A very close one last week, between Aimee Mann and 8mm, with the slight edge of 46.4% going to the former ‘Til Tuesday frontwoman. 8mm still pulled a respectable 41.8%, and just a handful of “other” responses, like Me First & The Gimme Gimmes, Anna Faris (who drunkenly covered the song in the film “Lost In Translation”), Adam Sandler, and Ivana XL.
This week’s matchup not only puts two very different bands up for your vote, but two very different musical styles as well, as we listen to the funky stylings of Nostalgia 77 and the chill bossa-nova version by Glambeats Corp.
Which of those two versions has got a story to tell?
Listen to the podcast featuring both songs:
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I like these "who did it better" entries, but I have one major complaint: for some reason you always make it so difficult to tell what is going on!
In almost every one of these, I have to really hunt for who is being covered and what song it is. For example, lets look at this post: nowhere in your post do you even mention the White Stripes OR Seven Nation Army. Why is that?
The only reason I'm complaining is that, I apologize, but I don't always like the song or bands involved in these. But I love the White Stripes, so I'm interested in hearing covers of their stuff. But I almost glossed over this post because I didn't know who was being covered.
Again, sorry for the complaint.
Oh, and I still don't like how your podcast song list shows up in my RSS reader. I thought that was going to be addressed, wasn't it?
Good point – from this point forward, I'm going to make sure that the post title (at the very least) contains the song title and original artist, which should make it easy to spot right away.
And with regard to how the song list appears in RSS, it's on the list. But since that's come up, quite a few more pressing issues have prioritized above it, like the irritating Error 500 and making the show links appear correctly in the Cover Song Search window. It will be addressed, but only after those other items get resolved. Honestly, I'm still not completely happy with the way the podcast show notes appear in general. I feel like there are three disparate elements in the show notes: the show info and download links; the sponsor info; and the song list itself. I'd love to come up with a design that makes them appear to be more connected, and still look good in an RSS feed reader.
Thanks for the response! No biggie. And it doesn't even have to be in the post title. I kinda like the way you've been formatting the post titles for these. But it would just be nice to have the info somewhere in that second paragraph, after you sum up the last matchup.
Oh, and here's a cover for you: http://bit.ly/axk3IL
I also have trouble following what's going on with these — including which performance is which. Any chance you could include the summary box (including the various links) like you do with the regular shows?
Please clarify – when listening to the podcast, you're having a hard time telling which performer is which? I'm hesitant to add any more to the shownotes for these shows, because there's already so much going on graphically; the WDIB image, as well as the poll window, etc. But if there's a demand for it, I might be able to re-jigger the design of these posts so that it all works together.
Whether listening to the podcast or reading the post on the website, who's performing requires paying close attention, which can be tough when I'm doing other things. You have huge pictures of them, but their names are in the fine print of (in this case) the second paragraph. Yes, also in the poll, but that's somehow harder to skim than the usual matrix of songs.
With the normal shows if I want to see ahead of time who I'll hear and who they're covering, or I want to know who I'm hearing without worrying about when you announce(d) it, I can look at the site and see at a glance. And then I can click to find out more about them or buy their stuff.
In this case I didn't care who I was hearing (and didn't really notice your talking, I'm afraid) until after the second song started. So I went to the website and skimmed the post… and the actual artists just were not obvious. Just adding some boldface to the artist names in the body paragraph would help a lot.
I agree that there's a lot going on graphically, and not just in the WDIB posts. I personally don't thing the WDIB image needs to be so big; the artist's picture rarely tells me anything I want to know. But as long as it's so big, having the artist name on their picture would help a lot; though I'd still love to have the links to more info or buying.
(My ideal would be to integrate both the WDIB polls and the song-ratings of the normal shows into the usual song matrix. But I realize that would probably require drastically changing the way you do the polls and ratings.)
Dunno if all that was clearer, but it's at least longer!
BTW, found the Glambeats Corp song at Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0011UCEB6/
how long does the poll stay open?
I usually keep the polls open for 5 days after the show goes out.