Chart Championship Week 4 RESULTS

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

And now the votes from the poptasticuk jury.

"Everyone has chosen so well, I feel bad having to pick winners and losers. Well done Poptimists! The songs seem to me more varied than some of the past selections, which I was pleased about. Now I have a whole load of ace new music to listen to - thanks guys!

1. Bonnie And The Treasures - "Home Of The Brave". Nice Motown-y sound (certainly of that era), female vocals. I'm a big Motown fan but haven't mentioned that before so a good taste-prediction. 10th Place - LOSE - unflattering scoreline for martinskidmore.

2. Data Panik - "Cubis (I Love You)". Fun 80s/90s style, a bit shouty but only as necessary. Obviously British vocals (I'm guessing Scottish cos the girl reminds me of Manda Rin from Bis... is it her?), both male and female. Lots of different ace bits. This is great! 1st Place - WIN - lisa_go_blind goes top after busy performance.

3. Jorge Ben - "Taj Mahal". Weird but very jolly. Liking the nonsense lyrics, plenty of 'dedede's and 'lalala's. Not sure where it's from - could be Spanish or Eastern European, which is a pretty wide guess! Goes on a bit, though, and doesn't really go anywhere. 8th Place - LOSE - epicharmus lacks penetration in the final third.

4. Ooberman - "Blossoms Falling". Ooh, 90s post-PSB British boypop - ace! Sounds like a gay Blur. More great 'lalala's but other lyrics too so beats the last song by far. 2nd Place - WIN - journeyman squad play their socks off for skillextric.

5. Bananarama - "Doctor Love". Super-80s sounding electro-pop, quite sharp but nice girly 'woo' bits. Is it Bananarama? Either them or someone very similar. 11th Place - LOSE - jeff_worrell won't believe this scoreline.

6. Miranda! - "Una Lagrima Sobre el Telefono" Euro dance-pop! In foreign, most likely Eastern European. I like it - although it's not the absolute best of its genre it's better than the majority, which can get a bit mindlessly boshy at times. Would be good for a bit of 'big fish little fish'. 7th Place - LOSE - World Cup stars fail to produce for lockedintheatti.

7. Ben Watt ft Est'elle - "Pop A Cap In Your Ass". I was immediately put off by the length (3 mins over the optimum pop song duration!) but it's actually a cool, interesting song which I enjoyed listening to. A mix of slightly 90s-ish dance sounds and a girl with a London accent describing her shoplifting exploits. 4th Place - WIN - gamble pays off and inf0vore climbs out of relegation places.

8. Manu Chao - "Bongo Bong". The backing music is familiar but I don't recognise the singing. Oh, I just realised - Robbie Williams and Lily Allen covered it. I don't know this version, though, so you're safe. It's good, but could do with more singing and a little less speaky bit. 5th Place - WIN - koganbot scrapes a win.

9. Ingenting - "Slapp In Solen". Yay, someone found something Swedish! Lovely. Typical Swedish indie-pop, a bit like Håkan Hellström. 3rd Place - WIN - tried and true tactics kickstart blue_russian's season.

10. Of Montreal - "A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger". Very jolly, cute indie pop, funny lyrics about living in Norway! Some great 'papapa's and squelchy background noises. 6th Place - DRAW - piratemoggy's first point of the season - could easily have been all three.

11. Mott The Hoople - "Saturday Gigs". A ballad in a very British accent (a bit Bowie-ish), sounds quite 70s. Not what I'd normally listen to but it's enjoyable nonetheless. 9th Place - LOSE - ageing striker fails to perform and leaves byebyepride under pressure.

I can't believe I'm putting the one I presume to be Bananarama at the end, since they are pop legends, but it just shows how much I liked all of the songs.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The thinking on Track 11 - and I totally see this myself - is that it's the ancestor of what The Ark do. It was one of two I knew (also knew track 8).

[infov0re.livejournal.com]

Cripes, I was dreading this one - I nearly gave you some of the Outrun2 soundtrack - but managed to get in with a nifty WIN. Alright!

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

OH NOES (mine was the Bananarama one*)

Ah well, #2 is a worthy winner. That track stood out for me too on first play of the mix.

*bragging points to anyone who can guess who wrote this song btw. It is someone very famous. No cheating!

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Oh noez, my clear run is ruined! :D

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Hahaha number 2 is indeed Manda Rin & co, I recognised this as soon as I downloaded it as it's on the Rough Trade Counter Culture 2006 CD. I was humming it all of yesterday!

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, I am guessing mine is track 1, in that although I don't think it's at all Motowny, that sounds a closer description than any of the others. Unless mine is 8, though I'd be surprised if those two covered it and I don't know about it.

[lisa-go-blind.livejournal.com]

Oh my! I made first!

I'm really surprised, to be honest, as I thought this was the best mix yet. I really liked # 1, 5 and 8 but I don't think there was a bad track on here.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My reactions:

- This seems to be a minority view but I didn't find much to like in this selection, save the stuff I already knew (or should have known in the case of Bonnie or knew the band but not the track in the case of the 'Rama - even so it wasn't a classic Rama run-out)
- "Too indie" might be one way of putting it. "Too twee" is closer to the mark tho: there's a lot of tiggerish bounciness about. Maybe I was just in unbouncy mood tho.
- Astonished and impressed that "Pop A Cap" (neither tiggerish or bouncy) got a win even though I probably like it least of anything! (Except maybe the Manda Rin one)
- Poor old Mott. :(

Home of the brave, land of the free, oh why don't they let him be what he wants to be?

[koganbot]

Ah, I've arrived too late to show off my guess work; I knew Bonnie and the Treasures for the same reason Jeff did, but in my notes I said "I bet you this was written by Mann and Weill" for its class issues and its sounding like "Uptown," and I was right. Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill were the Brill Building people most likely to insert class conflict into their lyrics; also wrote the Animals' "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" (of course Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry also put class conflict in a couple of their teen tragedies). Anyway, I knew this track but if I hadn't I'd have given it a solid win. (Tom Paxton denounced "Home Of The Brave" in a c. 1965 attack on "folk rock" in Sing Out!, preferring acoustic folk. Entitled the piece "Folk Rot." Don't really know how he managed to associate the Spector sound and folk rock, though maybe it was the incipient protest in the lyrics where he made the connection. Haven't read his piece in something like 36 years, though, so I'm probably not doing it justice, and maybe the "Home Of The Brave" was in someone else's piece.) Christina Aguilera should sing this at a gay pride rally.

Anyhow, I scribbled that track eleven was "someone imitating Ian Hunter," and called track six "a Bananarama type group." I liked this mixtape from start to finish, though I agree with Tom in thinking it too indie, the indie problem for me being not tweeness but that the music is too muffled. My track, "Bongo Bong," which I like fine, is mondo twee but also very visceral, as Manu's got the rhythm down. Anyway, this is how I'd order everything but Bonnie and "Bongo":

win:
--Ben Watt f. Estelle (tremendous, not at all twee, more like half brutal and half mournful; its emotions remind me of the stylistically very different "Hustler," by Simian Mobile Disco, which also has the brutal-mournful thing going, and a shoplifter)
--Mott (I'm regretting forever that I sold the album with "Death May Be Your Santa Claus")
--Ooberman (big lumbering version of what ought to be a Hawaiian beach melody, the clumsiness giving life to the lilt, somehow)
--Jorge Ben (d'n'b type beats in what's otherwise coming across as calm resort music; nice feel but needs a better melody)

draw:
--Miranda (Argentine indie hi-NRG goofballs, but the beats are mixed too high, so conflict with the melody)

lose:
--Data Panik (near miss: lots of funniness in the playing; the guy vocals are frantic and pushy like Go4's Jon King, which adds good tension but is also cloddy and sexless)
--Bananarama (party-disco whoos and good funked-up rhythms, but the so-so melody brings this down)
--Of Montreal (this is witty and creative and quite enjoyable, prog lounge or something, but I'm not feeling my way into the melody)
--Ingenting (breezy but teeming with musical elements, the crowdedness slowing down the breeze; pretty damn interesting for last place)

[fugitivemotel.livejournal.com]

Dudes! I am confused! Why is there no track from me? I sent it before I went to Moscow!?

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

I felt pretty certain I'd score with my selection, unless poptasticuk happened to know them already. Two pretty strong albums by them out there (and reasonably wide-ranging within the "boys with guitars" backet), if you can find them.

I have to say I'm little disappointed there's not more enthusiasm -- as koganbot pointed out, I think there are a lot of ways into the song -- but, oh well.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

How strange that my mix of all people's gets called 'too indie'! Perhaps people found it harder to think of big-sounding pop songs that I wouldn't know, with the slightly indier ones being a bit more secure in that respect.

I thought that might be Estelle on the Ben Watt track! And I correctly spotted Manda Rin as well - I must have good voice recognition, even if my nationality guessing is rubbish (Miranda not being from anywhere near Eastern Europe).