A Follow Up on my Hottest 100 Predictions

  • By: Alfie Chadwick Date: January 31, 2024
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    • 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.