gooddelta

This is amazing. All this time I thought it was an abbreviation of Downtown.

My town name in Animal Crossing on the GameCube was Ronta, which at the time was just made up out of nothing. I wanted something a little more country sounding for BJSC so lengthened it to Rontvia. FSR (Former Scandinavian Republic) is because I was so big on Scandipop at the time that it felt like a pseudo Scandinavian nation. I could drop that part but some people still call us FSR for shorthand, so I won’t be doing that.

Oops at forgetting Taylor chalked up four weeks at a later date. And I couldn’t even remember My Man On Willpower charting at all oops, my mind instantly went to a Christmas campaign for that. Delighted with second! And congrats Chez! Thanks for hosting a great round Liam.

I remember that but can’t remember the contest - obviously the boycott lasted all of a few posts l. Maybe I just quit as mod instead as got fed up of all the drama (being in charge of it anyway!! I don’t mind watching from afar with popcorn) 😂 Every time I host something on BuzzJack I feel compelled to turn my phone off completely in case a friend inevitably decides it’s time for a long overdue catchup when 60 people are waiting to find out the results. I’m always impressed that so few hosts have to bail midway through a show for personal reasons because life happens and last minute things come up! That’s amazing ha. Didn’t Tyron find some clip of an electropop song that he was desperate to send and sounded like a winner but it was never released in full in the end - it was around 2010/11. So he sent some other song by the artist instead called Hot Lovin’ or something similar? The closest I came to something like that was hearing an early 2:30 version of Example’s Watch The Sun Come Up on MySpace before it was released several months later and being so desperate to send it that I ‘completed’ the song myself on Audacity and gave it a remix name. Also Lena and Ellie Goulding never collaborated on the song Not Following. They both recorded the song separately and I combined the vocal on both into a ‘duet’. Outside of BuzzJack, it doesn’t exist.

Richard Blackwood, really not a fan of his music career. Irish Son was better than Brian's debut.

Bryan Adams

My partner knows all about it and I occasionally play the entries in the flat to ‘gauge opinion’ without saying what it is. Although her taste and what does well in BJSC tends to be polar opposite (Korku aside). Kind of hard to hide it when Tom Kay introduced us so she knew the connection between us.

I sent Värsta Schlagern, which was wonderful novelty but not the kind of thing I tend to send at all. As I really thought it was the final contest! The following month we had the great anonymous contest, BJUSC (u for unknown) to finally rid the contest of its friendly bias - and most of the same countries did well lol. It pretty much killed the contest’s discussion too so didn’t last long. As you can see by BJSC being 10 times more active with discussion and predictions than the other anonymous contests on the site.

Both good but Shackles, a very refreshing, joyful sound in the charts and clearly even bigger in Australia than it was here, where it was never off the radio for years.

Lots of memorable hosting over the early years too, particularly in the order votes were revealed. I'm sure in the 12 point system era Hitstastic lumped all of the high scores for one song (I want to say Charice's Louder) on right at the end, so it went from a complete no-hoper all night to suddenly contending then winning in the last few votes. He wasn't the only host to pull the old 'winner emerges from nowhere' trick, which had the countries who sent the winners in question complaining all night of their terrible results until they suddenly emerged.

Which of course saw some people reserve artists they had no intention of using, to ensure nobody else would.

Confirmations in the very early days were announced during the confirmations window with the opening post updated, that's all. And then odds were made, some songs got low odds, people reacted and changed them. Or people just changed their mind like they do now but it was done publicly. But songs were never swapped over during the voting period indeed. The lore everyone seemed to reference recently is BJSC 5 where I held a semi to turf out only three songs, because we were strict on our 24 song final back then 🤣 I wish we had these all written down somewhere because there have been some great moments over the years. Multiple confirmations, funny/deserving vetoes, cheeky entry attempts, voting dramas, Kath's ikonek phone hosting spread out over 3 days in 2009 etc...

A good start with four top answers, oops at missing Dave, Brat was just that iconic

I've only seen her live once, but it was a good one, in a very small club in Brighton in 2008, during the peak of her second wind. So good.

I'm always excited for new Robyn, the leading lady of heartbreak on the dancefloor. I love that so many of the new pop artists coming through cite Robyn as one of their inspirations - as they should!

I Wanna Be The Only One is my No.1 song of 1997 overall, pure gospel pop joy, absolutely wonderful and what a song to take them to No.1, by far my favourite from them. Easther Bennett and Bebe Winans riff so well of each other, each with their extraordinary voices, and I love all of the key changes at the end. I always think that every major pop act has (at least) one song destined to become a future classic in them, and this was theirs. Block Rockin' Beats is great too, such an infectious bassline and cool production. They were such a leftfield sounding act to rack up so many major hit singles.

Without going back and checking every odds thread, I don't know. I used to be much better at it when we had more entries that were less inspired and would often sweep the board. In 2009-11 I was probably able to predict at least three quarters of the winners correct, but I have nowhere near that strike rate now. Think I've had three of the last four though - Annalisa, Ninajirachi and Erin LeCount, as I predicted Night Tapes 3rd. I think I get anywhere from 50-70% of the top ten right most months, and a few of the top five. The final is easier to predict than the semis because you know everyone is involved in the mix, you've heard where vocal hype is going (not always with pop and the silent voters though), you know what songs are similar sounding and will be competing for votes, and you know the songs/genres that have fallen at the semi stage and who might in turn get a boost (e.g. with so many pop songs falling in Semi 2 this time, there are fewer pop contenders in the final which will benefit the pop that did make it). I don't do semi predictions anymore as I'd be hopless with them in such small semis with so many moving parts. Indeed, last night I'd have probably got about 50% correct in each semi. Seven used to be very good at it (we don't always see psychic predictions anymore), Dan's are often good. Some people tend to boost their personal favourites too high, and you see it in the votes when they come in, an anomaly in the odds compared to every other set can often be explained by someone giving it their 18/15. I've done this myself too - it's hard to get past personal bias because you are willing them to do well if you love them so much yourself.

Sorry to hear that Herbs and hope you can continue to participate here, I always think any country is one right song away from a huge hit, and I'm certain that Valencia's PFSC entry would have done as well in BJSC, this one was maybe a little more subtle than that. Still good but thwarted by the semi draw and few pop nations. We can only vote for 10 songs each in the semi and the alt crowd had about 15 to choose from even before geting to the pop they liked! Who knows, Valencia could be a star of the future - Chappell Roan's Pink Pony Club was a DNQ here many years ago and look what happened to that in the real world. The listenthroughs are often harsher on pop, as has been stated before a lot, simply because many of the pop nations don't attend them. Comments made there are definitely no reflection of the quality of the song.

I'd go with Kathaldazia or FARC for the win (possibly Zanmatony too), but not sure anything sounds like a runaway winner so it could be a close contest this month. Flattered with the positive predictions for Luukered though.

Too Much is such a beauty, I've always loved it, yes agreed, good memories of the film. Melanie C puts in such a star turn on it (as ever). I'm not huge on Barbie Girl, although appreciate its take on pop culture, and I loved that a novelty Europop single could be that big. It was perhaps so big that it became annoying though at the time, but is always an impressive one to look back on.

Kelly (Freemasons Remix only). Ciara's is a gem though, deserved to be bigger.

Yeah my top 15 in Semi 2 were as strong to my taste as my top 7 or so in Semi 1, so I think Valencia would have been about mid pack in my Semi 1 vote had it been there. Unfortunately the pop songs did get a tough draw in there but I love the presence of Herbilore in the contest.

Seeing as I listen blind first to everything on Spotify, who sends what is of no consequence to my votes. I did give Valencia high points in PFSC which I knew you were behind, because I was the host. So absolutely not is my answer.

Thanks Jade for an evening of excitement and suspense! Sad for the DNQs as I loved the majority of them. I'm actually surprised the scores weren't higher in Semi 2 among the DNQs as it felt so closely fought, but I did lose two of my votes and Herbilore who were 12th in my very close top 15, all of who I wanted to vote for. I liked the other three songs too, bah.

Phew! Thank you Semi 2 voters <3 And congrats to Sovarasma too.