BBC Sound of 2014 longlist poll

All new music is to be banned immediately, for the sake of sanity and the greater good.

mnek is the only one i'm fully excited about. great producer/songwriter, underrated singer - loved his single with duke dumont and his mks remix, obviously his turns for rudimental are classic

banks - slightly kooky, slightly posh, slightly brit school, slightly r&b, slightly electro young female artists are ten-a-penny these days and they increasingly feel like a checklist of buzz traits rather than worthwhile artists, certainly this one does. fatigue

chloe howl/fka twigs - have not bothered to check out due to aforementioned fatigue, and in the latter case her fucking terrible stage name

chance the rapper - talked elsewhere on ilx, stuck on "admire" rather than "love". voice a bit too annoying and what he says not quite interesting enough for me to work past it

ella eyre - "waiting all night" is classic but that's all i've heard and one guest spot is insufficient reason to be placed on this list imo

kelela - i feel very sorry for people hyping kelela over kalenna

bored now

oh sampha is just a godawful singer

I voted for Chance and, despite her terrible name, FKA Twigs. Don't know all the others.

jungle

that's only a rung or so above a musician calling him/herself "chair" or "table"

On the face of it this looks like a less awful list than normal? Putting Sam Smith and Ella Eyre on here when both of them have appeared on massive #1 hits is cheating though. MNEK could be great and I feel duty bound to rep for him as a Catford boy. I like the one Royal Blood song I've heard.

'Say Lou Lou' is an atrocious name for an artist.

*insert weak zing about BANKS never being less popular with the British public*

"Ella Eyre: real vocals and real music are coming back."

Ugh.

I don't see a problem with tipping people who made their name with guest spots on dance records. It happens a lot.

boring list

why do people take this list by "tastemakers" seriously again?

I don't see a problem with tipping people who made their name with guest spots on dance records. It happens a lot.

no problem with that as a principle but it seems a touch lazy from both ends - as matt says she's already had a number one, but on the other hand a discography consisting of a couple of guest spots seems insufficient reason to vote for someone

wait a minute did AG just ask why people take lists seriously?

why do people take this list by "tastemakers" seriously again?

it's astonishing that they do. similar reasons to the mercury i guess? every music fan i know considers them irrelevant/a joke, every industry person i know creams themselves over a desperate chance to maintain their relevancy

also i have no idea how any sort of consensus list comes out of the process, it seems hugely unlikely

xp Which people? If you mean the industry, then because it has a decent strike rate. Last year's top 5 was Haim, AlunaGeorge, Angel Haze, Laura Mvula and Chvrches. If you mean people on ILX, well most don't take it seriously.

Surprised Lulu James isn't on this fwiw.

xp the only people i know who take it seriously work in the music industry and even then only the most ~industry of them

alunageorge, mvula and ch"v"rches are three good reasons not to take it seriously

and keane

Why? Mvula and Chvrches were both successful. That's the point. The point is not to make Lex happy.

Ella Eyre had a solo single recently so she isn't in on guest spots alone (it wasn't that great though).

Chvrches will take a little time to adjust to Premier League football but looks a real prospect

the voting form explicitly told us to vote for acts based on taste, not hype or potential success. i can't really say i care about potential success

Everyone knows this has nothing to do with personal taste, it's about putting acts in the shop window.

"industry people" have the worst taste, no wonder the industry has gone tits up. How many genres of music has been left out yet again by tastemakers ? fuck them. Worse than Q magazine.

"industry people" have the worst taste, no wonder the industry has gone tits up

Erm.

"The quality of restaurants here is just the worst, no wonder there's a famine"

"formerly known as twigs" ?

Given the size of the voting pool, generalising about "industry people" is pointless. People in A&R and radio are likely to back perceived winners while writers tend to vote for artists they genuinely like. I don't think anyone hears FKA Twigs and thinks £££.

The main flaw is that many artists who proceed to do well aren't being talked about in Nov/Dec of the previous year so the list always ends up missing out some of the year's big breakthroughs while featuring some people with a couple of promising EPs who then fizzle out, but if the list was 100% reliable then everybody would complain that it's a stitch-up. The list is either too influential or not influential enough. I can't tell if people who hate it think the wrong artists are on it or just dislike the whole idea.

For me the worst aspect is seeing so many horrible industry-speak blurbs in one place.

new board description

i didn't write this year's blurbs, so don't blame me!!

Say Lou Lou used to be called Saint Lou Lou, which still isn't a great name but it's still better than their new one.

music industry wanker words

Good point a friend made - 12 solo artists, three duos, no bands with three or more members. That seems sad somehow.

Music biz economics innit, solo artists are a lot cheaper to send off on tour in these straitened times. It's why so many indie labels are signing laptop merchants.

Thinkpiece bingo

http://breakingmorewaves.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-bbc-sound-of-2014-some-thoughts.html

Yes, well, Savages, they turned out to be a whole heap of nothing, didn't they?

Scanning through the write ups, Jungle are the only ones I'm particularly interested to hear.

FKA twigs is very good, but then I would say that. Will probably have the life produced out of her on record just like Little Boots before her.

i like Say/Saint Lou Lou but more for the remix versions of their tracks than their originals. how many years has it been since an 'indie' type band won one of these things?

ll new music is to be banned immediately, for the sake of sanity and the greater good.

― Here he is with the classic "Poème Électronique." Good track (Marcello Carlin)

I'm beginning to feel this way.

Yes, with me a lot of it's down to age (inevitably) but also...how about giving music some space? Why do there have to be fifteen ideal new acts per year? What about developing and nurturing the talents who are already there and trying to make a living? Can't this stuff come through naturally without the industry hype? Otherwise this time next year several people on the list will get hyuk-hyuk chucked onto the reject pile to make way for the next lot - and we'll never know how good they might have been, had they been given the time and patience to breathe.

good point, well made tbh

MNEK because they're helping to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb and destroying Israel.

Also, Baby and Spoons were good.

Can't this stuff come through naturally without the industry hype?

No is the answer to this, if by "come through" you mean sell records and make a decent living.

I mean... are you really implying the BBC should lay off promoting new artists?

God I just said "artists" didn't I. Kill me.

When in the history of pop did people "come through naturally"? There's always been hype, just not so concentrated at a particular time of year. I know the BBC poll can hurt artists who don't deliver (Little Boots, Clare Maguire, Jamie Woon) but it's hardly an overall negative.

There does appear to be some evidence that a lot of these acts see their debuts rushed out to fit some kind of artificial hype cycle and they're not as good as they could be as a result. Then by the second album people stop caring because everyone has already labelled them a busted flush. The first Little Boots album actually did okay commercially but it didn't matter because the hype was so high that everyone saw her as a flop.

So you get this situation where there's minimal incentive for acts to get really good in the first place because there's all this blanket praise flying around, until suddenly the album's out and it's overtaken by "AHA, Emperor's New Clothes" balloon-puncturing. It doesn't really benefit the artists unless they can do a Haim and hit the bullseye first time.

What happened to Jamie Woon anyway? I liked his guest vocal appearance on the Disclosure album. Might be my favorite track on that album.

I agree that it only benefits artists who are ready to nail it with their debut but that's the industry all over. Artists need to hold their nerve when it comes to the debut - Haim apparently gave their label conniptions by taking so long to get the record right but it paid off. Actually, if you look at lists of previous winners, there aren't many glaring examples of people rushing records and fucking up. In Little Boots' case it was more about unrealistic expectations. If she'd come in at #3 and Florence at #1 it wouldn't have been an issue. Of all the winners only the Bravery really tanked.

Further down the lists you find a lot more flops. I don't even remember this lot: Tali, Gemma Fox, Marcos Hernandez, Kubb, Sadie Ama, Air Traffic, Ghosts, Rox, Mona, Arlissa.

Daisy Dares You's Wikipedia page makes it look like she's disappeared from the face of the earth: "Rush is the first studio album by Daisy Dares You, and was scheduled to be released in June 2010, with the single "Rosie" released in May 2010. As of 2013, the album has still not been released. Daisy's website is no longer online and her Twitter feed has been inactive since 2010."

reminder that Little Boots put out half an amazing album this year (the other half is shit but can't win them all)

sadie ama may have been a flop but her collected output >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 99% of all other sound of... longlisted acts

Oh hey one of these is a friend of mine

anyway initial impression is a) kelela is clearly three tiers above the rest of the list b) oh man london grammar must be PIIIIIIISSSSSSSED (in either sense of the word)

probably when it comes down to it my antipathy towards this list is down to my disinterest in who's a commercial success - also the way it elides "credibility" and "who has the biggest record contracts and on-side press" in a dishonest way

yeah, if you could grow a sound of act in a vat it would be london grammar; very hard to figure how they didn't make the list

Er, London Grammar's debut EP came out in Feb 2013. Their album went to #2 in early September and has been in the Top 40 ever since. How could they have figured in this or last year's list?

haha right. Oh well. I didn't realise they were actually that big!

i was momentarily cheered by the thought that they didn't make the list because they're too shit and boring even by its standards :(

poor london grammar and their gold-selling album now doomed to obscurity

That is a funny thing about the eligibility stipulations - you have to be big enough to be on people's radar, but not immediately successful enough to have charted. So real undeniable out-of-nowhere surprise stories rarely figure.

i tried my best. voted for kalenna, shanell and gunplay :(

Rox was signed to rough trade and made this really lovely thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXlBAadicBI

i think i saw on twitter that she'd put out a new single a few months ago. now unsigned tho

little boots' interview on popjustice a few weeks ago was an interesting read. she has her own label now.

ah, I figured it might be a release-date thing, over here they are approximately at career stage Ella Eyre

i'm surprised betty who didn't make this list although she's probably too US-centric. lulu james also seems like an odd omission esp. considering ella eyre made the list.

Of all the winners only the Bravery really tanked.

It was an honest mistake.

Voted for Chance over Kelela over MNEK.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Poor Sam Smith. I thought he'd at least get a vote or two. He was my second choice after MNEK.

Surprised MNEK beat Chance though I guess maybe chance fans didn't come into this thread.

how am I the only vote for kelela

oh i didn't expect this! good winner.

i listened to fka twigs in the end and found her ep unremarkable to say the least.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25590722

Singer-songwriter George Ezra has come fifth in the BBC's Sound of 2014 list, kicking off a week-long countdown to the winner.

The Bristol-based artist, whose tracks include Budapest, has been described as making "grizzly folk-pop".

............

Ezra, who is 20, performed to a packed crowd on the BBC Introducing stage at Glastonbury last summer.

He was initially spotted by BBC Bristol, which has championed his bluesy, acoustic ballads since February 2012.

Bristol's Introducing presenter Richard Pitt described him as "a young man with the voice of a 50-year-old".

Sampha 4th, Banks announced as 3rd today

i have never read a single thing that convinces me either of them are the tiniest bit interesting. i think everything i've read about banks has run along the lines of "she ticks all the on-trend boxes" and i sigh deeply

So this is going to be one of those "anyone remember them?" years, then.

Banks has always struck me as a Jessie Ware type but with a less full-bodied voice. She has some charming songs but I'm much keener to hear Jessie's second album than Banks' first.

i just met sam smith :D

i'm really glad he won, i love latch and he seems like a good 'un

So 3/5, possibly 4/5 of the shortlist are singers who have come up through a Britdance ecosystem? Or do major labels just pimp their prospects at dance acts in search of a vocalist now?

i'd like to know which way round it is too!

idk, the emeli sandé fiasco has made me v wary of artists who seem to be exciting dance-orientated artists on first blush and then turn around and aim squarely for the beige saturday night light entertainment New Boring audience

For every Sande there's a Jessie Ware, but it'd be great for more of these artists to come up and just want to make bangers.

I prefer to pretend Sande retired after Heaven so I can think of her as a Shara Nelson or Nicolette.

Matt - how many compelling dance music vocalists have ever wanted to just make bangers though? The kind of person who has that kind of voice and charisma is almost inevitably going to have bigger ambitions - Seal Syndrome.

matt there's an article about your question in the guardian today, if i'm reading you right:

"There's a lot of covering your arse because when you sign someone you have to spend a lot of money and the risks are lower with these features," says Amir Amor, one quarter of Rudimental. "It's easier for labels to get someone out without spending as much cash – if it's a feature on someone else's record, then you're not really paying for it, you're getting money from it. A&Rs can test it out and say to their bosses: 'It's justified signing this artist.'"

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jan/09/sam-smith-john-newman-ella-eyre-success-guesting

it always feels such a waste when good artists wanna be versatile

like Thudd deciding he's really a False 9 or something

I feel like it's always been this way - most singers are signed as potential stars and debuted on dance records rather than coming up through the clubs and then getting bigger ideas. Yazz and Lisa Stansfield did it via Coldcut, Seal through Adamski, and so on. Even Katy B has a more traditional songwriting background, she's not just a clubber who can sing a bit. I have a friend who used to be a singer-songwriter and she got paid by singing on the occasional trance record. If one of those had been a big hit then she'd have been viewed the wrong way up, as a trance vocalist who suddenly wanted to play acoustic guitar.

seem to remember even Olive thought they were some kind of sophistipop thing and stumbled across their good song by mistake

and yeah i guess you're right DL, it's just odd how lame a lot of those peeps end up being at the stuff they really want to do

DL - okay, "just bangers" is the wrong way of putting it, but a lot of the time something other than 12 Radio Two-friendly Britsoul ballads would be nice, even if they're really good ones. Feel like we're crying out for a Neneh Cherry to complement all the Shara Nelsons.

Obviously Katy B is the exception here but being Rinse she's come up through a slightly different route, and even her new single is warning sign.

But Neneh went "classy" very quickly, albeit with unusually good results. There must be someone who lasted for a few years by sticking with dance music but I can't think of one right now. The urge to be "real" and "sophisticated" and "adult" almost always gets in the way - pesky rockists.

Roisin Murphy?

even then you could be those things in a "Bowie in Berlin" way rather than a "Robbie Williams in a tux" way

xp yes Roisin is a good counter example tho Moloko weren't exactly a dance act at their outset

Another odd thing is that nowhere in this ecosystem do British MCs exist any more, maybe because they've got their own ecosystem now. Scrufizzer being on Black Butter might change that, I suppose.

so Sam Smith won both the BBC Sound poll AND the BRITS critics choice award?? has that happened before?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25333170

Adele, Jessie J, Ellie Goulding...

http://assets.gcstatic.com/u/apps/asset_manager/uploaded/2012/48/john-newman-1354020975-custom-0.jpg http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Observer/Columnist/Columnists/2013/11/20/1384947834814/Sam-Smith-009.jpg

sam smith, before he was famous:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzuUNQY5XJ8

:oooooooo

i can't hear that but i'm assuming from the picture it is somewhat different to what he does now, wonder if there's a thread in thinking about people that have lots of goes in different styles at being a "success" in the music industry before they break through, and whether that dilettantism has any effect on their goodness

ok best video ever??

it's like that episode of grange hill where tucker gets hit on the head with a cricket ball and wakes up the next day thinking he was andrew roachford

"thinking about people that have lots of goes in different styles at being a "success" in the music industry before they break through, and whether that dilettantism has any effect on their goodness" -- I think this is mostly a red herring; lots of people probably have and had lots of goes at different styles before they break through, the difference is whether they generally get heard/leaked/publicized. so anything that could possibly be said is probably confirmation bias

Yeah it's a question of visibility. A lot of people who broke through making punk or synth-pop or psychedelia would have sounded very different a couple of years earlier before those styles took off, it's just we don't have YouTube clips to pore over.