Thanks for hosting Severin, and congratulations to Bre.

After the deadline, I was reminded of a fantastic cover that would have been less obviously my entry, but it was too late to change. That said, The Paraochestra and Brett Anderson's version of one of Echo and the Bunnymen's greatest songs is fabulous and I make no excuse for introducing it to a wider audience.

Thanks to everyone who gave points to Kelsey Lu, especially Chez and Julian for the 12s. I discovered their version of I'm Not In Love in 2019 and was keeping it for Reinvention III if that ever happened but this theme gave me the opportunity to enter it here.

Congratulations to Brer on a first retro song contest win. I enjoyed that version of Rock The Casbah.

Thanks to Severin for coming up with the idea for this contest and for doing a great job hosting it.

Well done Brer, what a great entry. Glad other people saw what I saw in it! Lovely to see Sylver 2nd too, they are always good, and Gigi safely top 10 <3

Thanks for hosting Severin, an interesting theme with some very unique covers.

14th isn't bad, thanks to all the voters, especially guest voter Wardy for the 12!

8 minutes ago, jimwatts said:

Quite a convincing win in the end - congrats Bré!

As I mentioned earlier your entry was just outside my votes - with my votes being literally every song from 2nd-11th!

It does indeed look like I've snuck into the top 20, so I'll take it - not sure whether it's 19th or 20th in 'canon' as ties in these contests are usually separated by number of votes before number of 12s, 10s, etc. regardless not my finest performance in one of these contests. but I'm glad some of you enjoyed it.

Great theme, thank you Severin for hosting!

Didn't realise that. Dinosaur Jr got 8 votes compared to Halocene's 5 so you were 19th anyway

5 minutes ago, Severin said:

And thanks to everyone that voted for Emma Conquest. Was genuinely worried I might win at one point which would have looked very dodgy, but relived by the last few voters giving it very little 😅

My recorded comments on that song stated that it sounded rather like Blancmange. I already loved the Hurts version (with added Kylie), so I was bound to like a version that sounded like Blancmange.

Great hosting

Congrats to the winner

Thanks to all who showed Pentatonix some love

The votes in full if anyone has a quibble on the tie breaks.

Apologies I assumed highest votes settled it rather than most

The Dinosaur Jr version of Just Like Heaven was probably my biggest disappointment. I had expected better from them.

2 minutes ago, Herbs said:

Great hosting

Congrats to the winner

Thanks to all who showed Pentatonix some love

I've heard quite a lot of Pentatonix covers and have generally found the to be refreshingly different. Therefore, I wasn't surprised that I liked their version of Creep.

@Severin thanks for hosting and congrats to @Brer

yeah these results were not enjoyable but I did think this was gonna happen 😞 thanks to everyone who pointed it though

Oh @dandy* and me still keeping our record of finishing Top 10 in all 9 retro contests so far

Well then! That's my fifth win in a song contest on this site and my first in nearly 5 years (since Moaning winning Nuggets XII in May 2020 - previous wins were BJSCs 67 & 74 in 2014/15 and PFSC IV in late 2017), I noted it went down fairly well on SyncTube so had decently high hopes that it'd be another one that'd finish above my usual bottom 5-ish results in this particular contest but was absolutely not anticipating being a contender to win so that's a wonderful surprise *.* thanks very much to all who threw points my way - particularly the trio of golds from Cow, fiesta and Severin and further medals from Rich and Dandy, was very close to being an entry that strictly got decent points or nothing as out of all of the voters there was only one who gave it fewer than 5 points so gracias also to AH Gold, Chez, Rollo, Jade, Scene, Wardy, Bjork, Dobbo, Mango and Suedehead + Cody for the solitary mealworm

That's now 2 of my 5 song contest winners that are sung (at least mostly) in Arabic so perhaps I ought to find more Arabic songs in the future I felt a little cheeky sending a song that's technically not exactly a direct cover although from what I can tell it is effectively a one to one translation so close enough - the original version of the song was actually allegedly inspired by Rachid's music after he gave them a demo tape in the early 80s so this cover was him 'reclaiming' it in a way (I don't think there's any beef though!) with more authentic Arabic musical elements, jumped out to me as a really cool instrumental arrangement in the verses while staying more faithful to the sound of the original in the chorus. Very pleased to see it going down so well here

(incidentally I'm also only just realising now somehow that this cover was only released in 2004, I just assumed it was older than that I guess! Though ofc the rules only stipulated that the original version needed to be from the 21st century so it's all good anyway)

Will have to have a think re a potential theme for the next one of these then, with how badly I've done in most of the previous editions it's not a hypothetical that I've kept on my mind too often haha! I guess I'll have a few months to mull it over x

From the last couple of reveals, I actually thought Kelsey Lu might have been Chez's entry but now it's revealed of course it'd be Rollo sending the 10cc cover - I think that's maybe a shout for a song here I actually like more than the original version, lovely stuff.

Well done Julian getting another medal after the Bop Idol win the other day, I would not have predicted Nina doing so well but well deserved! 3rd-9th place were all in my votes, very happy with 6th for The Breath Of Life which was quite an easy 12 for me, just a shame the other The Cure cover didn't fare nearly as well but nevermind! Tori Amos and Sophie Ellis-Bextor the other two outside the top 10 which got points from me, would have liked to see the latter do a bit better too, that one grew on me a fair bit on second listen.

Thanks for the hosting Severin, was well worth the wait for the results...!

I guess that's the trick then, avoid sending an entry so Bré can win!

Yes, I did attempt to send Oasis, not knowing if the artist would be too well known compared with other artists sent, but no real complaints and I'm sorry if I partly held up proceedings looking for a recomfirmation that couldn't be found. It's actually the first song contest I've sat out of for some time, but I still found time to listen to the songs and send some guest votes.

Congrats to Bré once again!

Congrats Bre! Feels like a while since you've won a song contest, this was a very unique cover of a great song. I voted for most of the top 10 too, admittedly there's not a huge amount here I'll be going back to over the originals but Kelsey Lu and The Breath of Life did come pretty close. I admittedly didn't know the Portishead original of Sour Times, but this one sounded amazing all the same.

Pleased to be top 10 and a little bit better than my last entry here, I was expecting to bomb completely following the Synctube reaction. I actually heard this version of Wordy Rappinghood before the original, and they certainly sound similar, but I do think it fits into Chicks on Speed's overall image very well and I hope I at least introduced the song to a few of you as it's such a unique, brilliantly eclectic song (I did actually enter the 4:46 edit via YouTube rather than the one played at the listening session as it does condense it to the best parts, but it wasn't available on streaming)

Thanks for hosting, Severin, always do enjoy song contests focusing on reinvention as they are interesting if nothing else x

This is the revised scoreboard based on number of votes deciding the tie-breaks. All three of them have the positions swapped over from where they were.

Final Scoreboard

1. 114 Rachid Taha - Rock El Casbah (Brer)

2. 96 Sylver - Lay All Your Love On Me (Addy!)

3. 95 Nina Simone - The Times They Are A-Changin' (Julian_)

4. 91 Emma Conquest - Confide In Me (Severin)

5. 83 Kelsey Lu - I'm Not In Love (King Rollo)

6. 81 The Breath Of Life - The Love Cats (Jade)

7. 80 Gigi D’Agostino - The Riddle (Dobbo)

8. 79 Clubdrugs - Sour Times (dandy*)

9. 64 Groove Armada - Crazy For You (AH Gold)

10. 62 Chicks on Speed - Wordy Rappinghood (Chez Wombat)

11. 53 Tori Amos - Losing My Religion (Bjork)

12. 50 Adam Lambert - Holding Out For A Hero (Scene )

13. 48 West End Girls - What Have I Done To Deserve This? (gooddelta) 10 votes

14. 48 Fratellis - Yes Sir I Can Boogie (Mango) 6 votes

15. 46 Paraorchestra with Brett Anderson and Charles Hazelwood - The Killing Moon (Suedehead)

16. 44 Pentatonix - Creep (Herbs)

17. 41 Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Do You Remember The First Time (Jester ) 10 votes

18. 41 Willam Shatner - Common People (Fiesta) 9 votes

19. 33 Dinosaur Jr - Just Like Heaven (Jimwatts) 8 votes

20. 33 Halocene - Barbie Girl (Cowtzy) 5 votes

21. 30 Dolly Dots - Do Wah Diddy (WoW73)

22. 22 Mr Ed Jumps the Gun - Smoke (Cody Buckley)

congrats Bré

my favs were the Kylie and Madonna covers, 2 great discoveries

Well done to Bré, definitely one of the more standout entries. Great that Nina finished top 3, that was far and away my highlight from this.

I'll take another top 10 here, thanks Severin for running.

Well done Bre! And thanks for hosting Severin! Really enjoyed this theme. I’ll take 12th considering I’ve finished last in these before.

Well done @Brer Rabbit! 🐇 A win in near time for Easter!

This is the updated league table after 9 contests:

1. (1) 59 Addy!

2. (2) 52 dandy*

3. (3) 36 AH Gold

4. (3) 34 jimwatts

4. (5) 34 Dobbo

6. (6) 30 King Rollo

7. (7) 28 Jade

8. (13) 23 Julian

8. (12) 23 Severin

10. (8) 22 Bjork

11. (9) 21 Jester

12. (16) 20 Brer

13. (10) 19 Chez Wombat

14. (11) 17 Popchartfreak

15. (13) 15 awardinary

16. (15) 14 danG

17. (16) 10 Ansel

18. (18) 9 fiesta

19. (19) 7 lewistgreen

20. (20) 6 ClaudiaKinkleman

20. (20) 6 *Ben*

22. (22) 4 Roba

23. (23) 3 !!!

24. (24) 2 gooddelta

25. (25) 1 seven