Categories

1. A song for the winter
2. A song that feels really carefully crafted
3. A song that feels really spontaneous
4. A song that features two or more vocalists
5. A song that contains one of the Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television in its lyrics
6. A song that features a brass instrument
7. A song that epitomises the United States of America (2 bonus points if not by an American artist)
8. A song to listen to on headphones while walking home from the pub while slightly drunk at about one in the morning

25 Entrants

Alrighty Roo
bright_sensor
captain_binkles
ChrisV
Doremivera
El_Timon
eyebooger
fnord_too
Hero Value
Jabonator
mexineil
Monkey Banana
Nick Royale
SMUTTTT
soma84
SuqAta8
tchaz
Telcontar
Treep
UncleDynamite
vginaman
Willi
xkf
Yakmelk
younguns87

Scoring

Points for rankings are below. In addition, all entrants receive one bonus point if I've not heard their song before, and another bonus point if I've not even heard of the artist before.

1st - 40
2nd - 36
3rd - 33
4th - 30
5th - 27
6th - 25
7th - 23
8th - 21
9th - 19
10th - 17
11th - 15
12th - 14
13th - 13
14th - 12
15th - 11
16th - 10
17th - 9
18th - 8
19th - 7
20th - 6
21st - 5
22nd - 4
23rd - 3
24th - 2
25th - 1

Category One - A song for the winter

Common themes in this category were pianos, introspection and slower tracks. Generally a pretty good set of entries, probably about five I didn't really like, ten that were fine but nothing special, the top ten were all pretty nice but there's a very clear podium and a clear winner as well.

17 out of 25 songs got the full two point bonus for being by artists I'd never even heard of. Only three people failed to get any bonus points at all. Which is a good sign really!

Reveal will start in a couple of hours. This reveal will probably be pretty spaced out - expect it to take 2-3 hours for me to reveal this whole category. Should hopefully give plenty of people a chance to sweat at least some of it.

But if you're here already, I'll put my choice for this category up for people to enjoy/criticise/worry about how much their song doesn't sound like this.

Anyway, my pick would avoid the ubiquitous piano for this category and go with something a bit more rural. I grew up on a farm and this is a track that always takes me back to the countryside in winter.

Apparently I missed the 2 point bonus for artists you've never heard of rule and only saw the 2 point bonus for the US track by non US artist. Oh well.

zomg reveal!

I also missed that, oh well, ZOMG!

Bleh must have missed some as well, didn't want to force the bonus points too much. Revealaments ITT.

...or if everyone is here already maybe this reveal starts sooner

this

I'm not gonna be around for a couple of hours... but then again I'm not gonna be revealed anytime soon.

I'll be asleep in a couple of hours :P

no lolnick as well? Let's start this thing up.

My winter submission isn't even looking that bad when comparing to that Horse Feathers song, its a whole lot less artistically impressive though :|.

zomg reveal

In 25th place, scoring 1 point

Yeah, this isn't a wintery song at all, and the submitter even had the massive cojones to admit this in his submission. Might have done slightly better if I'd liked the song, but it really didn't do anything for me at all either. Like, not offensive to my ears or anything, but just pretty generic.

maybe it's a winter song like how it's currently summer in australia while you guys freeze

That's like the opposite of a winter song.

The reasoning was:

Like I said, massive cojones.

To be fair it was "a song for the winter" not "a wintery song", I'd write it off as a lolbloo if I were suq.

oh lol

details

hmmmm, nick has a good point here

Eh, I wouldn't listen to it in the winter so PLACING STANDS.

In 24th place, scoring 2 points

I actually prefer the 25th place entry to this song tbh, but the total lack of category fit killed it. This is just gluuuuuurge and blaaaaah and fneeeeeeeeer. Just put it on and thought it had massively improved and I'd have to revisit this before realising I was listening to the vastly superior music of the YouTube ad playing before this came on. Category fit is vaguely there but the lyrics seem to be playing 'how many cliches can we fit in here', and the music is so inoffensively bland as to come back around and be actively annoying again. Sounds like it should be playing over the closing credits of a crappy romcom - I can imagine some 16 year old girl having this as 'our song'.

I guess I just celebrated not being last a tad early, lolme. I had a feeling that song might suck the life out of you but I couldn't resist.

Yay, not last!

In 23rd place, scoring 3 points

Oh hey we've got another song playing the 'bland ballad containing as many lyrical cliches as possible' card. And again it's not really worked for the submitter. This is just far too clean and polished and bland for me.