Song Contest 108 (RESULTS POSTED)

[Max]

I'm gonna give this a whirl.

[Max]

I have a choice between a pretty nice easy listening duet, a bit of bluegrass, experimental music nobody will like, a piece of classical music that I love and a piece by a famous artist that isn't one of her hits

[Max]

There's even a really cool video that adds nothing to the music unless you like men hitting percussion

[Max]

You'll all know which is mine unless you all submit experimental music. So. Get to, guys.

[Max]

I like any genre if the music is good

Sames

[Max]

I am SO excited for everyone getting to listen to the music I submitted.

I even listened to the album today. SO SO GOOD.

[Max]

Not so-so, so so.

[Max]

I'm surprised by the Glass Animals song choice.
So many great songs from that album (a brilliant album, I might add), and I never would have ranked this as one.
Very much love the artist though.

Can I get a working video for chad though?

[Max]

Awesome, it works!

Azerbaijan - i am in love i think
Ecuador - yeh yeh (also love the instrumental near the end)
Fiji - yeh
Kenya - yeh
Taiwan - yeh, but pretty dull
Hong Kong - yeh
Chad - hahahhaha, listening now, and after an intense first minute, the rest was p good
Italy - yeh yeh
Latvia - yeh-
Nicaragua - I like this, but need to listen again
Sweden - I like this, yes. I love electro pop
Bhutan - god, it has been years since I heard anything remotely like this.

--

USA - yeh-
Micronesia - yeh-
Somalia - meh+
Iceland - meh+
Albania - meh
Canada - meh
Afghanistan - meh

--

Burkina Faso - meh-
Laos - no
Cote d’Ivoire - no
Georgia - nah
Greece - never been a moby fan, my parents are though… and that’s not a good thing

Bolivia - in case there was any doubt, this is mine

I must confess, the first few tracks in I was dreading what I'd got myself into. But it soon picked up.

[Max]

That's my vague first listen, but I'm going to set aside some time to listen again this week. There's a couple out of the running completely. But afghanistan up could rejig substantially. First listens are difficult to gauge.

[Max]

psyche's opinions match up virtually identically with my own. except i didn't like 'oh no 2' as i thought it lacked artistic substance AND musicality

[Max]

If you think 9 minutes is indulgent...

soz

Edit: tbf the theme of 1 beat per day of the first world war isn't so meaningful if you have it as 360 beats per minute.

[Max]

Einstürzende Neubauten - it started out sounding like the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Mosquito and I was all about that. But it stayed at the moment for far longer than I was willing to wait to find out. I have one question for the person who submitted this: How dare you?

I think it typifies the band and the album perfectly. I can understand it's not for everyone. I met them when they played band on the wall, manchester. I'm hoping to see them again this autumn.

I'm a big fan of concept albums. And you don't get a better fit for war than industrial music.

[Max]

so like i listened to many of these songs 3 or 4 times to rank them.

Ecuador
Canada
Afghanistan
Sweden
Nicaragua
Latvia
Bhutan
Somalia
Hong Kong
Fiji

were my final ranks. I think I preferred Kenya to some of these, but I feel weird ranking music that I already own, because it's not so meaningful.

On additional listens some of the more pop tracks shot up and some rock tracks shot down.

Methodology: listen to them all again, either approving or eliminating (reduced to 16). Randomising into groups of 4, ranking (eliminating one from each group) and then doing a merge sort (eliminating a song when going from 2x3s to 1x5) then merge sorting again.
This methodology favours songs that can be listened to repeatedly. I think this might have disadvantaged the rockier tracks. But it also took forever, so I shan't be doing that again. Next time I'd probably just listen to each twice and score them blindly. Eliminate half, then do a blind scoring on this last half.

[Max]

Latvia – This is just too 80’s for me. I dunno it doesn’t really sound bad or anything but I don’t care for the vocals & the instrumentation is a bit bleh too. I don’t really mind it in any real way though, it’s not bad, just not for me. (AVERAGE)

Can I just say that this 80s vibe was pretty much why I loved it because I flubbing love 80s music.

[Max]

Can i just say, after my second listen there was no doubt in my mind the flip flap was the worst submission.

[Max]

I'm suprised how well Micronesia did. I'm surprised Afghanistan didn't do better.