Well, 24 songs appeared in both lists. These songs were more likely to occur in the second 50 of the Hummingbird 100, and in the first 55 of the Hottest 100. That is to say - the songs we had in common were more likely to be the more popular alternative songs, which were less popular than the standard pop songs. So to speak.
Also, there were 64 artists appearing in the Hummingbird, compared to 69 in the Hottest 100 (which we should point out here, is actually 110). This equals a 64% uniqueness ratio (yes, that's the official term) for the Hummingbird, and 63% for H110 - ie, Hummingbird has a slightly higher ratio of individual artists.
Of those 64 artists, 22 were in the Hottest110 - meaning we had a much higher overlap of artists, than of songs. Which makes plenty of sense.
I appreciate your attempt to be balanced but come on!!! Hummingbirds list is complete CRAP (I do like yours however). You cant possible tell me that Pink, Fergie, and Lady gaga are responsible for 3 of the greatest songs ever!!! Based on your taste this must grate on you? And this has nothing to do with weather they are artists or not. This is about songs!!!
ReplyDeleteHummingbird’s is trying to sell a product to a target audience (whom evidently like shit music) ….plain and simple. This poll completely lacks creditability. Even in describing the winning song Hummingbird got their facts incorrect (STAX is not a band, its a record label). This is nothing more then a clever PR stunt (that may have worked) but im just left feeling sorry for people who may have looked to this as something more meaningful.
Well ... Look, I find it unlikely that an "objective" jury would find Lady Gaga to be one of the best artists of all time. But.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like the people voting in this poll were teenagers/very early 20s. Now, these ARE the songs they think are the best. When I was in that age group, I also would have voted for the music of the past 5 or so years - because that's what I was listening to, and that's what I was exposed to, and that's what I was judging music based on.
We are now older, and wiser, and can confidently say that Lady Gaga is crap, because our music from when we were in our early 20s is by far superior. See where this is going?
These polls don't reflect some arbitrary, objective judgement of the quality of music. They reflect the voters voting - like I say, JJJ should have retitled theirs to "Hottest 100 of all time by male artists!" That would have been a whole lot less offensive. The same retitling approach could have been demanded of my poll! If the majority of my audience were 20 year olds, they probably would have been plenty pissed off, just like we were at JJJ.
All we're all really doing is hosting polls which are voted in by a certain demographic. Then other demographics come along and yell at the poll results.
I agree that it was set up by a PR company - but the people who voted in it were quite likely just as dedicated to and enthralled by the results as my readers/listeners were to the H100W countdown. The people who were voting haven't been exposed to the music that people older than them have. But that shouldn't invalidate their opinions of women's music. Their countdown should probably just come with a "pop-py 00s-heavy" label, just like mine should have had a "alternative-y 90s-heavy" label.
I've read in a lot of places that the Hummingbird 100 would have been voted for by teenagers. The majority of voters were actually aged 26 - 30. I commend Naomi for stating the facts rather than saying, "the vote isn't credible because it doesn't have MY favourite song on it".
ReplyDeleteThere you go - 26 to 30, where I still (just) sit myself! Perhaps the poll results therefore also suggest that pop music is pretty transient - only the really REALLY catchy/famous/controversial songs stay popular across decades(ish).
ReplyDeleteIf I'd known how the list was going to turn out-so bland and mainstream-I wouldn't have bothered to vote!
ReplyDeleteSeeing the likes of Lady Ga Ga, Christina, Beyonce, Destiny's Child, Rhinna and Whitney included, has made me realise that my votes wouldn't have had any chance of counting for anything!
Australian girls were also virtually ignored.
Overall, very disappointing....
Very dissappointing overall
Thanks Naomi Eve for putting the stats together. I'm sorry I only just caught up with it.
ReplyDeleteDo you think the sheer numbers of votes would have swayed the result? I mean age may be one thing but the more people voting the more the current radio airtime songs will come up - therefore more pop, less alternative. I'd like to know how many votes Hummingbird received.
Our poll (how dare I say *our*?! I mean the H110 poll) just had fewer current radio releases. Bad/good or just different. Still playing those songs though Naomi Eve, and loving them.
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ReplyDeleteHey Shiny! Slack replying on my part too :) I don't think the number of votes contributed significantly to the difference between the two polls. Because they had around 9x the votes we did, and so if you think of our poll as a sample of 12.5% of their vote, you would expect more of their top 10 songs to have appeared to have appeared in our countdown - let alone in our top 10.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, I'd expect the strong voting trends to come out early and stick around, as I saw happen with our countdown. So the fact that in our 7,000+ votes we were missing entirely many of their top 10, suggests that those songs were never really going to be break the top 100, let alone the top 10, of our countdown.
(PS "our poll" works for me too!)
I think if H110W had received 62,000 votes, we wouldn't have seen any drastic rewriting of the final 100 - P!NK wouldn't have suddenly appeared in the top 10. HOWEVER I'm basing this on the assumption that similar people keep voting in our poll - obviously if Hummingbird voters came and voted in H110W en masse, everything would change.
But I guess what I'm saying is: the H110W voters were very VERY clear about what they wanted!