Anthony Albanese spoke to Triple J FM radio this morning, because what else would you expect from the prime minister who for awhile there was known as ‘DJ Albo’ the Monday after the Hottest 100?

Here is how that chat went:

PRIME MINISTER: It was fabulous. I was listening here in The Lodge in Canberra and I listened to the last, I guess about 35 songs. 35 down to one, because I had flown down from Sydney. But I was watching online as they popped up. I mean, some of them, sometimes they popped up, as you know, before they actually came on. And so –
 
LUKA MULLER, HOST: Called out by the PM, brutal.
 
CARISTO: Our socials team. No, it does happen, you know.
 
PRIME MINISTER: It was absolutely fabulous. And I’m old enough to know that the first Hottest 100 was won by Love Will Tear Us Apart. And it wasn’t the first, the top 100 of that year, it was of every year. So, people pitched in and Joy Division won the first time, and then gradually then it evolved into an annual, an annual event night. I still have about ten of the CDs going back – I don’t even know if the CDs are made these days of the Hottest 100, because it was always, you got about 30 of  the best tracks.
 
CARISTO: Wow, you with the stats there PM, on the Hottest 100. Doing our job. I mean, how did your votes go in the end? How many of your votes made the countdown?
 
PRIME MINISTER: I got five out of ten, which was, which was pretty good, I thought. I did have a whole lot. It was really hard. I liked the way the system worked, that you could have essentially a short list or, I had a short list of about 25 and I kept changing. It took me days to press the submit button because I kept changing my mind. One of the ones was Never Tear Us Apart and I ended up not, not making it. It was on there a couple of times and it was off and it was on again.
 
MULLER: Almost backed a winner, but not quite then. I’d love to hear you talk about, yeah, Never Tear Us Apart. So, you were 24 when the winning track, Never Tear Us Apart by INXS came out. Can you take us back to a young Albanese at that age? Were you a music lover? Were you going to gigs?
 
PRIME MINISTER: I certainly was. And I grew up in – I was very lucky to grow up in Sydney at a time where you could see in INXS, Cold Chisel, Midnight Oil, Spiderbait, The Le Hoodoo Gurus, as they were called originally. A whole bunch of these bands in, in local pubs, you know, The Annandale, The Lansdowne, The Hummingbirds, which I don’t think The Hummingbirds made it. They were on my list and off my list a few times. But there were so many great bands you could see for very little money, some of them for free. And it was a great time. And in ‘88 I did the Australian young person’s thing of backpacking around Europe, and at that time, INXS and Midnight Oil were huge. That was when they exploded internationally. And so –
 
MULLER: I’m happy to hear you say that.
 
PRIME MINISTER: If you’re out at clubs there, you could hear that song. So, it reminds me of being in Europe.