List This, mate! Londonist vs. NME

As any music lover will know, end-of-year polls are important, as are lists in general (see High Fidelity).

That's hilarious. Unless they're not being sarcastic. Then it's just kind of sad.

Jake, Londonist has removed the original story after being contacted by the NME. Is there an archive copy somewhere? I love arguing about year-end lists and would hate to miss this critique.

Google's cache: http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache%3A%68%74%74%70%3A%2F%2F%77%77%77.londonist.com%2Farchives%2F2005%2F11%2Fscoop_nme_album.php

The important parts:

In the document we saw were the actual results of the poll, according to the votes of the NME staff, which we can now compare with the version that appears in today's NME.

We notice, for example, that Babyshambles appear at #9 in the published poll, despite fairing particularly badly in the 'genuine' poll. Dare we speculate that Mr. Doherty shifts too many papers for him to be outside the top 10? At least we can glean what NME's reviewers really think of Babyshambles album...

Another band who seem to have shot up the rankings according to the list in today's paper is Oasis, who appear at number 24. This hefty leap is nearly matched by Elbow, who have also made the move from near the foot of the chart to a quite respectable number 35.

There are four other artists whose positions in the published chart are nothing short of miraculous when compared to the original: Madonna, Kate Bush, the Brakes, and Test Icicles.

These entries might be excused on the basis that they are relatively recent albums that might have been released after the votes were counted. But hang on, the Brakes album came out back in July, did it not? So why do the Brakes now find themselves at #40? And how come their sibling band British Sea Power drop down several places from their initial standing?

Others disappear completely, having featured in the writers' votes. Whither have New Order, Patrick Wolf, Beck, Wrens, Cut Copy and the Tears fled?

Lastly - and this is probably the most contentious discrepancy of all - the order of the top four or five results (including the number one spot, which is taken by Bloc Party in the published list) appear to have been shifted around slightly to reflect what is presumably editorial bias. If we were Arcade Fire, we'd be feeling pretty cheated right about now.

Guardian: [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,,1656637,00.html]NME defends album of year poll[/url]

This isn't the first time the NME has pulled a stunt like this. We've got documented evidence of a couple of others over at http://www.indiecredential.com. The guy who wrote the review of Here Come The Tears that the NME published told the entire Tears messageboard that they'd downgraded the rating on his review because the band wasn't trendy enough to warrant a 10/10.

for posterity's sake, an html scrape of the original post with all the bickering comments between the londonist & NME editors lives on here: http://postmeridianrecords.com/LondonistNME.html