UK Blog Sound of 2014 Longlist Revealed

3 Dec

You may have noticed, it was hard to miss frankly as Twitter was all of a flurry, that yesterday (2 Dec) the BBC released their Sound of 2014 Longlist. As with the last couple of years, we bloggers have responded to the internal question we often ask (why should they have all the fun?) and produced our own list of artists we, collectively, love and have high hopes for next year.

We’ve bolded ‘love’ there, because that is the most important word. When asked to vote, the onus was put on upcoming artists we adore, not specifically ones we think could be massive. Perhaps the list would more closely resemble the BBC’s had we done so, but we doubt it this year. There is such a wide range of fantastic music spanning so many genres right now that forming any kind of consensus is going to be difficult. Indeed, over 100 acts were nominated by 59 blogs, with the majority getting just the one vote each. So anyone who thinks we all just like and post the same stuff as each other can think again.

Now, you might not agree with the list, only one of our top 3 made the Longlist and only four of our own Longlist of 15 (some are still to be revealed so you can have fun guessing who the remaining ones are) are included. So, while we have no fundamental disagreements with those who are listed below, we think you’ll agree there are a couple of surprises in there.

Before we get to the list, here’s some quick background from organisers Robin and Andy of Breaking More Waves and The Von Pip Musical Express respectively.

The Blog Sound Poll was first published in 2011. The concept of the poll wasn’t to criticise the established BBC Sound of list, but simply an experiment to see if UK music bloggers could come up with its own list of emerging artists that was more representative of their community and give the artists that were nominated some extra publicity. Indeed the idea was to compliment the BBC list in many ways by providing an alternative to compare and contrast.

The 2011 list contained some interesting alternatives to the BBC list including Mercury Prize winners Alt-J and Bastille who have found huge commercial success in the UK in 2013. The 2012 list was more similar to the BBC list with Haim being the runaway winners, followed closely by Chvrches.

The UK Blog Sound of 2014 poll is the biggest yet with 59 blogs each nominating their 3 favourite emerging artists. It has been retitled to give emphasis to the fact that it is a list created by UK bloggers, although the choices of music can come from around the world.

The Top 3 will be revealed on 2 January, but for now here are the 16 acts that made the longlist.

The Nominated Artists For The UK Blog Sound Of 2014

Banks – Sultry electronic music with a hint of soul from Los Angeles.