Jop Tournament Round 3.1

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Into the last 16!


[Poll #927757]


Reason, recoil, and repent in the comments.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Human League vs Madonna: This was the hardest of the four - I like both tracks but my love for them has dulled a bit. In the end it's the multiple voices and viewpoints in the Human League song that sway me, and Phil's discomfort seems richer than Madge's rapture.

Jackson vs Joy Division: The easiest of the four. Disco beats despair, as Joy Division's story proves anyway.

Missy vs Michael: Frank's comment last time about the anger and fear and wit and suchlike in Billie Jean convinced me that it was more than a warhorse, but I'm still voting for Missy.

Britney vs Pet Shops: Another fairly easy tick even though it's not my favourite PSB track (7th or 8th favourite single, maybe) - the discussion last time about "Are people just voting for Madonna because it's Madonna?" springs to mind, maybe I am just voting for the Pets because it's them, but they did and do mean an awful lot to me, and it's hard to separate the particular connections they made with me from the music.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

These were VERY HARD.

The first two fites are between evenly matched B+ songs. The last two fites are all A+++. I am sticking with Toxic over WEG though, the former being in my top ten pop songs of ALL TIME (WEG would probably make the top 25). Missy vs Jacko is too close to call musically so I went for the one with the better video.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

The thing with all the torturous fights and bad results in the previous rounds is that it’s getting easier now! No real hesitation about any of these though I feel kind of wrong in ticking DSTYGE and not the waaay superior Billie Jean – it’s all about their opposition.

[infov0re.livejournal.com]

"Don't Stop.." vs "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is totally, totally killing me.

21 tick salute (off topic)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Canon fans may be interested to know that as soon as I have got my pile o work finished for this week I will be compiling CANON RESULTS - all of them, right from the beginning - and putting them on a post linked to from the info page. So if you ever need to know the Top 10* Beautiful South songs you'll know where to look. So if you want to change your mind on any of them (http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/tag/canon) make sure you do it today! There will be fresh canon action tomorrow lunchtime.

*I will be listing only the Top 10 for each artist, but will link to the original poll.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

These fites frequently leave me wondering whether I would vote the same way if, for example, I were at home when I saw the poll and could listen to each track, instead of being sitting at my desk at work.

Case in point, "Toxic," which I know is quite good, but on some level I connected with WEG. And the, erm, emotion there wins me over. All Toxic had Britney was in a uniform. But maybe if I could listen to Toxic, because I WEG is certainly well-worn.

LWTUA is wonderful, but its stiffness is thrown into harsh relief going up against supple Michael and his fancy footwork.

Hmmm

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The older record is winning on all four of these (admittedly v marginal in the case of MJ vs J Div)

I can't believe Madonna is getting shafted here

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

Don't You Want Me is a great song, and I would have voted for it against most of the others here, but certainly not against Madonna's finest moment.

It's the song where everything I love about Madonan came together perfectly - it's a brilliant, euphoric, uplifting pop song for a start, tackling the classic Madonna theme of religion & sex, but the whole package was great too (and surely of all popstars, with Madonna you have to look at the whole package) - controversial video, a great look, and it came at the time where she'd grown up enough as an artist to be more interesting but not so much that she'd started to take herself too seriously, as happened later on. It totally deserves to go through.

[koganbot]

"Don't You Want Me" vs. "Like A Prayer": two songs I don't care that much about, and I actually had to go back and listen to them; the result is that I way prefer "Don't You Want Me" for a rather simple reason: way better melody. The tune to "Like A Prayer" is nondescript, only the arrangement and Madonna's singing make me care about the song; and Madonna's singing is starting to carry the heaviness that makes me like later Madonna less than earlier Madonna. Of course, Human League isn't so vocally light either. So it's the tune.

"Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" vs. "Love Will Tear Us Apart": But on this one the riff of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is one of the most tunefully beautiful ever but I'm voting against, 'cause the singing, while in style is fine for what Ian is trying to do, is really really terrible in execution; and though overall I'd say riff overwhelms badness of singing, not against good competition and one of the most beautiful singers ever. (Btw, when I voted LWTUA previously (I don't actually remember how consistently I did), it wasn't a matter of my having been there, since being "there" for me meant a general opinion of me and many of the people around me that Joy Division were a terrible retreat from punk and power pop and were actually Pink Floyd in drab garb w/ Jim Morrison-like vocals that were lacking Morrison's ebullience, so JD seemed like a step back. So it took me a while to admit that I actually loved some Joy Division songs a whole lot. I did feel for the beauty of LWTUA right off. I think "She's Lost Control" has a far better performance. (Did consider New Order to be a step forward and also dull as dishwater [unless it's ditchwater that they're dull as; poll: which is duller, dishwater or ditchwater?], and plenty of other dance steppers were dancing further anyway.))

"Work It" vs. "Billie Jean": Already told my love for "Billie Jean"; my not quite love for "Work It"? Hmmm. I said "too cutesy" last time, which states it too strongly (the track is more cutesy peculiar than cutesy ha ha); it's a delight, but "delight," while praising, also identifies a limit; the song doesn't work itself into my heart muscle.

"West End Girls" vs. "Toxic": Feelings about these two aren't so strong, and therefore once again I relistened. It think WEG is actually among PSB's very best, but then I'm talking as a non-PSB fanatic and maybe I like it for being the one where the disco shows through and the vocals and arrangements don't cloak the disco in their sensibility - and the sensibility, not weighing down the sound for once, sounds beautiful. "Toxic" is fun - quite good - but chillier than a lot of other Britney and chillier than WEG. (I wonder now whether, if I were revoting previous rounds, I might vote WEG more and "Toxic" less.)

Everything I'm voting for today is winning decisively.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

Bloody hell, some of the most difficult decisions there in AGES!

So...

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

... chances of an all-Jacko final, then?

[lollers.livejournal.com]

I actually reasoned that Missy would win overwhelmingly, and sympathy ticked Jacko even though my first instinct was that Work It was the better song. Sorry Missy!

Come on Britneh

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

You can do it