The first of two groups based on themes voted for by participants, with tracks drawn from your suggestions. This one is 21st Century covers of 20th Century songs.

1. A cover of The Smiths’ “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”. Released as a single in 2000.
2. A cover of Nirvana’s “In Bloom”. From the 2016 LP A Sailor’s Guide To Earth.
3. A cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”. Released as a single in 2019.
4. A cover of DJ DMD’s “25 Lighters” from the 2012 LP La Futura.

This is the second of two groups on a theme picked by participants and with tracks drawn from your suggestions.

1. From the soundtrack to the comedian’s 2021 film Inside.
2. From the Houston rapper’s 2005 LP The People’s Champ.
3. From the cyber-pop artist’s 2019 debut full LP Serotonin II.
4. A 2017 standalone single from the UK dance-pop group.

1. From the Brooklyn sludge rockers’ 2008 set The Ruiner. Nominated by Martijn tH.
2. Taken from the Glaswegian psychedelicists’ 2013 LP Of This And Other Worlds. Also nominated by Martijn tH! (Sorry)
3. From the Dutch band’s 2022 LP Nuts – nominated by Job De W.
4. From the Montreal band’s 2012 LP He Was Such A Quiet Boy. Nominated by Matt.

1. From the Boston art-rockers’ 2019 LP You Know What They Mean. Nominated by stabilimentum.
2. From the Dutch producer’s 2023 LP Choral Feeling. Not to be confused with the “Insanity” hitmakers! Nominated by Job De W.
3. From the Dutch indie rockers’ 2003 LP Log 22. Nominated by Leo B.
4. Solo cut from one half of Black Dresses from her 2023 EP Rookie’s Bustle. A Bracket Balancer.

So, as you might be aware, I’ve been thinking – again! – about the future of the pop polls. Caused by a combination of increased workload and a sense that the existing format of the polls wasn’t working well in their new home. Lots of you gave your feedback on this – thanks so much for all the input!

Here’s what’s going to happen next. Short version: The “Tournament” polls are going to move back to Twitter, though I’m going to start seriously investigating Twitter competitors too on the assumption that Twitter’s long-term future is not great. This site will host “League” polls which suit the strengths of the blog format and the site design. Read on for more details on both these things.

ON TWITTER:

1. We’re going to keep on doing the US No.1s Mini-Poll in addition to everything else, as it works well as a light, quick-results bonus and is really almost zero work.
2. Next week we’ll start the CHARITY CRUSHER (ANCIENT) Qualifiers on Twitter. Those will run for 9 days.
3. Either immediately after that or a week later if people need more time, it’s nominations day for Late Work. I’m going to aim for this and future polls to be smaller scale than before – probably around 200 tracks rather than the 300+ beasts we’ve been running. This might mean changes to the nominations system. We’ll do 2015 after Late Work.
4. Not decided exactly which order we’ll do the R1s in, but at any rate I’ll get the Crushers out of the way before we do anything else.
5. And then it’s on to Late Work.

ON HERE:

1. The first order of business is finishing the Modern Qualifiers – this might take a while to get some groups over the line, vote-wise.
2. After that I’ll do Golden Beats for the Modern Qs and the relevant songs in the Curatorfest groups. These might work a bit differently from GBs of old. Or they might not.
3. Then I’m going to open player slots for the first LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GOLDEN BEATS, which will be the main event on peoples-pop.com. Roughly it’ll work like this:
   • 10-12 players (or teams) nominate a track each week on a theme, for a weekly 10-12 song playlist.
   • Each week’s theme is a previous People’s Pop Poll. eg covers, 1999, christmas, etc.
   • Everyone (players and spectators) votes for favourite tracks from the playlist using Golden Beat rules – you can’t vote for anything you already knew.
   • Points are allotted at the end of each round Eurovision style! The player who came last gets to choose the next open theme slot (so they can pick something they’ll do better in)
   • After 10 weeks the winner is crowned! And the top-scoring song of each player competes for the overall track crown.
   • The playlist, poll and scoreboard will all be sticky posts here to allow week-long conversation at a more gentle pace than Twitter permits.
4. If that’s a success then we’ll do further “league” games.

It’s the closing day of Modern Qualifiers! What happens next? There’s a special post about that. Today we have two final dips into the Low Shazam Zone and also two special groups whose themes were voted on by YOU dear voters. The “21st Century covers of 20th Century songs” group and a group themed around THE INTERNET.

The YouTube playlist is here but won’t embed at the right point – I think cos it’s over 200 songs long now.