We’re down to our last 16 B-Side tracks in the World Cup Of 1985 – a parade of the underground, the influential, and the unjustly forgotten.

They’ve been split into four final groups. The Top 2 in each will advance. But in a bit of EXPERIMENTAL POLLING, you can vote for your preferred two in each group. I’m interested to see what difference (if any!) that makes.

Polls end on Wednesday morning UK time and we’ll have our quarter-finals that afternoon. Here’s the YouTube playlist:

Now for the actual polls:

First group:

Second group:

Third group:

Fourth group:

Vote in them all! Tomorrow it’s the A-Side Octofinals over on Twitter too.

Here are the final four B-Sides Round 2 matches in THE WORLD CUP OF 1985, which is also continuing over on Twitter at the peoples_pop account (assuming Elon keeps polls intact).

Here’s the YouTube playlist for these:

Matches today include Sophia George, Newcleus, Robert Wyatt (again!), Squirrel Bait, Sugar Minott, Amina, Lone Justice and The Triffids…

Sophia’s reggae-pop bounce and Newcleus’ electro-rap form our first pairing.

That’s followed by a second Robert Wyatt selection – this time it’s “The Age Of Self”, up against uncanny 90s-inventors Squirrel Bait.

Next it’s the full-length dub version of Sugar Minott playing Amina’s French-Tunisian disco-funk

And bringing our B-Sides Round 2 matches to a close it’s Lone Justice head-to-head with this glowering epic from The Triffids.

All these matches except the Minott/Amina one are also on Spotify!

At the weekend Twitter will host the A-Side final groups then come back here on Monday for their B-Side equivalents…

Back back BACK with four more matches from the 1985 World Cup, underground polls for the more discerning people’s pop palate. Or something like that.

YouTube playlist:

And onto the polls themselves:

Our first match is an absolute cracker – house music from Mr Fingers v freestyle from Brenda K Starr

Then we’ve got the first of two Robert Wyatt tunes in the B-Sides, this time it’s “Gharbzadegi” up against The Damned.

Proto-gangsta rap vs chic French pop as Schoolly D and Etienne Daho face off in match number three.

And finally it’s the arsequake v punkabilly showdown you probably failed to demand as the Butthole Surfers take on the Redskins

The Spotify playlist actually has all these tracks – here it is:

Four more matches of lesser-known or lower-voted tracks from 1985.

This time we’ve got a YouTube playlist set up, starting with Youssou N’Dour

And matches involving Youssou, Indochine, John Cale, The Woodentops, Wayne Smith, Zazou Bikaye, The Dead Milkmen and The Chameleons.

First up it’s a spicy Senegal v France clash – Youssou N’Dour v Indochine.

Then John Cale’s stentorian balladry faces the indie-skiffle of The Woodentops

Match 7 sees Wayne Smith’s iconic riddim up against French-Congolese pop from Zazou Bikaye

And finally, the not wholly serious Dead Milkmen battle the really very serious indeed Chameleons.

There’s also a Spotify playlist which has lots of missing tracks (those B-Sides are obscure!) but has everything in match order.

Our first actual on-site polls (I hope they work!)

These are our B-Side matches – lesser-known tracks put under the spotlight. Four head-to-heads with 12 more to come, assuming these function as planned.

First off, Detroit proto-techno from MODEL 500 vs Monsoon’s SHEILA CHANDRA

Then it’s an industrial v hair metal clash – COIL v RATT

Dancehall don TENOR SAW is up against alternative pop songwriter MARTI JONES

And finally a brutal indie-on-indie match between WORLD DOMINATION ENTERPRISES and THE LOFT

I’ll be advertising this secret den of polling violence on Twitter too, comment there or here – ultimately I want comments to mostly move here though, but it’ll be much easier once we do Twitter integration on the new site.

As you probably know, Elon Musk is threatening to make Twitter polls a subscriber-only feature

As you may also know, we’re launching a dedicated Pop Polls site here at the start of May, as part of a general relaunch of the site with individual ‘homepages’ for Popular, the Polls, and everything else.

But this leaves the current Twitter poll – about 1985 – in a kind of limbo. So we’ll be running the rest of THAT on this site before the relaunch. (If Musk doesn’t fuck polls up we’ll probably just do the B-Sides here)

It’s also an opportunity to try out the poll widget I want to use on “live” polls and users.

One very important thing: these 1985 polls will use the same plug-in, but the look and feel of the actual new site will be a lot smoother, easier for commenting, better on mobile, etc. I fully expect this to be a bit clunky at best as an interim solution, so hopefully you won’t be thinking “OH NOES the polls are doomed!” on the basis of the ’85 stuff.

We’ll be starting off later with the 1985 B-Sides, but first of all I want to make sure people can actually vote, so here’s a 1985 Test poll I made quickly.

So the first question is – can you vote in this? You should be able to if you’re logged in, but not otherwise.

If not, what ID is it asking for? (We want to make it so you can use Twitter ID to login)

If yes, can you vote more than once? (Ideally the answer is NO)