The Blog Sound of 2015: the longlist and BBO’s vote

It’s that time of year again – time to predict who’s going to make it next year. The BBC has released its Sound of 2015 list, the day after the Guardian preempted it with their own list; and yesterday the Blog Sound of 2015 list was released. This last list, organised by Robin Seamer and Andy Von Pip of Breaking More Waves and the Von Pip Express blogs, was designed as an alternative to the BBC ‘Sound of’ effort, and is voted for by music bloggers, including us here at Both Bars On. The longlist contains 15 acts, and the overall winner will be announced on the 2nd of January 2015.

The 15 most popular acts, in alphabetical order, were:

All We Are, Black Honey, Chloe Black, Coasts, Deers, Fickle Friends, Flyte, Halfrican, Honne, Lapsley, Prides, Shura, Soak, Sophie Jamieson, Tei Shi.

You can listen to all 15 acts on this Soundcloud playlist.

There has, of course, been some angst from the organisers and others about the longlist and its relationship with the BBC’s list. This is inevitable given the Blog Sound List was designed to be an alternative to the BBC’s list, which is inevitably affected by the industry’s own sense of who will be big next year (a self-fulfilling prophecy). You can read the Breaking More Waves and Von Pip Express posts on the list here and here, for example. But it strikes us that there’s a problem with seeing the Blog Sound as just ‘an alternative to the BBC Sound of 2015′, because bloggers are asked to “vote for their favourite acts, irrespective of chances of commercial success”. Given that 62 blogs took part but only 148 acts were chosen, there clearly was some overlap, so the longlist is a kind of consensus – bands who might be popular, if not famous, next year – because that’s what the BBC poll is all about. However another 133 acts received at least one vote but didn’t get longlisted, so it’s obvious these blogs are also picking stuff they really love.

As a result the Blog Sound longlist is two things: the emerging acts people may love but certainly expect to be popular, and the 133 others are the ones they just love. It’s this dual nature of the Blog Sound idea which is always going to make people worry/complain about the comparison with the BBC’s list, when they are and are not quite the same kind of thing.

Anyway. We certainly think it’s worth doing and applaud the organisers for their efforts, though as usual we picked bands that didn’t make the longlist, and our choices are not on the BBC list either. But we do love ’em:

1. The Drink, reviewed Monday, here playing ‘At the Weekend’ live earlier this year:

2. Trojan Horse, reviewed in October, with ‘Jurapsyche Park’:

3. Dead Sea Apes, reviewed in October, here with Black Tempest:

The Blogs that took part this year were:

17 Seconds, A New Band A Day, A Pocket Full Of Seeds, A World Of Music And Madness, Across The Kitchen Table, Alphabet Bands, Beat Surrender, Beat2aChord, Both Bars On, Brapscallions, Bratfaced LDN, Breaking More Waves, Brighton Music Blog, Daisy Digital, Dots And Dashes, Drunken Werewolf, Echoes and Dust, Electronic Rumors, Even The Stars, Everything Flows, Getintothis, God Is In The TV, Hearty Vibes, Hitsville UK, I Love Pie, Just Music That I Like, Kemptation, Like 1999, Lipstick Disco, Little Indie Blogs, Love Music : Love Life, Music Broke My Bones, Music Liberation, Music Like Dirt, My Day By Day Music, Never Enough Notes, Not Many Experts, Notes For A Road Sign, One Album A Week, Popped Music, Queen Beetch, Rave Child, Scientists Of Sound, Some Of It Is True, Song By Toad, Sounds Good To Me Too, Sound Of Now Music, Spectral Nights, Sweeping The Nation, The Blue Walrus, The Devil Has The Best Tuna, The Electricity Club, The Evening’s Empire, The Mad Mackerel, The Metaphorical Boat, The Paper Penguins, This Must Be Pop, Thoughts On Music, Three Beams, Too Many Blogs, The VPME, What If I Had A Music Blog.

Go and listen to the bands, and check out all of the blogs. And here’s hoping we’ll be asked to do it again next year.

jkneale