The Metaphorical Boat's Top Songs of 2012 - 35-31

The next part of the countdown features a band tipped for big things in 2013, a band who were tipped for big things in 2009, the biggest (non-Coldplay) band from England, and a track from one of my favourite Northern Irish bands:

35. The Big Pink - Hit The Ground (Superman)

34. The 1975 - Sex

33. Muse - Madness

32. Lucy Rose - Lines

31. Cashier No.9 - Death of Fun

The Metaphorical Boat's Top Songs of 2012 - 40-36

The next part of our countdown features the quintessential blogger's artist, Northern Ireland's premier shifty-pop group, and a collaboration which on paper sounded ill-advised, but in practice is rather fantastic:

40. Imagine Dragons - It's Time



39. Eatenbybears - Simple As Hell



38. Grimes - Genesis



37. David Byrne & St. Vincent - Who



36. Eugene McGuinness - Sugarplum

The Metaphorical Boat's Top Songs of 2012 - 45-41

The next part of our countdown looks at songs from 45-41, and includes American stadium-rockers, young indie guitarists and a song premiered during the Olympic Opening Ceremony. 

45. The Black Keys - Gold On The Ceiling



44. Athletes in Paris - Echoes Louder Than Voices



43. Underworld ft Alex Trimble - Caliban's Dream



42. The Super Happy Fun Club -Way Back (The Conflict)



41. Jake Bugg - Two Fingers

The Metaphorical Boat's Top Songs of 2012 - 50-46

As we're reaching the end of the year, it's a good time as ever to reflect back on the wonderful music that has came into my life over the past 12 months. As such, like every good music blogger, over the next few days I will be running through the fifty songs that I enjoyed the most this year. Some of these are songs that have featured on the blog at some point or another. Some of the songs might be surprising inclusions, but I feel that they will be the tunes that I will remember the most fondly when I look back at 2012.

And in the words of that immortal philosopher Julie Andrews, let's start at the very beginning. The first 5 tunes in the top 50 include a buzz band, the first Northern Irish artist in the countdown, and a song sung entirely in Japanese:

50. Spector - Celestine

49. Diiv - Doused



48. A Plastic Rose - Build From the Ground Up



47. nano.RIPE - Real World



46. The Diamond Noise - Never Say Never Say Never

Blog Sound of 2013 - Poll Results

The Blog Sound Poll was first published in 2011. The concept of the poll wasn’t to criticise the established BBC Sound of list, but simply an experiment to see if UK music bloggers could come up with its own list of emerging artists that was more representative of their community and give the artists that were nominated some extra publicity. Indeed the idea was to compliment the BBC list in many ways by providing an alternative to compare and contrast.

Last year’s final long list provided some interesting alternatives to the BBC list; most notably it included Alt-J, this year’s Mercury Prize winners, who didn’t feature on the BBC list at all.

The Blog Sound of 2013 poll has expanded with 49 UK blogs nominating their 5 favourite emerging artists. Just over 170 acts received at least 1 vote. The winning act received votes from around 25% of all bloggers.

The long list represents the very best of new music and draws from major label, indie label and completely unsigned acts. The likes of Haim may be featuring on a lot of new music tip lists at the moment, but the Blog Sound poll also highlights lesser known bands such as Curxes and Randolph’s Leap, bands that do not have big PR representation, and this is what makes the Blog Sound list fascinating and exciting.

The poll was organised by Robin Seamer (Breaking More Waves) and Andy Von Pip (The Von Pip Express). “Each blog was allowed to vote for five acts and the diversity of the nominations was staggering. Based on the evidence of the spread of votes anyone that says that music bloggers are sheep and are all writing about the same artists has got it wrong. However, the results of the poll show that certain artists do have a lot of support and love from a significant portion of UK bloggers and those artists make up the Blog Sound of 2013 list,” says Robin.

The fifteen nominated artists are:

AlunaGeorge - Infectious R&B influenced pop from London



Curxes  - Dark industrial-pop electronic duo from Brighton and Portsmouth



Chvrches – Scottish electro pop trio formed from a variety of other bands

Daughter – Minimal / ambient sounding folk

Haim – Classic rock from LA with pop sensibilities



Laura Mvula – Jazz / soul singer hailing from Birmingham



MØ – Hip soulful female vocal electronic pop from Denmark



Palma Violets – Raw and energetic indie rock band



Pins – Edgily cool and raucous all-female indie band from Manchester



Randolph’s Leap – Glasgow based indie folk pop with a twist of brass

Rhye – Smooth and blissful pop duo

 

Savages – Intense post-punk with female vocals



Seasfire – Modern rock band from Bristol who mix electronic beats with guitars



The Neighbourhood – Atmospheric Californian 5 piece rock / pop band 



Tom Odell – Piano based singer songwriter originally from Chichester



There are some great artists on this year's list, and I'm glad to have been one of the 49 bloggers to have made up this year's voting panel. Although artists we nominated didn't make the longlist, and although no Northern Irish artists made the list, I feel that does offer a great overview of what acts the UK blogosphere will be keeping tabs on over the next 12 months. I will enjoy following the progress of all 15 artists next year, especially Randolph's Leap, who are perhaps the most surprising nominee and greatest gem on the list.

The 49 blogs who voted in the poll are:

A New Band A Day, A Pocket Full Of Seeds, All Noise, Alphabet Bands, Both Bars On, Brapscallions, Breaking More Waves, Brighton Music Blog, Details Of My Life So Far, Don’t Watch Me Dancing, Dots And Dashes, Drunken Werewolf, Eaten By Monsters, Electronic Rumors, Faded Glamour, Folly Of Youth, Flying With Anna, God Is In The TV, Harder Blogger Faster, Howl, In Love Not Limbo, Just Music That I Like, Killing Moon, Kowalskiy,  Love Music : Love Life,  Mudkiss, Music Broke My Bones, Music Fans Mic, Music Liberation, Music Like Dirt, My Bands Better Than Your Band, Not Many Experts, Peenko, Real Horrorshow, Scottish Fiction, Skeletory,  Song By Toad, Sounds Good To Me Too, Storm’s Brewing, Sweeping The Nation, The Blue Walrus, The Electricity Club, The Mad Mackerel, The Metaphorical Boat, The Music Hoarder, The Recommender, This Must Be Pop, Von Pip Musical Express, 17 Seconds