The Chart Championship: FINAL ANALYSIS

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Congratulations to koganbot, our title winner.

lisa_go_blind and jeff_worrell are in the play-offs.

piratemoggy is relegated.

Final Table

1. koganbot. W7 D2 L2 Pts 23 GDiff +6 Total ranking points: 75.
2. lisa_go_blind W7 D1 L3 Pts 22 GDiff +9 TRP: 78.
3. jeff_worrell W6 D3 L2 Pts 21 GDiff +7 TRP: 81.
4. epicharmus W6 D0 L5 Pts 18 GDiff +3 TRP: 69.
5. skillextric W5 D1 L5 Pts 16 GDiff +5 TRP: 74.
6. lockedintheatti W5 D1 L5 Pts 16 GDiff +1 TRP: 67.
7. infov0re W4 D2 L5 Pts 14 GDiff -3 TRP: 58.
8. martinskidmore W3 D4 L4 Pts 13 GDiff -3 TRP: 68.
9. blue_russian W4 D1 L6 Pts 13 GDiff -3 TRP: 62.
10. poptasticuk W4 D1 L6 Pts 13 GDiff -4 TRP: 59.
11. byebyepride W3 D1 L7 Pts 10 GDiff -7 TRP: 54.
12. piratemoggy W3 D1 L7 Pts 10 GDiff -11 TRP: 46.

Week-by-week Winners

Neko Case - "Set Out Running" (chosen by skillextric, track 01)
Ultraviolence - "Hardcore Motherfucker" (chosen by martinskidmore, track 08)
Moonbaby - "Kitsch Bitch Kool" (chosen by poptasticuk, track 06)
Data Panik - "Cubis (I Love You)" (chosen by lisa_go_blind, track 02)
Sing-Sing - "Feels Like Summer" (chosen by skillextric, track 08)
Nachlater - "Fett" (chosen by lockedintheatti, track 01)
Marco Borsato - "Rood" (chosen by skillextric, track 03)
Lonnie Mack - "Chicken Pickin'" (chosen by epicharmus, track 07)
Diskoteka Avariya - "Hardcore Rap" (chosen by blue_russian, track 09)
Beenie Man ft Ce'Cile - "The Thing" (chosen by jeff_worrell, track 09)
Bobbie Gentry - "Fancy" (chosen by lisa_go_blind, track 11)
Yes - "Tempus Fugit" (chosen by jeff_worrell, track 08)

("Total Ranking Points" is an addition of inverse rankings i.e. 11 points for 1st place, 10 points for 2nd. "Goal Difference" was meant to follow it closely, which it does, but not quite closely enough, so next time I'll use TRP as the tie-breaker.)

Comments

request for post-season commentary

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

i want to do some summing up of my own, but i'll wait until the results of the other league are in, but while we're still here, i'm curious to hear from people what their strategy/approach was "big picture." were you picking songs that you loved, or to put it another way, definiting your own taste through your submissions? were you playing to (or against) your perception of the other players' tastes? did you feel compelled to pick particularly "obscure" (your definition) artists if order to avoid a draw? was there broad category that you avoided submitting?

a few answers from my side: at the beginning of the season, i toyed with only sending Russian music, which i figured would pretty much guarantee that people would be hearing new songs. i decided not to mainly because i decided i didn't want people knowing immediately which song i'd submitted. I definintely 'tailored' more over the course of the season as I had a better sense of what people seemed to like (based as much on their submissions as their bios). i basically knew what i planned to submit koganbot and poptasticuk from early on, given their fairly well-defined (internet) personas. A couple submissions, I'll admit, were purely strategic - i certainly like my submission for martinskidmore, but i definitely searched around before settling on Major Lance; and my biggest hit, "Hardcore Rap," is on my hard drive as much for "ethnomusicological" purposes as anything else. Three of the songs I submitted would probably make "all-time favorite" lists of one kind of another. Almost all of my subsmissions were proper "singles," and that was a conscious decision on my part - I took the "pop" in poptimists seriously, although I use my own definition. (One week someone almost got a mid-period Genesis track! but I chickened out.)

My strategy

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Oh good, this gives me the perfect excuse for a ROLLCALL. Here's my play-off achieving squad in full, in alphabetical order.

1. Aavikko
2. Au Revoir Simone
3. Bananarama
4. Brigitte Bardot
5. Yummy Bingham
6. kevin blechdom
7. Ce'cile & Beenie Man
8. ELO
9. Lindstrøm
10. Squeeze
11. Yes

Most of these were undoubtedly artists/songs I love and wanted more poptimists (and not necessarily just the home player) to hear. That applies particularly to tracks 5-11, which probably would have gotten submitted regardless.

1-4 were chosen with the particular home player in mind (also, I thought Hazel would appreciate the lyrics to the blechdom, which she did up to a point). Bardot also stood as a representative of several dozen 60s French pop songs that I would like to have submitted, just as the Beenie Man stood for any number of early 00s dancehall tunes I could have picked.

Bananarama got lucky in that Deep Sea Skiving just happened to be reissued in the week that Jessica was home player - although fielding them turned out to be my biggest tactical mistake of the tournament. (It was a toss up between "Doctor Love" and another track on the CD, which I'm minded to post on poptimists tomorrow actually!)

Re: My strategy

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

I was quite surprised that a) more people apparently didn't IMMEDIATELY recognize ELO, or b) at least like the Squeeze. When I was at uni, "Singles 45s and Under" was one of those albums that pretty much everyone had. For me, the Lindstrom was probably the big "hit" off jeff_worrell, Volume 1.

Re: request for post-season commentary

[(Anonymous)]

I decided early on that I wouldn't submit anything I didn't like myself just for the sake of scoring points, so the challenge was finding stuff I liked that fit the player profile. Some weeks that was easy, some very, very difficult (I'm thinking skilletric's week, and was duely rewarded with a crashing defeat); even harder were the weeks where my tastes coincided most closely with the home player, as it forced me to be more risky - and in both cases (Blue Russian, PoptasticUK), I lost. Also, my knowledge is quite broad across a lot of genres but not very deep within most of them, so I generally went foreign to avoid draws, even though I knew it would mean my 'style' would be guessable (you guessed your winner was my choice for that reason).

Re: request for post-season commentary

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

whoops, that was me by the way