Ellie Goulding wins BBC Sound of 2010 poll

so....
'industry movers and shakers' make a list of 'tips' for the coming year.
To me, this sound more like a list of bands that the various 'movers and shakers' will be plugging over the next year.
And as such, it's self-perpetuating.
Jan 2010 - these bands are gonna be the next great thing!
2010 - cue plugging of all bands on the list over the entire year
Dec 2010 - well, didn't we tell you so! These bands were huge in 2010!
Hmmm.
Don't believe the hype, personally.

.. and a nation yawns!

I'm sure most of the these bands are part of Universal, all of which have very close(almost corrupt) links with the BBC. Jeez, it's enough to make you sound like a Daily Maily reader campaigning for the abolishment of the license fee.

It's completely average.

But I thought it would get panned (rightly) for "shooting fish in a barrel"

Number 1 and 2 in this list have the same manager, hmmmmmm. So its not all about who you know eh?
Number 4 haven't even released a single or played a gig yet - how the fuck can a band that have yet to be seen playing to the public be on a list like this
Number 5 - Bloggo-tastic

This list gets worse every year. Here we are everyone, this is what YOU must like this year, fuck making your own mind up

DOOOOES SHE? DOES SHHHEEEEEE?

(Incidentally that was written in the style of how Florence sings/bellows. I'm sure shes lovely though...)

Its looks like just a bunch of editors, blog writers and guys who work on the radio. So unless any these guys work for record companies as a second job, noone from the list gains financially.

That said, none of the top 5 artists sound great to me. Could be case of everyone votes who they think will win rather than who they really like, making sure a rather bland artist wins.

Ture story that, yeah.

what like the great singers of our time "great"?

or just ok great?

or just Nokia folk great?

jesus help us.

I had to double check I wasn't on NME after sifting through all the rage. I'm with BMWaves - you're not being told what to listen to and the vast majority of the people that chose the acts have zero personal involvement with them.

I'll admit the concept of "ranking" the Sound Of The Year is utterly ridiculous and I'd much rather have them whittle it down to an unranked top 10 but what's the fun (read: angry internet-based contention) in that.

Like Little Boots before her, Ellie Goulding has a knack for putting out some highly listenable pop but past the inevitably catchy singles I can't ever see myself choosing to listen to her and god forbid the sound of 2010 is more average electro-pop.

Of the top 15 the only bands I still expect to be listening to this time would be Drums, Delphic and Stornoway who would get the top spot for me were I to rank the rather bizarre selection. Whoever voted for Owl City needs to be sat down with a copy of Postal Service's "Give Up" and asked to kindly reconsider.

Doh!

I'm probably not as cynical as some of the folk on here, but an issue I have with the BBC Sound of poll... is that it seems to revolve around artists that doing something that's been done ten thousand times before (and then some). It simply does not make for interesting artists.

When I hear something like "...if Kate Bush, Bjork and Stevie Nicks shared a flat in trendy Shoreditch in 2010, this noise would emerge..." (as pointed out earlier), this doesn't make me go "wow!!"; in fact my response is more along the lines of "Kate Bush, Bjork and Stevie Nicks are alive and well - why do we need imitations?"
Sadly, these emerging artists more often than not sound just like that, imitations and overly produced ones at that.