gooddelta

Love that we got the new titles this week, and the ones I grew up with, agreed that I like seeing the chart position at the start of the song. I actually love All That I Need, I think it's one of Boyzone's better songs, quite a breezy number that reminds me of Bee Gees, a strong vocal from Ronan on it and not a cover for once. Also in my top 20 of 1998 is Last Thing On My Mind by Steps, which I know is a cover but it's far better than the Bananarama version imo, and a very worthy big hit for them. A lot of memories with this song of ending primary school, where it was played at parties and discos etc. It set up the classic Faye verse/Claire verse/Lisa middle eight structure after the anomaly that was 5678, has very sharp production and is still one of their best! Dance The Night Away also brings back different kinds of memories, unfortunately. May 1998 is when my parents divorce was finalised and we moved out of our childhood home, and my dad used to listen to this song ad nauseum. Not that I don't like it, it just reminds me of that tricky month. I did not care for either side of the All Saints cover - at a push I prefer Under The Bridge but I never listen to either of them. Some great, classic new entries as stated already in the brilliant Ray Of Light and Teardrop, travesty that these peaked at No.2 and as low as No.10 behind the All Saints song. Road Rage is fantastic too. 1998 was partly so great because it was so diverse, with strength in so many different genres at the same time. People look back to it as a big cheesy pop year, which it was, but you've still got Kula Shaker, Catatonia, Garbage, Massive Attack in the top ten these weeks. Spark was wonderful from Tori Amos, great performance. And really stellar performance too from Imaani, definitely one of our best ever Eurovision entries, love the second verse when the garage production comes in, and I just appreciate that we sent a high quality British song from a Midlands singer to a contest hosted in the Midlands, performed and sung really well, and it did really well, coming second. It really should not be that hard to get right - I wish the BBC would look back at why the late 90s era worked for them and work from that template. Good songs, good performers, good vocals, good results.

I've just voted now too, I thought mostly people did a reasonable job at finding strong choruses. I know it can be a little bit of a subjective thing too so we weren't super harsh on that aspect, as long as a chorus was present. Anyway, thank you all for submitting such strong stuff here, I whittled down my shortlist to 15 originally but did manage to get it down to 10 and love all of them but my top two are really great in particular. We are six votes in now and some interesting stuff happening on the scoreboard for sure - keep your votes coming in as there is more than one entry still on nul points.

Mystic Jade confirmed, loved yours btw too - I sent Jungle Drum way wayyyy back in 2009 to the main contest but had never sought out her very early stuff. Was lovely to hear that. I really thought Say Lou Lou would walk this so my predictions were way off.

In all these years I’m sure I’ve never won a BJSC spin-off before, in shock 😭

Oh my! Amazing. Thank you to all the voters so much. How funny that it’s the second song contest in the space of three months that I’ve won on this site that I’ve been sitting on since 2021 and passed over for BJSC because I have imposter syndrome with pop as others do it so well. Come back in eight years for Schlagerfest III then I guess! Really liking a lot of the top ten, delighted to see my two faves in Skall and Summericia (who actually understood the title of the contest) come top five! And my third fave in Cor Lupus third, I couldn’t ask for much better results. Thanks so much NocheLuna for hosting! I did make some lovely discoveries here.

And came out two years before Tattoo! Loreen fraud confirmed! I’ve been sitting on it since 2021, didn’t expect it to do so well at all!!

Just catching up with this - thanks so much to the voters so far ❤️ some 12s!!!

The act that just came 2nd in BJFestivalen? 🫣 I like this song more than that one too.

It feels a bit like if it was a b-sides album to Short n' Sweet I'd get it, or even a deluxe extra disc, but as a whole new era it's a bit limp for me. Considering she released several of the best singles of last year, the first two singles from this album are nowhere near the same league. I like some of the album tracks more - laughing at the idea of her being inspired by Bucks Fizz but it's a completely fair comparison, whether by design or accident Nobody's Son does sound like them! Otherwise it's a very 70s-inspired affair in many places, Goodbye in particular, but maybe a little too far into pastiche territory to come across as effortlessly as her past material inspired by that era has. Nobody's Son and House Tour are keepers for me, and I like the soundscape of Don't Worry I'll Make You Worry but the track itself will need to grow. Most of the middle section of the album is a complete miss. I'm surprised as the last album was so tight and pop perfection - my favourite of last year!

18 songs on points after two votes! Keep them coming.

There definitely wasn't much schlager to be found apart from maybe two or three entries, although I suspect an actual schlager spin-off would go down like a lead balloon. If you opened it up to Germany/Austria/Switzerland, The Netherlands and South Africa for such a spin-off though, there would be plenty to choose from. I wouldn't struggle with that! I did really enjoy all of what I voted for though, and even had a couple of spares I liked.

Britney. Cool fully deserves to be here, a wonderful track <3

Forever is oooooooovvvvvvvveeeeerrrrrr

Akon, but could just have easily gone for A1 too.

As far as I can remember, the majority of the veteran nations, if we're talking about Singerpurear, Tartford and maybe Quintessa, were all heavy pop voters more than any other genre. So I doubt pop doing well would have alienated them, I expect it was probably just a change in circumstances/passion for the contest.