The Hottest 100, Triple J’s annual music countdown of its listeners’ favourite songs of the year, is a national institution. The “world’s greatest musical democracy” has become as iconic of modern Australiana as Russell Coight and Lee Lin Chin.
Yet, some worry that Australia’s musical flagship is in danger of losing its identity. This year’s Hottest 100 looks likely to again be dominated by international megastars. Kendrick Lamar’s scorching take-down of Drake, Not Like Us, now sits as the favourite. Charli XCX will no doubt rank highly after the world was swept up in Brat summer. Ditto her fellow alt-pop queens Billie Eilish and Chappell Roan. All deserve their place.
Jerkin’ is a punk song for modern times.Credit: John Angus Stewart
However, after American rapper Doja Cat beat out homegrown legend G Flip to take out last year’s crown, it would be nice to see the Hottest 100 return to its roots. And nothing would be a more fitting choice than Australia’s resident punk deviants, Amyl and the Sniffers – specifically, their blistering anthem Jerkin’. The opening track from their 2024 album Cartoon Darkness, Jerkin is a supercharged bulldozer powered by illegal fireworks. It’s dirty, scrappy, defiant and super fun – a punk song for modern times.
Yet Jerkin’ faces a steep uphill battle to secure top position. While no song is better equipped for a fight, everything that would make it the perfect Hottest 100 winner also renders it an unlikely one. It would be the first hard rock song to win since 2007, it would have to triumph over some of the world’s biggest stars, oh, and it’s a flamethrower of outrageously explicit insults that kicks off with a c-bomb and never lets up. I literally cannot write a single line from Jerkin’ in this column (the uncensored music video, too, featured full-frontal nudity).
Amyl and the Sniffers have established themselves as one of the country’s most beloved rock bands and the torchbearers of Australian punk – following a rich lineage of Aussie punk giants from the Saints and Radio Birdman to Cosmic Psychos and the Hard-Ons, to the first Australian Hottest 100 winner, Spiderbait (with 1996’s Buy Me a Pony). The Hottest 100 has a long history with irreverent Aussie punk, including the likes of Prisoner of Society by the Living End, Russell Crowe’s Band by Frenzal Rhomb, and Bullshit by Dune Rats.
Jerkin’ is everything a great Aussie punk song should be – short, fast, loud, and all the way up in your face. It’s a thundering two minutes of tongue-in-cheek vitriol. Fuelled by a gargantuan Metallica-like riff, Amy Taylor sneers and spits with sardonic venom, belligerent and hilarious in equal measure. The song is the musical equivalent of a pit bull terrier – short but massive, aggressive but lovable, impossible to ignore. It packs the kind of infectious killer chorus that seizes a crowd by its nether regions and demands to be shouted. It must be chanted, bellowed, screeched, fist-pumping deliriously in the air. It’s a communal experience both cathartic and terrifyingly involuntary – like an exorcism, but a fun one.
Unfortunately for the Sniffers (as well as the stalwart headbangers among us), there has been an increasing dearth of hard rock in the top echelon of the Hottest 100. Only two hard rock songs have made the top 10 since Muse won with Knights of Cydonia in 2007 (Uprising by Muse in 2009, and Denzel Curry’s cover of Bulls on Parade in 2019).
