The Hottest 100 of All Time on Australia’s government-funded youth radio station, Triple J, has been pretty cool so far. The way it worked is that listeners were asked to submit their top 10. They had over half a million votes, which is pretty cool.
What I am enjoying as I listen to the countdown being broadcast live or the streaming podcast is that even if the song is not to my particular tastes, they are all awesome songs. I can appreciate that each song has a particular power that at a given place and time will serve as part of the biography of someone’s life, often my own. It is like a sonic photo album, with many weird little moments or life-changing events that have been part of my life brought to the surface, often with a bittersweet resonance.