Thank you very much to everyone who submitted their votes towards my Top 20 albums survey. Overall I have received Top 20 lists from 51 contributors. These include people who have contributed towards my survey for the first time and those who contributed towards my first survey in June (many of whom have changed their choices this time). Special thanks once again to John Evans for canvassing colleagues on my behalf from which I have once again received quite a few new lists.

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 30 Albums from my poll ranked by points then by no. of votes with the June 2002 positions in brackets (top 30 only):

Some of the more interesting and unusual albums between numbers 30 and 40 include ABC - Lexicon Of Love, Pulp - His'n'Hers, Queen - Innuendo and Marvin Gaye's Whats Going On. The top 7 have stayed in similar positions since the June poll but there have been lots of changes between 8-30. The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs has proven even more popular than before with two votes as the no. 1 album and one as the no. 4 LP. 3 of the 4 people who have voted for it do not know each other at all so it isn't a case of 4 friends with similar tastes voting for this LP which is surely worth checking out.

Looking at the table above, you will not be surprised that The Beatles are the top act overall by some distance. The top 30 artists sorted by total no. of points then total no. of votes is as follows (June 2002 positions in brackets - top 30 only)

Among the artists just outside the top 30 are Velvet Underground, Madonna and Tindersticks and the two biggest casualties from my June poll - Joy Division and Tom Waits (who finished 16^th and 11^th last time). Amongst others, there were big rises for David Bowie, Elton John and Frank Sinatra who had the most different LPs voted for (11) although virtually no one could agree which album to choose.

Thank you once again to everyone who voted towards my Top 20 Albums Poll. I am planning to make this Poll an annual occasion towards the end of each year so will be getting back to all previous contributors to ask for their 2003 choices in about October 2003. 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.

Greg

19.12.02