After almost two weeks of speculation, Taylor Swift has been disqualified from Triple J’s Hottest 100, a countdown of the year’s most popular songs as voted for by the radio station’s listeners.
Station presenter Lewis McKirdy announced the decision on air, breaking a thousand Swifty hearts as he did so.
McKirdy said there were “a whole range of reasons” behind the disqualification, and pointed listeners to triplejfeed.com for more information.
The site, which crashed shortly after the announcement, is a Buzzfeed parody titled 8 Hilarious But Totally True Reasons You Didn’t Hear Shake It Off In The Hottest 100. It follows a concerted social media campaign to include Swift’s song Shake It Off in the countdown, originally instigated by Buzzfeed Australia’s Mark Di Stefano who implored readers to tweet #Tay4Hottest100.
The ensuing social media fracas split fans of the countdown into two camps: those who believe Swift’s track is too commercial to belong on the alternative music station, and others who says any such exclusion would be elitism.
In its Buzzfeed parody, Triple J claim the hashtag campaign “bought Tay a one-way ticket to Bansville” and accuse Buzzfeed of trying to “troll the poll”.
The post includes several retweets that reveal some hashtag users as less interested in further popularising Swift’s song and more interested in upsetting the “snivelling indie kids” and “music snobs”. As the post’s author writes: “It became pretty clear, pretty quick that a lot of people just wanted to prod some ‘hipsters’ for the lulz”.
The station also cites a social media post by KFC last week which offered a voucher to anyone who named their favourite Swift song, but which also contained the #Tay4Hottest100 hashtag. According to the rules of the contest, a song may be disqualified if it benefits from commercial endorsement.
“The Hottest 100’s an opportunity for individuals everywhere to cast their votes for their legit favourite songs of the year,” the site went on to say. “The invitation doesn’t extend to Fried Chicken companies eager to wrap their greasy fingers around a freshly-minted hashtag... we’d prefer if people voted for the love of music, not the love of cholesterol.”
The station ended their parody article by saying they “don’t have beef” with the American pop singer. “She’s smart, she’s cool, she’s successful, and she has great taste in BFFs. Shake It Off shows she hates trolls too, so we’ve even got that in common.”
The countdown began at midday, opening with Switch Lanes by Tkay Maidza at No 100.
Had Swift’s song been included, which was unofficially voted into 12th position, it would have kicked the 18-year-old rising star of Australian hip-hop off the list. Social media reaction to the announcement was predictably mixed: Presenters said that more than two million votes were cast for this year’s Hottest 100, the highest number ever, and 52 per cent by male listeners, 48 per cent by women.
Shake It Off was not played on the station in 2014, but was reportedly played 13,511 times on other stations. Milky Chance performed a cover of the song earlier this month, which will automatically qualify for the 2015 Hottest 100 shortlist.
