No Friggin' Ad's.

One of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's greatest achievements was to set up the youth radio station no known as Triple J. It is a government owned national station that has no friggin ad's and plays a wide genre of music including Alternative, Hip Hop, Metal and techno. It is hard to be pleased with all the music they play given the wide variance in genres (and I'm not a big fan of the latter two genres) but it does try to cover the spectrum well and has a good focus on unearthing Australian talent. They are not the type of station that plays the same top 40 songs over and over again.

Just about everyone you speak to have a sentimental attachment to the music they listened to from their late teens to early 30's. i am no different and Triple j helped me along with those emotional bonds. In the last few years, my interest has been more towards politics so my radio listening has moved away from Music and onto the AM dial, as such, I've lost track of many of the new bands that are popular with the youth of today. I still tend to listen to Triple J over the Christmas and summer breaks.

one of the biggest Triple J summer rituals is the Hottest 100 countdown on Australia Day. Voting opens on New Years Day and stays open for 20 days. I vote every year, but voting gets harder every year as the bands I used to love and listen to slip out of fashion or lose their edge. This year was very difficult for me and I had much catching up to do - it was obvious early on that listening to an hour or two's radio in the car each day for a month wasn't going to cut it this year. Today, I voted in this years countdown.

I've needed to get creative in finding new songs. I've searched top 10 lists and previewed the favourites and picked the songs I like out of it. I remember years where I would struggle to get down to 10 songs from a short list of 30, this year I barely made the 10.

My standout choice was Icona Pop's "I Love It"! - i first heard it on an ad but it was ringing in my head for a week or so and is the only new song this year to give me an ear worm. I was happy to discover that the Presets, Metric, The Herd, Hilltop Hoods and Regina Spektor were still pumping out decent tunes and also voted for some bands I had heard of but their music is relatively newer to me - Seth Sentry, Birds Of Tokyo and Rudimental.

Whilst the exercise was difficult it was not in vain. I made an opportunity to familiarise myself with some of this years new songs, even if I didn't vote for it. Now all I need to do is wait for the countdown on Australia Day.