Thank you all very much for submitting your votes towards my Top 20 albums survey. Overall I have received Top 20 lists from 62 contributors. 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 2002 (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 or 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 giving me their 1^st choice only, the remaining albums received the median value between 19 and 1 which is 10 points. Similarly if the first 10 albums are ranked, the remaining 10 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 2002 positions in brackets (top 50 only):

As you can see, there is a new top overall album and big jumps for Ziggy Stardust, The Bends, Bridge Over Troubled Water and a few others. Among the more interesting albums just below the 40 are Pearl Jam's 10, ABC's Lexicon Of Love and Queen's Innuendo as well as the 2 biggest casualties Tom Waits' Raindogs (43 - 19 in 2002) and Joni Mitchell's Blue (59 - 20 last time).

Although The Beatles no longer have the top overall album they are still 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 2002 positions in brackets - top 40 only)

So as you can see many acts are in similar positions to last year but there are big rises for Madonna (mainly due to one voter), Queen, Prince and Nick Cave. Among the more interesting acts between 30 and 40 are Manic Street Preachers, Nick Drake, Magnetic Fields and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. It's interesting that the most different albums voted for were by Frank Sinatra followed by Elvis Costello and David Bowie though for Sinatra and Costello hardly anyone can agree which album to vote for.

I will shortly put these overall results onto my web site http://www.fieldfareguru.com which also includes LP, film, book and gig reviews - the site is still very much under construction and more reviews will continue to be added to it over the coming months.

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 2004 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 have a Happy New Year.

Greg

27.12.03