly but it doesn't add up to much and it's hard to imagine it rewards repeat exposure lol. Commenter seems OTM: "not gonna lie, if someone sent me messages of just 'do do do do do'- I’d block them."

These results were completely baffling. I keep thinking i'll see some stat : inxs wins with 0.93 of the vote, closely followed by someone else on .0926 of the vote.