Chappell Roan has taken the number one spot in Australia’s largest music poll, Triple J’s Hottest 100, with her song Good Luck, Babe!
The American singer-songwriter enjoyed a breakthrough year in 2024, when her debut album proved a sleeper hit in the year after its release – taking her from obscurity to global fame. Good Luck, Babe!, a follow-up single released after her album began climbing the charts, has since become Roan’s biggest hit.
Coming in at No 2 was Australia’s Royel Otis, who took the runner-up spot with their cover of UK pop star Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s noughties hit Murder on the Dancefloor. Their indie-rock take on that sparkly pop classic, released as a Triple J Like A Version, went viral last year, amassing over 67m streams globally, and reaching No 1 on the US Alternative Airplay chart. The Sydney pop duo also had two original tracks feature in the poll.
But beyond the top two, this year’s countdown was dominated by two other international pop stars: Charli xcx and Billie Eilish.
Charli xcx, who painted 2024 neon green with her smash hit album Brat, had eight different tracks place in the countdown. Her highest ranking was Guess, a smutty collaboration featuring Eilish, which placed at No 6. The TikTok sensation Apple appeared at No 20 and the remixed version of Girl, So Confusing, featuring New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde, landed at No 26.
Eilish, meanwhile, landed at No 3 with the lovestruck Birds of a Feather and had a further six solo songs place in the poll.
But homegrown artists were noticeably few and far between in this year’s countdown, with just 29 songs coming from Australian acts. That’s a steep decline from previous years: in the 2023 Hottest 100, 52 of the songs came from Australian artists, while the 2022 Hottest 100 featured 57 tracks from local acts.
Triple J executives have attributed the fall in part to a changing music industry, in which social media and streaming platforms are increasingly important for music discovery – but can also be tough to crack.
“It’s a combination [of factors] – it’s obviously been a big year of releases from some key [international] artists, Charli xcx and Billie Eilish in particular,” says Lachlan Macara, the head of Triple J. “I also think you’ve got Australian artists competing on a global scale [on social media and streaming] … what I hear from Australian artists is that it can be a real challenge to cut through the algorithm.”
Macara sees the results as “a chance to have a wider conversation about how we can all support Australian music.”
Certainly, Australian music had a tough time on the charts in 2024. Just five out of 100 songs on Aria’s year-end charts were Australian – and one of them was Vance Joy’s Riptide, released more than ten years ago. Riptide is still the current No 1 track on the Aria Australian singles chart and was recently revealed as the most streamed Australian song by Australians on Spotify in 2024.
And Triple J, perhaps once the most important platform for breaking new Australian music, has seen its own taste making influence wane. Listener numbers have steadily decreased in recent years. The station captured just 4.3% of broadcast audiences in 2023-2024, down from 4.6% the previous year and 5.5% the year before that – with the majority of listeners older than Triple J’s core 18-24 demographic.
The highest placing original Australian track was the electronic track Girl$ from producer Dom Dolla, at No. 7, while acts like RÜFÜS DU SOL and Amyl and the Sniffers both enjoyed multiple entries in the poll. A total of 2.4m votes were cast in the countdown, which was broadcast on Triple J on Saturday.
This was the first Hottest 100 without former music director Richard Kingsmill, who departed the station after 35 years at the end of 2023 in a rumoured redundancy – part of a restructure that saw several other senior staff members also exit. This month, the station celebrated 50 years on air.
Despite a disappointing result for homegrown acts in the Hottest 100, Macara says Triple J remains committed to platforming Australian artists. The station says it does play more than 50% Australian music every week – above its government-mandated quota of 40%, and much higher than the commercial radio quota of 25%.
“I think especially in our 50th year, we’ve got some big things cooking to remind people about the unique cultural worth of Australian music,” Macara says.
