Let’s be honest, everyone thinks their own music taste is the best.
That’s why we have radio music directors and presenters, to actually decide what a radio station will sound like. But, for the last 2 years, Triple J has been giving the audience the metaphorical aux cord for Requestival.
During Requestival, listeners request what they want to hear and the presenters pick songs to play all week. Nothing is off limits, and it’s pure chaos.
From a nerd perspective, Requestival is pretty smart – you can only request from the Triple J app, meaning their app gets more downloads. It’s crowd-sourced content for the presenters, they just have to pick and choose who to talk to about their requests. It’s excellent audience engagement, and makes you listen for longer; waiting to see if your song gets played, and waiting to hear what madness comes next.
We listened most of the week (sorry day jobs) and in case you missed it, these are our highs and lows. By genre/vibe, because it’s the only way we could make sense of the mess.
Meme Tunes
Highs
Doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot (doot doot doot).
Can I borrow a feeling? – Kirk Van Houten
This song is bound to make you feel like the big cheese down at the cracker factory.
Not a fan? I don’t recall saying “good luck”.
Additional special shout out to all the songs that we had only previously heard cuts of on TikTok. Especially this one.
Lows
DAD ROCK
highs
Come On Eileen – Dexys Midnight Runners
A crowd pleaser at the club every time. Also a favourite to fuck up the DJ’s mixing when it changes speed thirty or so times.
The Safety Dance – Men Without Hats
Hits different during COVID. Keep your One Point Five Meters Thanks.
lows
How You Remind Me – Nickleback
The reason we listen to Triple J is to avoid music like this and hearing it during Requestival didn’t make it any easier. Another song about how shitty you treated someone that ends up making you a literal fuck-ton of money. Can’t wait to hear a distorted and crushed rendition of this on the Coles PA system.
Teenage angst
highs
A difficult choice between the original and the Tiborg remix, but it looks like enough people submitted the original. Bulletproof always deserves to be played back twice, if only we had enough lung capacity for it.
I Write Sins Not Tragedies – Panic! At The Disco
It’s a staple to this day. Go to literally any event, be it cool or ~not cool~ and it’s guaranteed to get belted out twice. We didn’t get any other Panic! For the rest of the week though, ripped off.
Teenagers – My Chemical Romance
Continuing the theme of cool but not cool party staples, hearing teenagers come on during prime office work hours quickly reminded us of our age and yeah ngl these days teenagers actually do fucking terrify us.
lows
We know better than to trash anything in this genre, we don’t wanna get banished, so let’s move on.
Cheese
Highs
Barbie Girl is overdone. Can we please try to remember Aqua for their best work?
Adam’s real time reaction truly says it all.
lows
According to Triple J Plays on Twitter this played for 5 consecutive hours. Look, we already knew what to do if the tank was empty or a drink was spilled – guess someone at the station was behaving in an ordinary way too.
Moments that caught us off guard
Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech was played, not the full 15 minutes but a good chunk of it. It came out of nowhere and fired us up nonetheless. An iconic moment. Just don’t look it up on Spotify – we accidentally found a metal track with it somehow dubbed over. Less iconic.
In case you forgot, there was a brief period where Bratz (yes, the dolls) had an animated show. They even released music, hence Rock Angelz. Bratz are having a bit of a comeback at the moment, with the return of early 2000s fashion and it being the 20 year anniversary of the dolls. Regardless of all of that, this song slaps. It’s got some pop punk early 2000s girl group vibes that you don’t even realise are made by the dollz.
Special shout out to the presenters of Triple J for playing this one in it’s full 9 minutes 39 seconds glory.
H2O Theme Song aka Ordinary Girl by Kate Alexa
CLEEEOOOO NAAAAOOOOOO
Nah no apologies for loving this song, it came on during the Friday commute home and it left us stronger, more powerful and way more mermaidy.
Awesome – The Bloody Beetroots, The Cool Kids
An ode to the fever dream that was 2009. I (Adam) lost the password to my iPod Touch years ago, and for that very reason we’re going to be leaving behind any song that appeared in the Ministry of Sound Annual 2010.
Honorable mention
Who do you think you are requesting normal music during Requestival?? Not even songs that Triple J doesn’t play – just songs in the normal music rotation. These are the kinds of people that say no to dessert and think having an air fryer is a personality trait. Live a little!
The Requestival playlist traditionally pops up on Spotify, so keep an eye out and relive the reminder of why it’s important to let the professionals do the music selecting. And maybe think twice next time you try and make a request at a club.