Which album poll has the most even distribution of votes?

i.e. what is the most consistent album of all time?

fine print:
- minimum 6 songs on the album. Jazz/drone albums with one song per side don't make for interesting results.
- every track counts, no exceptions for throwaway intro tracks or skits
- minimum 20 total votes in the poll

i don't think this is even close, but just as a low bar for everyone else to beat, here were the results of The Cure - Standing on the Beach/Staring at the Sea :

A Forest 11
In Between Days 10
Charlotte Sometimes 8
Close to Me 7
Primary 7
Boys Don't Cry 6
Jumping Someone Else's Train 5
The Caterpillar 5
The Lovecats 4
Play for Today 3
Let's Go to Bed 3
The Walk 2
The Hanging Garden 2
Killing an Arab 2
10:15 Saturday Night 2
Other Voices 1
A Night Like This 1

(on top of that, it's a comp. oops)

Oh, right, should have thought to start the search with the ILM canon.

Low-Life is pretty tight, but still a few outliers at the top end:

1. Love Vigilantes 18
2. The Perfect Kiss 17
3. This Time of Night 7
6. Sooner Than You Think 7
4. Sunrise 5
5. Elegia 3
7. Sub-culture 3
8. Face Up 3

i feel like Studio's West Coast would have a pretty even spread in a poll

Out There
West Side
Origin
Life's A Beach
Self Service
Indo

which album poll would have the most even distribution of votes: a poll

haha

gotta be 6 tracks or longer, right? so..hmm. it's hard because to get a lot of votes you need a semi-popular album, but semi-popular albums usually end up with a song or two that draw in the casual fans and get more votes

Murmur: Now that it's remasterd and everything lets do an R.E.M.'s Murmur poll

A1 Radio Free Europe 4:05 10
B4 Shaking Through 4:30 10
B2 Sitting Still 3:18 9
A5 Moral Kiosk 3:32 7
A6 Perfect Circle 3:30 7
A2 Pilgrimage 4:30 6
B1 Catapult 3:55 4
A4 Talk About the Passion 3:23 4
A3 Laughing 3:58 4
B3 9-9 3:05 3
B5 We Walk 3:01 2
B6 West of the Fields 2

i guess the metric is Standard Deviation? Album with the lowest standard deviation wins?

Murmur's Standard Dev is 2.93

Murmur: average of 5.66; St Dev 2.93
The Cure Standing on the Beach comp: average of 4.65, st dev: 3.10
Low-Life: Average 7.88, st dev: 6.17

although going with Standard Deviation punishes albums with tons of votes, and rewards albums with lower vote totals.

i know no one cares, so i'm going to stop thinking about this now.

no, this is the correct spirit

Karl thank you for your service on this crucial issue

pretty shocked by these search results, hard to believe ILM never polled Pink Flag or Unknown Pleasures! do they have stupid non-searchable names?

i'd say that's a good bet

try searching long horrible titles based on a bad lyric with POLL randomly substituted in

hahaha I'll think about it

I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR A POLL TO POLL AND TAKE ME BY THE POLL

(actually i love that line but essentially that's the style)

Unknown Pleasures:

Best Song on Unknown Pleasures

can't find Pink Flag tho

ah forgot to search BEST, tyvm

POO: a song out of Wire's Pink flag+Chairs Missing+154

jeez I thought UP would have en even spread, but not even close

Honestly can't believe that the Joy Division poll wasn't titled UnPOLLed Pleasures.

Astral Weeks Poll from 2007: essentially 3-way tie for first and all songs got multiple votes.

Sweet Thing 13
Astral Weeks 12
Madame George 12
Cyprus Avenue 6
Ballerina 6
The Way Young Lovers Do 4
Slim Slow Slider 4
Beside You 3

White Light/White Heat poll from 2008:

Sister Ray 35
I Heard Her Call My Name 25
White Light/White Heat 15
Here She Comes Now 13
Lady Godiva's Operation 9
The Gift 7

although going with Standard Deviation punishes albums with tons of votes, and rewards albums with lower vote totals.

Good point. We should go with the normalized standard deviation (standard deviation / mean).

i was thinking about that too! (actually i was thinking of mean / standard deviation, but same deal). ok, so let's recalculate:

https://i.imgur.com/ZB49dwG.png

Murmur still the most consistent, but Astral Weeks isn't far behind.

would a poll that looked like this:

song 1 - 5
song 2 - 5
song 3- 5
song 4 - 5
song 5 -5
song 6 - 5
song 7 - 5
song 8 - 5
song 9 - 5
song 10 - 5

have a STDEV/MEAN of 0 ?

This one still cracks me up: in praise of Runt:The Ballad of Todd Rundgren poll

xpost to budo - yep!

the mean would be 5, the st Dev would be 0, the stdev/mean would be 0

ok, who's got a new consistent album, my spreadsheet is in tipsy friday mode

Runt would be a very good candidate, if it had at least 20 votes

but as we all know, the initial variables have been set into place, are respected and will be respected, and must never change

added a few more. there's a new champion. *ducks*

https://i.imgur.com/OxOVRnb.png

this thing is a fucking mess. feel free to take it from here (anyone can edit it): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w9Z6NWQ_ePBTNqzEsDbvY1n-w1qVory8EjA19vUUDxo/edit?usp=sharing

the stone roses seems to just beat rem by my calculations.

Can someone link to the Stone Roses poll? I can't find that one

The Stone Roses (S/T)

lol @ that Runt poll

I don't think I voted in that poll because the track I would voted for has no votes.

OK Computer still has the edge:
https://i.imgur.com/n5Yx9C2.png

houses of the holy is 0.524

and the bends is 0.529

Updated leader board... needed to add a 3rd decimal place to the results since it's shaping up to be a tight race.
https://i.imgur.com/6crPPbX.png

dummy is another good one... 0.516

isn't anything comes close... 0.453

So far best I've been able to find is Illmatic with 0.567

Great topic. But it’s Standing On *A* Beach, dammit.

Updated Leader Board
https://i.imgur.com/2QzOeij.png

(I couldn't find this MBV Isn't Anything poll)

Best Song on "Isn't Anything"

my math on "houses of the holy" got me to somewhere around .49 but i closed the tab accidentally

ok so can we use this thread to predict which album *would* get the most even distribution if it was polled? cuz my money's on Neu! '75

i don't think 20 people would vote in that poll

18, 3 each

you could call it Leb' POLL: best song on Neu! '75

excellent thread idea, top-notch execution, kudos all around

OK Computer a controversial leader as KM is clearly using the second of its button polls rather than the og

ok so can we use this thread to predict which album *would* get the most even distribution if it was polled? cuz my money's on Neu! '75

Music For Airports. Or Metal Machine Music.

those both don't qualify per OP

Byrds, Younger than Yesterday, probably not as even as those Radiohead ones but seems like a nice-looking spread:
Say there's a limit there, we can't POLL past that - The Byrds, Younger Than Yesterday

Although it's more a case of half of the songs getting 0-3 votes and the other half 5-10 votes so I guess it's not that even at all.

Byrds score a .737, which puts them in 20th place on the leaderboard.

Soundgarden - Superunknown? NB, I am too dumb to do the math.

Astral Weeks = .516 if I am calculating correctly.

Oh, duh, it's already on there.

Byrds score a .737, which puts them in 20th place on the leaderboard.

Oh wait this one might be really good:
Best Track On Tim Buckley - Goodbye And Hello

0.245 !

0.245 !

I entered the Tim Buckley poll results in the Google doc and it gives me 0.351. (Still beats Radiohead.)

wait, the google doc does the math for you ???????

lol

oh i see what i did wrong nvm

starsailor is consistent too... 0.574

Just as I was getting ready to call this race for OK Computer, Tim Buckley pulls into a seemingly insurmountable lead...
https://i.imgur.com/IWCB0YN.png

"Goodbye And Hello" just might be the most consistent album of all time. The data does not lie.

In Utero seems to be 0.417

ok so can we use this thread to predict which album *would* get the most even distribution if it was polled?

I was wondering about Scott Walker's Scott 4. Couldn't find a poll for it yet, may set it up myself later.

Good idea but Boychild” or “The Old Man’s Back Again” would be miles ahead of the rest.

Could be but I'm not too sure about that. Those two wouldn't be the songs I would go for myself (was thinking of three others) and I was somehow more thinking of 'Seventh Seal' & 'Angels of Ashes' to be massive favourites.
There's one 'rank the songs on Scott 4' thread out there and I got the impression that there are big differences in people's lists.

I'm curious. I'll set it up sometime soon, we'll see.

I thought this one should work but it's 0.706
Best track on The Specials debut LP

Best track on Mastodon Crack the Skye should be 0.598

Best track on Portishead Dummy is 0.492

Barely misses the podium

It's an interesting topic. So many albums have obvious standout tracks or a couple of tracks which don't stand out at all.
The results are somewhat skewed as Buckley got far less votes in total than Radiohead, but Hello & Goodbye IS an album where, indeed, I would say that all songs on it are consistently good.

When I started on this thread I instantly thought of No Other by Gene Clark myself: one where I would have lots of trouble deciding on a favourite. It's been polled though (Gene Clark - No Other Poll) and it's not that even at all. And I can understand that as, while I'm surprised nobody went for 'Silver Raven', I don't expect 'The True One' to be anyone's favourite (it's certainly not bad but it's unremarkable compared to the rest).

I'm wondering about vote distribution on In The Court Of The Crimson King as well, although that album wouldn't count in this thread (5 songs only).

Scott 4 is 0.479

That puts it in 6th place, your hunch was pretty good one.
(i have to confess that I voted in that Scott 4 poll for the song which seemed least popular, just to try to help smooth out the distribution... but "Angels of Ashes" ended up in the middle of the pack, so my vote didn't actually help)

https://i.imgur.com/n9dj6Bu.png

I was thinking about albums where there’s no clear standout and wondered how “Moondance” would do. Though I suspect would be weighted towards side one.

Seems PIL Metal box hasn't been polled!

Scott scored well indeed - I had wondered beforehand if he might have had the power to dethrone Tim but I guess not enough people could get behind Get Behind Me for that. 6th place certainly isn't bad!

Moondance or Veedon Fleece might be good ones, yeah

Metal Box not so much, side 4 would get creamed

*cough* I mean disc 3 for the UK folks

METAL POLL
second edition

see?

Blood on the Tracks just misses top 20 - nets out at 0.647

^that's from the 2013 poll. It was less consistent (0.848) according to the 2007 poll.

The Man Machine might be interesting, seems it has never been polled.

good call, six tracks, all solid

OK, I made one. I look forward to adding it to this list in a month's time.

She's a POLL And She's Looking Good: Kraftwerk, The Man-Machine

idk who's voting for Metropolis or Spacelab though

Those are both great it's "The Model" I can't be bothered with tbh.

I voted for Spacelab!

well then I stand corrected

still think it's gonna be Robots & Neon Lights way up top and the rest down below

"Robots" is the other one I don't like so much, the title track and "Neon Lights" are my favourites.

As a maths teacher I have found the way this thread has used averages and SD fascinating and plan to use these ideas in my work...thanks, especially to Karl for going down the mathematical rabbit hole.