Alright, now that I can get onto the forums, Hottest 100 is a yearly contest performed by Australia's free to air broadcast "youth" radio station (it is how they originally got funded), paid for the by the government, is called Triple J. Every year people vote for their favourite song from the year and gets compiled into top hundred. This year as a separate thing in the middle of the year it was Hottest 100 of All Time. For every time they do it they release a double disc compilation of 30ish of the songs from the year (I think you can buy a cut back version that is one of the discs if you want now.
So it is voted for by the Australian (largely, voting is online, I assume there is some overseas contingent) public. Normally gets over a million votes, as far as I know it is still the biggest popular music contest in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hottest_100 For the wiki on it
http://www.triplej.net.au For the radio station, they have internet radio and a huuuuuuge archive of old broadcasts, I highly recommend checking out the J Files section, but their mix tapes and all kinds of stuff are good listens. Is where I picked up Tom Waits from.
Edit - Yeah obviously me not being able to reach the DL website for a bit killed my running commentary and I am not picking up where I left off.
Eels - The Longing.