This is Round 1 of the AM Pazz & Jop Songs of 2008 poll.

This round starts in about 55 minutes (midnight GMT) and will finish on January 31st, at midnight GMT (so at the British or Portuguese turn to February).

And here are the rules:

1) List your 20 favourite songs of the year 2008 (not in any specific order).
2) All 2008 songs are eligible. They may be released as single in 2008 (and be part of album / EP from any other year), or be part of album / EP released in 2008 (even if it was a single in 2007).
3) E-mail your list to amforumpoll@googlemail.com. I will reply with a confirmation and let you know if your list is OK.
4) Please just list your songs in the body of the e-mail. No Word or Excel attachments, please. Thanks.
5) In the e-mail, please mention the username that we know you by in the AM forum.

Results of this round will be presented in a separate thread on February 1.

Have fun listening and nominating!

I prepared a list hoping that I could post it here so that people could hear some these songs!

Yeah, that didn't come out quite right.

In any case, I thought this first stage would be a public vote (i.e. visible in the forum) and the second stage would be the secret one- kind of like the way the 90s and 80s albums/songs polls went.

That way, those who want recommendations of things to hear can check out the lists of others, and so forth.

I know that many of my 20 songs will be unknown to most (if not all), and I'd also like to hear some tracks that I've missed this year!

maybe we should start a recomendations thread ?
Otherwise we're all gonna wait for the others to post their lists and nobody's going to vote
but the idea of submitting a few songs to the others is a good idea

I second Moonbeam idea. We could even add youtube links (the way I'm doing with HOA game) so everyone could actually listen to the songs.

Hmm, didn't get that part ... but good point, Moonbeam. And yes, let's start a recommendations thread, similar to the albums poll.

2) All 2008 songs are eligible. They may be released as single in 2008 (and be part of album / EP from any other year), or be part of album / EP released in 2008 (even if it was a single in 2007).

I have some concerns about this, in that I would hate to see tons of album tracks from well-known 2007 albums, that were released as obscure singles somewhere in the world, end up dominating the list.

For example, RYM currently has 2 Radiohead tracks in their Top 3 for 2008 Singles.

While I love Radiohead and all, it wouldn't seem to be in the spirit of the list if they ended up dominating. In Rainbows really was a 2007 event, correct?

On the other hand, I would have no issue with votes going to Bon Iver (who I like less than Radiohead for the record) even though For Emma was technically released in 2007. The album only got wide distribution in 2008, and is accordingly appearing on 2008 lists.

This is all about the spirit of the list, and just my 2 cents.

sonofsamiam, I understand and share your concern, but don't see any other solution, than to assume that the voters are wise and aware enough to vote 'properly' ... and somehow I believe we can do a 'better' job than the RYM charts. Not knowing exactly how to interpret these two words, 'properly' and 'better' ...

... but even if one or two of those songs would make it to the second round, I don't think they will get much support there. So, agreed it is a concern, but I don't consider it a big concern.

Can anyone think of a (better) solution?

Andre, I'm on the same page as you, and I don't necessarily think there's a better solution. Hopefully any votes like that will just be one-offs. And in the grand scheme of things, it's just not that big of a deal!

Now...off to list some songs in the recommendation thread! It actually was a really great year once I started peeling the layers back.

There is a better solution, but it's not available to us because it's the first year we've done this. On the woxy.com board, the way they do it is anything in a previous top 40 can't be included in your ballot.

So if we do this same thing next year, we can say 'Anything that was in the top 20 last year can't be voted on'. But we can't do that this year.

Good tip for the following polls, BillAdama.

So far, the following 5 people have submitted their nominations to me (and should have gotten a confirmation):

Andre
Moonbeam
Mitchell Stirling
BillAdama
Tim

Considering the large number of recommendations here at the forum, I do allow you to still change the list and send it to me again. So, in general, the last list that you submit to me this month, counts!

Time for a quick update.

Another 5 people have e-mailed their 20 nominations to me:
Fred
VanillaFire1000
VGRD
Rocky Raccoon
pop elton

The last three did not get a confirmation by e-mail yet, but don't worry, will do that soon.

So, we have 10 times 20 = 200 nominations so far.

Round 2 will have a minimum of 23 songs (i.e. there are currently 23 songs with 2 or more nominations).

Great, the nominations keep coming in: Michel and Penguin have just submitted their votes as well.

And guess what? Now we have 40 songs with 2 or more nominations, so round 2 is definitely gonna have a minimum of 30 songs.

I have a request : could we see the ballots that were already sent to you ?
Maybe that would help us make our choices more strategically and pick songs that were already picked by other people instead of favorites that don't stand a chance.
If you say it is too much work, or it is not democratic, I'll understand...

nicolas, it would not be too much work (already keeping track of all nominations in one Excel file), but I do have a bit of a problem with the strategic voting ...

So far, 15 people have sent me their ballots, and as I already stated, everybody can still change their votes until the very last minute. As long as it arrives on the mail account by the latest on January 31st midnight GMT.

Now, to change your votes because of the many recommendations posted, or because in the meantime you've heard another great song, sounds all fine to me, but to change your votes based on somebody else's votes ... it doesn't feel good to me. This could lead to dozens of e-mails with latest strategical changes ...

How do other forum members feel about this? Perhaps there is some kind of compromise possible?

The only, still not very democratic, but borderline okay, compromise I could think of, is to do a daily post in the recommendations thread of all songs that were nominated so far, without mentioning how many nominations it got so far.

The benefit would be, that previously unknown songs might come to the surface ...

As you want Andre. If nobody else is interested, don't change a thing.
I was hesitationg between songs, and the fact that one of them is already chosen might have decided me, but that's not a big deal. Let us keep the secrecy of the votes.

How many songs will be in round 2?

Fred, the decision to that is explained in the Overview thread.

And since we have already more than 30 songs with 2 or more nominations, the answer to question is: At least 30!

OK, got two new voters today. With a bit more than 4 days still to go, the following 17 people have submitted their nominations: Andre, Moonbeam, Mitchell Stirling, BillAdama, Tim, Fred, VanillaFire1000, VGRD, Rocky Raccoon, pop elton, Michel, Penguin, sonofsamiam, Jonah, Miguel, Nassim and Stephan.

That makes 340 nominations and nicolas, I'm gonna tease you a little bit by revealing some info, but not really:
- At this moment, 54 songs would qualify for round 2
- There are 2 songs leading the pack with each 7 nominations
- There are quite a few 2007 or older songs nominated (I use RYM as source), and 10 of them currently would make round 2

OK submitted my list. And without naming them, I did add some tunes that were among the recommendations.

Got it, Greg, and confirmed it by e-mail as well.

You are submitter #20, Henrik and nicolas have sent me their nominations in the meantime as well.

Hey, Andre, I'm having problems with my e-mail, so I'll just let you know here that it was "Dr. Carter"

No no no Rocky Raccoon, I'm sure it was Mr Carter... please tell him it was Mr Carter ^^

Last 24 hours for round 1 are ticking ...

I just sent mine.

Mine has just been sent either!

Just to confirm, we're now at 25 voters.

Latest 5 additions are from Harold Wexler, John, ako, AJackson and Toni.

Just sent mine...

Yes, and with your nominations the first round is finished with in total 26 participants. Results coming up later today.

Results of this round are posted here.

And the individual lists are posted here.