Joint Winners of the UK Blog Sound of 2014 Revealed - Banks & Marika Hackman

The votes are all in and today we can reveal that Banks (pictured left) and Marika Hackman (pictured right) are the joint winners of the third UK Blog Sound of 2014 poll, a poll voted for by 59 UK based music bloggers.

Marika Hackman is a British solo musician who writes haunting and captivating songs that feature her ethereal vocals and instrumentation that has been pigeonholed as folk but often offers much more. She was the 8th most blogged artist by UK based Hype Machine listed bloggers in 2013.

Marika Hackman - Cinnamon (Acoustic)




Banks is an American musician who makes sultry modern sounding electronic R & B influenced pop. She was the 9th most blogged artist by UK based Hype Machine listed bloggers in 2013 and also features on the BBC Sound of 2014 poll, a list that the Blog Sound of 2014 was designed to compliment.

Banks - Waiting Game 




It’s the first time in the polls three year history that the most voted for artists have had an equal number of votes.

The voting for the UK Blog Sound of 2014 was closer than ever with singer songwriter Sivu finishing as runner up, just one single vote behind the two winners.

This year 139 different acts received at least 1 vote from the participating blogs, the vast majority of the 139 receiving just 1 solitary vote. Of the 15 acts on the BBC Sound of list 7 of them failed to secure a single vote from UK Blog Sound voters for the UK Blog Sound poll.

What Can We Can Conclude From This Years Voting?

In terms of popularity, on one hand some UK bloggers have a commonality of taste with the BBC Sound Of voters, with Banks coming joint first on the Blog Sound poll and featuring on the BBC’s long list. 8 of the acts on the BBC Sound of long list also received votes on the Blog Sound poll, although only 3 of them (Banks, George Ezra and Royal Blood) got enough to feature on the Blog Sound poll long list. It will be interesting to see if the popularity of Banks with UK bloggers is repeated by the BBC voters and if she features in the top 5 of the BBC list. On the other hand Marika Hackman and Sivu are nowhere to be found on the BBC long list, but are evidently both popular with certain sectors of UK bloggers.

With Banks being one of the winners it also continues a tradition of UK bloggers voting high for American artists, with Friends topping the poll 2 years ago and Haim winning it in 2013.

And so to 2014....

We look forward to seeing what all of the Blog Sound 2014 nominated artists deliver this year (you can see the full long list here) except for Mt Wolf who sadly in a strange turn of events announced they were splitting up the day after being named as one of the Blog Sound nominees! The curse of the Blog Sound list? We hope not, but credit to Mt Wolf for mentioning the Blog Sound poll in their split statement (and a thumbs down to the NME who removed the line about the Blog Sound poll in the feature they ran on the Mt Wolf split when quoting their statement - we'd love to know why).

Here’s more music from Marika Hackman (performing a song she recorded with runner up Sivu) and a remix of another track by Banks, the UK Blog Sound of 2014 winners.

Marika Hackman (featuring Sivu) - Skin



Banks - Change (Dream Koala Remix)



For a full list of voting blogs see here.