9 minutes ago, awardinary said:

Definitely expect a rebranding of this competition for the next series. Pop just isn't pop anymore.

Pop Factor is for all everyone... apart from those that like Pop

Oh, gosh. Fontaines could've been eliminated with their Club Bizarre winner. 😧

20 points ahead of Fontaines

What an unfortunate time to add a fifth judge (not for Fontaines!)

Alt Factor, your time is up. The Texas and Zara fandom will be redistributed across the remaining pop acts. Send your best to this round, or it's over.

3 minutes ago, ElectroBoy said:

Pop Factor is for all everyone... apart from those that like Pop

the top three are all very much dance-pop by definition tbf

3 minutes ago, ElectroBoy said:

Pop Factor is for all everyone... apart from those that like Pop

Intriguing for this to happen after Dido's Bop Idol winner was close to sending her home too.

Oh we are a rebellious judging panel once again, going against what the people voted for!

6 minutes ago, Calum said:

I have to apologise to the judges for giving them a pointless exercise this afternoon when I started panicking

I was checking every few minutes for an emergency late addition of New Order to the 'who would you save' pairings!

Just now, gooddelta said:

20 points ahead of Fontaines

What an unfortunate time to add a fifth judge (not for Fontaines!)

Alt Factor, your time is up. The Texas and Zara fandom will be redistributed across the remaining pop acts. Send your best to this round, or it's over.

I do feel awful about this sorry!

The judging panel would have alternated if it wasn't just Pete that accepted the invitation, so here's a sneak peek at what could have been

3 minutes ago, Calum said:

I do feel awful about this sorry!

The judging panel would have alternated if it wasn't just Pete that accepted the invitation, so here's a sneak peek at what could have been

LOL I want to be a judge next season just to see what you would call me.

Spicy The Annoying Pain in the Backside? 😂🤣

Just now, Spiceboy said:

LOL I want to be a judge next season just to see what you would call me.

Spicy The Annoying Pain in the Backside? 😂🤣

You wouldn't get in, you like pop too much x

If you ever need a mentor who has been made redudnant to cast a deciding vote, then I can offer my most poptastic services.

2 minutes ago, Spiceboy said:

Spicy The Annoying Pain in the Backside? 😂🤣

Spicy Specimen will be yours!

I mean personally that is excruciating for me - I put Texas 2nd out of 13. I had Fontaines DC and New Order at the bottom and New Order were never coming off of my 13th place. For both to have nudged out Texas is brutal.

Obviously I benefited from some alt-leaning votes in this years competition so I can't complain.

3 minutes ago, ElectroBoy said:

You wouldn't get in, you like pop too much x

Just you wait until they reveal who I am now... 😎

10 minutes ago, Calum said:

I do feel awful about this sorry!

It's all good <3

I know it's the game and I've benefited from some of the other twists and turns.

1 minute ago, Spiceboy said:

Just you wait until they reveal who I am now... 😎

Not the pop boys Fontaines D.C - I would be shook

18 minutes ago, ElectroBoy said:

Not the pop boys Fontaines D.C - I would be shook

🤫

28 minutes ago, ElectroBoy said:

Not the pop boys Fontaines D.C - I would be shook

He may be deaf, but he’s not THAT deaf

3 minutes ago, Lee_J said:

He may be deaf, but he’s not THAT deaf

I mean you literally cannot get any deafer than me so... maybe I am them after all. 👀

WELL WELL WELL... it was me, who'd have guessed?! Surprisingly, not everyone!

I really f***ed this round up for myself and I knew it from the minute I opened the thread, to be honest. I just took the theme too literally - in my brain, the only two "club bangers" that Zara Larsson had were Lush Life & Midnight Sun which I wasn't using yet incase she got further. Obviously, given that we ended up with stuff like Seventeen Going Under and even something like Radioactive, to be honest, means that I could've just got away with sending anything upbeat like Eurosummer. I just overthought it... which I guess is part of the danger of sending someone that you love so much, I'm perhaps too familiar with her music. Puss Puss is my favourite remix on the Girls' Trip album but, in hindsight, silly of me to think that would translate.

I can't feel bitterness at leaving though, considering I didn't deserve to be in the final in the first place, and was only there because of Robyn departing. I like to think of myself as something of a clever game player and I'm VERY competitive but my game was thrown LITERALLY at Round 1, as Viper said, by how badly Love Me Land did. That song, for reference, was voted as her 5th best song in a Zara Larsson fan poll on Reddit with about 200+ people voting in it, in the same week as Pop Factor started. There is no way I could conceivably have known it would've gone down so badly, but it meant that I started swinging way earlier than I had any intention of doing so. Ain't My Fault would PROBABLY have been my pick for this club banger round, if I hadn't used it, and I had every intention of keeping it until the live shows. The girls were just TOO good this time and those with a bigger legacy just factually do a lot better - it's a fact that the majority of voters are probably closer to 40 (this is absolutely no shade) and have a huge nostalgic lean towards 90s and 00s, which isn't as strong for me, outside of the biggest acts like Britney Spears. So, I think where artists like Kate or Sophie could maybe get away with a hidden gem that people were aware of - I had to go with a hit every single time to not fall behind, which is just how the cards fell in Series 3! But, yeah, consider my tactical game play blown apart and then, as soon as I tried to start a game plan, I played Puss Puss to save myself and here we are!

My FAVOURITE part of this game hasn't been the songs or being Zara Larsson, it's 100% been the pretending to be other acts. I actually can't believe, 9 rounds in, people still thought that I wasn't Zara Larsson, as her biggest fan of this site landslidedly, but I was THROUGHLY entertained by it. It had me GIDDY to see Rich thinking I was Darin even today.

I had a gameplan from the first moment to pretend I'd missed out on an act and Darin being entered was like putty in my hands. To be clear about the lengths I went to, on the day that the artists were revealed, I began streaming Darin on my Last.fm. I changed my signature. I pretended to "discover new music". On the day that we found out ALBUM TRACKS was the theme, I watched Big Brother while this played in the background just incase anyone was snooping my socials for clues:

So thank you to Lee for giving me someone to hide behind xx

I will say, on a slightly less fun note, that I am a little bit relieved to be out. And I was relieved when I was out the first time. There has been a strange negativity surrounding Zara from the beginning which felt unexpected to me - I wasn't aware she was an artist that people had particular disdain for me and it took me by surprise. I don't mean not liking Love Me Land - like what you like. But there were some quite heavy criticisms, people openly willing her to get voted out early and being disappointed when she wasn't, and constant - what I can only describe as - pop snobbery in people's comments. I'm kinda used to that happening in BJSC - a lot of the time when I go into Plug.DJ, my entries are sneered at a fair bit when I send pure pop (Felicia, Babe America etc) but I find the humour in it because the rivalries between blocs are silly and it's all pantomime, I've always said. However, this being a Pop Factor contest held in the Pop Forum, it's kinda irked me that there's been a sneering towards pop, as I wouldn't go into the Indie Forum and look down my nose at Unknown Pleasures, or Dance with Club Bizarre. I can acknowledge maybe I don't get the most out of it and let people enjoy it, but the "soulless", "vapid" kind of criticisms kinda shit on pop music, where a lot of the joy in it is its whimsy. That's that me espresso, here's my number call me maybe, I really really really wanna zig-a-zig ahh. This is the type of place I should not have to feel like that's a guilty pleasure or beneath people. I think I always tried to keep my comments, even with artists I regular voted low like Gary Numan, New Order, so that there was a positive at the end, or that I liked the production, or that I was looking forward to Cars because I know there's something I'm gonna like.

So, all in all, I think I will definitely participate going forward because I think this is a fantastic competition that Calum has created and, my god, does he work hard at it?! I can't even imagine the work that goes into it. But, I think I'd have to play it with somebody who I'm less devoted to and play it at an arm's length without feeling too involved, because sometimes the energy is a bit off.

I hope most of you at least got something you liked out of Zara Larsson! I managed to send something from every (British released) era and even a DEMO. And I absolutely do not regret not ever sending my favourite pop song of the decade, and realistically already one of my favourite songs of all time, in Midnight Sun - that was only ever going to be played if I made the final because it's the only way I'd have wanted to cap off playing my favourite artist in the world ❤️

ENJOY EVERYONE!