A Follow Up on my Hottest 100 Predictions

By: Alfie Chadwick Date: January 31, 2024

In my last post I ended by planting my flag and making my predictions for the Hottest 100 for 2023. And on first glance, I’m pretty happy with myself, picking not only the top song, but a good chunk of the top 20. So today I just want to do a quick follow up on how I did.

Top 20

Song	Artist	Predicted
paint the town red	doja cat	5
the worst person alive	g flip	48
saving up	dom dolla	34
rhyme dust	mk	62
prada	cass	31
adore u	fred again	25
what was i made for?	billie eilish	4
rush	troye sivan	9
lovin on me	jack harlow	59
chemical	post malone	7
vampire	olivia rodrigo	1
rumble	skrillex	NA
kill bill	sza	6
atmosphere	fisher	88
nanana	peggy gou	13
sprinter	dave	2
back on 74	jungle	NA
eat your man	dom dolla	NA
therapy	budjerah	NA
sorry instead	spacey jane	NA

The top 10 seems okay, but i did miss a lot of the top 20 completely. I seemed to be undervaluing Australian artists such as Dom Dolla, Spacey Jane, and G Flip, as well as EDM as a genre, which made up a much greater portion of the top 20 than I predicted.

Snubbed Songs

Song	Artist	Predicted
love type	poolclvb	3
super ego	babe rainbow	8
super-vision	dice	14
adored	royel otis	15
dash of speed	rum jungle	21
pretty girl	ice spice	22
attention	doja cat	27
up	lee	29
lost without you	san cisco	30
don’t let me down	gus dapperton	32
daydreaming	young franco	33
exploding	angie mcmahon	35
do it again	benee	36
pets and drugs	the rubens	39
mrs. hollywood	gojo	40
lil boo thang	paul russell	41
into your room	holly humberstone	44
too much	the kid laroi	46
lola	maya	49
make up your mind	cordae	50
can’t play myself	skepta	51
eyes ahead	dice	53
prescription	remi wolf	54
midwest	vacations	55
sinner	the last dinner party	56
calling	metro boomin	57
virginia beach	drake	58
change	laurel	61
who told you	j hus	63
float	safia	64
blak britney	miss kaninna	65
candy apple	teenage joans	66
thinkin bout the nights	the vanns	67
bitter lovers	tash sultana	70
high school drama	lola scott	71
queen	kita alexander	72
toxic trait	stormzy	73
closer to you	memphis lk	74
asking	sonny fodera	75
angel	pinkpantheress	76
2 be loved	lizzo	77
mourning	post malone	78
big fu	david guetta	79
adam	lotte gallagher	80
now and then	the beatles	81
good mood	the rubens	82
imposter	redhook	83
set it off, set it right	vallis alps	84
fried rice	royel otis	85
better love	eliza rose	86
cobra	megan thee stallion	87
something familiar	maya	89
vertigo	griff	90
uh oh	gut health	91
tied up!	genesis owusu	92
like it	kinder	93
the hillbillies	baby keem	95
drive me crazy!	lil yachty	97
messed up	holy holy	98
your funeral	maya	99
highlands	middle kids	100

So there were 55 songs in my predictions that didn’t make it into the countdown, including 3 of my top 20. Funily enough though, a lot of my predictions seemed to line up with peoples opions online with Love Type, Super Ego and Adored all being mentioned as snubs from the hottest 100.

Surprise Songs

Song	Artist	rank
rumble	skrillex	12
back on 74	jungle	17
eat your man	dom dolla	18
therapy	budjerah	19
sorry instead	spacey jane	20
good enough	g flip	24
rich baby daddy	drake	25
rough	g flip	26
dance the night	dua lipa	28
say yes to heaven	lana del rey	29
not strong enough	boygenius	30
get him back!	olivia rodrigo	34
baby again..	fred again	35
boy’s a liar pt. 2	pinkpantheress	36
laced up	hilltop hoods	37
scary movies	the rions	40
pedestal	lime cordiale	42
popular	the weeknd	43
sweetheart	old mervs	47
padam padam	kylie minogue	48
australia	g flip	50
ten	fred again	51
i used to be fun	teen jesus	52
lookin’ out	king stingray	53
more than you know	blink182	54
we don’t talk abo…	thelma plum	55
all-american bitch	olivia rodrigo	56
darkside	bring me the horizon	57
lost	bring me the horizon	58
a&w	lana del rey	60
fall at your feet	peking duk	64
real life	g flip	65
letting go	angie mcmahon	67
f u goodbye	peach prc	68
leaving the light	genesis owusu	69
snooze	sza	70
take what you want	the rions	71
speedracer	teenage dads	74
nobody gets me	sza	75
sofa king	royel otis	76
i don’t wanna be …	ruel	77
bleed	the kid laroi	78
video killed the …	teenage dads	79
7 days	g flip	80
like a girl does	peach prc	81
exes	tate mcrae	82
the summoning	sleep token	83
glue song	beabadoobee	85
fine day anthem	skrillex	87
midnight driving	teenage dads	88
nothing matters	the last dinner party	89
nightmare	polaris	90
did you know that…	lana del rey	91
strawberry daydream	pacific avenue	92
no bad days	the terrys	93
welcome to the dcc	nothing but thieves	95
boys light up	chillinit	96
stay blessed	genesis owusu	97
cool about it	boygenius	98
i miss you	slowly slowly	99
lost the breakup	maisie peters	100

With 55 snubs, we are going to have 55 surprise songs. There doesn’t seem to be a massive trend here. G flip only made it into my countdown twice, so 5 of their songs are in this list. Its also interesting seeing which conventionally popular songs are part of this list. Boy’s a liar pt. 2 by Pinkpantheress and All American-Bitch which peaked at 2 and 10 on the aria charts were left out in my predictions, even though it predicted similar chart toppers in the top 10.

Looking at these plots, it seems that the chart data for these songs didn’t correctly join with the play data from triple J. After cleaning the names, I was hoping that there wouldn’t be too much of a discrepancy. However, in the ARIA charts, “all-american bitch” is listed as “all-american b**ch,” and “boys a liar pt. 2” is listed as “boys a liar”. This kind of discrepancy is probably present throughout my dataset and may have led to some major inaccuracies. However, it is also just part of life when dealing with text data.

Did I do better than Warm Tuna?

Part of my mission when setting out to make these predictions was to outperform 100 Warm Tunas, who utilize a compilation of social media posts to formulate their predictions.

Song	Artist	rank	warm_tuna	my_rankning
paint the town red	doja cat	1	9	5
the worst person alive	g flip	2	11	48
saving up	dom dolla	3	18	34
rhyme dust	mk	4	5	62
prada	cass	5	19	31
adore u	fred again	6	6	25
what was i made for?	billie eilish	7	4	4
rush	troye sivan	8	1	9
lovin on me	jack harlow	9	49	59
chemical	post malone	10	28	7
vampire	olivia rodrigo	11	14	1
rumble	skrillex	12	3	NA
kill bill	sza	13	20	6
atmosphere	fisher	14	23	88
nanana	peggy gou	15	15	13
sprinter	dave	16	22	2
back on 74	jungle	17	13	NA
eat your man	dom dolla	18	59	NA
therapy	budjerah	19	8	NA
sorry instead	spacey jane	20	21	NA

Straight away, I can see that warm tuna did better than me, but by how much?

So, I made up a quick statistic to see how far off our predictions were. This is the sum of the magnitudes of the differences between the predicted score and the actual score. If a song didn’t make the top 100, it’s given the equivalent rank of 101. I then divide this by 100 to get the average deviation for each prediction.

my score: 35.3

warm tuna's score: 26.5

So from these statistics, we can see that my predictions were, on average, about 10 places more off than warm tuna’s.

Next Year?

I reckon this method still has promise, but I need to sort out the name joining issue to ensure that my method is working at its maximum potential. I also want to include genre and artist country into it since it seemed to be an important factor in the final rank that I didn’t account for.