Brett-Butler

#19 A Long Wait For Bad News Wojtek The Bear B12u2nuEhVQ Album: N/A If you like Scottish indie of the Frightened Rabbit/Twilight Sad variety, than Wojtek the Bear are the band for you. It was the jangly “A Long Wait For Bad News” that caught my attention, a powerfully emotional track.

#20 Laurel Wreath Bear’s Den xLmTgWeu5oU Album: So That You Might Hear Me A track from former year-end chart toppers Bear’s Den. The album as a whole saw them moving back to the more acoustic song of their debut, of which “Laurel Wreath” was the highlight, a wistful track, underpinned by the refrain “you don’t have to be lonely alone”.

You're joking...right?

It was rubber stamped with a referendum that voted substantially in favour though.

It's a shame that they're been wound up. Yes, they were terrible in so many ways, and really did nothing to differentiate themselves from other parties or make themselves exciting to voting, but as someone who wants more parties not less, it would have been nice if they blossomed into something that at the very least tread water for a few years. Although of course as we all know FPTP naturally leads to a 2-party system, so it's not going to happen in the next 5 years at least.

Everyone's entitled to their own beliefs. You are not entitled to your own facts.

#21 Working Sundays TeamRKT QyZDfZD0Xu8 Album: N/A Rory Powers & Kit Grier, the duo behind formerly NI-based electronic duo TeamRKT, have become award-winning podcast superstars since the last time they had a song featured in my year-end chart (they’re the hosts of “This Paranormal Life”), but I’m glad that they still find the time to release new music, with “Working Sundays” seeing a change of direction for them, moving into more Passion Pit-esque music, rather than the chiptune-rock they started out with. Previous chart positions: 2013 Breakout - #48

#22 Sugarface Fjokra EG2RKXVG5Yw Album: N/A Dublin based singer-songwriter makes it 3 years in a row with his genre-hopping music. Elements of rock, brass and chiptune intermingle in this enjoyable little pop song. Previous chart positions: 2017 Sick Kids - #12 2018 Evening Lights - #17

#23 Sean Connery Allez Allez ohTngtBq0bc Album: N/A This is probably the strangest song to make my list this year. A funk tribute to a former James Bond with bizarre lyrics, made by a Belgian band who had split up for 30 years before reforming. It’s not my usual cup of tea, but it’s a rather excellent one.

#24 3 Nights Dominic Fike OWKzRngush4 Album: Don’t Forget About Me You can normally count the number of top 10 hits that make my countdowns on one hand, but when I likes it, I likes it. “3 Nights” got stuck in my head through the simplicity of its muted guitar and repetitive lyrics. When it’s good, it’s good.

#25 M5 Sports Team _f07M3WH8EU Album: Keep Walking! A great slice of English indie-rock from the ambiguously named Sports Team. I’ve seen “M5” described as being a modern take on “Country House” with a music video reminiscent of “Girls & Boys”. A fantastic track.

It's always worth sticking a cheeky fiver on the Queen's Speech, especially with those odds, but Gavin & Stacey is a great shout. Surprised to see Mrs Brown's Boys is quite far down the odds, it wasn't too long ago that it was the highest rating show on Christmas Day.

If Labour are trying to appeal to less middle-class voters, it would be surprising for them to have as a leader someone who was literally sacked from the Shadow Cabinet for sneering at the working classes. But apparently a lot of people consider her to be fun, and the Labour membership post-2015 might have got to like her more over the years, so you never know. Conor McGinn is apparently considering running for the Deputy Leadership, so will be interesting to see if that pans out.

Other name fun - there are 24 Mac's or Mc's elected, but only 6 of them are from Scottish constituencies, and none from NI.

I've already imported that data into Microsoft Excel to dig into (God bless Text To Columns). I think they've come a bit unstuck when it comes to sorting the NI constituencies - It puts the DUP as "Lib Dems" and the Alliance as "Brexit". I've also counted 19 people elected called "Chris", "Christopher" , "Christian" or "Christine" - which I think might prove my nominative theory (although admittedly most of them were already MPs at the start of the campaign).

Duffy's mistake was to part company with Bernard Butler. It all went downhill when she stopped working with him. If she's collaborating with him again, it'll be gold.

I don't think Long-Bailey would be a good leader for a few reasons, mainly being too closely linked to the Corbyn project, but hey, it's not my party. Although I have been debating whether to join the party in the hope of trying to influence its direction from the inside (and to be able to vote in the upcoming Leadership Contest), although being from Northern Ireland and being me, I doubt I would win as many people over as I would like.

Thanks. I'm a big fan of Ciara O'Neill, I absolutely love her voice. I had her on my podcast last year, and she was absolutely lovely.

#26 Higher States Sundara Karma Uv9tz6Nr4gI Album: Ulfilas' Alphabet “Higher States” is a kaleidoscopic baggy-inspired art-rock tune that really gets you going. The song gained a little bit of indie-notoriety earlier in the year as it bore a striking resemblance to another high-profile single released around the same time...

#27 Odd Behavior Junodream qjSL0lBLua4 Album: Terrible Things That Could Happen E.P Whilst we've now got to the stage where nearly every "this band is going to save rock music in *upcoming year* group doesn't live up to the potential, it would be silly of me to say that of any new artist that makes it in this countdown. Although in the case of Junodream, I wish it were the case. "Odd Behavior" is my favourite of their songs released this year, and is a great piece of throw-back Britpop inspired music. They've got a decent amount of varied tunes already recorded, so I have high hopes of them making a bigger name for themselves in 2020.

#28 Be Someone CamelPhat ft Jake Bugg sSJ-jfKaE4g Album: Lessons of War I didn’t think that the crossover of 2019 that I would enjoy the most would be deep-house group CamelPhat and rock and roll revivialist Jake Bugg, but they won me over with “Be Someone”. It’s definitely more the former than the latter, but Bugg’s vocals do add something else to their sound. Previous chart positions: 2012 Lightning Bolt - #12 (Jake Bugg only) 2012 Two Fingers - #41 (Jake Bugg only)

#29 Something Else to Talk About Buí qWR8wWSenro Album: N/A A lovely piece of slacker-rock from Northern Irish band “Buí”. The music video is quite special, as it renders some of the band’s favourite Belfast landmarks in 8 bit. See how many you can recognise!

#30 You And I Barns Courtney 92-eHSMdBG0 Album: 404 I could’ve sworn that Barns Courtney was American, but apparently he’s English. Oh well, good for his streams, I guess. “You And I” reminds me of a more widescreen version of “Riptide” - I’m surprised it hasn’t/didn’t cross over to the mainstream, but I guess he’s still popular enough as he is.

In short - no. They're still an important force on a local level (they've still got 1/8 of all councilors in Local Government), and they're still a social-liberal alternative for people who don't like Labour or the Greens. If anything, there should be a more diverse set of parties of the left (and the right) represented - it's just that FPTP means that it's more likely to go down to a 1-party system.

Margaret Thatcher won 3 elections during a period that one could argue was even more sexist, and Theresa May's Conservatives actually increased their vote in 2017. I've theorised before that people are happy to have a female leader as long as she's more conservative-leaning (which is why I believe the first female President of the US is going to be a Republican). And "social conservatives" are under no illusions surrounding Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party as a whole. They do not consider any of the actions of the Tory Party over the last 9 years to show anything even remotely socially conservative, and I think you know exactly the reason why I dislike Boris Johnson.