Talk:Favorite Songs

Feb. 27 2004 - With Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head, Flansy has finally cracked the top ten! Wooo!

Mar. 27 2004 - Since I posted my favorites (basically judging by my top-played TMBG songs in iTunes), I've added several other albums I had on tape to iTunes, and purchased the pink album. What should I do if I want to submit my new favorites?

Apr. 2 2004 - Probably what I would do is subtract the scores I made previously, reorganize my favorites, and vote again. But if by subtracting scores, I completely eliminate one of the songs from the list, I probably wouldn't subtract it. But since there are so many songs, and some of the scores are so high, you could do whatever you want, and I wouldn't notice. --My Evil Twin's Twin

Apr. 11 2004 - I don't remember what I rated them at, and checking the diff file and doing so would probably just cause confusion. I'll just resubmit if that's OK.

April 26, 2004 - I was just noticing something...the way the numbering system works, some songs aren't getting their due. For example, currently Au Contraire , First Kiss , I've Got A Fang , James K. Polk , Out of Jail , Rest A While , and Stalk of Wheat are all tied at 4 points, but are divided between 62 and 68, ordered in alphabetical order, so Au Contraire seems to be more loved than James K. Polk...though it's not. Eh, maybe I'm just worrying about nothing. - kfarnstein

April 26, 2004 - I definately concur. Happy Doesn't Have To Have An Ending is number 25. Above Metal Detector and Why Does The Sun Shine? and others. Need I say more? - Doctor Masonstein

May 2, 2004 - It is a problem -- not the gravest in the world, since obvious favorites like Birdhouse In Your Soul and Ana Ng will out no matter how you do the numbering, but the lower songs really are getting shafted. It's a cumulative effect. If the list were reworked so that songs could be tied for places, Kiss Me, Son Of God would jump from #15 to a three-way tie at #11, and Everything Right Is Wrong Again would move up from #34 to #20. Most dramatic, of course, would be the songs at the very bottom -- Mrs. Train would jump a full sixty places. My Evil Twin's Twin had the awesome idea for a Favorite Songs page in the first place, so I think we should defer to him on this one, but clearly these numbers are misleading as they stand right now. -- Your Friendly Neighborhood Octofish

June 11, 2004 - Does anyone else think it's interesting that possibly the best-known TMBG song, the one that helped catapult them to international fame, the song that you sing when your friends say, "They Might Be what? No, I've never heard of them," isn't on here (the first Favorite Songs list)? I speak of course of Istanbul (Not Constantinople), which is nowhere among these 92 songs. Anyone have any speculation as to why this might be? I have a couple of ideas, but I'd like to hear what y'all think. -- I Might Be A Sociologist, Or I Might Be An Octofish

• Well, I would think that since it's not an original TMBG song, it wouldn't really count as Theirs. But then I see that New York City is up there with twenty votes, no less. So maybe it's because it was the song that made Them (reasonably) famous (very famous with those of us here), and we're just greedy and want to keep Them to ourselves? Are we afraid that if TMBG is the cool thing to listen to, then we'll be left with nothing to express ourselves with? I'm personally glad the "cool" people at my school have never heard of TMBG, because it wouldn't be fair to those who already loved Them. I don't think we want to be shunted aside. Aurora Hawthorne

• I think there's also a degree of fans having heard the song so many times before that they're just tired of it. --Vovat

• Tired of listening to it? How can you say such a thing! The only song of Theirs I tired of was Meet James Ensor after I listened to it a few dozen times straight, and that's just too much for me (antidote: listen to the girl sitting next to you hum "Toxic" by Britney Spears until you want to reach out and strangle her. Hey, it worked for me. Or you can watch David Lee Roth's music video for "California Girls" until you don't remember where you are, but this caused me to scream and grab onto a Beach Boys cd for dear life, so it's not recommended). I will never grow tired of listening to Istanbul (Not Constantinople). Aurora Hawthorne

June 12, 2004 - This might be a stupid question, but how do I vote for my favorites? I don't see any explanation on the site. --Vovat

• Just edit it like you would a normal page, but then delete the old numbers (write them down or something, though), tack your points onto your favorite songs, put the new numbers back in, and edit numberings and pages accordingly. That's all. Aurora Hawthorne

July 3, 2004 - Hey Wikians. I'm thinking about changing something. I'm thinking about taking off the Favorite Song numbers on each of the song pages. The reason is because I think when you cast your votes it takes too long to go through all song pages to change the numbers. I'll still leave the Favorite Songs link, but it won't say what number it is anymore. What do you Wikians think? --My Evil Twin's Twin

July 15, 2004 - Yeah, I definately agree with you. It takes WAY too long to vote for your favorites...And I think that, since The Spine & The Spine Surfs Alone have just been released, now would be a good time to revamp this whole section. Granted, it'd take a while for everyone to re-vote, but my list has almost completely changed, and I'm sure others' have as well. It'll be a long-winded process, for sure, but what do you guys think? - Stiddy

July 17, 2004 - I have a feeling this page is going to be going under some serious redoing. I'm thinking of keeping the numbering the way it is, except give each song a number in parentheses so that each tied song is at the same number. Also, deleting the Favorite Song numbers for the song pages like I said before, and maybe redoing the whole list all over again, because since new songs came out (especially from The Spine), many people have new favorites. What do you Wikians think? --My Evil Twin's Twin

July 19, 2004 - I agree. And also because I am new to this wiki type stuff, so I am a bit confused on the way the rating system works. Redoing the whole list seems to be in order, especially with the new album and new songs coming out. --Joseph

July 27, 2004 - Is it okay if a few songs get the same amount of points, as long as there are 10 songs whose points total up to 55 (10+9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1)? I'm having a lot of trouble choosing the better of several pairs of songs. -- Rhinoceros Rex

I can't see how there'd be anything wrong with that...go for it! - Stiddy

Cool. I ended up doing five songs with 6 and five songs with 5, if anyone's wondering about the abundance of 6- and 5-pointers. - Rhinoceros Rex

Isn't it conceivable, then, that somebody might give nine songs one point each and give one lucky song a whopping 46 points? And is this something we should be worried about? Just wondering. - Octofish

I doubt this is a serious issue, but it seems to me that the giving your favorite song 10 points system is kinda screwed up. A favorite song list should represent how many people like each song, and the song with the _most people_, not the most fanatical followers, should be highest on the list. That is to say, i don't want to know that two people gave Pet Name 46's because their lives were changed by it - that's great, they can write about it in their bios - but i want any song with 92 points to have 92 people who like it, not two who really like it.

So I propose a system under which you vote for fewer songs (1-5, maybe) with only 1 point each. This would more fairly represent how many people like each song, as well as un-cluttering the list a bit. So if anyone cares enough (and thinks I'm right), they can feel free to start Favorite Songs 3 any time they like. This would result in lower overall scores, but it's all relative, and i think it would do a greater service to the TMBW community. Jes' mah dos centavos. -- Personman

Well, that WOULD make ranking one's favorite songs somewhat easier, since all the votes would be worth one point. I didn't add my songs for quite a while because I couldn't decide whether I liked Track A better than Track B or if I should really consider adding Track C because that's a pretty worthy track and so on and so forth. On the other hand, it'd mean I'd have to chop a favorite songs list down to 5, and cutting it down to 10 was hard enough as it is. Still a good idea, at any rate. -- TheNintenGenius

I'm having a real hard time getting my list down to just 10 songs. Even though I really like some of the newest stuff, I think I'm going to have to give precedence to the older tracks that I know have longevity. Will I still love Now Is Strange in a month? - Professa G

August 24, 2004 - Hey all. I have a novel idea, but I've no clue how to begin executing it. In terms of the "Favorite Songs" page, I am both attracted and repulsed by the idea of it. I agree with others in this discussion thread that the rankings of certain songs over others seems disjointed. And I can't help but notice that the list morphs every time They release something new - not to say that They aren't putting out work just as good as Their oldies, but I wonder how many people would still rank their newer favorites as high after having as much time to reflect on the songs as they have with, say, The Bells Are Ringing (just a random example). So after some thinking on the subject, I realize the problem. Ranking TMBG songs isn't the answer... RATING them is!!! I for one have a problem with saying that Song X is better than Song Y, because Song Y's been known to grow on me from time to time and edge out X in my favor. The point is, with a rating system, we could see a true reflection of everyone's opinions of the songs without putting them into something that looks like the Olympic medal tracker. Plus, a rating system could cover every song, and this would be a really interesting tool for the tracks that are more on the rare side for those who haven't heard them. So... the questions are: a) are people interested in such a thing, and b) can this wiki support some kind of "poll" device that could collect and calculate the results itself without having to resort the tedious, awful task of manual tabulation? I await your comments. - Charlie

That's actually something i'm working on right now...I'd like to store song ratings in a database, so that people could rate each song, rather than just voting for their top ten faves. It would take all the manual effort out of it. Hopefully i can get something prototyped in the next month or so. -- Duke33

9-3-04: Wikians. METT here, in other words, The Guy Who Started This Page. I guess you could call this my apology speech. Have any of you heard of AFI (American Film Institute)? They're a group of movie judges that, in the last few years, have been putting out lists of the 100 best movies, 100 funniest movies, 100 most thrilling movies, etc. These movie lists have interested me a lot, because I'm a person who likes looking at numbers and statistics. And based on this idea, I made my own list of my top 100 favorite TMBG songs. In order to do this, I made a list of all TMBG songs, from favorite to least favorite. Also, I kept hearing about the most famous TMBG songs, but these only made lists of one or two songs. So based on this idea, I wanted to find out exact lists of what songs were the favorites of most TMBG fans. So that's when I started the Favorite Songs page. It was a brilliant and simple idea to me. I didn't think anybody would be able to make a list of 100 favorite songs like I have, but I guessed it wouldn't be so hard to make a list of 10. But alas, as it turned out, I guess what seemed like a simple idea to me was actually more complicated to everyone else. For this, I'm sorry. After the Favorite Songs page was going for a few months, the complications started emerging. Review this page to find all the complications. At times, I added my thoughts, to attempt to make things work, but it just wasn't enough. Now a whole different idea is emerging: rating songs instead of ranking them. Now I'm starting to wonder if the Favorite Songs concept that I invented will keep going. If it does, maybe it'll be okay for me and sorta bad for the rest of you, or something like that. If it doesn't, maybe it'll be okay for you and sorta bad for me. I guess both will just have to be sufficient for me. In summary, I apologize to everyone who thinks the idea of the Favorite Songs was brilliant, but bringing it about was revolting. --My Evil Twin's Twin

I don't think it was revolting... Birdhouse and Ana tied for first, which makes sense, and the rest of it seemed to work. I think people just hated to have to put one song under another in a tie. The nice thing about rating songs is that by doing it, you can rank them. Take a look at the prototype and you'll see what I mean... the highest-rated songs by the most people are sorted in order, making it very similar to this one, only with less work. - Random