The Wedding Present Cup

                           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

                         Four rather one-sided affairs to finish off the last 32... You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends v Corduroy Although 'Corduroy' managed a respectable 230 points in the second stage, the fact that YSAKITWYF acheived the biggest winning margin (111 points) meant that this one was a bit of a foregone conclusion. 12 You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends  5  Corduroy Silver Shorts v Don't Touch That Dial The Hit Parade a-sides have not, in general, fared as well as I thought they might (on my blog ranking, I had seven of them in my top 50 and four in the top 25). 'Don't Touch That Dial' hit a winning total with several votes yet to come in.  5  Silver Shorts 12 Don't Touch That Dial Interstate 5 v What Did Your Last Servant Die Of? A predictable hammering for a decent, if fairly unremarkable George Best track. 13 Interstate 5  4  What Did Your Last...

                         Dalliance v Nobody's Twisting Your Arm The charmingly nostalgic jangle of NTYA was always likely to get a bit of a hammering here, and so it proved. 17 Dalliance  0  Nobody's Twisting Your Arm Carolyn v Queen Anne Two strong tracks, although this tussle (they were quite close until the last few votes) feels a little irrelevant, given that the winner goes up against 'Dalliance' in the next round... 11 Carolyn  6  Queen Anne Come Play With Me v Blonde I love both of these songs pretty much equally (they were only four places apart on my blog ranking), so although I went for 'Blonde', I'm happy enough to see CPWM progress. 13 Come Play With Me  4  Blonde Bewitched v Blue Eyes A tough choice for many, I should imagine, but in the end it was a very clear win for Bewitched. 11 Bewitched  6  Blue Eyes Home page