Thank you all very much for submitting your votes towards my Top 20 albums survey. Overall I have received Top 20 lists from 77 contributors (15 more than last year‘s poll). These include people who have contributed towards my survey for the first time and those who contributed towards my last survey at the end of 2003 (many of whom have changed their choices this time).

Before giving you the results, a note on the voting procedure. I have allocated points for each vote. If your album choices were ranked 1 to 20, I have awarded 20 points to your no. 1 choice, 19 for your no. 2 and so on down to 1 point for your no. 20 choice. Many people didn’t rank their list of 20 albums in order - in these cases I have, as before, given each of the 20 albums the median points value of 10.5 points. Finally a few people told me their e.g. 1^st 10 choices only but didn’t rank the remaining albums on their lists. For these lists, the remaining albums were each given the median score of the remaining points to be allocated. For example, for someone ranking their first 10 choices only, the remaining 10 albums are each given the median between 10 and 1 which is 5.5 points.

Anyway, that’s enough about the scoring procedure - here are the Top 40 Albums from my poll ranked by points then by no. of votes with the December 2003 positions in brackets (top 60 only). As you can see there is a new winner…

Some of the more interesting albums just below the 40 include the Original Cast Recording of Les Miserables, Roxy Music’s Avalon and Blondie’s Parallel Lines. It’s good to see Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs very much holding its own amonst more famous company and interesting to see quite a few new entries between 20 and 40 - I doubt if I’m the only person amazed that OK Computer wasn’t even in the Top 60 last year! The biggest fallers from last year’s chart who are no longer in the Top 40 are The The’s Soul Mining (18 last year), Joy Division’s Closer (22) and Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions (23).

With four albums in the Top 10, it’s not surprising that The Beatles are once again comfortably the top overall act. The top overall group / artist sorted by total no. of points then total no. of votes is as follows (December 2003 positions in brackets - top 50 only):

The acts between 31 and 40 include Bruce Springsteen , Eric Clapton, Nick Drake, Oasis and Eels. As you can see, there are big jumps up for Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, RHCP, Blur and Travis. Many of the bigger fallers are acts who have one classic album which most of their voters go for such as The Smiths, Stone Roses, Miles Davis (21 last year) and Fleetwood Mac (26).

I will shortly put these overall results onto my web site http://www.fieldfareguru.com which also includes LP, film, book and gig reviews as well as Top 20 song lists for David Bowie and Queen. If anyone would like to send me their Top 20 songs by either of these artists (they don’t have to be in order) or Beatles, Neil Young or Pink Floyd, I will happily put your choices on my website. I can also put your Top 20 Album choices on my site if you wish - several people’s lists are already there.

Thank you all very much for voting towards my Top 20 Albums Poll. As this poll is an annual occasion I will be getting back to you in about October to ask you for your choices for the 2005 poll. Please encourage your friends / colleagues / family to also take part in my poll - I am happy to receive new or revised lists at any time.

Keep enjoying the music and Happy New Year.

Greg

8.1.05