UK Blogger Album of the Year Poll 2012

For the last eight years, on New Year’s Day, Simon from Sweeping the Nation, one of the UK’s most hard serving and dedicated music bloggers, publishes the results of a survey of UK music blogs and the DIY online music magazine community of their favourite albums of the preceding twelve months. Breaking More Waves once again voted.

Participants in this year’s survey included

17 Seconds, A Pocket Full Of Seeds, All Noise, Alphabet Bands, Both Bars On, Bowlegs, Breaking More Waves, Don't Watch Me Dancing, Dots & Dashes, Drunken Werewolf, Eaten By Monsters, Flying With Anna, Folly Of Youth, Give Pop A Chance!, God Is In The TV, GoldFlakePaint, I Prefer Their Older Stuff, In League With Paton, In Love Not Limbo, It's All Indie, Just Music That I Like, Just Played, Keep Pop Loud, Last Year's Girl, The Mad Mackerel, The Metaphorical Boat, Mudkiss, Music Fans Mic, Music Liberation, Music To Die For, Not Many Experts, Peenko, The Pop Cop, Ragged Glories, Scottish Fiction, Some Of It Was True, Skeletory, Useless Chamber and The Von Pip Musical Express.

We find the poll a fascinating insight into how close or far adrift our tastes are with the UK Blogging community.

This year Alt-J’s Mercury prize winning An Awesome Wave came out top of the poll (it was 8 on our own list) and the overall top 10 was as follows (in reverse order)

10 GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR - Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
9 JESSIE WARE - Devotion
8 KENDRICK LAMAR - Good Kid, M.A.A.D City
7 SWANS - The Seer
6 GRIZZLY BEAR - Shields
5 FRANK OCEAN - Channel Orange
4 TAME IMPALA - Lonerism
3 GRIMES - Visions
2 SHARON VAN ETTEN - Tramp
1 ALT-J - An Awesome Wave

You can see the full Top 75 over at Sweeping The Nation (here)

So here’s how Breaking More Waves Top 10 compared with the Blogger list. (Note : The blog poll excluded compilations and therefore our choice of Girls Aloud at fourth wasn’t eligible for the poll, but then even if it did count it probably would have been the only nomination for it)

 You can see our full Albums of 2012 commentary here.

1 LANA DEL REY – Born To Die 20th
2 GRIMES – Visions 3rd
3 FIRST AID KIT – The Lion’s Roar 14th
4 GIRLS ALOUD – Ten (n/a)
5 THE XX – Co-Exist 24th
6 CRYBABY – Crybaby (Not placed)
7 REN HARVIEU – Through The Night (Not Placed)
8 ALT-J – An Awesome Wave 1st
9 THE UNTHANKS – Diversions Vol 3 – Songs From The Shipyard (Not Placed)
10 CLOCK OPERA – Ways To Forget 43rd

So in summary it looks like to a certain extent our tastes marry up with the masses but there are certain records this year that we’ve loved that either haven’t found favour or haven’t been heard by other bloggers namely Crybaby, Ren Harvieu and The Unthanks ( probably the three most old fashioned and traditional records on our list).

Our thanks go out to Simon for adding up the votes, tomorrow we’ll be announcing the results of our own vote counting for emerging bands and artists – the Top 5 of the Blog Sound of 2013. (Longlist playlist here)

Here’s this year’s album poll winner, with a newer track that isn’t actually on the album. Surely that bonus edition double CD version can’t be far behind though can it?

Full poll results

Alt-J  ft Mountain Man - Buffalo