dandy*

The Bravery is the best one here! Gah!

I’ve finally taken the plunge and ordered a copy of Tori Amos’ From the Choirgirl Hotel. It gets more expensive each year and she’s indicated that a rerelease is really unlikely so I’ve just bought one from Discogs. I’ve paid more than I’d have ideally liked but it’s one of my grails so it’s okay Just the slightly nervous wait now for it to arrive as I’ve ordered a NM copy and I won’t want it to be anything less!

Agree with that one, very annoying and whiny!

Oh I completely missed this, sorry! Will try to listen if I can ☺️

I really like Rise, I think it's definitely Gabrielle's best single. It deserved #1 and it is great to see it increased sales in week two as more people discovered it. I think I probably was one of them. Both Glorious and The Great Beyond are also really fab singles. I think I bought Andreas Johnson's album as well as the single, sadly it didn't live up to the promise of Glorious.

I don’t remember Turn Up The Music at all, not inclined to change that. Sing is absolutely diabolical. One of the worst songs to top the charts so pretty confident that would hold last spot for me this year. Impossible is kinda okay. Not heard it for a very long time but I don’t think I hated it as much as I normally dislike the winners songs

Tourist was the song I already knew that I thought had the potential to attract lots of voters… so we’re sort of in agreement after all Rich!

I like that one, I’m a sucker for that type of combination as well

I don’t really understand why so many people get their hopes up so much for each tournament when essentially every country ends up disappointed aside from one. I always go into it assuming we won’t win and maybe one day I’ll be pleasantly surprised instead.

Erasure making the top 50 is great to see, especially as their real hits of the decade were all in the lower sales period. They had a near perfect run of singles between Sometimes and the end of the self titled album. In My Arms wasn’t bad either.

Oh and I was going to send something from this to the next contest so they could have been entered twice in a row! But I just thought I’d share the album here anyway as I don’t feel like we talk about new indie enough atm

Hurrah! Glad someone else is enjoying this... I really do feel like the early singles fit well with this album though and wish they'd just included them. For ease for anyone else who wants to listen, here's the playlist I have for it with the earlier 3 singles included as well.

It's a lot easier to take losing if you feel like you didn't actually deserve to win the match (in the assumption that the unlikely event of them levelling occurs!) - and that's the case here really. They've done well to get this far but to my untrained eye they've looked like they've struggled a lot today.

I don't think anyone would say they didn't deserve to score tbh - they have been much better than we have been since the opening goal

They'll be lucky to hold on at this rate tbh. I'm only half watching but it's still painful.

New album on Ninja Tune that was released this week to very little fanfare. They've had a few singles I've enjoyed over the past couple of years so I thought I'd give this a try and it's really grown on me over the week, it's sort of like Everything Everything but with a stronger rhymic approach and a knack for tracks with a quirk or two that keeps them interesting. I'd say that every track is worth listening to but I particularly love the rave influences on Side On, the structure of the title track, the gregorian influence on Youth and the strings of Moving On... it's essentially a indie-pop album but they really do keep it interesting and I'm finding myself enjoying it more with each listen. If you like the sound of any of the above then the album really is worth checking out... plus the previous singles Book That You Like, Eyes and Manners are all great too <3

In our house, I'm definitely Victoria whilst Mr D* was celebrating

I’ve finally picked up my Rough Trade albums after being away when they were released… and all three are really lovely records. I’ll pay more attention to their next two drops because it feels like care has gone into producing these special editions, really intrigued to see what albums they choose to represent the more recent 20 years.

Wow I'm amazed by this... I just assumed that Saturday Night would have been one of those songs that smashed in virtually every territory!

Jamiroquai <3 I absolutely love Virtual Insanity and Too Young To Die, both are among my favourite 90s singles. The former in particular was good enough to be a UK #1, much more so than what did make it for them.

Oh no! Sorry calxyum, I really thought you were a cert when I commented eeek

Here as called! Although oh no! I do not want to be up against an almost certain Q!!! 😭

Interesting opener! I'm not spoiling this for myself by seeing what's to come but that's a mid opener for me, I'd be surprised if I'd rank it last (especially if there are indeed 36 of them! ) but it's certainly not a favourite either.

I’m not too hopeful today tbh but will wait and see…

Another one from my Summer playlist is Foundations by Kate Nash. Didn’t get it at the time really and only began listening to it a couple of years ago