Living Together, Polling Together — it's the BURT BACHARACH SONGBOOK Ballot Poll

so the rollout is for songs, but for each of those you give the breakdown as to which versions contributed how many points to the total?

This is how the results will roll out, btw. After they're done I'm sure I'll do a one-post data dump with a ranking of the individual versions.

Everybody keep listening and voting!

I don't know much about Bacharach. I haven't participated in many ballot polls lately because they tend to ruin the artist for me, but maybe I'll join up for this one because he's such a blind spot for me.

For my part, here's Bobby Van doing Question Me an Answer from Lost Horizon, just because that's always what I think about when I hear his name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfs62HWRjyA

I do hope you'll vote! The great thing about Bacharach is there are so many artists involved you probably won't burn out on any one.

If the votes are for songs only presumably the carpenters bacharach / David medley counts as a song in its own right in voting terms?

i am not gonna be able to listen to 200 recordings, or even relisten to most, but ive been hearing the songs since i was 5 or 6

xp - sure, you can vote for the Carpenters Bacharach/David medley. As far as its contribution to the composition standings, since it's a medley of 6 songs, each song will get 1/6 of the points a single song would get in the same spot on your ballot. For example, 6th place on a ballot gets 60 points. If you put the medley there, each of those songs will get 10 points toward the overall songbook standings. I'll round up to an integer if it's in a spot on the ballot where the points aren't divisible by 6.

Everybody still listening and putting their ballot together?
https://media.giphy.com/media/l0NwPo3VHujpJDI4w/giphy.gif

I thought I would be finished with my latest work deadline this week and would have free time next week to tabulate votes, create graphics and roll out results, but my work client is dealing with newly-discovered cancer and I have no idea what this is going to do to my schedule.

Think I'm done researching now, just need to whittle down to 30

i won't participate but i am psyched for the results. bacharach is more or less a blind spot in my music knowledge.

Without voters, there won't be any results; cross your fingers.

D Warwick's Check Out Time keeps ascending further up my list with each listen. I hadn't knowingly heard it before this exercise but I certainly should have.

I'm enjoying your playlist. Have to recommend the Woody Herman and His Thundering Herd irrepressibly jaunty instrumental of 'Say a Little Prayer'

still here / still voting

fwiw

will post more links when i have time and get a ballot in by the deadline in the op (although i’m not opposed to extending it if it means more votes).

how many ballots in so far ?

a whopping 3 ballots

I may have to push back the deadline for work reasons as well as to try to get more voters.

I'll be voting. Been enjoying the playlist except for multiple versions of this guy/girl in love with you. That's a song that seems to inhibit interpretation. Aretha tries to soul it but gets twisted up by the melody along the way.

my work life is crazy, i'd like to put a vote in over the weekend tho

VOTED

Got it!

I had misremembered the sample spreadsheet with ballot weighting that finefinemusic had done many years ago as having 20 spots, which is why I ginned up a new point system for a 30-track ballot. But it turns out her spreadsheet had been for 30 ballots after all, so I could use that point system that goes from 40 points for #1 down to 2 points for #30. Or I could stick with my new system (1159 total points per ballot lol). I'll probably use the latter.

NV, I do hope you'll take a few minutes to vote.

30 places on the ballot, not 30 ballots

I will try to vote too

I have settled on 30, more or less. I feel like my provisional list came too easily. So this has mainly been a process of deciding whether seemingly "obvious" selections should be displaced.

Planning to vote in this, not sure when I will have the time though

My big dilemma right now is choosing which version of my #1.

TS: Burt's "Pacific Coast Highway" vs. Sonic Youth's "Pacific Coast Highway"

I've started tabulating and there are 6 songs on everybody's ballot so far.

What is the deadline for submissions wmc?

This coming Tuesday, May 7th.

Seeing on FB that Lou Johnson was passed on.

<has>

Ah, RIP

Here's a challop -- I don't really like Aretha's "I Say a Little Prayer." I don't like how she lays out in the choruses and lets the backup singers do the work.

Finished my ballot, with a few days to ponder it before I call it final.

xp
I getcha. But. Counterpoint: those hand-offs to the backing singers work really well in the verses.

Been meaning to throw this in for a while, so may as well do it now.

When it comes to the most renowned songwriters with large songbooks, like Bacharach & David, does anyone else attach a greater premium to whether the singer interprets the song just so, how well they express the lyric or the melody than to originality of interpretation or arrangement? To the extent that you don't think of new versions as "covers", only good or bad interpretations of a set text.

Contrast with most pop music, where what I'm looking for in a good cover version includes deviation from the prototype, unexpected takes and angles, and so on.

Not saying either of the above is correct or a good thing, it's just what I do. Just wondered if I'm alone in drawing that distinction.

I'm in roughly the same camp if I'm reading you right, though a few spots on my ballot have gone to unexpected angles. I think that's due to my first really deep listen into the songbook coming from the Great Jewish Music compilation. There are some tracks on that compilation that I thought must be pretty wide variations from the set text, only to find out in the listening for this poll that they're not so far off after all.

I'd say the Aretha version of "I Say a Little Prayer" deviates from the prototype, to name one

Hey WmC, you don't have any spreadsheet etc, just doing manual collating from emails? Just checking bcs I'm off to Memphis tomorrow so need to submit tonight.

Yeah, email it is.

Go to Pho Saigon on Poplar and have the bun thom thit nuong cha gio, so good.

Thanks for the tip.

Submitted, wasn't sure if i'd go the email address right, let me know if it's come through.

Haven't gotten it yet. The address at the top is googleproofed, the µ should be a u.

Just got a ballot, all lowercase.

Lowercase not a problem, just mentioned it as an identifier.

Just noticed a problem, you have 2 different versions of a song on your ballot, sent you an email back about it.

Props to Noel Gallagher for introducing me to him via his 'Rebellious Jukebox' piece in Melody Maker when i was about 17, i bought a 24 track early 90s 'best of' (The Bacharach and David Songbook)as a result.

and his cover of this is great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIZHzLd0Cak

I just listened to the Promises, Promises original cast recording and I may have to make a change on my ballot. (Not saying which song.)

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7BF367F005988986

Oooh, I only just realised on hearing the overture that I'm voting for one track myself. Wasn't aware of its origin!

Listening to Samuel Jonathan Johnson's My Love today I was reminded of his very nice version of What the World Needs Now is Love, which is followed by the funky extended outro Sweet Love.

I am up to six ballots in and I hope every Burt-lover out there will vote. Rollout won't happen until the week of the 13th, as paying work is being dragged out due to client health issues.

79 different songs have votes so far.

^ that's awesome.

i'm getting fatigued by hearing version after version so i've just decided to just cut my ballot at 25 and call it a day. will email my finished list shortly.