We are having our first ever Readers Poll this year! It’s only going to be a little poll, with just one category – the best tracks of the last year. If you’re reading this, and especially if you’re a regular reader or commenter, we’d love you to take part.
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. :)
Thanks to the people who’ve already sent their lists in! There will be reminders aplenty I’m sure, particularly as deadline day approaches.
That Gomez picture never gets old.
Kat @ 2: I linked to this thru yr comment and was expecting a photo of some Southampton shamblers in Millets student gear…
Southport shurely?
I do like the first Gomez album, especially when that Tom Ewing fella sings…
did my provisional top 100 last night and it was MOIDER
I sent in my list yesterday, fully understanding that there was a lot of stuff I hadn’t got around to hearing. A very subjective list in other words. Well, bloody hell. Just today in the light of the Guardian picking Janelle Monae’s album as best of the year I finally got around to checking out some tracks from her on youtube for the first time. Oh. My. God is she good. She’s gonna have to be my Ms 2011….
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.
In other words, it will be assumed that the entries are in order unless you say otherwise, so (for instance) your number 1 will be allocated more points than your number 20. (Some people were confused on this point over on poptimists, so that’s why I’m clarifying it.)
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.
Well, what I’m doing on my ballot, should it come up, is counting tracks from ’09 if they had their main impact in ’10 (which, by the way, is what the Village Voice recommends in its instructions for its Pazz & Jop poll); and I remember that last year over on poptimists Tom, like the Voice, had some formula for deciding when a track got sufficient attention this year to make its previous year’s totals eligible to be added to this year’s (this is so as not to penalize the tracks that get their votes split between the years, though I don’t think anything actually qualified last year).*
Ke$ha’s “TiK ToK” would be an obvious example here, since it didn’t peak until 2010. Also, Coati Mundi’s “Bundas Bom,” which, if my sense of things is right, is going to get a sudden burst of attention in these parts.
Also, for my ballot, I consider leaks and boots and mashups very eligible.
*But this also means I won’t put anything on my ballot this year that I already voted for last year, even if its explosion of popularity was in 2010.
Oh, and I assume you very much don’t want us to submit our ballots both here and at poptimists, as you’ll be adding the two sets of submissions yourselves. Right?
#7 Yes! If it’s unranked say so.
#8 I was actually harsher than P&J, in that if something had charted the previous year it needed to beat its position to qualify. So “The Fear” was our #19 in 2008 and then in our Top 3 last year. But “Bad Romance” was #1 last year and so there’s no chance of it appearing this time.
#9 Well we can sort it out! But yes each one will only be counted once. We might then have separate subgroups so we can work out what was popular among self-defined Poptimists and which among the FT voters…
Can one name tracks that were recorded years ago and have now been either rereleased, or released for the first time in 2010?
#11 – I’d say yes, it doesn’t have to have been recorded in 2010. Reissues of stuff that was high profile at the time shouldn’t count though.
I’ve sent my 20 so-called-pop faves but I don’t expect most of them to trouble the upper end of the overall results, so check out a youtube playlist of my full 100 if interested: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=66DD19CB8AE40E5B
I cannot imagine liking 100 songs from this year!
I can’t imagine having to pad my ballot out with reissues.
I’ve just tallied up the ballots received so far (for FT and Poptimists): gratifyingly the #2 slot on the FT poll is currently occupied by a track I’d never heard before!
338 tracks mentioned so far, 70 of ’em with more than 1 vote. 3 different artists have 5 nominated songs apiece. Keep them coming!
Current standings: 459 tracks named, 104 with more than 1 vote. 4 artists with 5 songs named and 1 with 6.