Triple J’s placement of The Wiggles at the top of their Hottest 100 has left plenty of people pissed off

By creammagazine, January 24, 2022

As if it’s not enough The Wiggles are dumbing down our children, this contemptible lot is also rorting the Australian radio scene.

The Wiggles made it to the number one spot this weekend in Triple J’s Hottest 100. Obviously, it was a tactic on the government-funded station’s behalf to try and get tongues wagging, as if to have listeners thinking, “Ooh, aren’t they cool and ironic to be opening up their charts to include a naff children’s act?”.

In short, it’s not cool; only a daft, desperate attempt at breaking tradition.

The Wiggles got to the top of Triple J’s Hottest 100 with a cover version of the Tame Impala song, Elephant. Not only are listeners and media upset at the ridiculousness in sound of the cover version but over the fact that it’s a cover version in the first place.

Triple J, after all, is supposed to represent innovation and progression in music, not pastiche and retrogression (save for the slowly debilitating ‘Like A Version’ series).

“Every 90s’ Hottest 100 is better than today,” wrote one Twitter user, Higgo74.

Added another upset listener: “The #TripleJ  hottest 100 music sucks… Surely the top 100 in the 60s, 70s and 80s wasn’t so freaking bad with crap music” (perhaps not realising there was no Triple J in the 60s and 70s, although we’re fairly certain he’s referring to charts in general).

Other critics called the number one placement “a bin job”, “a joke”, and a “downhill” move.

Personally, we stopped tuning in to Triple J a decade ago, when the internet began to provide us with a plethora of specialised and eclectic music channels that didn’t deviate from our serious love of music, and where we didn’t have to put up with too-cool-for-school-but-deadpan-as-batshit on-air announcers.

And on that note, imagine all the heartache it has caused all those struggling indie bands to note that an inane children’s act – already worth tens of millions of dollars – has snapped yet another career opportunity from them.

No seriously, Triple J, get your act together. It is our hard-earned tax dollars that pay your wages, after all.

And don’t get us started on the subject of conflict of interest, seeing as The Wiggles and Triple J are both key affiliates of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Self-congratulatory much? We think so.

Lisa Andrews & Antonino Tati