Best Song of 2005: Finalists

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Nordic chums Robyn and Royksopp led a very close final heat of 2005 - they're joined in the next round by the Narcade Fire, Girls Aloud and Mariah. So our top 40 of the year looks a little bit like this:


Sugababes - Push The Button
Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone
Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch
Amerie - 1 Thing
Girls Aloud - Biology
Kanye West ft Jamie Foxx - Gold Digger
Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc
Gorillaz - Dare
Madonna - Hung Up
Rihanna - Pon De Replay
LCD Soundsystem - Daft Punk Is Playing My House - Daft Punk Is Playing At My House
Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl
Daddy Yankee - Gasolina
Rachel Stevens - I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)
Black Eyed Peas - My Humps
Ciara - Goodies
Robyn - Be Mine!
Chemical Brothers - Galvanise
Ashlee Simpson - La La
Missy Elliott - Lose Control
Ciara ft Ludacris - Oh
Pussycat Dolls ft Busta Rhymes - Don't Cha
Miranda Lambert - Kerosene
Vitalic - My Friend Dario
Rachel Stevens - Negotiate With Love
Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor
MIA - Pull Up The People
Three 6 Mafia ft. Young Buck & Eightball & MJG - Stay Fly
Royksopp - What Else Is There? (Thin White Duke mix)
Robyn - Who's That Girl
Maximo Park - Apply Some Pressure
Mylo - Destroy Rock and Roll
Sébastien Tellier - La Ritournelle
Snoop Dogg feat. Charlie Wilson & Justin Timberlake - Signs
Arcade Fire - Wake Up
t.A.T.u. - All About Us
Kanye West - Diamonds From Sierra Leone
Girls Aloud - Wake Me Up
Kate Bush - King of the Mountain
Mariah Carey - We Belong Together


Not bad at all! We'll be taking a short break from the decade polls for a few weeks, but FEAR NOT! Interim orgafun is on its way! Details coming up later in the week...

Comments

[meserach.livejournal.com]

Massive thanks for running this thing Kat, it's an enormous project which requires a whole bunch of work. I personally know I've learned a lot and gained a great deal from the process in terms of being exposed to music.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Am really glad to see Sebastien Tellier and We Belong Together got through; both really, really beautiful songs.

A few stats to keep you going

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Taking into account the different tick allocations for 2000 and 2001, I can hereby reveal that:

- 'My Humps' is more popular with poptimists than 'Thong Song' and 'Ooh Stick You'
- Sugababes have EIGHT songs in the next round (Girls Aloud and Jay-Z have 7 songs each, Missy has 6)
- Girls Aloud got the most votes of any artist but t.A.T.u had the highest average per song (I think - my pivot table has gone a bit wonky).

Re: A few stats to keep you going

[koganbot]

I'd have thought "Ne Ver Ne Bojsia" would have brought t.A.T.u.'s average way down.

Re: A few stats to keep you going

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Ah - stats only calculated from the songs that made the next round (otherwise my pivot table would be unworkable!)

After all the heats are done...

[meserach.livejournal.com]

This may also be an opportune moment to do some thinking about what we'll actually do once we have our Top 40 from each year (or top 400 of the decade, if you prefer).

To get from 400 songs to, eventually, one "Best Song of the Decade" will require either several further "rounds" before the final (to whittle down to say, 100 and then 40 and then ten and then one) or an extremely brutal second round (whittling 400 straight to ten? Ouch.)

My thoughts are that we need one somewhat brutal second round and then should perhaps slow down a bit to draw out the process once we have a more manageable number of songs. It's be nice once we're down to, say, a top 40 or so, if we could get some proper discussion and argumentation going, perhaps even a structure a bit like the one the Singles Jukebox are using where people justify their votes with a bit of writing, even if it's only optional.

It would also definitely be good if the second round mixed up the years, so we aren't just pitting each year's top 40 against itself. More fun to be comparing 2002 and 2009 tracks, etc. Thought will need to be given to selection, seeding etc.

Most obvious approach to second round perhaps is to take the whole top 400, allotting them into, say, eight or ten heats completely at random, and then taking the top X from each poll much as we have done for the polls thus far.

Other options might be to do some sort of seeding (based on first round votes/positions?) to try and prevent lumping the biggest names together.

If we whittled down to 128 or 64 songs we could do some sort of ridiculous elimination-tournament structure!

Re: After all the heats are done...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The only solid ideas I had for the next round were as follows:

- mixing up years (seeding is a good idea I think)
- format: previously we have done a knockout tournament for the Now polls winners' 64 (http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/tag/now%20polls) (gosh that seems like a long time ago) and groups-of-4 for the Pazz&Jop polls (http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/tag/pazz%20jop), the latter of which I think is probably a better way of cutting down to a small group quickly (and will make for more agonising choices).

Re: After all the heats are done...

[meserach.livejournal.com]

Groups-of-four as in, stick all 400 tracks into 100 groups of four, and then in each group it is "tick one, most votes wins"?

OUCH. That's.... terrifying.

It will achieve a 75% reduction in numbers in a brutal brutal fashion, but it'll require a lot of careful attention to seeding - that's a format in which the draw matters a great deal.

Hmmm.

Re: After all the heats are done...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The only problem with seeding is that you get the same old songs winning every time (and people get sick of ticking them). Looking through the (seeded) Jop polls there were very few upsets compared to the Now polls.

Re: After all the heats are done...

[koganbot]

I do remember that "Billie Jean" made the finals from a surprisingly low spot (was only a fifteenth seed).

For me the whole thing will be a surprise no matter what, since I knew so few of the tracks to begin with.

A problem may be to get people to listen to the tracks they haven't heard. You could simply say, "BEFORE TICKING, PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO LISTEN TO ANY TRACK IN THIS MATCH THAT YOU HAVEN'T PREVIOUSLY HEARD. THANKS."

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Can I just offer my congratulations to the Poptimists community for producing an excellent Top 40 for 2005. And massive thanks again to Kat for running this whole shebang.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

It's not bad, but this was a poor year. A lot of these won't stand a chance in the next stage.

Spotify

[meserach.livejournal.com]

All these finalists (except the Arcade Fire for some reason, Spotify has never heard of them at all) can be found in a playlist here:

http://open.spotify.com/user/meserach/playlist/29nEuKi5dn75VNxcRdDLiz

In addition, you can find everything we nominated and that I managed to find on Spotify for 2005 here:

http://open.spotify.com/user/meserach/playlist/5glyssMFdreZNuU2TYZu94

At some pint I'll go back and do playlists for 2004 and 2003 which I largely missed due to my Months Without Internet.