Best Ever Albums

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

Hayden — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 20:43:30 GMT

Author: Hayden

Posted: 01/22/2025 01:43

MadhattanJack wrote:

Well, I'd just like to thank the Academy and all of my colleagues for providing me with this opportunity and for making me the forum-member I am today by helping me overcome of all the challenges and hardships I've experienced while getting to this point in my career but despite all that I wouldn't trade the experience for anything because the most important thing I've learned from all this is that you should never give up on your dreams and if you fail for any reason you just have to keep trying and trying until you finally reach your goals and now look at me here I am making the text smaller and smaller until it becomes completely unreadable and you have to go out of your way to read it which was my plan all along.

🤣 — ... I did 😨

It was a good pick— glad it got some limelight. 😄

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

MadhattanJack — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 17:26:33 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 01/21/2025 22:26

Well, I'd just like to thank the Academy and all of my colleagues for providing me with this opportunity and for making me the forum-member I am today by helping me overcome of all the challenges and hardships I've experienced while getting to this point in my career but despite all that I wouldn't trade the experience for anything because the most important thing I've learned from all this is that you should never give up on your dreams and if you fail for any reason you just have to keep trying and trying until you finally reach your goals and now look at me here I am making the text smaller and smaller until it becomes completely unreadable and you have to go out of your way to read it which was my plan all along.

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

cestuneblague — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 16:23:36 GMT

Author: cestuneblague

Posted: 01/21/2025 21:23

It's my "Party" and I may cry if I want to, but Blond can soar out of that shell since....

KISS CITY wins the 2023 Song tournament 6-3!!!!

Allright thank y'all for your time, interest and voting in the matches, I know this was a weirder go-around with the truncated song list but did want to get 2023 at least covered in the BEA tournament canon. I'm going to go ahead and just get the ball rolling on 2024, will send out a bunch of PMs to our many past participants and current forum regulars in other subsections so we can get the usual wide net of nominations. Again congrats to our tourney champion MadhattanJack and everybody put songs forth this time, hopefully we'll see you in the new thread rather soon

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

cestuneblague — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 14:53:00 GMT

Author: cestuneblague

Posted: 01/21/2025 19:53

One last bump

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

cestuneblague — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 15:57:19 GMT

Author: cestuneblague

Posted: 01/20/2025 20:57

One more day to get your votes in, then we'll wrap this baby up

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

melisandre — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 07:04:38 GMT

Author: melisandre

Posted: 01/20/2025 12:04

CA Dreamin wrote:

melisandre wrote:

I should’ve nominated some Slowdive 🧱 (I went with Kiss City again)

MadhattanJack wrote:

I considered doing that myself since it was my #1-ranked album for the year, but the single from Everything Is Alive was called "Kisses," so I'm afraid there was really no getting away from it. :-'

On Dec 24, on the main tournament thread, CA Dreamin wrote:

Whoops, completely missed this. I would've nominated a song from the new Slowdive album...

Shaking my head. We can pretend Slowdive won this tournament.

Tbh I hadn’t listened to “everything is alive” until yesterday (it’s unsurprisingly very good). I just think dreampop is probably a genre that works for most of the participants in this tourney so Slowdive would likely have done well in hindsight. I’m certainly okay if not blown away by the final.

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

cestuneblague — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 16:13:01 GMT

Author: cestuneblague

Posted: 01/19/2025 21:13

That's what I was planning as soon as this ends, but I'll likely need a co-runner since I'm not sure if I'll be moving around a bit and might not always be available to open/close matches on certain days and whatnot.

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

Hayden — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 14:34:17 GMT

Author: Hayden

Posted: 01/19/2025 19:34

Should we just do 2024 after?

So we don't miss it 🤣

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

cestuneblague — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 14:30:32 GMT

Author: cestuneblague

Posted: 01/19/2025 19:30

Considering "Souvlaki" and especially "Pygmalion" are two of my favorite records of the 90s, I have to say I've been completely indifferent to Slowdive's comeback albums. If they were my introduction to the band I probably would've never explored them further, though the last two albums were pleasent-enough listens. Given I can also see how someone would be underwhelmed by "the Party", which isn't really about overwhelming musicality or innovation but it's the richness of personal, confessional detail that I really love, and "Kiss City" is, well, swoony and well-crafted too but a bit lacking on the smaller details. It's all good though, I think the problem was trying to do this tournament a year late just to be a completist and we probably would've gotten a better variety if we cast a wider net of nominations.

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

CA Dreamin — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 12:56:28 GMT

Author: CA Dreamin

Posted: 01/19/2025 17:56

It's certainly interesting three users wish they had nominated Slowdive, but didn't. I agree with Hayden this isn't a home-run final. I listened to all 16 songs, and voted in every matchup so far, but I wasn't wowed by any of the songs, not enough to go explore more by the artists (unlike that time cestuneblague introduced me to the song "Forgiven/Forgotten"). Don't get wrong, Party and Kiss City are both pleasant enough. I actually haven't voted in this one yet. I have a small preference to Kiss City, but I kinda want to see if Party can mount a comeback.

And I understand where MadhattanJack is coming from on Everything is Alive. It's difficult to compare a track from that album to many of the tracks in this tourney. I think I would have nominated Alife (my personal fave), but that's more of a 4-minute slice of the album than a 'song', if that makes sense. Furthermore, I'm not sure how BEA would have welcomed Slowdive to this tourney. They're such a big name here, that the voters are likely already familiar, and already have their opinions on them. This tourney gave lesser-known artists a push, that Slowdive probably doesn't need. Nevertheless, I'll still pretend they won this tourney! Haha. Heck, I'm playing Everything Is Alive as I type this (Maybe I need the calm music before the Eagles game...I gotta get ready to go to my watch party as soon as this album's over).

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

MadhattanJack — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 20:58:12 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 01/19/2025 01:58

CA Dreamin wrote:

We can pretend Slowdive won this tournament.

By all means do! But Everything is Alive isn't really that kind of album. It's basically ambient dreampop, it envelops you like a big warm blanket and then they turn off the artificial gravity and you float away out into space. It's very successful in that regard as an album, but for a song contest, people want "bangers" and Big Hooks, and those are in very short supply on it.

And speaking entirely for myself, the main reason I got involved here on BEA was that I wasn't being exposed to enough new music, but I think I've since gone too far in the other direction — I hear so many new albums now, most of them in their entirety, I can't remember individual songs/tracks as easily as I could before. There are just too many of them. Not necessarily a bad thing, but if I do encounter a track that stands out, I figure that means something — either that it struck a chord with me personally or that it really does deserve lots of critical recognition. That's why I picked "Kiss City," it was just one of those tracks. (And, of course, Sabrina Teitelbaum obviously.)

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

Hayden — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 17:40:15 GMT

Author: Hayden

Posted: 01/18/2025 22:40

CA Dreamin wrote:

Shaking my head. We can pretend Slowdive won this tournament.

Yeah... I'm not going to pretend like this is a home-run final 😨 ... so I'm cool with that.

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

CA Dreamin — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 16:03:39 GMT

Author: CA Dreamin

Posted: 01/18/2025 21:03

melisandre wrote:

I should’ve nominated some Slowdive 🧱 (I went with Kiss City again)

MadhattanJack wrote:

I considered doing that myself since it was my #1-ranked album for the year, but the single from Everything Is Alive was called "Kisses," so I'm afraid there was really no getting away from it. :-'

On Dec 24, on the main tournament thread, CA Dreamin wrote:

Whoops, completely missed this. I would've nominated a song from the new Slowdive album...

Shaking my head. We can pretend Slowdive won this tournament.

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

Hayden — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 20:47:35 GMT

Author: Hayden

Posted: 01/18/2025 01:47

Kiss City.

Worth noting, Blondshell has another album on the way soon.

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

MadhattanJack — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 05:21:42 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 01/17/2025 10:21

melisandre wrote:

I should’ve nominated some Slowdive 🧱 (I went with Kiss City again)

I considered doing that myself since it was my #1-ranked album for the year, but the single from Everything Is Alive was called "Kisses," so I'm afraid there was really no getting away from it. 🫠

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

melisandre — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 05:12:15 GMT

Author: melisandre

Posted: 01/17/2025 10:12

I should’ve nominated some Slowdive 🧱 (I went with Kiss City again)

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

cestuneblague — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:11:22 GMT

Author: cestuneblague

Posted: 01/17/2025 05:11

Admittedly Kwengface would've given better variety for the finals matchup here, but I'm still easily going for Party here. Kiss City is a well-crafted bit of dream Pop cotton-candy that certainly has hit the tooth but not quite the heart.

Re: 2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

craola — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 22:01:01 GMT

Author: craola

Posted: 01/17/2025 03:01

it will end in tears kisses.

2023 BST Final: Party vs Kiss City

cestuneblague — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 13:48:50 GMT

Author: cestuneblague

Posted: 01/16/2025 18:48

Daughter- Party (Ponymaster: cestuneblague)

Link

VS

Blondshell- Kiss City (Ponymaster: Madhattan Jack)

Link