Iz様 🌟

we need more hard rock entries to be entered and to do well brilliant discovery Nine, sorry about the result

oh damn, I don't think that bodes well at all, I obviously didn't vote for Autre Ne Veut this time around but it was a fine, nice song, just maybe got lost a bit.

hmm there's still a lot from semi 1 that needs to get through, possibly too much at this stage eek

Yeah that it IS the pop semi is what has me nervous, I must be targeting a very specific type of voter even with jazz and it seems like lots of those are in semi 2 where they've sent all kinds of amazing rock and metal nonsense

Quiet on here about Gorton and Denton but the campaign has been very interesting (and at times worrying) to follow over the last few weeks. Voting is going on, we'll know the result by tomorrow morning. Seems to have turned into a dead heat 3 horse race. In that Labour, Green and Reform are probably going to each have ~10,000 votes with one of them having 11,000 and winning, each setting up an entirely different narrative for the next phase of British politics, but I could not tell you with any certainty which of those will have the winning vote number, even though I like to go against perceived wisdom in election predictions a fair bit. seriously, if you go on social media it seems like campaigners from all 3 parties are flooding the constituency - the last time I remember a by-election getting anywhere near this much coverage was Batley & Spen and I think this outstrips that.

I must say these predictions are more confident than I am being, would love you to be right (except Dan) trifoski and ennea to defy the odds from the other semi

I do not feel confident in my ranking, I have a top 15 or so which are all brilliant and could have on another day all have been +- about 5 places either way, but I have voted. It's definitely the pop semi in contrast to the alt/rock heaven that is semi 2 (sorta wish I was voting there), but there's a lot of genres on display here which just makes it harder, it's harder to rank songs so different against each other that way.

oh no that's a horrible elimination for Ace Of Base, I didn't see that coming at all, I thought their song was the best they'd done so far this round! (same for Guitarricadelafuente, his song was also the best of the 3 so far)

Hypothetically, I would be ranking everything as normally as possible and putting my own act where I thought they deserved to be. Hypothetically, of course.

Oh, you didn't like unconstitutionally approved tariffs that got struck down by the Supreme Court? How about 10% on the whole world. No, wait, better make it 15% for good measure.

Quite, like, the depressing reality of 'all politicians are liars' being a common expression is well, what is the result of that expression? It's apathy and negative thinking, a grim acceptance that things can't be better. It also casts all politicians as the same whereas if you actually take the time to do research into what politicians are like, you'll find a wide variety that run the gamut from amoral lying charlatans to forthright and moral public servants looking to improve the world. Across whatever 'political spectrum' you may think of as well. In fact you'll probably find more working hard to put in progress for their government department or constituency than you'll find workshy layabouts, 'MP does honest job' isn't news unsurprisingly. It's why I also hate cliches like 'X party with hundreds of MPs has nobody good', there's likely talent there, you just haven't been exposed to it. Negative thinking that generalises the people who work as politicians depresses your ability to think and reason about politics and I really wish more people snapped out of it. For similar reasons actually, the working royals are actually for the most part, a good set of public servants fulfilling ceremonial functions up and down the country and occasionally abroad. Princess Anne, Prince Edward, William and Kate, I don't think they should be 'royal', but they are good at performing their role. It's a shame you've then got the ones like Andrew, who quite clearly was unfit for such a career - of course it is completely unsensible that because your family is good at doing something, that you are necessarily good at it, but if we employed logic in the selection of our Head Of State, we wouldn't still have a king.

Mei Semones - Koneko (feat. Liana Flores) A foray into something that has genre keyword tags of jazz and bossa nova is something you rarely if ever see from Séyetana but I am always willing to try anything when it sounds good and the harmonies that Mei Semones and Liana Flores do together are just heavenly, hope you enjoy this beautiful collaboration x ('Koneko' means kitten)

he says, as an erstwhile member of the Royal Family is arrested for duplicitous actions in his role as a representative of the British state the Royal Family are politicians as it is, just ones we don't choose; also not all politicians are liars but I don't really care to debate that in a thread about the Royal Family

Conan Gray - Never Ending Song The Weeknd - Take My Breath David Bowie - Modern Love Fred again.. - Jungle (Rico Nasty Remix) Guitarricadelafuente - Agua y Mezcal George Michael - Too Funky Shawn Mendes - There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back Ruel - YOU AGAINST YOURSELF Nik Kershaw - Dancing Girls Troye Sivan - My My My! Eric Saade feat. DEV - Hotter Than Fire

ABBA - SOS The 1975 - The Sound Ace of Base - Cruel Summer (Big Bonus Mix) Erasure - Sometimes The Corrs - So Young (K-Klass Remix) Blondie - Denis The Chicks - Gaslighter Scissor Sisters - Filthy/Gorgeous Florence + the Machine - Spectrum (Say My Name) [Calvin Harris Remix] Calvin Harris feat. HAIM - Pray to God Atomic Kitten - I Want Your Love

honestly good work detecting a 'chorus' in my song because that's better than I can do, it's all about the progression and vibes you get from listening in full~

I'm not sure I've ever seen someone claim the UK does well for political reasons, or why those same reasons would now no longer apply. Tbh, no one is allowed to doom anymore until at least we've heard the song.

ooh the winner AQ picking up an artist I entered a little while ago, intrigued to see what new stuff Pixel Grip has

01 FKA twigs - Perfectly 02 LiSA - Another Great Day!! 03 ROSALÍA - Aute Cuture 04 Toni Braxton feat. Loon - Hit the Freeway 05 Delta Goodrem - Wings 06 Kesha - Take It Off 07 Lily Allen - Everyone’s At It 08 Nadia Oh - Jump Out the Window best Toni Braxton one so far defo and Perfectly is absolutely brilliant, great new one to me.

The article does say that tactical voters range from about 40% of voters to 60% of voters, I think that's well outside the range of how many actually will tactically vote, I think estimates in 2024 was for about 17% of the electorate. Though surely more will be considering now, I'd be very surprised if it were as high as the people saying they're considering it on a survey in any real election. Reform have fallen back in a few polls, though YouGov has them lower than everyone else. Waiting on Gorton & Denton/the locals I suppose - which means the polling is open to change. Idk about Lowe, I think that's the natural extremists peeling off Reform and won't do anything in the real world. Unfortunately gives Reform a bogeyman to their right to point to (like say Le Pen with Zenmour - though he managed to get 2 million votes, Lowe isn't getting anywhere near the kind of oxygen needed for that).

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/54117-what-is-the-tactical-voting-landscape-in-february-2026 Really nice article about the current state of tactical voting, confirming that like many other countries and despite big claims about Reform replacing Labour or such like, we are going into a straight left vs right 50-50 fight from now on. (this image is overall numbers, there's some really interesting ones in the article including ones that show that while most parties have a good even chance of making a tactical decision to stick to their vote, Reform voters really are diehards and really won't countenance voting anyone else except.... maybe the Conservatives)

I really don't see the problem with "nobodies", it's always the song, not the act, and you hearing of people does not mean they don't have talent. That you never heard of him doesn't mean he's a nobody either, this is probably the first time most of the general public have heard of him but he's got fairly decent numbers on Spotify/Youtube, does have a reasonably long career as a musician/audio artist and many of us here are already aware of him. Also like, well-known names never pan out well, they often end up with a weak song that's nowhere near as good as it could be. Can quite easily see why he would do it now, he's been doing his thing for a few years in his niche, and it's an opportunity to get that niche exposed to the whole continent if briefly, and he can easily go back to doing what he did before afterwards.

Typical that the BBC choose this year to answer what I've been asking for for at least a decade and not only finally send a non-pop act, but one that I really like the material I've heard from before now. That's a good choice. normally by now I would have heard some of the field to work out whether the artist stands a chance, right now I have not, but I do hope that this is a choice that works out for the BBC and him.

I love the ABBA approach, it's really refreshing hearing these little known fun tracks show up, I'm sure the piloter will send big hits when it's time - I skimmed through it so I didn't see if the scores have been posted but I thought they wouldn't be second-last either.

have submitted something, I wasn't sure if I wanted to but my searches turned up a couple of good alt entries so one here and one in the other contest let's go