I give a mark out of 10 to every single featured on Popular. This is your chance to indicate which YOU would have given 6 or more to, by whatever standard you wish to impose. And if you have any ‘closing remarks’ on the year to make, the comments box is your place!

Send your top 20 tracks of 2011 to poptimistspoll2010@gmail.com* by 1am GMT on 30th December and we will post the results during the first week of January.

- ‘Tracks of 2011′ can mean something released as a single or on an album this year, or a track that emerged this year on the internet or a young person’s trendy mixtape, or singles taken from a 2010 album released this year. To be honest I will be pretty lenient about the whole business so put whatever you like.

- The order of your top 20 is important! Your #1 will be allocated more points than #20.

- If you can’t think of 20 songs then 10 or 14 or 2 is just fine.

- As per last year we are running this poll in conjunction with the Poptimists LJ community, so if you’ve already sent me your 2011 list over there, there’s no need to do so again.

That’s it! Get voting!

*Yes yes I know it’s last year’s email address. A big ‘whatevs’ to you too :)

So to celebrate five years of indulgence here is one last monstrous one: links and brief annotations for all 45 columns, spread over three posts.

1. Sing This All Together: The column was initially going to be called Sentimentalist, and I think I partly wanted to write about stuff which was too naff or emo or corny for usual Pitchfork coverage. I started off with Music Hall, having read one book about it (this would become a theme), and the Beatles, and the idea that what was lost when music became what we know of now as pop was a sense of participatory risk, loss of control of the message and the audience. Obviously I was thinking about the Internet as a return of these things, but for whatever reason I didn’t say so.

2. Spoiler Spice: A recurring trope in Poptimist was of the “uselessness of criticism” – said uselessness both an idea hanging in the virtual aether (criticism having been rendered ‘pointless’ by people’s ability to listen at once to songs) and something whose possibilities could be explored. This is a fancy way of saying that most of the second column – about whether pop could have “spoilers” and how critics dealt with that – is meta-criticism. It’s also the first one where I talk about the web a lot, and where it starts to become obvious that “Poptimist” doesn’t mean “into pop” but more “the changes in the ways we listen to pop are worth celebrating as well as lamenting”. Which is unfortunately less catchy.

3. Before The Giant Scorpions: “Can I write something mostly about comics?” I asked. “Sure”, Scott replied. I decided to allow myself one column a year which wouldn’t really be about music, probably thinking of the way Doctor Who has a “Doctor-lite” episode every year. Doctor Who was one of the things I never did a Poptimist column on. Another was The Moomins. But I was – amazingly – permitted to write a huge piece in an American music website about the British comic 2000AD and its aesthetics in the late 70s. This one is where I presented the semi-formed concept of “thrill-power” (basically a kind of condensate of awesomeness created by exploiting talent to the point where it can’t second-guess itself: from a labour relations point of view, this is bad news). From memory, the material about pop at the end is a bit of a fig-leaf.

4. What Do I Look For In Music Writing?: Slightly embarassing to realise I was repeating myself already – the paraphrase of Ian MacDonald here shows up in the first column too. This is more death-of-the-critic stuff, tackled head-on by offering a guide to what music writing does when it’s doing things well. As a defense of music criticism it’s pretty good: it was also a tacit admission I was never going to write descriptions of actual music as amazing as the ones I read. (The LJ post mentioned at the end – oh, the days of LJ – was by Hazel Robinson, who now writes for FT).

5. The History Book On The Shelf: The first of two Poptimist columns to be anthologised in a Da Capo Best Music Writing book, this one with a baffled mention in the forward where Nelson George made it clear he’d picked me for being an internet crazy who took ABBA seriously. I do take ABBA seriously, of course. This piece is about taking ABBA seriously. The problem with writing anything about ABBA is that you’re (well, I’m) under the shadow of Taylor Parkes’ magnificent essay on The Visitors (referenced in this piece) – the angle I wanted to come from here is the solid, rueful grown-up-ness of ABBA. It should be so blazingly obvious this essay is also about my feelings around being a “grown-up” that it goes without saying. Also: bonus Radiohead diss.

6. Are The Smiths Funny?: Having taken the radical step of actually doing some music criticism in the column I acquired a taste for it – this one is trying to tease out the complexities of fandom and what fans value in a band by thinking about The Smiths, and then suggesting that an awful lot of music conversation might be an attempt to bypass or post-rationalise our emotional connections to it. NEUROSCIENCE agrees with me on this, or so I’m told.

7. Bury The Past, Empty The Shelf: This was the first piece I got an angry blog post about, though I got a lot of positive reaction to it as well. Another recurring concept here: the non-hardwired, socially determined nature of taste, always ready to be played with, rebooted, or turned into a game. This was probably the first column I wrote with a greater awareness of who my readers actually were, which explains the very direct “addressing” of them, and also the attempt to gently troll them, asking them politely to take their record collection outside and have it shot.

8. Ape And Essence: A long feature on an advert which may well only have been shown in Britain – just call me “Mr Pageviews”. This is about how adverts which use music work as music criticism – I was desperate to get away from the standard piece about “music in ads” and selling out etc. I also used this as a test run for seeing if I could write about marketing and advertising and still enjoy it. (I could) (enjoy the writing, that is).

9. English Settlement: Probably the most dated of any Poptimist column, this is a postcard from the grim reign of Haircut Indie. It got approvingly quoted by Warren Ellis, probably because it confirmed his prejudices. The last paragraph seemed to confirm a lot of people’s prejudices to be honest, which is a shame because as a prediction it was way off base: the link between tasteful guitar rock and the British charts was rapidly broken and pop-grime soon ruled over all it surveyed. This is one of my worst columns – emboldened by having written quite well about one advert I dropped huge wodges of marketing theory on the readers and came across, in my opinion, as a bit smarmy.

10. Britney In The Black Lodge: or; The Blackout One. Maybe my most popular column. I’ve been asked a few times whether this was a review of Blackout which Pitchfork refused to run, and have seen this theory stated as fact on a message board. It is nonsense: I would never have pitched a review of the record because I assumed the site wouldn’t want one (I had no basis for assuming this, by the way). Blackout has become THE cult 00s pop record without any help from a “Best New Music”, anyway. It is possibly my favourite album of the last ten years, so I don’t actually want to re-read this piece and find I didn’t do it justice.

11. What You Hear Is Not A Test: I would like to thank Mark S now for the many times I’ve jumped on an idea of his and flogged it into the ground: hopefully always credited. Also in this discussion of the bullshit concept “the test of time”, an annoying trick I got fond of for a while of writing a couple of intentionally wrong paragraphs and then doubling back on them. I have no idea why I thought this was clever, since most people aren’t actually reading this stuff closely. And while we’re cataloguing mis-steps, another exciting Poptimist feature might debut in this column: the last sentence soundbite where I can’t actually work out what I mean. Those tics aside, it’s not bad.

12. The Rise And Fall Of The Festive Fifty: The second Da Capo anthologised piece, and one of my favourites too. There is a lot of nonsense written about John Peel – and carried out in his name – which bears very little relation to the experience of listening to his shows. This is a piece about polls, the relationship between audiences and DJs or critics (them again!), and ultimately failure – the failure of a tastemaker to carry an audience in a new direction more than once, which has been spun posthumously into success because of that once. (A couple of years later, Pitchforkreviewsreviews noted accurately that this essay was also about Pitchfork itself.)

13. How White My Shirts Could Be: I remembered this as being garbled – it’s not, though it’s another tilt at the windmill of fusing my “day job” and my music criticism and ends up clunky. The conclusions are a mix of stuff I’m proud to have said and stuff that now feels a bit naive.

14. Five Lost Worlds: Poptimist’s most complete failure! The idea here was to try and write a piece of criticism inspired by – pseud’s corner ahoy – Georges Perec’s A Void, which was composed without using the letter e. Punk would be my letter e, and I would write a column about punk, without mentioning it, by writing about five things that were reaching towards punk in the years leading up to it, but not pointing out the connection (the point being, erm… oh yeah! the point being to emphasise the lost-ness of the pre-punk world, the way we only make sense of it now with reference to punk, in the same way that it’s impossible to have any kind of fiction set in 1912-1913 without huge great THERE IS A WAR COMING future-ghosts hanging over it). Anyway nobody whatsoever ‘got’ this, because I wasn’t good enough to pull it off, and the piece went entirely unnoticed.

15. What’s Your Favourite Album?: Chastened by my brush with ambition I made sure this was a more accessible piece, a memoir and self-analysis of what having “favourite albums” meant and how I’d used the idea to define myself growing up. I remember it as being quick and sweet to write, and one of the times I felt like I’d felt when writing essays for Freaky Trigger years before.

In Part 2: Failed memes! Futurism! Folly!

In the poll below you will see the first-page results of a Google search for “the new rock n roll”, in order. Hats off to the magical SEO monkeys of theosophy! Comedy is still flying the new r’n'r flag, thanks to Jimmy Carr: everything else is testament to the enduring (albeit tongue-in-cheek) pull of one of the great bullshit phrases of the 90s. All you have to do is vote for which of these pretenders is the real thing.

This week – “Love and Heartache” – or as I anticipated DAWN OF THE BALLADOSAURUS. But was I correct? Well, not entirely…

NUVIBE: I have now learned Nuvibe is one word – though perhaps it is NuVibe? A question soon to be moot I’d imagine. I missed their discoish take on “With Or Without You”, the ten seconds of hightlights at the end suggested no need to catch up. They might survive another week, they might not – their main problem is that there’s a much better boyband on the show, which isn’t a good hand to play.

SAMI: It’s coming up on Popular, so I’ve listened to “I Will Always Love You” a fair bit recently. Sami gave it the full gale force 10 treatment – competent but a bit lacking in dynamics or personality. Harmless enough. This week the judges’ bitching was all about song choice – Gary, daring maverick that he is, had a go at Louis for his conservatism.

CRAIG: Craig’s odd, haunting voice seems to have lost all its idiosyncrasy under the mentorship of Barlow – this week he sang “Best Thing I Never Had” (cue much tutting from Kelly) with way too much mid-Atlantic rawk inflection, though also with a bit of genuine vengefulness and spite. Disappointing nonetheless.

JANET: Grab-bag of mannerisms on full display, of which the most annoying this week was her Bjorkian pronunciation of “Fall-Ling”. Tremulous stuff, nailing down her favourite status even more. Xmas is the twee-est time of the year, and post-Halloween it’ll be impossible to tell where the John Lewis Christmas advert ends and Janet begins.

FRANKIE: Much criticism of Gary’s song choice for Frankie – Coldplay’s “The Scientist” – which on the one hand, fair play, it’s a terrible song, but what can you do with Frankie? The song has a really truncated range and its phrasing is already See-Spot-Run so it was as safe a choice as you can get. “We know you can do better” said the other judges – there is zero evidence of this, so what they mean is “We know you’re not getting voted off but for god’s sake pull yr finger out”.

JOHNNY: Flashes of something intriguing amidst an overload of lazy camp – touches of Marc Almond this week. He’s a likeable performer, making the best of things – the falsetto on “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” defeated him a bit – but you have to hope some of his torchiness can come through. It would be less “fun” but more interesting – fingers crossed.

MARCUS: So you have a contestant who’s chirpy, young, moves well, has a great smile – what better track for him than “Russian Roulette”? You’d almost think Gary was trying to get rid of him. He didn’t sing it badly but it’s barely coverable and he wasn’t engaged with the song at all (and why should he be). Baffling.

RHYTHMIX: This week’s biggest surprise for me, a go at “I’m Like A Bird” which seemed to play to the girls’ strengths – they sounded up for it, gave it some oomph on the chorus, the arrangement gave them plenty to do… a good time had by all. Probably as much Tulisa’s credit as the band’s, but they suddenly seem a lot less like dead weight.

MISHA: Very bold version of Charles And Eddie’s “Would I Lie To You?” which Misha took imperious hold of. Two weeks in and her performances are the biggest event of the show – she looks amazing, commands the stage, and brings out the best in the arrangers and designers. The only problem here was this particular arrangement faded a little post-chorus, leaving Misha not very much to do but strut around repeating the title until her two minutes were up.

THE RISK: Took an oily song – Bruno Mars’ “Just The Way You Are” – and did amazingly well with it. Again, because they’re talented, the arrangers can give them much harder things to do and the bet tends to pay off – some lovely harmonies here, a lot of intersecting parts. I only hope they sing a song I actually like sometime soon.

SOPHIE: Exactly what I feared from Love And Heartache Week – a passable slog through a dreadful ballad (The Calling’s “Wherever You Will Go”). Given her lugubrious performance last week, is looking very much like a one-trick pony.

KITTY: Somewhat of a division of opinions in the Ewing household over this – Isabel thought it was the best of the week, I just thought it was a lot better than I feared it was going to be. A version of “It’s Oh So Quiet” but – mercifully – stripped of most of the Bjork phrasing and turned into lung-busting glam rock, which seems to suit Kitty. She might be turfed out, but unlike Katie last year she actually deserves to stick around a bit.

PREDICTIONS! I think it’s between Sophie, Kitty and NuVibe – maybe Marcus’ song choice will put him down there too. Can’t see the judges losing Kitty if she’s in the bottom two, though. I’ll say NuVibe.

Tiny background detail: as with last year I’ve studiously avoided previous episodes, press coverage, etc, so I’m coming to these acts (and three of these judges) fresh with no knowledge of who’s who in the narrative around the show. Not that they don’t make it obvious! Here goes -

Feeble theme this week: “US vs UK”, a body blow to the many X-Factor acts who sing Ghanaian or K-Pop tunes. “Sing whatever you like week” fits the ‘twist’, viz each judge will have to vote one of their own acts off. Presumably the judges have a fair idea what their decision will be in advance, so the tension would come with favoured acts fucking up. But do they?

AMELIA: Ropey start to the live shows – teenager doing “rocked up” version of Billie Jean. Not for the last time it’s the phrasing that does a performance in – as we’ll see, the ability to keep pace with any song that pokes its nose above ballad tempo is in short supply this year.

JOHNNY: First of the Wagner/Jedward contenders, crossing Kenneth Williams waspishness with Charles Hawtrey scrawn – in other words, we’re meant to find him camp but there’s something compellingly British about him, a strain of variety show Britishness long dormant. He chirps through Cher’s “Believe”, which is lazy typing – if he sticks around he needs a Morrissey track.

RHYTHMIX: Another phrasing disaster on “Super Bass”. The logic seems to be that because Nicki Minaj does lots of different voices, giving her part to four different girls can work – but not a one of them can rap. Dreadful syllabic pile-up ensues.

FRANKIE: Teenage scamp/stud given “The A Team” by panto rockist G.Barlow (more on this later) – I’ve never made it all the way through this song in original form so I don’t have much of a handle on whether it’s actually piss easy to sing or whether Frankie’s reading of it is just completely lazy, a string of barely connected phrases, all sung with equal breathlessness. Nothing convinces.

SOPHIE: Gimmicky slowed-down version of “Teenage Dream”, the novel arrangement making for a convincing statement of belief in Sophie, whose voice is solid enough to carry it. First performer who you imagine could do something good, though this wasn’t really it – once you’d got the point the song drifted in the way most “slow it down” attempts do.

JONJO: Soldier, did a Kinks song, given squaddie-in-a-stripclub stage dressing by Louis (I assume), though he publically disowned the song choice afterwards: not a good sign for Jonjo one suspects. He looked a bit frightened. “You Really Got Me” worked for One Direction because it papered over their individual deficiencies – this guy just doesn’t have the oomph for it.

2 SHOES: Post-TOWIE novelty duo given the full, garish Walsh-style treatment Jedward got in their day. Precisely as good as Diva Fever. The performance? Doesn’t matter really, but as with Rhythmix, a group given a song (“Something Kinda Oooh”) with WAY too much pace for their ability. Barlow missed the point but was wholly accurate in his slam of “Romford karaoke”, right down to the joyful relief when the girls hit the bit they actually know.

JAMES: Another slowed-down cover version, this time of “Ticket To Ride”, prompting (at last!) a backlash from the panel who have realised what a low and corny trick this is to pull. Well, all the panel except mentor Gary B who said “he’s the only contestant playing a proper instrument” in a huffy fashion. They had indeed miked James’ guitar up and yes, we heard the two tentative notes he played loud and clear, thanks Gary. In truth the performance wasn’t as shonky as the judges made out, but the whole approach is exhausted (he says more in hope than expectation).

MISHA: At last a genuine highlight – a savage snap at “Rolling In The Deep” by a woman wearing a newspaper ruff and wireframe crown. Misha didn’t quite have the lungs for Adele’s chorus but she tore strips off everything else and when she “did a Cher Lloyd” and dropped a rap in the song it really worked. Poor competition, but this was the best presence, set, costume and performance of the night.

NU VIBE: Delivered the wild flights of imagination their name promised. Rare moment of shrewdness from Gary B, pointing out that the song choice (“Beautiful People”) was well picked for making sure we couldn’t tell whether or not any of the boys could sing solo.

MARCUS: The judges fell on Marcus like a puppy on a bone but I was pretty underwhelmed – possibly it’s that “Moves Like Jagger” isn’t much of anything song-wise, maybe it was just fatigue setting in. In my inattentive state Marcus seems like mid-series cannon fodder, but he might go out earlier if Gary wants to save Hat Dude.

SAMI: Affable Welsh belt-em-out merchant, made up to look about 10 years older than she is for a hoof through “Free”. It sounded to me like she lost the vocal thread a few times, and the whole thing seemed a bit of a wreck – but what do I know, the judges approved. Gary started playing a bit of “mind games” at this point – a good time to point out that the whole banter between the judges isn’t working yet: barbs go unanswered, opportunities for mock outrage are lost, it still feels like a bunch of people playing some kind of insane X-Factor role-playing-game.

THE RISK: “This Risk REALLY PAID OFF” etc etc – in fairness technically the best of the groups by some way – they all had something different to do, nobody fucked it up. A very long way from exciting: Tulisa has been dealt a bum hand getting the groups first time out, she’s making the best of it, and The Risk seem best placed to stick around out of sympathy. Oh, they did Plan B’s “She Said”.

CRAIG: Plump Liverpudlian, presented in the pre-show line-up very much as a comedy option, I’d love to imagine that he decided “sod that” and played it straight against the wishes of weight traitor G Barlow. Tearfully intense, pretty competent version of “Jar Of Hearts” (a song I didn’t know I knew) – like several of the tracks I got the feeling it had been arranged in a hurry and wasn’t much more than a chorus loop. Hard to get rid of on this showing though.

KITTY: Whether Kitty is as “controversial” as the intro painted her, you have to think she’s made few friends in the make-up department. Her post-watershed look – devil eyes, streaming hair – distracted from a ropey take on “Who Wants To Live Forever” which seemed off-key to my (admittedly untrained) ear. Outside chance of her doing something interesting, but I said that about Katie last year.

JANET: “You’re a one-off” quoth the inept Barlow – not strictly true, of all the contestants Janet is the one who most blatantly echoes an earlier semi-success viz Diana Vickers. Much “voice of an angel” praise here – her shyness carefully played up beforehand – but it left me cold and jaded. Obviously doing Coldplay’s “Fix You” didn’t help.

So – what to make of it? Hard to spot an obvious winner: I’m glumly assuming my taste for Misha won’t be shared by the public. The judges aren’t settling, they’ve got a line-up far inferior to last year’s, but the wheels aren’t in any danger of coming off yet. Getting rid of four of this bunch right away is a sound move.

My guess is it’ll be Lily, James, Rhythmix and Jonjo, but the “overs” is the hardest to call: Sami and Kitty are far from safe. If Nu Vibe went and Rhythmix stayed nobody would care, either. I will now go and check the betting to see if I’m remotely realistic.

*why yes, it WAS an all-male party, why do you ask?

As found in the Queen Mum’s record collection.

Or maybe Amex just think it’s a rockin’ good song. Which it is! A few people answered my question by saying “Tom, what do you mean by ‘equivalent’?” I wish I knew! Was I talking about the song as a stadium rock anthem or was I talking about the song as a classic of lyrical misinterpretation, or was I talking about it as an angry indictment of the treatment of working class war veterans? Or all of the above? And of course there doesn’t have to be an ‘equivalent’ -but I was delighted by the range of interesting answers I got. Here are some of them:

“London Calling”: Has the rabble-rousing quality, and I guess it’s about something different from what you might think it’s about. Though I’m never totally sure what either of those ‘abouts’ are.

“Shipbuilding”: This got the most mentions of anything, I assume because it’s a) a terrific song and b) specifically about the experiences of working class communities involved in a pointless post-Imperial war. A “British equivalent” to Born In The USA is always likely to be smaller-scale and more domestic musically, and this is. So the only box it’s not ticking is lyrical misunderstanding.

“Live Forever”: I dunno, is there any ‘side’ to “Live Forever” which people don’t get? If so I don’t get it either, though after many years’ distrust I’ve reluctantly come to accept it’s a really good record.

“Born In The UK”: Badly Drawn Boy did a song called this! A commenter kindly linked it on YouTube so I can go listen, and I did, and I have to say it’s more of a British “We Didn’t Start The Fire”.

“Good Morning Britain”: Ramalama stuff from Aztec Camera and Big Audio Dynamite’s Mick Jones. Is aiming, I think, for a similar ironic title/savage lyrics juxtaposition, but isn’t as strong a song, and in BITU the power comes from the singer’s life story forced up against the rhetoric he still wants to believe – here it’s a bunch of slogans partying with a bunch of other slogans.

“Between The Wars”: A couple of people mentioned this Billy Bragg song, which I love. It’s a lot more broad-brush than Born In The USA, and the anger in it isn’t in it, if you get what I mean – it comes out of a knowledge of the context it was written and recorded in. So not an equivalent, but very good.

“Penny Lane”: Don’t see this at all! Sorry!

“God Save The Queen”: Wasn’t stated whether they meant the Pistols one or the actual National Anthem. Both are, er, anthemic, both also set out their stall pretty openly (so we’re still stumbling on the whole misunderstanding thing). “Anarchy In The UK” also mentioned a few times, I think there’s a playfulness in that one which BITU lacks, but perhaps a British equivalent ought to be playful. Hence…

“Parklife”: The first song which fits the double-edged anthem bill, in that it was probably meant as ironic and it was probably taken as celebratory… but these are big, baggy uncertain “probablies”: like Springsteen, Albarn is obviously in love with the music he’s using and very aware of its potency. For all that, there’s a cruelty in some of Blur’s records which is completely absent in Springsteen’s.

“Three Lions”: It caught a mood and then set a mood: as an anti-anthem written by genuine fans it became part of a mass performance of fandom, so I can see the parallel here. But it’s too much about football to be the best parallel.

“Jerusalem”: And here’s a left-field, but rather good, candidate: a radical song left unchanged but adopted to the point where it’s seriously talked up as an alternative national anthem. Obviously it’s not a rock song – though it’s as stirring – and it’s a lot older than Born In The USA, but we’re an older country and we rock less well.

All you need to do is send an email with your 20 favourite tracks of 2010, in order, to poppoll2010@gmail.com. And you should do this before the end of Sunday 2nd January 2011, so we can run the results on the week of the 3rd. That’s it really! But there are a few clarifications below the cut anyway.

Do I have to choose 20 tracks? No, you can send in fewer if you want. If you’ve done a Top 10 for another poll and you don’t have time to amend it, for instance, we’d much rather have a copy of that than nothing from you at all.

Do I have to put them in order? No, but please indicate in the email if they’re not! We will probably do a mix of the top picks though, so if you do have a #1 at least tell us that.

Do they have to be pop? They can be anything you like.

Do they have to be from 2010? You don’t have to go back and check the release dates or anything, if you think it’s a 2010 track we’ll take your word for it. And if it was from an 09 album but got a single release in 2010 that’s fine too.

What will you do with the results? There will be a complete countdown with videos on the LJ Poptimists community (who are also taking part in the same poll, using a different email address WHICH WAS PART OF OUR PLAN ALL ALONG oh yes) and we’ll link to that here too. On here we’ll have a text rundown, a mix of people’s #1 picks, and your favourite FT writers writing something about the list. Or, coo, we might have a special podcast or something. That would be fun. Anyway it’ll be good and a welcome distraction in back-to-work week.

What about albums? There are a lot of album polls in the world and I like track polls more. :)

MIGHT CONCEIVABLY MAKE A GREAT RECORD AS LONG AS WILL I AM KEEPS HIS GRUBBY PAWS OFF: Cher Lloyd

WILL MAKE A DISAPPOINTING BUT COMPETENT RECORD: Rebecca Ferguson

WILL MAKE A RECORD THAT IS NOT AS BAD AS THE RECORDS IT WANTS TO BE BUT STILL, FOR ALL THAT, BAD: Matt Cardle

WILL MAKE A RECORD, GOD HELP US: Wagner

WILL TRY TO MAKE A RECORD, GOD HELP US: Katie Waissel

TESCO EXCLUSIVE SEWN UP: Mary Byrne

MUSICAL THEATRE AND/OR PANTO AWAITS: Aiden Grimshaw

BACK TO THE PUB CIRCUIT (INCREASED FEES): Treyc Cohen, John Adeleye

BACK TO THE PUB CIRCUIT (REDUCED FEES): Diva Fever

OBLIVION: Belle Amie, F.Y.D.

EMBARRASSING TALKING HEAD APPEARANCE IN CHEAPO CLIP SHOW: Storm Lee

WILL WALK AWAY WITH A LEVEL HEAD, A SMILE ON HIS FACE AND SOME GREAT YARNS TO TELL THE GRANDCHILDREN: Paije Richardson

WILL PROVIDE VOCALS ON AN IRONIC DANCE-PUNK RECORD WHICH WILL PROVE THE WORST THING TO COME OUT OF X-FACTOR 2010: Nicolo Festa

What I stayed home to watch was a special highlights show on the music of the 80s, put together (so Alan tells me) by the Late Review team and shown on BBC2 across midnight. (A Big Ben graphic pops up during a Dead Or Alive performance, discreetly welcoming in 1990). The show had no presenters – it was simply a patchwork of clips, a minute or so long each, vaguely themed (sometimes VERY vaguely) in sections. It started with Hayzi Fantayzee, at the top of a one-hit wonders bit, and ended with the artist of the decade: Prince. In between was almost anybody I remembered and a lot more I didn’t. Here’s the section called “Barking” – essentially, acts who were a bit ‘eccentric’.

You could argue, of course, that this is shabby treatment of some fantastic artists – a minute or so each in a faintly sneery category. In the context of today’s TV, where clip shows are the saturated fats of programming and there are whole channels for musical nostalgia, you’d be quite right. But this was 1989. There was no TOTP2. There was no internet. There was satellite, but in the pre-Premier League days hardly anyone had it. The only music videos I could see were the ones on the Indie Top Video cassette I’d just got for Christmas. Nostalgia radio hadn’t reached the 80s yet and even when it did it hardly seemed likely to spotlight Grace Jones and Tenpole Tudor. These archives were essentially lost except for special events like this.

So I would have been happy to sit through any editorialising to see most of this stuff – and as it was there wasn’t much commentary. Most importantly, I hadn’t been there or fully aware for a lot of it – watching TOTP when I could, not allowed to stay up for the Whistle Test, completely ignorant of anything else… so much of this stuff was new to me, and I gulped it down, my vague awareness that I’d lived through a remarkable decade for pop turned into solid delight in its variety. In this segment alone I remember the thrill of Eddie Tudor-Pole’s livewire energy, the wonder of finding out what the Radio 4 “Week Ending” theme actually was, and the disturbing stillness of Grace Jones and her full-face horned mask. Oh, and Julian Cope in a donkey jacket – “Kilimanjaro” was the first, but not the last, record I went out and bought on the strength of this show. So a minute each was more than enough when you had viewers as greedy as I was.

It seemed a good way to end the decade – certainly I had nothing better going on. In the heart of my Morrissey phase but emboldened by a successful first gig, I’d ventured out to a disco the week before. I went, I stood on my own, I left on my own, I went home and I… well, I felt OK about it to be honest. I put on the new Wedding Present album when I got home and read the Christmas NME. If it was a choice between feeling smugly indie and feeling miserably lonely I’d take the former every time. But the New Years Eve show was a precious reminder that there was more to music than dreamed of in Danny Kelly’s philosophy – a bit more, anyway. As the parade of 80s stars went by I tried to imagine how music was going to be in the 90s – the first decade where I’d be listening not as a kid but as a committed, opinionated fan.

Joe Tangari came up with a breakdown of song title strategies on his tumblr, and I also really liked Sabina’s points about Villalobos and Autechre.

So I thought I’d throw the floor open to the Freaky Trigger people. Who does instrumental song titles best? What kind of titles do you prefer?

MGMT: The answer is “Kids”. 9 out of 13 people got this, the rest said “Time To Pretend” (#2). Not a bad start!

Lady Gaga: The answer is “Poker Face”. 6 people got this. Other choices were “Bad Romance” (which HAS now topped it but at the time of the update was #2), “Alejandro” (#4), “Just Dance” (#6) and “Telephone” (down at #20, an obvious victim of the ‘featuring’ curse)

Vampire Weekend: The answer here is “A-Punk” – 3 people got it, but the most popular answer was “no idea”. Or “Cousins” (#3), “Oxford Comma” (#5), “White Sky” (#6) or “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” (#9).

The Smiths: Right answer – fan favourite “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”. Again, 3 people got it. Most popular alternatives were “This Charming Man” (#2) and “How Soon Is Now” down in 6th.

Lily Allen: Our first one that NOBODY got – it’s impotence-diss-track “Not Fair”. Responses pretty evenly distributed between “The Fear” (which is a close 2nd) and “Smile” in 5th. (Someone said “Fuck You” – it was #3).

Blur: Despite a rich and varied catalogue it’s “Song 2″ that’s their primary legacy, as 9 people twigged. “Parklife” was a very poor 2nd.

Kanye West: Another one nobody got – “Heartless”. “Love Lockdown” was 3rd, “Stronger” 2nd, and people who picked “Gold Digger” were subject to the ‘featured’ curse but it would still barely have come in his top 10.

The Prodigy: It’s all about the current stuff with their fanbase – “Omen” was the winner here. 3 people got it right, most of the others said “Firestarter”, their 11th most popular track.

Beyonce: Surely it’s “Single Ladies”? Nope, that’s in 2nd. “Crazy In Love”? Don’t make me laugh – 10th. “Irreplacable”? “If I Were A Boy”? No – Beyonce’s most played track on LFM is “Halo“. No takers.

Radiohead: Ver ‘Head represented by “Karma Police”. Only Mike TD got it! Well done Mike! Huge spread of other answers: “Creep” is 3rd, “Paranoid Android” 2nd. Well done Steve M for “How To Disappear Completely”, there were a mere 36 better answers.

Rihanna: It’s not “Umbrella”! (Which is 10th). Lots of people realised that was too obvious, though nobody mentioned the #1 at the time, “Disturbia”. “Rude Boy” has taken over since, so I’ll use that as a tiebreaker.

Michael Jackson: It’s not “Billie Jean”! Oh, OK, it is. Only 4 people got it though. “Beat It” in 2nd, the other popular choice “Man In The Mirror” has faded post-death and lands in 6th.

Johnny Cash: “Hurt” by a fair distance. 8 people got it right, “Ring Of Fire” (3rd) its only real challenger.

Metallica: Well done KAT for getting “Nothing Else Matters” right, which noses it over “Enter Sandman” in 2nd and “One” in 3rd.

Britney Spears: Britney’s newest material is still what’s attracting fans – “Womanizer” was the right answer, and 4 people gave it. (Though nobody guessed the #2 track, “3″). “Toxic” is 4th, “Baby One More Time” is down in 15th.

The Kinks: It’s their debut, “You Really Got Me” – 3 people got it right. Most obvious other choice, “Waterloo Sunset”, is down in 6th.
12
The Beatles: Well done Birdseed who said “Come Together” – nobody else got this, most people plumping for “Hey Jude” (11th on the chart). The Beatles are weird.

Donna Summer: A few people thought “I Feel Love” was too obvious and they were right (WHY they were right I have no idea). It’s 2nd, well ahead of everything else but well BEHIND “Hot Stuff”. Pink Champale said “Hot Love” and I’ll give him a point for that.

Jay-Z: The ways of pop are strange. Well done Lex for saying “Big Pimpin‘”, nobody else did. “99 Problems” was a very close 2nd. “Empire State Of Mind” 3rd, but Lex is the only winner here.

Outkast: Now was not the time to avoid the obvious – yes, it’s “Hey Ya!“. “Ms Jackson” in 2nd is closer than you’d think. 11 easyish points picked up by people here.

And after all that – who won? Scores are as follows:

Pink Champale: 8
Birdseed, Steve M, Mike: 7
Roodle: 6
MV, Katstevens: 5
Lex, Crag: 4
Winner, Jeff W, Flahr, thefatgit: 3

So well done Mr Champale!

The remit of the column is that I’m meant to be jumping off from something that’s happening now – sometimes this is more central to the piece than others.

1. Cheap music and the ‘event single’ (Singles overtake album sales)
2. Indie rock and indirectness. (Spoon’s Transference)
3. The randomness of virality (OK Go griping at their label).
4. What critics get wrong and why (Fall Out Boy split)
5. What does ‘new music’ mean anyway? (6 Music brouhaha)
6. Three types of revivalism (Alphabeat and Goldfrapp LPs)
7. Fans as industry stakeholders (UK Music report on UK industry)
8. Why we want politicians to suck at pop (UK election campaign)
9. Global pop v world music (The Ayobaness! compilation)
10. Pop as a coalition (UK election aftermath)
11. The car-crash that is the UK’s Eurovision strategy (er, Eurovision)
12. Different kinds of populism. (Dizzee’s football single.)
13. Summer jams and the longing for ubiquity. (Katy Perry’s “California Gurls”)
14. Lo-fi as a post-industry survival strategy. (Wavves, Sleigh Bells)
15. The aesthetics of glut (Wiley’s 200 track giveaway)
16. Grown-up-ness in pop (Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs)

In this part we dig a little bit deeper into an artist’s catalogue, with two more metrics based on their list of top tracks (which, remember, are the tracks with most listeners over the last six months, not over the whole of LFM’s history). I’m calling these metrics – rather unimaginatively – head and body. “Head” is the number of listeners to the tenth most popular track expressed as a percentage of the number of listeners to the first. “Body” is the number of listeners to the fiftieth most popular track expressed as a percentage of the number of listeners to the tenth.

Both of these are based on the same principle – ratios of popular and less popular songs in an artist’s catalogue – but they turn out to measure quite different things. Head measures the extent to which an act is a several-hit wonder. A high head means that your top track isn’t that much more popular than your tenth, which usually means you’ve racked up either a bunch of successful singles or have at least one album that people are keen to listen to in toto. A low head means that you have a few, or maybe just one track which people are particularly keen on but that interest doesn’t extend very far – it suggests a big chunk of casual listeners in your audience.

A high body, meanwhile, means that people are keen to dig deeper into your back catalogue (50 songs is 4+ albums worth for most bands) and a low body either means they’re not, or that you haven’t GOT that kind of back catalogue. It’s usually pretty obvious if this is the case, as the body will be microscopic, since by the time Sleigh Bells or Wavves hit track 50 we’re in the realm of misfiled tags and typos. It certainly isn’t the case that artists who have that kind of back catalogue automatically get a fat body score though.

Head scores of over 50% seem to be pretty good, below 30% suggest the presence of at least one catalogue-outshining hit. In the top bracket you find “album acts” old and new – Pink Floyd are up there, for instance, but so are Vampire Weekend with an enormous 77% head, i.e. their tenth-most-popular track gets more than three-quarters the plays of their most popular one. In other words when someone puts on a VWE record they probably stick it out.

Just below the album acts you find a smattering of pre-Beatles icons – Sinatra, Elvis, Duke Ellington – men with broad enough catalogues to withstand even standout songs: Sinatra’s 10th most popular track gets over half the listeners of “My Way”. Modern pop icons – even those like Madonna with a basket of hits – dip under 50% head scores: there’s always a few songs that are much more popular than their others.

Down at the bottom you’ve got the occasional newbie like Ke$ha (14%) or Drake (9%), but you’ve also got a lot of 80s acts remembered for one or two songs – Dexys, Soft Cell, Bananarama.

Here’s where the relationship between head and body gets interesting though – or rather, the lack of it. The thing about these scores is that they don’t really correlate that much – you can quite credibly have a fat head and a thin body or vice versa. The averages are distorted by acts with small discographies but broadly speaking above 35% seems like quite a big body and below 20% is a thin one (if you’ve got a back catalogue that would merit more, that is.)

So this makes them diagnostically a bit richer, i.e. you can draw up a QUADRANT.

(Positionings in this quadrant are relative rather than reflecting absolute numbers, i.e. I hand-drew it, it’s not an actual chart.)

So let’s have a look at this. In the top-right you have acts with a big head and a big body – lots of popular tracks AND a deep back catalogue. Oh look, it’s the Beatles! But also Yo La Tengo, Radiohead, Kraftwerk, NIN: acts who have devoted fans who see their work as a body rather than a catalogue to be picked from.

Some of the interest lies in who doesn’t make it in: in the top left quadrant you get older acts like Elvis, Queen, and the Doors – people with extensive catalogues but who don’t have the big “body” scores which might be expected. This is the “good for one album” quadrant – whether that’s a debut album or a greatest hits isn’t reflected in the raw stats.

Below that is the “good for one song” quadrant at bottom-left – this section includes a lot of the acts I particularly like, perhaps because I believe people who’ve made one great pop song will often have made more and am happy to delve in on that basis. But the Last.FM public don’t agree with me so here are the Human League, Britney (though she does much better than most pop acts), ABBA on the borderline – lots of hits but no body to speak of – and, interestingly, the Beach Boys.

And on the bottom right is the most intriguing bunch of all – the rarest quadrant, made up of bands with one or a few big hit songs and a bunch of devoted followers who really get stuck in. If you’re happy to listen as far as your tenth Kate Bush or Johnny Cash track, you’re likely to stick around for a lot more. Most extraordinary is Lil Wayne: very very few of the many “Lollipop” listeners dig into Weezy’s labyrinthine back catalogue but a lot of those who do really get stuck in.

In part III I’ll link the data set as a download, point out important caveats, note some quirky results and also draw some conclusions from all this.

So using the most topline, publically available data possible – the artist pages and charts of most-played tracks – what can we find out? I created a few metrics which I could generate (by hand! no programmer I!) in 20 seconds or so for each artist and set to work populating a mini database out of the artists on the overall LFM charts, then the ones on my personal charts, then anyone I thought might be interesting. The results are this series of three – somewhat wonkish – posts: the conclusions will be in Part III so if you don’t fancy seeing me crunch numbers (albeit very EASY numbers) wait around for that.

Here’s what I came up with!

Obviously the sample I pulled from the LFM database is non-representative – these are, for the most part, famous bands with upwards of a million plays each. And as you’ll realise, LFM is itself probably highly unrepresentative of music listeners in general – probably more so of “committed listeners to music via computer” though. Even so some interesting patterns emerged.

The first metric I created was the incredibly obvious plays per listener (PPL) – a division of the number of plays by the number of listeners. The figures LFM gives for both of these are, as best I can tell, total: i.e. in the lifetime of Last, just north of 3 million users have listened to Coldplay, and they’ve racked up about 160 million plays, so their PPL is 53 (which is very high, as it happens).

The highest PPL I found was 116, for The Beatles (see the conclusions post for my thoughts on that). The lowest was 4, for Gloria Gaynor. Obviously the PPL has something to do with how deep into an artist’s catalogue fans will go, but there’s an element of loyalty and repeat plays in there too.

A high PPL seems to be 45+ – bands with that kind of score are generally long-serving, serious groups with global appeal: Radiohead, Metallica, NIN, Led Zep, The Smiths. But there are a bunch of much newer bands in there too who gain their high PPL simply by having a smaller, but obsessive fanbase: Paramore and the XX both have PPLs over 60, implying very heavy repeat plays of their smaller number of tracks.

This certainly doesn’t apply to all new bands: Wavves has a PPL of 27, Sleigh Bells have 24. Maybe people are trying those groups and not returning? And not all of the ‘rock canon’ do so well either – Springsteen has 28, Kate Bush 22, critical touchstones New Order and the Beach Boys have PPLs of 21 each. For soul legends the figures get worse still: Steve Wonder on 15, Marvin Gaye on 13.

In the 15-or-below zone we have a bunch of older acts who are best known for one or two songs: Human League, Soft Cell, Glenn Campbell, Donna Summer. We also have an awful lot of dancehall, R&B and hip-hop acts on under 15 PPL, which is partly a reflection of LFM’s audience demographics but partly because those musics are still hit-promoted as much as album driven.

The next metric I put together I’m calling Top Track Incidence (TTI) – this is the number of listeners for the top track as a percentage of the number of listeners. This one’s a lot less useful than PPL, because listeners per track are counted on a 6 month basis whereas overall listeners are counted across the site’s whole history. So it’s really just the percentage of an act’s listeners who listened to its most popular track over the last 6 months. Probably everyone who has ever listened to Outkast has listened to “Hey Ya!” but only 6.4% of them did it within the last 6 months (which might be good news for Outkast, it suggests they’re not a one-hit-wonder).

The highest TTIs I found were for the XX (“Crystalised”), and Ke$ha (have a guess) – both with almost 52%. There must, you would think, be higher ones out there. These were flukes, though – on the whole a TTI of over 10% was pretty unusual.

Down at the lower end – under 5% – were acts with broad catalogues and no one single smash: yes, “My Way” is Frank Sinatra’s top track, but only 3% of his listeners played it in the last 6 months – with a catalogue as big as his, there’s plenty of other stuff to play. The lowest TTI I found – and I looked at him because I knew he’d be low – was for Muslimgauze, whose CDs are notoriously a) numerous and b) similar to one another. His top track – “Dharam Hinduja”, if you’re interested – was played by only 1.4% of his fans. Perhaps more surprisingly, “Imperial March (Darth Vader Theme)” got a TTI of only 1.9% for John Williams – he has done many other soundtracks and it’s unlikely listeners are buying them for HIM rather than for the films.

In part II I’ll look more deeply at metrics dealing with artists’ depth of catalogue: the ratios between levels of listeners to given tracks – and there will be a CHART. In part III I’ll link to my little hand-made dataset (though expect more examples in the comments before then!) and also draw a few conclusions.

The quiz is very easy! All you have to do is guess which is the highest ranked track on Last FM by each of these artists. LFM’s public data only goes back 6 months, which makes a difference in some cases, and it hasn’t got the VERY latest hits (i.e. Katy Perry’s #1 is “I Kissed A Girl” not “California Gurls” let alone “Teenage Dream”). For some of the listed acts it is the obvious track, for others it isn’t, this is where blind luck your skill and judgement will play a role.

So here goes! Quiz under the cut, answers in the comments box and I’ll let you know who does best.

1. MGMT
2. Lady Gaga
3. Vampire Weekend
4. The Smiths
5. Lily Allen
6. Blur
7. Kanye West
8. The Prodigy
9. Beyonce
10. Radiohead
11. Rihanna
12. Michael Jackson
13. Johnny Cash
14. Metallica
15. Britney Spears
16. The Kinks
17. The Beatles
18. Donna Summer
19. Jay-Z
20. Outkast

Candy Flip’s “Strawberry Fields Forever” is an interesting record because it manages to be basely cynical and winningly naive at the same time. On the cynical side, yes, this is a brazen cash in. Perpetually-fucked singing and a beat lazily gesturing in the rough direction of hip-hop were the currency of hip British pop in 1990 and Candy Flip were well aware of it. At the time I assumed that THE MAN was behind them but whether they were “manufactured” or not there’s no need for them to have been. The boundaries between a novelty single, an underground sensation and a pop smash have never been thinner than at this point in time, and it was a good time for people who had an idea for a record to actually go through with it.

This is also the utopian charm of the thing. At the heart of “indie dance” was an ideal of musical subcultures coming together. Which in turn was part of a greater mythologising of club culture (and Ecstasy) as a dissolver of difference – even a kid like me with no interest in sports was aware that hooligans were meant to be hugging on the terraces under the influence of the “Love Drug”. And that tied in with all kinds of wider stuff in the culture – “positivity” as a philosophy, Benetton, the idea that the 90s would be a decade of Aquarian goodwill after the ‘decade of greed’. And then ladder up high enough and you get to the apparently ultimate dissolution of differences, the end of the Cold War. “Bob Dylan never had this to sing about” – and crucially, nor did Lennon.

So from this angle two kids doing a limply dancey version of a Beatles track wasn’t the act of hubris it would have seemed like even five years later: “pop history” was less routinely glorified and more liquid, and for a season or two it seemed like the happy destiny of every old sound was to be improved by the addition of house piano and/or the ‘Funky Drummer’ sample. Candy Flip aren’t trying to stake a claim to membership of a pantheon (which was behind all of Oasis’ Beatle obsession), they’re simply inviting the Beatles to a different, better party. The turn of the 90s were the last time for a while that British pop stars didn’t reflexively believe things were better in the 60s.

And don’t forget that the polls are still open for Nigeria v Ghana and Cameroon v Spain in the Pop World Cup 2010. So go vote! And reduce the chances of another controversial result.

Update! Tom Ewing and Mike Atkinson will also be taking part!

Summer 1960: Kids prepare to battle the future in a time-spanning pop war.

Mike isn’t blogging so much at T-D now and felt it was time to shake the Which Decade format up. He offered to do it here. Since it’s a) a great idea and b) proven excellent fun, I was absolutely delighted to agree.

So as of next week, Which Decade Is Tops For Pops? 2010 will be appearing at freakytrigger.co.uk, alongside your regular pop features. The top tens of 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010 will be abasing themselves to curry YOUR favour. History lesson, all-in pop wrestle and generational WAR all in one ticktastic feature.

Quite frankly, it is going to be BRILLIANT.

This match closes at midnight on Monday 10th May

CAMEROON: Bébé Manga – “Amie O” The Manager Says: “In March, I listened to Erik Satie’s ‘Vexations’ for eighteen hours and forty minutes. I sat entirely still, in the darkness, for the duration (I had put the Reinbert de Leeuw version on a loop). I saw nothing meditative or transcendent about the experience. In fact, the experience brings into serious question the very notion of a meditative state. Throughout, I struggled, as any of my true brothers and sisters would, in fighting off a kind of trance state that emerges when the boredom of passivity and repetition gives way to acceptance and indifference. The mistake that Satie made, a mistake then repeated by the 60s dilettantes, who took the idea to its logical endpoint, was to assume that the transcendence of boredom is a positive thing. I am edified by my boredom. I want to destroy the circumstances that lead to my boredom. Satie wants to revel in tedium, to erase through sheer force the desire to change the state of the world. Anyone who sits down to meditate is gifting time to those in power, time that could be spent fighting against them. Retreat into boredom is the death of the revolutionary spirit, it is a genuflection to power.”

Length: 7:07 Played: 162

NEW ZEALAND: P-Money (ft. David Dallas & Aaradhna) – “Say Yeah” The Manager Says: “Moonshine-based headaches following the group win are one thing but team selection for this match was a much more painful process. ‘Say Yeah’ is one of the most recent things you’re likely to hear in the PWC with P-Money’s album released on the day of this press conference. Essentially we’ve combined the winning tactics from our first two games with a rap/rnb duo with a housey sweeper system and I’m hoping Aaradhna’s catchy chorus will find fan favour. The sound of NZ is the sound of the world and imitation remains our finest flattery. Excited to hear what Cameroon have got in store (both on the pitch and in the press room) and I’ve been playing ‘Soul Makossa’ to the lads over and over again in admittedly nervous anticipation. ”

Length: 3:32 Played: 139

Commentary Box Analysis Cameroon hit a groove, they hit it hard, and they stick with it. It’s an enjoyable seven minutes and it might be powerful enough to carry them through. Equally, it may be that NZ, playing in Steve M’s trademark style, have enough pep and zip to take apart Cameroon’s by-the-book play, and to get around the back of the Cameroon defence. What we know is that we don’t know. But we’re looking forward to finding out.

Result! Round of Sixteen Match 2: South Africa 1 – Korea Republic 3It was an amazing game, played with pace and grace, but the precision and shine of the Korean team was ultimately too much for the power of the South Africans. “Korea start brightly but lack invention in front of the net. SA have pace and a rhythmic flow to their movement on the ball.” “I liked the SA number, but it stayed a bit medium-paced for me, whereas the Korean track is a total delight, and that just edges it for me.” “Korea, just. Like a hi-energy Lazytown tune you make up in a dream. DJ Cleo does a nice job channeling Kraftwerk though.” “…as it is, Korea is just too amazing, disco to the Jackson ’80s to a hook that sounds simple as breathing but is unstoppable, a score with every chorus. Crackerjack battle of the Souths, but this one is Korea’s.”

Coming up Honduras! Portugal! You know that this match, probably the less-discussed of our transatlantic tussles, will throw up some strong play, and it may turn out to be a classic. Stick with us, we’re close to finding our quarter finalists.

The great necessary thing about rivalries is that if you’re an outsider they should baffle you a bit. Take That and East 17 – seriously? What’s the difference? They’re both boy bands right, both manufactured, you shouldn’t be listening to either of them, you should be listening to oh, I don’t know, Consolidated or something. And isn’t the rivalry all a hype thing anyway? I had those conversations a few times in 1993.

But hype is the brassiere of pop rivalries, it lifts and separates but there’s got to be something there in the first place, some real division the marketing can draw to your attention. East 17 were rough lads, not cheeky, Londoners, ravers maybe – they were singing “House Of Love” at a time when the words HOUSE and LOVE were code for DRUGS and DRUGS. Well, maybe. Would you get Gary Barlow with his songcraft making anything so rambunctious and mucky and unchoreographed as “HoL”?* Would you get Tony Mortimer and his crew of chancers making anything as sleek and crushable as “Pure”?

There were real differences, but proper rivalries don’t just rest on real differences. They rest on the unspoken tribal things the groups bring to the surface, which were waiting there ready for bands to incarnate them for a few months. Those deeper things are why people feel however briefly that the rivalries matter, because unlike silly stuff like Coldplay v Crazy Frog they dredge up the hidden splits WITHIN a group you might be inclined to think of as a mass. After a bit the baffled voices receded and everyone KNEW what East 17 vs Take That ‘meant’. We have hardly anything like that now and it’s a shame.

*or indeed singing “So many bombs in the world it’s like a LIVING MINE”

The centrepiece of the portal though is of course the charts themselves. All thirty-three of them. Yes, THIRTY-THREE. The OCC do an awful lot of work it seems and I suspect go mostly unthanked for it. So when you’re asked “Who’s at Number One?” you could happily answer any of the following:

Diana Vickers (Singles, Singles Downloads)
AC/DC (Albums, Rock And Metal Albums, Scottish Albums)
Various Artists (err Compilations and indeed Classical Compilations with THE BEST HYMNS IN THE WORLD EVER! And Dance Albums)
Plan B (Albums Downloads, R&B Albums)
Ida Corr vs Fedde Le Grand (Subscription Plays)
Andre Rieu (Classical, Specialist Classical)
Paramore (Rock And Metal Singles)
WELLER (VH1 Rock Singles, Coalition Albums)
Futureheads (Independent Singles)
The XX (Independent Albums)
All Time Low (Independent Singles Breakers)
John Grant (Independent Albums Breakers)
Biffy Clyro (NME Singles – this chart is currently broken, in that it is suggesting that Ian Brown has been in the NME chart for the last 32,767 weeks. OR IS IT BROKEN)
Bat For Lashes (Coalition Singles)
Snow Patrol ft Martha Wainwright (Catalogue Singles)
Scouting For Girls (Catalogue Albums)
Usher Ft Will I Am (RnB Singles)
Chipmunk ft Esmee Denters (1Xtra Singles, VH1 Urban)
Kelis (Dance Singles)
Taylor Swift (Country Albums)*
Johnny Cash (Country Compilation Albums)
Chieftains (World Albums)*
Panjabi By Nature (Asian Download)

and to round us off Tina Turner who is topping the Scottish Singles chart with her contemporary hit waxing “The Best”.

Haven’t they all done well!

*there are no Country or World Singles charts, sadly.