Brélican

A surprise new (old) contender for this has appeared in the current contest o: (to say nothing of their song's chance of winning, just that they are a returning country who haven't won before x)

I do slightly prefer '9 To 5' to 'Jolene' but both are great, fingers crossed they can both hold up well over the week. I'm still not holding my breath for her to hold the #1 spot (regardless of which song) but will be interested to see the sales on Tuesday. I guess this is the kind of thing that might benefit from some media coverage.

Ok so catching up on other people's entry reveals that I wanted to comment on ~ - Not surprised at Jade being one of the people to dig back to the 60s and also not surprised at her bringing out a great hidden gem <3 liked this considerably more than the actual Kate Bush entry in this oop. - Iris DeMent being Chez was another curveball, not the kind of music I am usually into (although I suppose Big Thief/Adrianne Lenker isn't too far off and I enjoy some of their music) but I came very close to giving it a point in the end, oops that it was on 0 as of your votes being announced but at least it did get a few fans in the end x - Gorgeous entry from dhwe and very interesting backstory there so thanks for providing that context! My very first entry to this contest was actually kind of similar in that it was an older recording that was technically not actually released until the 21st century. - Rollo of course being behind the one song that I knew well already (even if it turned out there was another song I had already heard and forgot about), great choice though. And stands to reason that if you weren't Fish then you would be one of the long songs instead, albeit not quite the longest as Laurie Anderson had Elvis beat. - Speaking of Laurie, oof at her song being another to be in last place at the time of its unveiling - I wasn't too kind to it at the SyncTube listenthrough but I don't know what I was thinking after listening a second time, it all clicked with me way more then. Reminds me a bit of Animal Collective's 'Banshee Beat' which I gave high points to in BJSC! - After a number of quite surprising song reveals at least we could count on Nine and Cow to end up actually being predictable hehe. (Both very respectable entries though, as I said before a bold choice to go with a non-English language song for a contest ostensibly focused on the lyrics - and ended up working out very well for Nine!) Thrilled with a top 10 finish for Exuma - my second in a row in this contest which after a quick consult of the archive thread is something I have never managed before. The song certainly stood out as something quite special for me from my first listen but I had absolutely no idea if that would translate to anyone else, I knew it was likely to stand out from the rest of the field but didn't know if that'd be in a largely negative way or not haha! No golds in the end but 4 medals is a good haul, thanks to @CowTzy and @Dobbo for the silvers (and the latter for a bit of unexpected sort of winner hype x), @dhwe and @nine¾ for the bronzes and @dandy*, @King Rollo, @Chez Wombat, @Herbs (!), @Jade, @Julian_, @Popchartfreak, @jimwatts and @matto for the rest of the points! Not sure I'd agree actually about it being the most obscure song in the contest, it does have a 9 figure stream count on Spotify and as I mentioned in my votes the parent album has a pretty sizeable cult following on the RateYourMusic circles of the interwebs, I've certainly dug far deeper for song contest entries before! But I don't think anyone mentioned having already heard it so still rather satisfied to have provided a good discovery to so many x I didn't vote for either of the top 2 in the end and only gave 1 point to the third place finisher whoops - obviously can't begrudge a good result for Dolly Parton here though and happy that Melanie held onto a good result. Great to see Scott Walker in the top 5 and Sibylle Baier and Laura Nyro making the top 10 as well! My 12 pointer Joan Osborne falling a bit short but still top half. Pretty disappointing results for Elvis Costello and PJ Harvey who I'd definitely have expected to do a bit better, and would have wanted better for Laurie Anderson as well but clearly not the most instant song which doesn't help. Poor brave Iris didn't deserve to come last either! Thanks Dandy for the hosting, sorry for indirectly pressuring you to rush into results a day earlier than you planned ooops (although not as sorry for directly pressuring you to correct the scoreboard at the end hehe), was a lot of fun to read through / catch up with after I lost track a bit anyway! And shall very much be looking forward to Jim's hosting next time and what theme he may concoct. x

I mean technically it's not actually written down anywhere so I just take it upon myself to enforce people being consistent across the site BJSC semi-finals are actually the only place that the 12s tiebreak is officially used. (but in all seriousness, certainly in this contest's archive that's always been the tiebreak used, although I forget how many of those were also because of me correcting the hosts hehe)

Time for my semi-regular reminder that tiebreaks are done by number of votes first so I'll take my 8th place please x (I was going to post that before you posted the scoreboard but I figured it'd be too late if you'd already prepared it the other way anyway hehe)

'Now'? xox

They're just my trademark x (ask @blacksquare )

I would absolutely never have predicted Leonard Cohen to win or even come particularly close honestly so seeing him win by quite a bit (pending the last few votes) is quite out of leftfield for me. Well done @jimwatts though, sorry to have been seemingly one of the few who didn't support it...!

Oops sorry for disappearing (for once it was not because I fell asleep...! just been a bit distracted by some other things x) - I'll post a catchup post at the end but I see my song is about to be revealed, wonder what it could be x

PJ Harvey's song definitely stood out a lot among an otherwise mostly very mellow selection of songs! A good punchy banger x

I think I'd possibly have guessed at Ani DiFranco being Mattias' so wrong again! Another good pick there, effective use of a precision F-bomb, shame it's doing quite poorly so far.

Finding it interesting that Leonard Cohen is near the top of the scoreboard - maybe I'd have been more into his version if I didn't already know the Jennifer Warnes version but even so I'd have thought this version is less BuzzJack friendly than Jennifer's so I wonder if her version might have done even better! I really ought to compile an updated list of BJSC spinoff entries as they are admittedly a bit hidden away (and my memory of them is clearly not that great as I didn't clock that it had been used before until Jade pointed it out, though I did know it sounded familiar from somewhere when I heard it). The Youssou song is a good tune anyway so not mad at it getting a second contest outing. I only knew 'One Of Us' from Joan Osborne before as far as I'm aware, I do like that song but not to the extent that I was particularly anticipating her entry here to be a favourite for me - but I absolutely loved this one so thanks for the discovery Addy!

dandy* possibly setting himself up for a second win in a row

Great pick from Dobbo - as I posted already it was a shame we didn't get more 60s entries especially as the ones we did get were very good! Scott Walker not quite in his avant garde era yet with this song though x

Not sure if it's more shocking that Fish wasn't Rollo or that it was WoW. That's certainly not a style of music I'd associate with him...! Melanie is a good early leader but otherwise the top end isn't much in line with my taste thus far (not that I'd expect it to be from the people whose votes have been revealed).

I am not sure I have ever seen the name Aimee Mann mentioned by anyone other than Dandy so consider me also mildly surprised it wasn't his entry x (all looks good so far with the presentation!)

It simply means

Very unsure what to expect from my entry! Hope to see at least a couple of the older entries doing well in any case x

Yeah you might be right after looking into it more oop x (They had another entry before that predated widely accessible AI music so they're clearly capable of making legit music but that's a shame if they're really going so far down the AI rabbithole)

That was not who I meant x (but yeah I have read about them using AI although afaia it's only for vocals which at least isn't as bad as just being fully AI generated)

(Also yes looks like retro results are now probably being brought forward to today anyway so will keep this as tomorrow if so hehe - sorry Pavita x)

You can fix this - it's the links which have '?si=' (or "?is=') and then a long string of garbage characters at the end of the link. I always delete that from links submitted to BJSC, deleting everything from the question mark onwards removes the tracking stuff while not breaking the link.

Would people be up for a listenthrough of this today instead? (As tomorrow would now be clashing with retro contest results).

Admittedly I was kind of assuming the results of this would be today! I could do the PFSC listenthrough today instead I guess?