The Wedding Present Cup

              Group 15 Marblehead The Girl With The Curious Smile Greenland Hulk Loves Betty Never Said Crawl Hand In Glove The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend  Rekindling Scotland Interstate 5 Cattle and Cane Up Him Or Me (What's It Gonna Be?) You Only Live Twice  The Results An interesting group. If you evaluate each group by the average ranking on my blog, then this is the one that came out as the weakest - although it also contains two songs from the top ten . This certainly matched the general view of the panel. Gav M, for example,  considered it a 'round where anything scoring below a 7 would ordinarily have been contenders for zero points.'  Steve M was particularly succinct: ' Some right old tosh in this lot.'  Kirk described it as a 'low quality round with a bunch of middling b-sides allowing a couple of the better covers to gain some points.'   As for those covers, there were four in this round. The...

             Group 14 No Christmas Be Honest Fifty-Six Jump In, The Water's Fine Happy Birthday Step Into Christmas X Marks The Spot Sprague Silver Shorts Rachel Northern Ireland It's For You All About Eve  Santa Ana Winds Kennedy The Results Opinions were divided as to the overall merits of this set of songs, which, if you average the rankings from my blog , comes out as the sixth-strongest one. Joanna considered it a 'great group'; Gav M, however, thought it a 'woeful' one. Kirk's comment was, 'I could easily have given 10 zeros this round so a few songs have been lucky to get points'; whereas James said that he could have given points to every track. Only five non-originals have qualified thus far, and the two covers here continued the general trend. Despite my dislike of Altered Images, I actually find TWP's version of  'Happy Birthday' moderately engaging - enough to warrant a single point, at least. Keg thought that TWP 'carry i...

            Group 13 California Sticky You Should Always Keep in Touch With Your Friends We Interrupt Our Programme Think That It Might Mothers Venus Dan Dare Drive Jet Girl It's Not Unusual Summer White Horses  1000 Farenheit Three The Results After a run of groups that were considered either notably strong or weak by the panel, this one was seen by many as - as Gav M put it - 'middling'. Certainly the marks were more a little more evenly spread out this time, especially in the middle section of the table. This resulted in a nail-biting finish for the last qualifying spot: with one set of votes to come in, 'Mothers' was trailing ' We Interrupt Our Programme' by a single point. In the end, things swung in favour of the John-Paul Sartre Experience cover (which both Keg and Harry thought superior to the original ). Although it was edged out at the last, 'Programme' did perform better than most 24 Songs  tracks - only 6 of the other 22 featured so ...

           Group 12 I'm Not Always So Stupid  Metal Men Mars Sparkles Down On Me Come Play with Me Suck Real Thing Rocket It's What You Want That Matters One Day This Will All Be Yours Go Out and Get 'Em Boy! Theme from Shaft Kittery Lovenest Go-Go Dancer Living and Learning The Results In contrast to the last couple of groups, the panel thought that this one was a strong selection. This didn't make it any easier to score though... Joanna: 'A struggle to order the top 3... this round really illustrates his mastery at documenting relationships at different stages in life, and how his lyrics and musical style have evolved.' Gav M: 'Group of Death indeed. In the last round I was too annoyed to write anything – completely the opposite with most of the tracks in this round – where do I begin..? Some absolute stunning tracks here representing the very best of DLG’s work.' This group also saw the biggest divide between the qualifiers and the rest: the 30-poin...