Hmmm. Much as it pains me to breach the sacred bond of trust which implicitly exists between blogger and blog-reader, it looks like the Which Decade results are going to have to wait a little while longer. This is because I'm still pasting your comments on each song into the main body of each post (eight down, two to go), and I'm not going to announce the results until the job is done properly.

Yes, I know that you've already read them in their respective comments boxes, and that this an unnecessarily time-consuming and ultimately futile task. Nevertheless, as one of those people who takes forever to get round to starting a piece of work, then refuses to drop it until every last 'i' is dotted and 't' is crossed, I feel a somewhat irrational sense of duty about all this.

(So much so, that I even accidentally missed the first three songs in Making Your Mind Up. GO JAVINE! JORDAN MUST BE STOPPED!)

None of this has been helped by my latest online addiction: reading through all of JonnyB's archives in order, all the way from the beginning (when he says he wasn't that much cop, even though actually he was). Why did nobody TELL ME his blog was this good? Oh, you did? Well, why didn't you shout a LITTLE BIT LOUDER then? (I'm doing Petite Anglaise next.)

Anyway, all of this obsessively completist procrastination does at least give Gert one last chance to get her final two votes submitted. Come on, Gert! Buck up! As you've not only voted, but have also left comments on every other entry over the past three years, this is no time to be quitting!

Results tomorrow then. Or Monday. And then next week, I'll either post about my Gayest Moment Ever (pace Joe.My.God.) or about my blood-soaked ancestral history (pace Diamond Geezer). Or maybe I'll ask you to vote on which one you'd most like to read (pace Scaryduck).

You know: sometimes, I think that with this blogging thing, it's all been done already. Mind you, some people think the same thing about pop music, with particular reference to the 1960s. Ooh look, full circle!

I'm sticking this in the main body of the blog rather than the Linkrack, because it's too good to miss.

If you're a connoisseur of the motivational corporate anthem, then scroll down to February 24 on this page to read about how senior management at Starbucks took an already awful song and made it awfuller. Then, for the full horror, listen to the MP3.

(I've already played it three times in the last hour. Sometimes, I fear for my sanity.)

It's close.
It's really close.
My God, is it ever close.

With polling still open for all ten selections, a flurry of late votes have been sending our five hopeful decades yoyo-ing all over the shop. The key battleground is for first position, with the 1980s and 1960s slugging it out in a truly epic catfight.

At the time of writing, an outright victory for the 1960s - while still possible - is the least likely outcome. Instead, we are looking at either a one point victory for the 1980s, or else a tied first position.

As veterans from 2003 will know, a tied first position will result in a bonus tie-break round. If this happens, then I'll be pitching the Top Three for August 17th 1965 against the Top Three for August 17th 1985, i.e. six months after my birthday. After listening to all six songs, you will be asked to place them in order of preference, with points awarded in the usual manner. The decade with the highest number of points will then be the ultimate winner.

Some time on Saturday, I'll either be announcing the winner or posting the tie-break round. In the meantime, you can catch up with last-minute voting using the handy one-click guide below, complete with information on this year's Key Marginals.

It's all getting very tense. With narrow margins and tied positions abounding in the voting for the Number Twos and Number Threes (and beyond), the relative positions of our five hopeful decades are changing faster than I can re-edit and re-publish.

I'll be honest with you: I thought the 1980s were going to walk it this year. A couple of weeks ago, having studied the form of all fifty singles, I wrote down a detailed series of predictions for each round. At this stage in the contest, I had expected the 1980s to be eight full points ahead of the pack, and a whopping sixteen points ahead of the 1990s. However, at this precise moment (which could change with the next set of individual votes), the 1980s are dead level with the 1960s, with the 1990s still mathematically in the running for first place. So you never can tell.

Like all the best contests, everything rests on the final round. So cue drumrolls, and pray be upstanding for the Number Ones!With their third hit and their second Number One, The Kinks were looking unassailable in February 1965, and indeed there is little to quibble over here; Tired Of Waiting For You is a strong, memorable piece of quintissential British beat group pop. Nevertheless, quibble I must: the lyrical theme is not one of Ray Davies' strongest. There are, after all, worse things in life than unpunctuality. And what's with the Comedy Italian Waiter vocal stylings, then? She keep-a you waiting; you make-a me crazy!

Over the past few weeks, prompted by Marcello's detailed re-appraisal, I've been re-acquainting myself with the first two albums by the original line-up of Cockney Rebel (1973's The Human Menagerie and 1974's The Psychomodo), which I've dragged down from the attic and played again for the first time in the thick end of thirty years - and bloody excellent they have turned out to be. However, following major ructions during their 1974 tour, three of the five members of the band walked out, leaving just Steve Harley and the drummer behind. Swiftly re-grouping, Harley recruited a bunch of hired hands, added his name to the front of the band, and recorded this song, which is widely reckoned to be a bitter attack on his former band-mates.

It's a strange one, though. By far and away Cockney Rebel's most successful, popular and enduring hit, Make Me Smile also marked a sharp break away from the charmingly idiosyncratic violin-based sound of the old band, and into a more conventionally guitar-based arrangement. A largely disappointing album swiftly followed (you could tell he'd got the session men in). Two smaller hits later (one a cover version), and it was all over for Harley's Top 40 career.

It's therefore tempting to conclude that Harley must have used up of all his remaining creativity and originality on this one magnificently splenetic piece of pop genius. If you were one of the aggrieved ex-members of his band, you might even view it as some sort of karmic retribution.

But hey, you don't need to know all that! A classic's a classic, which I don't mean to diminish in any way...

...except that I'm trying my best to prepare the ground for Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson's masterpiece. Yes, you heard me, masterpiece. You gotta problem with that?

OK, I'll come clean; this was my break-up song with J, whom I had started dating in the autumn of 1984. It was one of those nice break-ups, where you're a little bit upset - appropriately upset - but not unduly traumatised, because Things had run their course and Things were not meant to be. All very amicable: a quick little blub, then smiles all round.

Very shortly after our break-up, J and I ran into each other at Part Two: Nottingham's big gay club of the time, one of the best in the country in its day, and still subject to fond reminiscences from dewy-eyed queens of a certain age. (Here he goes, then.) This was a place where you might find Su "Hi De Hi" Pollard flailing around on the dancefloor (with its perfect beat-mixing to upfront US imports and pre-releases way before that sort of thing caught on in the provinces), Justin Fashanu skulking on Cruise Alley, and Noelle "Nolly" Gordon holding court in the upstairs lounge bar. It was also almost certainly the only gay club ever to feature a resident chaplain - for all your spiritual needs - and a dark-room round the back. Needless to say, it was my second home.

So there we were, standing on the aforementioned cruising walkway above the main floor, all polite how-are-you's and have-you-seen-so-and-so's, when suddenly the dance music stopped and I Know Him So Well came on. (Wow, slow records in clubs. Takes you back a bit, that does.) At which point all conversation between us ceased, as we stood there rather stiffly and awkwardly, half-smiles still frozen upon faces, trapped in the mutual realisation that, f**k it, Auntie Elaine and Auntie Barbara had nailed our situation to a tee.

OK, so I might be projecting a little here - after all, it's not as if we ever had a discussion about it afterwards - but knowing J as I did, I'm fairly confident that the signficance of the moment wasn't lost on him either. Because, you see, I knew him so well.

Do feel free to cringe. After all, Auntie Elaine and Auntie Barbara never exactly had much in the way of Edge, and it was all a bit horribly Musical Theatre, and weren't the lyrics written by Tim Rice, that Tory twit who did all that stuff with Andrew Aargh No Make It Stop Lloyd-Webber?

To which I say: yes, but the music was written by Benny and Bjorn from Abba, and we never have a bad word to say about them these days do we, and that drama-queeny over-dramatisation of my not-all-that-dramatic-really situation was all part of its charm, and rather appropriate in a droll sort of way, and I like the way that Auntie Elaine and Auntie Barbara maintain this serene composure all the way through, all very reflective and mature...

...and not at all like that screeching Celine Dion creature, whose own break-up song practically has her clinging onto her man's shoes as he drags her across the carpet and out of the door. Have a little dignity, love! And how about trading in some of that vocal technique for a bit of genuine emotion?

Yeesh, power ballads. Worse than that: histrionically self-flagellating power ballads. The one useful thing I can say about Think Twice is this: if you copped off with someone for the night in 1995, and you went back to his place, and you decided to have a quick scan of his music collection while he disappeared off for a slash, and you found a Celine Dion album in his wrought iron "CD tower"... then you knew you were on for a crap shag. So I was told.

(Quick F**k Me Fact, with all due apologies to Low Culture: Think Twice was jointly composed by the man who wrote 21st Century Schizoid Man for King Crimson and the man who wrote Making Your Mind Up for Bucks Fizz.)

And finally... U2, a band I have never particularly got on with, end this year's contest with one of the finest tracks of their 25+ year career. Written in memory of Bono's late father, Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own slowly builds, with a beautifully judged grace and power, and without whatever it is that U2 do which habitually puts me off them.

My votes: 1 - Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel. 2 - Elaine Paige & Barbara Dickson. 3 - The Kinks. 4 - U2. 5 - Celine Dion.

Celine aside, this is an excellent selection - easily the best of the week - which only seems right and proper when you're dealing with the elevated territory of the Number Ones. I'm also quite pleased with the segues on this one, even if the medley does cut off abruptly at the end (the mixing software can be a bit temperamental at times). Why, even K enjoyed listening for once...

Over to you. As you can see below, it's neck and neck for both first and last positions, so vote carefully. I hope you've enjoyed participating as much as I've enjoyed putting the whole thing together.

Voting for all selections remains open until Friday night.
I'll be announcing the winners over the weekend.

Labels: whichdecade05

For the past three rounds, we've had clear and easily predictable winners right from the off. Dead Or Alive, Bruce Springsteen, The Righteous Brothers - all of these have established leads of at least 30 points each.

I'm expecting another clear winner today, for a decade which badly needs the points, albeit with a considerably reduced margin. But whoa, let's not get ahead of ourselves! Eyes forward! Chins up! Backs straight! It's the Number Twos!When it comes to The Seekers, whose 1966 hit Morningtown Ride is one of my strongest early musical memories, normal rational judgement fails me. There's something about those folksy harmonies, that warm tone - at once yearning and reassuring - and Judith Durham's pure, soaring voice which just gets me; not necessarily because of any particular objective musical merit, but because I am instantly transported back into the security and certainty of early childhood. Is it pap? Is it crap? Is it just too horribly Church Youth Group for words? Let me down gently, readers.

Pilot's almost-seasonal January (which didn't reach Number One until the first week in February) is the second track from the 1975 top ten to feature on Sean Rowley's delicious compilation CD from last year, Guilty Pleasures Vol. 1 - the other being Helen Reddy's Angie Baby. However, it's also one of the very few questionable choices on the album. For once the "ooh, I remember this one!" thrill has faded, all you're left with is a rather slight, anaemic confection; nicely turned in several respects, but with some shrill, jarring qualities which tend to jar ever more with repeated listens. It also loses points for disobeying Pop Law, by failing to rhyme fire (FYE-yah!) with desire (diz-EYE-yah!).

Aside: Guilty Pleasures Vol. 2 - a double album this time round - is released on March 14. Despite the odd worrying choice (am I truly ready to welcome Foreigner, Exile and Chas & Dave in from the cold?), I am positively slathering with the piquant juices of anticipation (Starland Vocal Band! Clout! England Dan & John Ford Coley! Randy Edelman! Lonely Boy!).

King! The hot new band to watch in 1984! Oops, take two. King! The hot new band to watch in 1985! With a "style press" hype stretching at least as far back as the spring of 1983 (which is when I saw them live at Nottingham's Asylum Club), some of us were getting a little impatient for King to start delivering on their promise. We knew all about the hairdos and the painted Doc Marten boots; but what about the music?

By February 1985, the tide was just beginning to turn against what the USA were dubbing the "haircut bands". With Springsteen and U2 in the ascendant, Culture Club and Spandau Ballet in slow decline, and the paradigm shift of Live Aid only a few months away, words like "authenticity" were being banded about with ever-increasing frequency. Suddenly, King looked not fashionably late to the party, but awkwardly, disasterously late, swinging gaily through the doors just as the caterers were starting to pack up the crockery. (By the time that Sigue Sigue Sputnik showed up, a full year later, with a magnificently bad timing which verged on the heroic, the room was all but deserted.)

"Take your hairdryer, blow them all away",indeed. Grrr! Bitch-slaps at fifty paces! I ask you, what kind of "manifesto" is that?

Now, I'm not normally one to get embarrassed about musical purchases that popular opinion might consider questionable. Five Nolan Sisters singles and proud of it, mate! And two by the Vengaboys! But if there is one item in my collection which makes me shudder with shame every time my eye catches its spine, it is Medusa: the wretched covers "project" which Annie Lennox inflicted upon the world in 1995. And why did I get suckered into buying it? Because of the one decent track on it: this cover of No More I Love Yous, which had flopped for an act called The Lover Speaks in the mid 1980s.

Yes, it's lovely. We all know that. But oh, Annie - with your fifty squillion Brits awards and your seemingly unassailable position as First "Hey, She's A Great Lady!" Of British Rock And Pop - you had always steered a precarious course between inspired and naff, but you well and truly jumped the shark with this one, didn't you? Your career was never the same again, was it? Still, you have your trophy cabinet, and we have our Eurythmics Greatest Hits CDs. Shall we leave it at that?

I can scarcely muster the enthusiasm to comment on the ongoing Elvis Presley singles re-issue programme, which has seen a new Top Three chart entry for "The King" in every week of 2005 to date. Wooden Heart: ghastly kitsch from a neutered giant, or quaint sing-along fun that's not worth making a fuss about? Don't ask me; I'm past caring. (Well, almost.) It's marketing stunts like these which rob the singles charts of their meaning, you know.

(What's that? They never had any meaning in the first place? Hello, should you even be here?)

My votes: 1 - Annie "Hey, She's A Great Lady!" Lennox. Because when has Annie ever NOT won anything she's been nominated for? 2 - The Seekers. 3 - Pilot. 4 - Elvis Presley, who gets an extra point for singing in German. 5 - King.

Over to you. As the first three songs are all within a single BPM of each other, you'll find that today's selection is quite the Disco Mix. (I can still do it, you know.) Looking at the decade scores, we find that the 1960s are staging a remarkable comeback: from a poor fifth position, to just two points away from the 1980s. Meanwhile, the 2000s have yet to earn a single first place position in any of the daily rounds. Will Elvis bring it home for the Noughties? Or will Annie Lennox spearhead a late resurgence for the 1990s? There's only one way to find out!

Labels: whichdecade05