If you ever refer to The Rules Of Pop Chapter 17 – Survival In Pop Music you’ll find that as a broad generalisation there are two main methods.
The first is the Oasis method. This involves finding a formula and sticking to it. It’s sometimes called Giving The Fans What They Want. It’s usual outcome is one of diminishing returns as eventually most of the fans and the artist themselves realise that the fans don’t really want that at all, because they’ve already got it and you’re just serving up another weaker version.
The second is the Blur method. This involves finding a formula, using it, throwing it in the bin and then using a new formula. It’s sometimes referred to as Keeping The Fans On Their Toes. It’s usual outcome is far more unpredictable, but get it right and if founded by good songs a long term career can be achieved.
Charli XCX very much appears to be going for the Blur method. Album two Sucker (coming to some parts of the world this month and other parts next) is going to be very different from Breaking More Waves sixth favourite record of 2013 True Romance. It will upset some old fans, but win some new ones as well. New song Breaking Up is a good example with Charli showing how she has moved from a darker synthetic sound to embrace elements of bubblegum punk. The other day we posted Do You Wanna Be In My Bland by DIY band Pris and Breaking Up, whilst given a glossier production, shares some similarities.In particular it references mid 90’s duo Shampoo.
The video for Breaking Up kicks off with an excerpt from Charli’s own cover of Allergic To Love by Snuffed By The Yazuka before launching into a riff-tastic and attitude laden pop song, Charli giving it some swagger in the bowling alley. “Everything was wrong with you, so breaking up was easy to do,” she sings, pulling no punches; once again she knows how to do a hook.
2015 looks like being another good year for Charli. Based on her recent sold out show at London’s Heaven we reckon that if she was given some decent evening slots at UK festivals this year, her energetic and fiery performance would go down a storm.
Charli XCX - Breaking Up
We don’t know about you but we’re pretty worn out by all these end of year tip lists. We’ve traditionally gone very early with the Breaking More Waves Ones to Watch, but now it seems that pretty much every website and blog under the sun is publishing their tips for the future year when there’s still another month of 2014 to go.
So whilst we’re having a breather before we dive headlong into our 15 favourite albums of the year posts (starting on December 8th, with one post a day until Dec 22nd), let’s enjoy one of the artists named on the longlist of today’s Blog Sound of 2015 and with it give a full disclosure that Chløë Black was one of our votes. The reason we chose Chløë? Quite simply because of her voice – a big soulful vocal that has hints of Paloma Faith and Amy Winehouse, it’s the kind of voice that we could imagine singing anything and making it sound utterly fantastic. She’s certainly done the job on this Kanye West cover. A showstopper.
Chløë Black - Runaway
Yesterday the BBC announced its Sound of 2015 poll results. Today it’s the turn of the music bloggers. This post contains some blurb on the UK Blog Sound of 2015 results followed by our own personal thoughts and a possible criticism / question around the voting process - which we take a lot of responsibility for. (See Our Own Personal Thoughts On This Years List And A Big Question That Needs Further Consideration below)
The aim of the Blog Sound of 2015 is identical to the BBC Sound Of list; it attempts to showcase some of the best new and emerging artists. However, the artists nominated are voted for by 62 UK-based music bloggers rather than just people working in the music business. A small number of these bloggers may work in the industry, but the majority are simply hardcore fans who write their blogs because of their genuine passion for music, normally with no financial incentive to do so.
This poll is not about picking acts who bloggers think will be famous. The bloggers involved are asked to vote for their favourite artists, irrespective of chances of commercial success. This is an essential part of the criteria for voting.
And what is an 'emerging artist?' That was left for each individual blog to decide!
How The Voting Worked
This year the Blog Sound Of 2015 poll asked each blog to pick its 3 favourite emerging artists and rank them in order of preference. In total 148 artists received at least 1 vote, showing that bloggers certainly aren't all listening to the same thing. The acts scored 3, 2 and 1 points respectively.
The bloggers could choose any artist they wanted, providing the artist had not had a top 40 hit (including as a collaborator on a song) by the time voting started. Whilst choosing 3 artists in order is the same method as the BBC list, the BBC rules require voters to choose artists that have not had a solo top 20 hit but exclude collaborations. This means for example that Years & Years were excluded from the Blog Sound voting by virtue of having collaborated on the The Magician’s top 10 hit Sunlight, whereas they qualified for the BBC list. Voters were also asked to not vote for any artist that they were related to or has any financial interest in. Once the scores were calculated where 2 artists tied on the same number of points the artist with the most first place votes was ranked higher.
The Longlist
The 15 most popular acts that form the long list include artists that are on major labels as well as indie and unsigned ones, such as Brighton based indie band Fickle Friends, fuzzy sounding Glasgow punks Halfrican, goth ‘n’ soul singer Chløë Black, recent XL signing Låpsley and singer songwriter Sophie Jamieson, an artist who appears on the list for the second time running having also appeared the previous year. There is some minor correlation with the BBC list but many differences.
The act who gained the most amount of points in the poll will be announced on January 2nd 2015.
The Full Blog Sound of 2015 Longlist
And the nominees are....
All We Are - Liverpool 3 piece who describe their music as 'psychedelic boogie'.
Black Honey - Brighton based indie band formerley known as Kill Moon
Chløë Black - Tags her music as 'goth 'n' soul'
Coasts - Indie rock band from Bristol who have comparisons with Foals
Deers - A band from Spain who first created a stir with some lo-fi demos earlier this year.
Fickle Friends - Danceable indie music from another Brighton based band.
Flyte - Classic old fashioned songwriting with an indie pop twist.
Halfrican - Glasgow based punk rock
Honne - R&B influenced electronics and soul pop.
Låpsley - Solo artist from Liverpool making downtempo electronica with a range of influences.
Prides - Synth pop group from Scotland, who performed at the Commonwealth Games
Shura - Singer songwriter and producer using synths to create a mellow pop sound.
Soak - Singer songwriter from Derry whose real name is Bridie Monds-Watson.
Sophie Jamieson - Singer songwriter who has been compared to Daughter. Was alos on last year's list.
Tei Shi - Describes her music as 'mermaid music'. Make of that what you will!
Our Own Personal Thoughts On This Years List And A Big Question That Needs Further Consideration
We’re pleased to see 2 of our own choices making this year’s list (we’ll reveal who they are in January when the winner is announced) and 3 of our own 10 Ones to Watch 2015 list (here) making the cut, namely Chloe Black, Coasts and Låpsley. Also 2 of the acts on this year’s list (Flyte and Sophie Jamieson) featured in our own Ones to Watch for 2014 a year ago. 3 of the artists selected also appear on the BBC Sound Of List (namely Låpsley, Shura and Soak ) and 8 of them have featured on Breaking More Waves in the past.
It’s also worth noting that 8 of the artists on the BBC list didn’t receive one single vote by UK music bloggers in the Blog Sound list, although 1 of them (Years & Years) was excluded from the blog list due to their top 10 hit with The Magician earlier this year (the Blog Sound rules being different from the BBC rules). Of the 7 that qualified for the Blog Sound poll that didn't receive any votes, 6 of them were black males - in fact every single black male on the BBC list. This sits uncomfortably with us, and we'd be really interested to know what others think about this.
There is also a complete absence of hip-hop / grime / dance music acts on the Blog Sound list, whereas the BBC list embraces much more diversity - something that one of the Blog Sound voting blogs Music Like Dirt has written about eloquently in previous years (see here and here).
As one of the organisers of the poll, in putting together the voting list we’ve tried to encourage a diverse range of bloggers with different tastes to vote, but it's something we struggle with every year. One of the big problems is that the blogs that are more likely to vote for a hip-hop or electronic dance act largely ignore our email requests to vote and the few who do engage are therefore in a minority so the artists they vote for are less likely to make the list.
The question is, is the lack of diversity a problem? In the 4 years the Blog Sound poll has been running there hasn’t been one single hip-hop / rap artist nominated and very few dance acts. Black and ethnic artists hardly get a look in. Indie music (as a broad generalisation in terms of style) has largely dominated the Blog Sound list. If it continues to do so in the future is the title ‘Blog Sound of 2015’ really a correct one? Does this list really represent the UK blog scene as a whole? A long list can never represent everyone’s views – the fact that 148 acts received nominations shows that. Some bloggers who voted will be disappointed because the music doesn't suit their tastes. But should this poll be reflecting the most popular favourite acts within the blog community, and does this list really reflect that? And as Neil from Music Like Dirt said last year: "I’d like to think that UK music bloggers are as diverse, culturally rich and musically varied as Great Britain itself, is that really not the case??" It’s one we’ll be discussing and considering with fellow bloggers this year assuming the poll runs again in 2015.
Whilst we discuss these important issues, one thing the Blog Sound poll has nearly achieved, for better or worse, is one of its original aims which was to provide a complimentary but alternative list of artists to the BBC Sound of list. In this respect the poll has had an 80% success rate.
You can hear all the artists on this year’s Blog Sound of longlist in the playlist below. We urge you to listen and if you find anything you like to go out and buy / download the song by the artist. Every little bit of support you give can help these fledgling bands keep doing what they do. We'd also urge you to listen to the artists on the BBC poll, particularly if the blog poll results aren't your cup of tea.
If you have any thoughts on the issues we've raised here about the lack of diversity within the blog poll we'd be interested to hear from you either via Twitter or in the comments section below. Please note that we can't guarantee a reply, but any comments will be read.
The Blogs That Participated In This Year's Poll:
17 Seconds, A New Band A Day, A Pocket Full Of Seeds, A World Of Music And Madness, Across The Kitchen Table, Alphabet Bands, Beat Surrender, Beat2aChord, Both Bars On, Brapscallions, Bratfaced LDN, Breaking More Waves, Brighton Music Blog, Daisy Digital, Dots And Dashes, Drunken Werewolf, Echoes and Dust, Electronic Rumors, Even The Stars, Everything Flows, Getintothis, God Is In The TV, Hearty Vibes, Hitsville UK, I Love Pie, Just Music That I Like, Kemptation, Like 1999, Lipstick Disco, Little Indie Blogs, Love Music : Love Life, Music Broke My Bones, Music Liberation, Music Like Dirt, My Day By Day Music, Never Enough Notes, Not Many Experts, Notes For A Road Sign, One Album A Week, Popped Music, Queen Beetch, Rave Child, Scientists Of Sound, Some Of It Is True, Song By Toad, Sounds Good To Me Too, Sound Of Now Music, Spectral Nights, Sweeping The Nation, The Blue Walrus, The Devil Has The Best Tuna, The Electricity Club, The Evening's Empire, The Mad Mackerel, The Metaphorical Boat, The Paper Penguins, This Must Be Pop, Thoughts On Music, Three Beams, Too Many Blogs, The VPME, What If I Had A Music Blog.
The Blog Sound of 2015 Playlist
Last year after the BBC Sound of 2014 list was announced we published a bingo card of sorts, which listed out the things that journalists and commentators would be likely to discuss in the inevitable debate afterwards. Sure enough pretty much every one of the items we suggested found itself into print / the internet somewhere. Seeing as the Sound of 2015 list has just been announced we thought it was worth revisiting that list again, modified for this year’s acts:
1. The straightforward ‘here are the stars of tomorrow and everything you need to know about them’ article.
2. The ‘it’s a self-fulfilling vehicle biased towards the major labels’ article.
3. The ‘all the nominees are so predictable’ article.
4. The article on ‘where are the acts from past Sound of polls now?’ (Fun fact: 2010 long lister Daisy Dares You who we wrote quite a nasty piece about (here) didn’t have a very long lasting pop career but she’s now gone quite rock and is in a band called Pink Lizards, which you can hear (here). They played in a pub in Brighton the other day apparently.)
5. The ‘it might be an OK year for guitar music, what with Wolf Alice, Slaves and Sunset Sons’ article.
6. The ‘this list is rubbish article’ eg: rubbish = doesn’t match my taste.
7. The rant piece about ‘how the list is meaningless’ (our question – so if it’s meaningless why write about it?)
8. The ‘it always misses some big acts’ article. (Probably mentioning Ed Sheeran or Bastille)
9. The ‘why is Years & Years included, they’ve already had a hit with The Magician?’ piece. (Simple – read the rules before writing the piece you amateur).
10. The’ who is going to win’ article? Probably mentioning Years & Years again.
11. The ‘actually this list is pretty decent’ article.
12. The ‘my favourite band isn’t included’ article.
If you haven’t seen the 2015 list yet, here it is:
George The Poet
James Bay
Kwabs
Låpsley
Novelist
Rae Morris
Raury
Shamir
Shura
Slaves
Soak
Stormzy
Sunset Suns
Wolf Alice
Years & Years
It was probably a little harder to call this year than previous years, with no obvious big hitters like Haim and Sam Smith from the Sound of 2013 / 14 respectively, although Years & Years were the one guaranteed inclusion; pretty much every single person we’ve spoken to about the list in the last 3 months has named them as a prediction for the list. Whilst we’ve seen Years & Years a couple of times live (and they seem to be developing a pretty large fanbase) we’ve yet to be moved by their music.
However, we’re very pleased to see the likes of Wolf Alice (a year after they were on the Blog Sound of 2014 poll), Låpsley (one of our Ones to Watch) and Rae Morris (a blog regular) on the list. Låpsley seemed very likely having gained lots of play on Radio 1 in the last few weeks.
Construct your own it’s so predictable / it’s rubbish / we like some of it but hell it’s tough for new artists these days isn’t it etc etc article now or refer to the above list.
Last year we didn’t use the bingo card though. Instead we compared our own Ones To Watch list to the BBC list (for the record this year just 1 of the artists we featured on our 10 Ones to Watch 2015 are on the BBC list) and then talked about the transparency of the voting and how we were surprised that in all the years the BBC poll had been published there had never been a tie for positions. This was partly brought on because we had advance notice of the Blog Sound of 2014 results, a smaller but similar poll where the pundits are just UK music bloggers, and knew that there had been a tie for 1st place.
Since writing that piece Jacob Rickard, the producer of this year’s BBC Sound of list got in touch with Breaking More Waves and explained that one of the things he was working on was trying to help the voting process become more transparent and clear to the public, to try and avoid some of the criticism that the BBC always gets when the list is revealed.
As a result this year the BBC has clearly stated how the results of the list are calculated.
Here’s what the Sound of 2015 website says:
“The pundits vote by email, choosing their three favourite new acts in order of preference.
There’s only one panel of voters, and only one round of voting. The 3 nominations from each of the pundits on the panel are counted, with a pundit’s favourite artist getting 3 points, second favourite getting 2 points, and third favourite getting 1 point. In the fairly uncommon event of two artists getting the same amount of points, the order is decided by which artist had the most votes as a pundit’s first choice. Only the shortlist of the top 5 artists (which is announced in early January) is listed in order of the amount of points they received; the artists who are placed 6-15 are listed alphabetically.
The numbers of votes/points for each artist are not published, and the BBC doesn’t publish a list of who voted for what.”
So there you have it. From our experience of running the Blog Sound poll we’d suggest that the reason that artists who are placed 6-15 aren’t listed in order of the amount of points they received is that there are quite possibly are some ties in those positions, even with the ‘first choice’ rule. If the BBC list is anything like the Blog Sound list there will probably be a very wide spread of votes and therefore even at the bottom end of the Top 15 the number of votes for any one artist could be pretty low. Last year’s Blog Sound poll had 50 odd pundits voting for their three favourite acts and at the bottom end of the list the artists had as low as 3 votes. Therefore logically an act chosen at the bottom end of the BBC list probably got there with a very minority vote.
One further point of note and a very small criticism of the way this year’s BBC Sound of list has been compiled is that for the first time in a number of years there are no amateur / hobby bloggers invited to vote. We find this a little surprising as music bloggers are some of the most genuine, passionate and knowledgeable people out there when it comes to new music (for example long-lister Låpsley first cropped up on Hype Machine listed blogs in November 2013 – way before the mainstream media cottoned on), but this year one of the criteria for selection as a pundit was having a day job in the music industry. Obviously the involvement of a few bloggers would have been unlikely to have radically affected the outcome of the poll but having invited bloggers to vote in previous years, the reason for an about turn and non-inclusion seems somewhat mystifying.
If you want to see how the BBC list might have varied (or maybe it wouldn’t!) if amateur bloggers had been involved, on Tuesday, Breaking More Waves, alongside a number of other blogs, will be revealing the Blog Sound of 2015 long list. Check back from 8.30 GMT to see if there’s any similarity with the BBC list.
The BBC Sound Of shortlist (top 5) artists will be revealed in a countdown between 5th and 9th January 2015, on the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show.
For more thoughts on end of year tip lists, take a look at this piece we posted recently called End Of Year Tips : Are We All Bored Of Supporting Artists For The Long Haul (here).
In the meantime let’s enjoy a bit of BBC Sound of 2015 long listed Rae Morris – her album is out next month.
Rae Morris - Under The Shadows
