The Velvet Forum

Alright, everybody! The festive season is upon us again and this always brings me in an end-of-year-poll mood. Since it is almost 10 years to the day I staged the previous Velvet Underground Song Contest, I thought it might be fun to have a fresh go at it.

Format slightly changed, inspired by the polls over at the Morrissey-Solo forums: just grade the V.U. songs on a scale of 1-8 (8 being best), resulting (hopefully) at the end of the year in a Top 50 of Velvet Underground songs.

I'll start with the songs that first appeared on The Velvet Underground and Nico, then those of the other main albums, and then I'll work my way through the comps and live-only songs.

(Technical note: much as I'd like to do a marks-out-of-ten poll, the forum settings won't allow it. This is why we'll have to go with an eight-point scale, since the five-point "stars" scale grading we see in music mags would result in too many ex-aequos.)

Caridad. Sounds like fun.

I wonder how people will grade? Am I grading a song against all songs on the album or against all songs in the VU canon? You see if I happen to think Femme Fatale is the weakest song on the album, then should it get a '1'? Clearly, I'd rather predict that, no, a '1' is going to be reserved for a truly bad (imo) song like Oh Sweet Nothing or I Found a Reason on Loaded and so, in comparison, Femme Fatale warrants a '6' or '7' for example.

Lord forbid you include Squeeze in the poll, as then we're going to need a '0' or '-1', later on.

To avoid people having to grade multiple versions (studio, live, alt. takes/mixes) of songs, esp. the likes of IWFTM, Heroin, Sister Ray, it's a song contest rather than a 'recordings' contest. Its relative position on a given album need not play a role, since a song can appear on multiple albums.
Just consider the song on its own merits, think of its best incarnation if you like, and grade it

It also might be fun sometime to have a Sister Ray live "recordings" contest too.

iaredatsun wrote:Am I grading a song against all songs on the album or against all songs in the VU canon? You see if I happen to think Femme Fatale is the weakest song on the album, then should it get a '1'?

Your comment made me realise that going through the songs album by album would create perhaps in-album bias. So the rest of the songs I'll add on an alphabetical order from now on. There are 91 songs in the canon altogether, by the way, excluding cover versions by the VU but including the Yule-era songs.

iaredatsun wrote:Lord forbid you include Squeeze in the poll, as then we're going to need a '0' or '-1', later on.

All songs are equal before the law (though not equal under scrutiny, perhaps ). Strictly personally speaking, I'd rather hear "Caroline" than "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" any time of the day.

I am skeptical of anything derived from Morrissey-SoLow!

Definitely 8, one of my favourite of the the Banana

Caridad Rodriguez wrote:

iaredatsun wrote:Lord forbid you include Squeeze in the poll, as then we're going to need a '0' or '-1', later on.

All songs are equal before the law (though not equal under scrutiny, perhaps ). Strictly personally speaking, I'd rather hear "Caroline" than "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" any time of the day.

Then check my vote on Caroline!

iaredatsun wrote:Then check my vote on Caroline!

I did Really curious as how "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" will do, then!