![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Frank's low scores peoples pop world cups
Apr. 19th, 2023 01:10 amTom Ewing's Peoples Pop Polls are moving off Twitter in the next couple of days, and as this will have a big effect on turnout and maybe even what the polls do, I thought now would be a terrific time to post my "Frank's low scores peoples pop world cups" file. (I'll link the polls' new location when Tom posts it; he'll surely post the info at the Twitter site and likely on the Freaky Trigger Peoples Pop page as well.) [EDIT: Actually, poll functionality was much worse elsewhere, so People's Pop Polls moved back to Twitter but are winding down, will end next May unless Twitter becomes impossible sooner.]
For what the polls are, you can read Tom's explanation at the aforementioned Freaky Trigger page. My own explanation is this:
Tom's invented a game where he gets a bunch of us to listen to music that other participants choose, and gets at least some of them to listen to music that *I* choose. It's quite brilliant, actually, this strategy, since it allows me to force my enthusiasms on others while getting me in turn to listen to and take account of other people's enthusiasms, and in the process keeps a lot of us hooked. This goes along with many of Tom's other projects, which often are about confronting himself with other people's tastes and choices and cajoling us to confront his own opinions and tastes, meanwhile we discover and/or rethink a lot of good music, and find new worlds and new ideas. The Peoples Pop Polls are in the category of what he and friends call "orgafun," which means he finds a way to turn the adventure into a game or competition. In these Pop World Cups, Tom's practice of pitting sharks against sharks and minnows against minnows in the qualifying round, as well as creating "B-side" subtourneys, ensures that a lot of tracks that are new and surprising to many of us stay in the conversation for more than one round.
Bali Baby "Designer"
My nominees, though, rarely stick beyond the qualifiers. This is not because my taste is so singular, necessarily, but because I just fell naturally into the role of, let's give 'em something new, let's give 'em something they don't know, let's give 'em something *I* don't know.
My first nominees were for a charity poll in May 2020 for Refuge, a women's shelter, and so I chose tracks I loved by two artists who'd courageously participated in the New York Times's Me-Too series back in 2017, Tina B and Vanessa Carlton. You shouldn't get the impression from this that my nominees going forward were a punch bowl of worthiness, however: I quickly decided that the electorate was veering too easily to postpunk and Britpop and fairly well-known Anglo-American pop, rock, and soul – music that was okay, usually, but surprisingly unsurprising given Tom's own exploratory nature. I shouldn't have been so surprised, given that it's probably an ironclad psychological law – the mice effect – that people prefer the music they're most familiar with. But I decided I was going to nominate what there wasn't enough of and, for that reason, what people ought to and maybe wanted to hear, but I particularly wanted to include stuff that challenged the middlebrow massive that kept giving victories to artists like David Bowie and Talking Heads. So I sought out old Korean ballads and new fucked-up Soundtrack rap, and stuff on the border of gratingly great and gratingly unlistenable. And of course reaching out beyond myself means, you know, reaching out beyond myself, and reaching to the world's music means reaching to a world that's often awash in chauvinisms and sexism – though almost certainly a lot of the c's & s, being in languages other than English, I didn't pick up on even as I was nominating it. Anyway, not to be simplistic about artists I've often made little effort to understand in context, but my nominees have included guns, butts, and guns and butts together.
But also, crucially, I'll only nominate something for which I feel enough of an emotional commitment that when people inevitably vote it down I'll think, "What's wrong with these people?" So even with all the variety, and even though I was mostly eschewing rock, nonetheless you get a footprint from this music that pretty clearly says "Frank Kogan" and that sounds not so surprising from someone whose official favorite album is still Raw Power by the Stooges (but definitely the Bowie mix; hey there, middlebrow massive!).
( Types of polls )
( What's wrong with these people? )
Frank's low scores peoples pop world cups
Click the song title if you want to hear it. Click "(qualifier)" if you want to see the heat, and when you get there scroll down if you want to see comments. In italics I've listed the name of the particular poll the track competed in.
Backbone "5 Duce- 4 Tre" 10 votes (qualifier) 2001
Kidd Kenn "Slide (Remix)" 12 votes (qualifier) covers [flashing lights in video]
Bali Baby "Designer" 15 votes (qualifier) debuts
Fairies "Hey Hey Light Me Up" 16 votes (qualifier) covers
SECOND CHANCES POLL: Backbone "5 Duce- 4 Tre" 16 votes (qualifier)
Hurşid Yenigün "Şeker Oğlan" 17 votes (qualifier) covers
Wa$$up "Jingle Bell" 20 votes (qualifier) Christmas
DJ Wesley Gonzaga, MC Cyclope & MC Laureta "Sarra Nela Com Fuzil Na Bandolera" 22 votes (qualifier) 2021
Rail Band "Mali Cebalenw" 23 votes (qualifier) Black history 68-72
Franz Waxman "The Birth Of Andrei" 24 votes (qualifier) soundtracks
Franz Waxman "The Birth Of Andrei"
( Frank's scores that are almost as low as his other scores )
( Footnotes 1 & 2 )
***Twitter had tech problems on the 3rd day (the final day) that "Gurage Tone" and "Tobago Gals" were up in their placenames qualifiers, though that probably cost those tracks no more than a handful of votes since by Day 3 most votes have been cast. But the tech screwup may have redounded to "Gurage Tone"'s benefit ("Tobago Gals" was in a different heat and wasn't running against "Gurage Tone"): "Gurage Tone" had finished fourth – last – in its qualifier, but there had only been one vote separating 2nd place (qualifies for Round One) from 3rd (doesn't qualify) when Twitter stopped recording votes; Tom decided this was unfair and close enough for a runoff so he staged one, and for some reason he included 4th place "Gurage Tone" in the runoff as well, maybe 'cause he liked it – but he liked 3rd place Helen's "Zanzibar (Afro Mix)" more, which won the playoff decisively [for a while this became his frequent but not universal practice, to include the 4th-place track in a runoff when there was a tie for 2nd, but I think this was the first time he'd done it, and he seems to have now stopped] – "Gurage Tone" finished last again but this may have given it more listeners: when it came time for the Golden Beat nominations (for Best Song One Hasn't Heard Before The Poll), it got six, more than anything else I've ever brought to these polls. So I'd say that, oddly enough, "Gurage Tone" has been my most successful song. So it ran again, this time for the Golden Beat in the Placenames World division! – where it finished last again, of course, and once again was behind "Zanzibar (Afro Mix)" which finished second (and got my vote because, since I knew "Gurage Tone" before the poll, I wasn't allowed to vote for "Gurage Tone"). So more people heard "Gurage Tone" than if Twitter hadn't messed up, it garnered an historic, never-to-be-repeated three last places in a single Pop World Cup, and though not that many people voted for it, everyone who did started their own band! Anyway, great track; not high impact when you first hear it, but it sticks with you.
("Gurage Tone" got into the second Second Chances poll in Dec. '22 and this time scored only 29 against slightly worse competition, but this resulted in 3rd place by one vote so it failed to extend its last-place streak.)
For what the polls are, you can read Tom's explanation at the aforementioned Freaky Trigger page. My own explanation is this:
Tom's invented a game where he gets a bunch of us to listen to music that other participants choose, and gets at least some of them to listen to music that *I* choose. It's quite brilliant, actually, this strategy, since it allows me to force my enthusiasms on others while getting me in turn to listen to and take account of other people's enthusiasms, and in the process keeps a lot of us hooked. This goes along with many of Tom's other projects, which often are about confronting himself with other people's tastes and choices and cajoling us to confront his own opinions and tastes, meanwhile we discover and/or rethink a lot of good music, and find new worlds and new ideas. The Peoples Pop Polls are in the category of what he and friends call "orgafun," which means he finds a way to turn the adventure into a game or competition. In these Pop World Cups, Tom's practice of pitting sharks against sharks and minnows against minnows in the qualifying round, as well as creating "B-side" subtourneys, ensures that a lot of tracks that are new and surprising to many of us stay in the conversation for more than one round.
Bali Baby "Designer"
My nominees, though, rarely stick beyond the qualifiers. This is not because my taste is so singular, necessarily, but because I just fell naturally into the role of, let's give 'em something new, let's give 'em something they don't know, let's give 'em something *I* don't know.
My first nominees were for a charity poll in May 2020 for Refuge, a women's shelter, and so I chose tracks I loved by two artists who'd courageously participated in the New York Times's Me-Too series back in 2017, Tina B and Vanessa Carlton. You shouldn't get the impression from this that my nominees going forward were a punch bowl of worthiness, however: I quickly decided that the electorate was veering too easily to postpunk and Britpop and fairly well-known Anglo-American pop, rock, and soul – music that was okay, usually, but surprisingly unsurprising given Tom's own exploratory nature. I shouldn't have been so surprised, given that it's probably an ironclad psychological law – the mice effect – that people prefer the music they're most familiar with. But I decided I was going to nominate what there wasn't enough of and, for that reason, what people ought to and maybe wanted to hear, but I particularly wanted to include stuff that challenged the middlebrow massive that kept giving victories to artists like David Bowie and Talking Heads. So I sought out old Korean ballads and new fucked-up Soundtrack rap, and stuff on the border of gratingly great and gratingly unlistenable. And of course reaching out beyond myself means, you know, reaching out beyond myself, and reaching to the world's music means reaching to a world that's often awash in chauvinisms and sexism – though almost certainly a lot of the c's & s, being in languages other than English, I didn't pick up on even as I was nominating it. Anyway, not to be simplistic about artists I've often made little effort to understand in context, but my nominees have included guns, butts, and guns and butts together.
But also, crucially, I'll only nominate something for which I feel enough of an emotional commitment that when people inevitably vote it down I'll think, "What's wrong with these people?" So even with all the variety, and even though I was mostly eschewing rock, nonetheless you get a footprint from this music that pretty clearly says "Frank Kogan" and that sounds not so surprising from someone whose official favorite album is still Raw Power by the Stooges (but definitely the Bowie mix; hey there, middlebrow massive!).
( Types of polls )
( What's wrong with these people? )
Click the song title if you want to hear it. Click "(qualifier)" if you want to see the heat, and when you get there scroll down if you want to see comments. In italics I've listed the name of the particular poll the track competed in.
Backbone "5 Duce- 4 Tre" 10 votes (qualifier) 2001
Kidd Kenn "Slide (Remix)" 12 votes (qualifier) covers [flashing lights in video]
Bali Baby "Designer" 15 votes (qualifier) debuts
Fairies "Hey Hey Light Me Up" 16 votes (qualifier) covers
SECOND CHANCES POLL: Backbone "5 Duce- 4 Tre" 16 votes (qualifier)
Hurşid Yenigün "Şeker Oğlan" 17 votes (qualifier) covers
Wa$$up "Jingle Bell" 20 votes (qualifier) Christmas
DJ Wesley Gonzaga, MC Cyclope & MC Laureta "Sarra Nela Com Fuzil Na Bandolera" 22 votes (qualifier) 2021
Rail Band "Mali Cebalenw" 23 votes (qualifier) Black history 68-72
Franz Waxman "The Birth Of Andrei" 24 votes (qualifier) soundtracks
Franz Waxman "The Birth Of Andrei"
( Frank's scores that are almost as low as his other scores )
( Footnotes 1 & 2 )
***Twitter had tech problems on the 3rd day (the final day) that "Gurage Tone" and "Tobago Gals" were up in their placenames qualifiers, though that probably cost those tracks no more than a handful of votes since by Day 3 most votes have been cast. But the tech screwup may have redounded to "Gurage Tone"'s benefit ("Tobago Gals" was in a different heat and wasn't running against "Gurage Tone"): "Gurage Tone" had finished fourth – last – in its qualifier, but there had only been one vote separating 2nd place (qualifies for Round One) from 3rd (doesn't qualify) when Twitter stopped recording votes; Tom decided this was unfair and close enough for a runoff so he staged one, and for some reason he included 4th place "Gurage Tone" in the runoff as well, maybe 'cause he liked it – but he liked 3rd place Helen's "Zanzibar (Afro Mix)" more, which won the playoff decisively [for a while this became his frequent but not universal practice, to include the 4th-place track in a runoff when there was a tie for 2nd, but I think this was the first time he'd done it, and he seems to have now stopped] – "Gurage Tone" finished last again but this may have given it more listeners: when it came time for the Golden Beat nominations (for Best Song One Hasn't Heard Before The Poll), it got six, more than anything else I've ever brought to these polls. So I'd say that, oddly enough, "Gurage Tone" has been my most successful song. So it ran again, this time for the Golden Beat in the Placenames World division! – where it finished last again, of course, and once again was behind "Zanzibar (Afro Mix)" which finished second (and got my vote because, since I knew "Gurage Tone" before the poll, I wasn't allowed to vote for "Gurage Tone"). So more people heard "Gurage Tone" than if Twitter hadn't messed up, it garnered an historic, never-to-be-repeated three last places in a single Pop World Cup, and though not that many people voted for it, everyone who did started their own band! Anyway, great track; not high impact when you first hear it, but it sticks with you.
("Gurage Tone" got into the second Second Chances poll in Dec. '22 and this time scored only 29 against slightly worse competition, but this resulted in 3rd place by one vote so it failed to extend its last-place streak.)
CROSSPOSTS: HTTPS://KOGANBOT.LIVEJOURNAL.COM/388783.HTML
