The theme of this qualifier is of course BOATS, put together by Twitter’s Katie G.

Stan Rogers is from 1976 and will enter Round 1 of our ANCIENT poll if he makes it – the rest are all MODERN. “Wolves Of The Sea” is not on the Spotify playlist and is also Latvia’s 2008 entry for Eurovision!

RESULTS: Stan Rogers does indeed enter ANCIENT Round 1. Little Big Town sneaks into MODERN Round 1 by a single vote!

A group from Adrian R, themed around (I believe!) Duckie nightclub bangers.

All singles – Frankie Valli is from 1972, Grandmaster Flash from 1982, Pet Shop Boys from 1986 and Girl Aloud from 2005.

RESULTS: Grandmaster Flash qualifies for ANCIENT Round 1. Girls Aloud go through to MODERN Round 1.

For the last few months the People’s Pop Polls have existed under the shadow of Elon Musk’s godawful new Twitter, and I’ve been promising an off-Twitter future on a new site.

That day has arrived!

We’re starting off the CHARITY CRUSHER POLLS today – tracks nominated via donation to two excellent charities, ActionAid and The Ruth Hayman Trust. I offered an option for people nominating four tracks to have them all in the same group, and we’re starting off with 13 of those CURATED GROUPS over three days.

There are likely to be all sorts of tweaks we make but the biggest changes to point out are these:

First, we’ve set up authentication by Twitter, so you should be able to log in, vote and comment easily.

Second, there’s now a link which takes you to ALL currently unfinished polls, which should make catching up very easy at any point.

Other than that, do let me know any issues, and we can work them out and get things running smoothly over the next few weeks. The Twitter account itself will stay active, linking to the polls and posting playlists (which will also be available here).

Happy polling!

Here are the playlists for the Charity Crusher Curatorfest! 13 groups of specially selected tunes to vote on during the preliminary round of the Charity Poll. Here’s Spotify:

And here’s YouTube:

Democracy hasn’t had a great run of it in recent years but it can still deliver a result like this – a pair of B-Sides semi finals which give voters a window seat at the birth of Detroit Techno, Chicago House and Dancehall.

These will be the last set of Peoples Pop Polls before we move to the new site – there’s still the Final to come but I’ll run that on Twitter as I don’t want polls to be ongoing when the actual move starts.

There will be an exciting new destination (and URL) for People’s Pop and Freaky Trigger will go back to hosting everything I/we do that isn’t polls or Number 1 song reviews (yes, those will be back again).

Thanks for taking part – I’ve already learned plenty about how the new poll plug-in works and I’m looking forward to seeing you on the new, specially designed for polls, site next week for the opening matches of our charity pop poll.

OK, let’s do some polling…

We’re down to the last 8 competitors in the A-Sides (on Twitter) and the B-Sides (here!). The winners in these matches enter PollHalla, the pop poll hall of fame, and you have less than a day to make the choices.

I’ve not re-ordered the YT playlist but these tracks are all there, and linked in the matches. And Tenor Saw is starting us off anyway…

…in an all-reggae clash with Sophia George!

Our second Quarter-Final puts our last remaining song from the Global bracket, Youssou N’Dour, up against Detroit’s Model 500.

Chicago house in QF 3 – it’s Mr Fingers vs Lone Justice

And finally back to dancehall as Wayne “Sleng Teng” Smith goes up against Squirrel “Every subsequent post-rock band” Bait!