Thank you all very much for submitting your votes towards my Top 20 albums survey. When I launched the poll in November, I mentioned that I hoped to reach a grand total of 100 contributors this year and am pleased to announce that I have had exactly that number of lists (13 more than for the 2005 Poll). Extra special thanks for this go to David Ogden for managing to get so many of his colleagues to cast their votes.

These 100 lists include people who have contributed towards my survey for the first time and those who contributed towards my last survey at the end of 2005 (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 more than 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 2005 positions in brackets (top 40 only). As you can see Revolver has extended its lead and we have a tie for 3^rd place…

Some of the more interesting albums between 40 and 50 include Muse’s Black Holes & Revelations, The Strokes’ Is This It, Bob Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde and Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland. . There have been a big rises for Nevermind, Bat Out of Hell and Different Class with Definitely Maybe arriving out of nowhere. The biggest faller out of the 40 from last year’s chart was Madonna’s Ray Of Light (26 last year, now 43).

It’s no surprise 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 2005 positions in brackets - top 40 only):

Some of the acts between 31 and 40 include Pearl Jam, Nick Cave, Magnetic Fields, Frank Sinatra and Manic Street Preachers. Generally speaking major acts from the 90s have risen up the poll with Nirvana, Blur, Oasis and Pulp all recording big rises. Elvis Costello (22 in 2005) is the highest placed act from last year to fall out of the 30 this time around.

I have put these overall results onto my web site http://www.fieldfareguru.com which also includes LP, film, book gig and gallery reviews as well as Top 20 Films and Christmas Songs Lists. If anyone would like to send me a list of their Top Films or Xmas songs, I will happily put your choices on my website. I can also put your Top 20 Album choices on my site if you wish - many 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 2007 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
6.1.07