Please post any GENERAL comments/suggestions/hate mail about bracketology on this thread rather than the Bracketology Central thread. Thanks.

As you may have noticed, Schleuse devised the brackets based on what the top 256 songs would be with songs from 2006 included. As it happens, only two songs from last year are incorporated that way: "My Love", which was in one of the first brackets, and 2006's top-ranked song, "Crazy", which will appear later. But the consequence (minor, but worth noting just in case there was any confusion) is that all songs from #37-#240 are one position lower than they are on the October 24 song list as it currently appears on the site, while #'s 242-256 are two positions lower.

So let's take a moment to tip our hat to a couple of "honorable mentions" -- the old #255 and #256, which stepped aside so that the tournament could be as up-to-date as possible: "Mannish Boy" (Muddy Waters) and "Losing My Edge" (LCD Soundsystem). Gone but not forgotten.

Absolutely...I noticed that myself, and I leave them out of the tournament with some pain (in particular, lately I've been singing the praises of LCD Soundsystem to my near and dear ones). Let me also recognize that just below the tournament's radar are particular favorites of mine by Talking Heads, U2, and Muddy Waters (again).

Actually, your friendly neighborhood bracketologist has something in mind for these songs which are just "bubbling under" the tournament proper. Watch this space for further details (although probably not until September at the earliest).

Damnit, Dylan lost.

I kinda wish those 2 new songs weren't included now cos it looks like people might do the unthinkable - vote 'Crazy' ahead of 2 hall of famers and the song voted at #8 in this forum's poll of favoutite songs of all time

Are we suppose to bow down to anything not made in the past 10 years? People have to stop treating the past with such esteem that they can't see the brilliance of what's going in the now. There's a lot of great classic music being made these days you know.

I think it's a good idea to include 2006 songs that could never have made to top 256 (too recent)
Strange but exciting to compare Gnarls with Elvis
John is right : let's no starify the past and let's give those songs a chance.
generally in such polls more recent songs tend to win, but we are all music lovers and (somehow) experts and we just can tell a good song from another, whatever the decade.
(I think in my opinion that those 2 2006 songs don't stand a chance, not because they're 2006 of course)

"generally in such polls more recent songs tend to win"

I think it's just the opposite. I tend to see mediocre albums and songs from the 60's and 70's get better treatment than 90's and 00's albums and songs. Even 80's songs and albums get thrown under the bus in favor of older bands. Just because those albums were there at the beginning doesn't mean that they deserve special treatment.

The trend I see is that the older albums and songs continue to gain acclaim simply because critics refuse to honor newer releases as superiors or even equals. It seems as if you were a popular band in the 60's and maybe even the 70's you have an album in the top 3000 just because that band was lumped in the same genre with the really great bands. That's not the case for much better bands that came out of the 90's. You can say they didn't come out of that original group of rock and roll, but those original groups weren't truly original. There were definitely innovators, but for the majority most bands of that time period weren't laying down a blueprint for anything. A few bands/singers did lay down that blueprint just like today there are a few bands/singers that are shaping the landscape of music. The rest of the bands just get lumped in with the scene. The older bands that latched on shouldn't receive more acclaim than a newer band that is making tommorows music...

John, I think you are talking about critics' polls while nicolas talks about readers' polls.

If this is the case, I agree with both of you.

Perfect sum up Henrik
That's exactly what I meant
Another aspect : the age of critics. The older they are, the more they will favor old songs (that came out during their youth).

Yeah I guess I was...

The thing I don't get is that it seems the acclaimed songs of today are all party anthems. Hey Ya!, Take Me Out, Get Ur Freak On, Crazy in Love, Work It, Can't Get You Out of My Head, 1 Thing and Gold Digger. Only Seven Nation Army and House of Jealous Lovers make the top 200 and even those have a dance vibe going for them. Those songs are all good but, not only are today's songs not given the respect they should but also you don't get any respect if you can't fill a dance floor...

It probably has to do with the single, and now in the digital age you're starting to see good tracks show up on lists instead of just dance songs.

There's not many songs from this decade that compare with the greats of the 60s and 70s - you can see that from how little new songs there are on AM and even most of those ones that are on there are too high.

If you read the previous 6-7 posts you would have seen that there is probably a good reason why newer music isn't on the list.

I'm guessing you don't have an appreciation for hip-hop or electronic music or even modern rock for that matter. There is a plethora of music that is not only as good as stuff that came out of the 60's and 70's but just as innovative as well. You can't just take a form of art and say "it's only a masterpiece is if it's from this 15 year period". You just can't pigeonhole art like that. Well, I guess you can but it's kind of saying something of what you think about the artform in general.

I personally think music dive-bombed after 1979. Sure, there have been the occasional bright moments afterwards, grunge being the longest lasting of these, but by and large the golden period for music was between 1964-1979. It was just a completely different atmosphere than nowadays. It was exciting and quickly changing. The medium was brand-new and folks were doing things on a daily basis that had been previously considered impossible. There was also the fact that that period saw the largest number of teenagers than ever before in history (thanks to the baby boom), and it was also a period where culture and media were changing societies all across the planet. Nowadays we generally live in leftist societies, we don't have a cold war, or any war worth worrying about, and there hasn't been a major recession in decades. Besides, there is some truth to the statement that everything's already been done. Sure, there are always new sounds to explore, but society already understands music as well as artists will ever teach it. It's not like the 50's where folks thought all art was pompous, sombre and highly professional: fertile ground for Elvis Presley, The Doors and the Sex Pistols. I personally think music is headed for another revolution which will revitalize the industry, but it won't be anything near the scale of the British invasion.

I think that big revolution probably already happened 5 or 6 years ago with hip-hop. Just like the 50's most people embraced it, and some didn't. But, it's definitely not a fad and has taken over the charts while the rock and roll candle burns.

I've said this in different forms in several other threads, but I still think comparing the music of different eras is comparing apples to oranges.

I mean, to take a period which not many people get excited about--what was the music of the 70s? You've got singer/songwriter, heavy metal, reggae, ska, disco, a couple of different flavors of punk, early power pop, easy listening. Or, how about the 90s, where you've got grunge, indie, house/dance, electronica, Britpop, boy/girl bands, Nashville, ambient, and so on?

I've never really understood trying to draw borders around different decades or different periods and trying to generalize about them...that's one thing I like about this site: you get to see examples of dozens of different genres and many different eras, side by side.

that's right schleuse

But in bracketology, we still have to compare apples and oranges
I have to say that the result is sometimes very surprising. Like Jonmarck, I listen to a lot of 60s and 70s music (to speak about rock and r&b in general, because for the past 5 years I've been listening to a lot of blues and country) and tend to think that those eras were more creative and inventive than nowadays; but thanks to the brackets, I have re-discovered the eighties, the times of my teens (I was born in 1970). I remember them as very poor musicaly speaking, but listening to the brackets songs again made me change my mind, at least for a certain number of artists (Smiths, Soft Cell), as you'll see in my grades which are coming soon.

"But in bracketology, we still have to compare apples and oranges"...true, but I think it makes more sense to compare individual songs to each other rather than decades. I didn't express that very well.

I agree that the results are sometimes surprising; I imagine everyone who votes regularly has surprised him- or herself at least a few times...

What about songs lower than the 256? It might not be fully representative - I mean the likes of 'Marquee Moon' by Television at #364 would surely trounce just about everything in the top 256 in bracketology

Point taken, Midaso...it bothers me, too, that there are a lot of worthy songs below #256 that didn't make the cut.

However, I do think that the tournament field is reasonably representative. Offhand, I can't think of a major musical style of the last 50 years that doesn't appear somewhere. In other words, I agree that it's too bad we don't have "Marquee Moon," but we do have the Buzzcocks and the Undertones and the Ramones and Blondie and Talking Heads...

Now, of course the field would be more representative if it was expanded to, say, 512 or (shudder) 1024 songs...however, at some point I think you start getting diminishing returns--the advantage of including still more great songs has to be weighed against the problem that there will also be a lot of songs most voters have never heard.

I have been wondering for a while if there's a viable way to recognize more lower-ranked songs, and I've got a few half-baked ideas on the subject which I'll probably share once bracketology winds down...if anybody else has any thoughts, let's hear 'em!

I agree with Midaso that it would be nice to have more songs represented in Bracketology (say 512), but I don't necessarily agree with Marquee Moon "trouncing" anything. (even though I am a fan of Television). lol

A brief glance at songs 256 - 400, and right away I can pick out a handful of songs that I'd love to comment on: Paranoid Android, Crossroad Blues, Instant Karma, It's Too Late, etc. I'm sure everyone else has a few as well.

But, I think 256 was a good number to start with. Like you said schleuse, it's representative of most genres and styles, and at 512 it would take something like 40+ weeks before the tournament would be finished (if my math is correct), and at that point, it's probably going to lose some of its... charm?

Just my thoughts anyways. Then again, a 512, or 1024 song tournament could be interesting.

I'm afraid 512 or 1024 would be the same : people would still look out the window to see what's outside that we don't have inside
I mean you've got to give limits, and a limit is always frustrating. I guess 256 is a good number
And nobody would stop you from making free comments on other threads
That could be a good thread though : songs you'd want to see in the 256
Everybody could express their frustration this way

Golly, I wish we could have bracketology EVERY day!

You want one every day? Golly, maybe we can make a special one, just for you!

Nice update, Henrik...unfortunately, since we're already well underway, the seedings for bracketology won't incorporate the new rankings (I can't really readjust everything in the middle of the first round). The differences, especially at the top, aren't all that dramatic, so it shouldn't matter much.

Anyway, I'm just browsing the new lists. Let's see...

AAAAAAAA!!

If we had used these rankings for bracketology, we could have had one of my all-time favorites, "Roadrunner" by the Modern Lovers. Plus a second Sly Stone song and "There She Goes." Not fair!