The Wedding Present Cup

                             Scores after the first round of the final: 41 Dalliance 37 What Have I Said Now? 31 My Favourite Dress 27 Dare Round 2 My Favourite Dress v Dalliance This tie  saw the most entrenched views: only one judge (John) made it a draw. 11/17  judges called this in Dalliance's favour, and once again only Johnny gave MFD a 4-0 victory.  Keg was also rooting for MFD (along with WHISN?): 'I've always rolled my eyes when "Dalliance" keeps topping fans' polls. I mean, it's no "Le Bikini" is it?' Gav M took a very different view:  'I could score this 0-8 for Dalliance – absolutely no competition here. The Peel session version is actually even better than that on Seamonsters. I remember hearing it on that Peel session – it really blew me away. I seem to recall it had a similar effect on Peel too.' 25 My Favourite Dress 43 Dalliance What Have I Said Now? v Dare This tie saw the g...

                            Our final four tracks are: My Favourite Dress What Have I Said Now? Dalliance Dare We are not going to have a traditional knock-out semi-final and final; instead, the panel are going to vote in a 'round robin' format. It will work like the group stage of the World Cup: each track will 'play' each of the other in three sets of matches. For each tie, the judges have three scoring options: 4-0 (Clear-cut, no-brainer decision) 3-1 (Some pause for thought before deciding the winner) 2-2 (Unable to separate them) N.B. I will post the results in three stages, but I won't begin until all of the panel have cast all of their votes, so as to avoid any temptation to vote 'tactically'. (I entered my own scores before any of the rest of the panel voted.) Round 1 My Favourite Dress v What Have I Said Now? A fairly close one. Gricey described MFD as 'a perennial favourite' but conceded that he'd 'found it ...

                           Four very tight contests: with only three sets of votes left to come in, two were tied at 7-7 and the others were 8-6. My Favourite Dress  v  I'm Not Always So Stupid In the end, the closest run contest of the four. I've always had a soft spot for 'Stupid' so it was pleasing to see this non-album track make it so far and get so close to the final. 9 My Favourite Dress 8 I'm Not Always So Stupid

                          Dalliance v Carolyn Can Dalliance be beaten? After romping through the last 32 with a 17-0 whitewash of 'Nobody's Twisting Your Arm', it again sailed through here, this time against much tougher opposition. 15 Dalliance  2  Carolyn Come Play With Me v Bewitched I have, in nearly all cases so far, stuck with the rankings on my blog. In this case, I had 'Bewitched' at #8 and CPWM at #11, but I found myself wanting the latter to go through here. The rest of the panel had other ideas, however; for example Steve M, who described CPWM as 'alright, but nowt special.' Several judges found this choice a particularly tricky one; not Kirk though - Bewitched being 'probably the easiest choice of the eight' for him.  7  Come Play With Me 10 Bewitched You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends v Don't Touch That Dial According to Keg, it was this one that was 't he toughest tie.'...

                         I had imagined that most of the ties at this stage would be tight affairs, but the first four were actually rather one-sided. My Favourite Dress v No When you consider the excellent songs didn't even make it to the last 32, I find the presence of 'No' in the final 16 particularly baffling - and I'm not alone in that view. Harry's comment was, 'How on earth is 'No' still in this?  I mean, come on people. Get a grip!' Keg was of similar mind: 'Be off with you, bland, unworthy "No"!'  On the other hand, Gricey described 'No' as 'beautiful', even if he didn't vote for it. Gav M did vote for it: 'A great song. Full of intricate guitar work that really builds as the song progresses. Listening to this alongside the boring old, admittedly classic My Favourite Dress, there's only one winner.' It isn't a track that I expected to be one of the most divisive ones, but it's all ir...

                          Songs that qualified for the last 16 by year of first release: N.B. The x axis only includes the years TWP released new material. Songs that qualified for the last 16 by album: Comparison with my blog rankings How the 16 qualifiers ranked on my blog: Songs from my top16 that didn't make it to this stage: 1  Crawl 3  Take Me! 4  Anyone Can Make A Mistake 6  Suck 7  Blonde 14 Click Click 16 Santa Monica The judges The number of their last 32 picks that qualified: 14 Gricey 13 Gav M / John 12 Johnny / Harry / Ali 11 Gav F / Ian / Bob / Joanna / James / Mike / Kirk 10 Mandy  9 Steve / Keg / Steve M Home page