The Wedding Present Cup: Stage 2, Group H

                     



The panel must award a total of 136 points to the songs in these groups; no song may receive more than 25 points, and they must give points to at least 10 of the 16 songs. The top 4 go through to the last 32.

Group H is made up of the qualifiers from groups 15 and 16 in the first stage.

Group H

  • Interstate 5
  • Crawl
  • Never Said
  • The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend 
  • Up
  • Rekindling
  • Scotland
  • Him Or Me (What's It Gonna Be?)
  • Dare
  • Flying Saucer
  • Take Me!
  • Niagara
  • Not From Where I'm Standing 
  • Getting Nowhere Fast
  • Model, Actress, Whatever...
  • Pleasant Valley Sunday

The Results

Described as 'a bitch' by one forum member, this final group certainly had its share of big-hitters: five of the tracks were in the top 15 on my blog, and half of them were in the top 50. From early on in the voting process, it was clear that there was to be no middle ground - a large gap soon developed between the top seven and the rest, and this remained the case until the end, when it was 72 points.

Predictably, the three remaining covers made an exit, with 'Him Or Me (What's It Gonna Be?)' faring particularly badly, ending up with the lowest score in the second stage overall. El Rey's participation in the competition also came to an end. 'The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend' managed a reasonably respectable mid-table finish, but 'Model, Actress, Whatever...' once again got some stick from a few judges for its sleazy lyric. Kirk gave 'Scotland' a patriotic 25, but it attracted little support elsewhere.

In the end, we had a fairly predictable set of qualifiers in 'Interstate 5', 'Dare', 'Take Me!' and 'Flying Saucer'. The only anomalous marks were Gav M and Kirk's zeros for 'Take Me!' 'Crawl' - my number one on the blog - was there or thereabouts until the end, but was hampered by low scores from Gav F and Harry, plus a zero from (guess who?) Kirk. It was unlucky to find itself in such a strong group: its total of 254 would have seen it qualify easily in any of the others; in fact it would have come third in all but two of them and second in group A or G.

'Niagara' and 'Never Said' attracted more than a few hefty marks (including two 25s apiece) but ultimately couldn't match the consistent support for the top four. 



All of which leaves us with this set of ties for the first set of knock-out rounds:

1. My Favourite Dress v Anyone Can Make A Mistake

2. No v Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft

3. A Million Miles v Suck

4. Octopussy v I'm Not Always So Stupid 

5. What Have I Said Now? v It's For You

6. Perfect Blue v Kennedy

7. Heather v Take Me!

8. Don't Talk, Just Kiss v Flying Saucer

9. Dalliance v Nobody's Twisting Your Arm 

10. Carolyn v Queen Anne

11. Come Play With Me v Blonde

12. Bewitched v Blue Eyes

13. You Should Always Keep In Touch... v Corduroy

14. Silver Shorts v Don't Touch That Dial

15. Interstate 5 v What Did Your Last Servant Die Of?

16. Dare v Give My Love To Kevin



Stage 2 statistics post to follow...


Comments

  1. KegJune 17, 2024 at 6:15 PM

    This really was the group of death. Only 4 qualifiers possible from 7 strong candidates.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MikeJune 19, 2024 at 4:55 AM

    I'm really glad I5 made it through. Not that I really worried about it, but it's one of the few greatest post hiatus tracks, if not one of the greatest overall!

    ReplyDelete

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