Javi has slowly but surely been completing the Condorcet polling project I started back in April. Those of you who have been following the series know that we are currently voting on the last album in the album poll, Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic:

http://prince.org/msg/7/368418

It's possible that Javi may do a revote on Sign 'O' The Times, as I had to shut that poll down early due to confusion about the rules (people were reporting the preliminary results before the poll closed, which is a no-no in this game). We have already voted on the A-sides and B-sides of U.S. singles. However, before we can take the results of these individual polls and conduct some kind of tournament to determine the overall top 25 songs, we need to do a poll of those songs that were never released on Prince's official albums or U.S. singles.

In two previous threads, I have solicited suggestions for a poll that would include unreleased Prince songs, songs written by Prince but recorded by other artists, and songs that were released by Prince but have a well-known unreleased alternate version that might conceivably outrank the released version. Songs on NPG Music Club exclusive albums would also qualify for this poll, as they were not ranked in my poll of official albums. Here are links to those earlier threads, both of which have now expired:

http://prince.org/msg/7/364193

http://prince.org/msg/7/360072

I've made an effort to compile a list of all the songs that were nominated and were not ranked in the earlier polls. This is what I came up with:

All My Dreams

All Day All Night

Beautiful Strange

Blue Limousine

Chocolate

Climax

Cool

Computer Blue (Unreleased Versions)

Crucial

The Dance Electric

Dance With The Devil

Desire

Do Yourself A Favor

Electric Intercourse

Elephant Box

Elephants and Flowers (Original Version)

Eternity

Extra Loveable

Get Blue

Get It Up

The Glamorous Life

Go

Good Man

The Grand Progression

Hypnoparadise

I Hear Your Voice

I Miss U

I Wonder

If I Love U 2Night

Irresistable Bitch (with Feel U Up beat)

Lisa

A Love Bizarre

Love 89

Love Thy Will Be Done

Make It Through The Storm

Manic Monday

Mia Bocca

Moonbeam Levels

Nasty Girl

Nothing Compares 2 U

Old Friends 4 Sale (Original Lyrics)

Ooh This I Need

101

A Place In Heaven

Poem

Possessed

Purple Music

Rebirth of the Flesh

Screams of Passion

Sister Fate

Something In The Water (Original Version)

Stand Back

Strays Of The World

Stone

Tick, Tick, Bang (Original Version)

Train

Turn It Up

We Can Fuck/Funk (Unreleased Versions)

When I Lay My Hands On U

Wonderful Ass

Wouldn’t U Love 2 Love Me?

Yo Mister

I would say that this is a pretty comprehensive list. There are many songs on here that I've never heard, and although I don't have nearly as many bootlegs as some people here, I would be surprised if some of these songs end up coming anywhere near the top 25. So, I don't think we need any more nominations unless there is some glaring omission. However, since I'm not familiar with all these songs, I can't confirm that all of them were actually written by Prince. If any of these songs are not written or co-written by Prince and are thus ineligible, please reply and so indicate. Also, please let me know if I missed a song that was nominated in one of the earlier threads and was not ranked in any of the other polls. Otherwise, I think we can go ahead with a poll based on this list once Javi is finished with the official album polls. If no one has nominated a song in the past four months, it's unlikely to make anyone's top 25 list.

[Edited 10/7/11 21:49pm]

I have some suggestions for songs, that are sorely missing, and are great:

Leaving for New York

Baby, You're a Trip

A Million Miles (I Love U)

Can I Play With U?

No Call U

I Spend My Time Loving You

I Can't Love U Anymore

Miss U

Empty Room

Me Touch Myself

Splash

Judas Smile

Van Gogh

Big Tall Wall

In a Large Room with No Light

It's a Wonderful Day

The Undertaker

The War

Be My Mirror

Make Believe

I'll Do Anything

Uh Huh

Y Should I Do That, When I Can Do This?

Many of the songs on your list I have never heard of, so I doubt them, but wouldn't put my head on the block...

Oh, I forgot:

We Can Work it Out

There's Others Here with Us

Open Book

The Sex of It

Slave 2 the System

irreverence said:

Oh, I forgot:

We Can Work it Out

There's Others Here with Us

Open Book

The Sex of It

Slave 2 the System

I personally like some of the songs in both your lists. However, the criteria for inclusion in this poll (as stated in the earlier threads) include a belief that the nominated songs would stand a good chance of making the top 25 in a general poll of Prince's best overall songs. Would you say that these songs meet that criterion? In my opinion, most of the songs that have been nominated in the two earlier threads have no chance of making the top 25, although the only way to find out for sure is to actually conduct the poll. If we end up with a poll of 200 songs, some of which have been heard by very few people, there won't be as much participation. On the other hand, I wouldn't want a song to be excluded that might actually make the top 25.

[Edited 10/8/11 5:13am]

electricberet said:

irreverence said:

Oh, I forgot:

We Can Work it Out

There's Others Here with Us

Open Book

The Sex of It

Slave 2 the System

I personally like some of the songs in both your lists. However, the criteria for inclusion in this poll (as stated in the earlier threads) include a belief that the nominated songs would stand a good chance of making the top 25 in a general poll of Prince's best overall songs. Would you say that these songs meet that criterion? In my opinion, most of the songs that have been nominated in the two earlier threads have no chance of making the top 25, although the only way to find out for sure is to actually conduct the poll. If we end up with a poll of 200 songs, some of which have been heard by very few people, there won't be as much participation. On the other hand, I wouldn't want a song to be excluded that might actually make the top 25.

[Edited 10/8/11 5:13am]

Okay, that's your choice, but it would be interesting to see how people rated these - in comparison to each other.

Is this the reason for not including the one released album I don't recall on the poll: NEWS?

electricberet said:

I personally like some of the songs in both your lists. However, the criteria for inclusion in this poll (as stated in the earlier threads) include a belief that the nominated songs would stand a good chance of making the top 25 in a general poll of Prince's best overall songs. Would you say that these songs meet that criterion? In my opinion, most of the songs that have been nominated in the two earlier threads have no chance of making the top 25, although the only way to find out for sure is to actually conduct the poll. If we end up with a poll of 200 songs, some of which have been heard by very few people, there won't be as much participation. On the other hand, I wouldn't want a song to be excluded that might actually make the top 25.

These additional songs warrant an entry, If Baby Ur a Trip, The Sex of It, and Possessed don't make it to the top 25 I swear to god I'm cancelling my .org account

irreverence said:

electricberet said:

I personally like some of the songs in both your lists. However, the criteria for inclusion in this poll (as stated in the earlier threads) include a belief that the nominated songs would stand a good chance of making the top 25 in a general poll of Prince's best overall songs. Would you say that these songs meet that criterion? In my opinion, most of the songs that have been nominated in the two earlier threads have no chance of making the top 25, although the only way to find out for sure is to actually conduct the poll. If we end up with a poll of 200 songs, some of which have been heard by very few people, there won't be as much participation. On the other hand, I wouldn't want a song to be excluded that might actually make the top 25.

[Edited 10/8/11 5:13am]

Okay, that's your choice, but it would be interesting to see how people rated these - in comparison to each other.

Is this the reason for not including the one released album I don't recall on the poll: NEWS?

I'm OK with including your suggestions. I'd hate for Wildboy to cancel his membership. I just want to make clear that we're soliciting suggestions for songs that might make the final top 25 overall, not people's favorite unreleased songs. We could do a separate poll for "most underrated songs" for the latter purpose. If most people on the org haven't heard of a particular song, it won't get many votes in the final poll. (Not that your suggestions fall into that category.)

I didn't include N.E.W.S. in the poll of official albums because it was initially an NPG Club exclusive. Since the album was later given a "low-key official release" according to Prince Vault, it arguably could have been included. If anyone thinks that any of the four songs on that album (or other NPG Club albums) might make the final list of his all-time top 25 songs, feel free to nominate them here.

617automatic said:

Where is open book?

That's one of the songs that irreverence would like to add to the list above. I'm willing to include it and other songs that people think might make the top 25 in the final poll. But keep in mind that the final poll will include the best of his released songs as well as the unreleased, rare, and associated artist songs that do well in this poll and any intermediate rounds that follow. So, if you nominate a song for this poll, you're saying it stands a good chance of not only making the final poll, but beating some of his best officially released singles and album tracks in that poll. That means a lot of other people on the org would have to be familiar with it and like it. I expect that only a few of the songs that have been nominated so far have any chance of making the top 25, but the only way to know for sure is to do this poll.

[Edited 10/9/11 12:34pm]

electricberet said:

I didn't include N.E.W.S. in the poll of official albums because it was initially an NPG Club exclusive. Since the album was later given a "low-key official release" according to Prince Vault, it arguably could have been included. If anyone thinks that any of the four songs on that album (or other NPG Club albums) might make the final list of his all-time top 25 songs, feel free to nominate them here.

I personally bought it in a record store.

irreverence said:

electricberet said:

I personally bought it in a record store.

I never bought it (and have never heard it). Should any of the songs be included in this poll?

My criteria for inclusion in the album poll were not perfect. But I wanted to avoid controversies over whether certain albums such as Newpower Soul should count as Prince albums. Right now we're getting ready for a poll of songs, but we could do a revote of the album poll at some point to add the NPG Music Club releases and various protege releases.

electricberet said:

irreverence said:

I personally bought it in a record store.

I never bought it (and have never heard it). Should any of the songs be included in this poll?

My criteria for inclusion in the album poll were not perfect. But I wanted to avoid controversies over whether certain albums such as Newpower Soul should count as Prince albums. Right now we're getting ready for a poll of songs, but we could do a revote of the album poll at some point to add the NPG Music Club releases and various protege releases.

Well, it's your poll, so you decide the criteria. But NEWS is an officially released album, whereas nps is released as an NPG album, and the internet releases were not officially released as albums in my point of view.

N.E.W.S. was also available in stores in Spain. Anyway, as the main goal of the polls is to determine a list with the favourite 25 Prince songs according to his fans in this site, it's unlikely indeed that any of the tracks in that album would ever make it into that list.

[Edited 10/11/11 6:35am]

news kinda sucks ass but wasn't it nominated for a grammy? unlike pretty much everything else prince has done in a few decades .. so that alone may propel something off of news into the upper regions of the chart ..

TrevorAyer said:

news kinda sucks ass but wasn't it nominated for a grammy? unlike pretty much everything else prince has done in a few decades .. so that alone may propel something off of news into the upper regions of the chart ..

If you think that one of the four songs from N.E.W.S. might make the top 25 in the final poll, we could include them in this one. Or we could conduct a separate poll to rank the songs on N.E.W.S. and then include the top-ranked song from that album in the first round of overall polling. I am hoping that we can develop some kind of tournament system for the overall polling so that there is no question that the songs in the final poll belong there and the songs that are excluded from the final poll were appropriately excluded. I doubt anyone is going to conduct a series of polls like this again on the org in the near future (if indeed the org is still around for much longer).

electricberet said:

I posted a similar thread a few weeks ago. There may be something there you can use.

http://prince.org/msg/7/367628

I think your polls are great, but I don't get the idea of 25 best songs as the only purpose. The reason I participated was to see the score of each album.

I personally like NEWS, but that's not the point for me, just that you have included all other officially released albums.

In my opinion it would be nice to have a poll of all the internet releases as well.

irreverence said:

I think your polls are great, but I don't get the idea of 25 best songs as the only purpose. The reason I participated was to see the score of each album.

I personally like NEWS, but that's not the point for me, just that you have included all other officially released albums.

In my opinion it would be nice to have a poll of all the internet releases as well.

I'm glad you like the polls.

The top 25 idea was kind of arbitrary. I guess that number got into my head because of American college football (which uses polling to rank the top 25 schools). The final round of polling would actually include a lot more than 25 songs, so we would end up with a more comprehensive ranking.

It's all just fun. Something to do while we wait for Prince to put out some new music (or some remasters).

[Edited 10/13/11 4:56am]

irreverence said:

I think your polls are great, but I don't get the idea of 25 best songs as the only purpose. The reason I participated was to see the score of each album.

I personally like NEWS, but that's not the point for me, just that you have included all other officially released albums.

In my opinion it would be nice to have a poll of all the internet releases as well.

Although the main purpose of the poll is to determine the mentioned top 25 list (which, as electricberet has said in one of his posts, will actually be bigger, as the final round of polling will include more songs), the fact is that we also get all the albums ranked. That's also a result of the polls, and to some people (like you) even more interesting than the final list. Actually, having all the albums ranked is also of much interest to me, I think it's an important resource for Prince fans.

For those who might be wondering about the point of these Condorcet polls, suppose that a friend of yours who's only heard a few Prince songs or saw him on TV a couple of times asked you to put together an iTunes playlist to understand why some people are so into Prince's music. The friend is open-minded but just doesn't "get" Prince yet and doesn't want to listen to all the albums in order as you insist. In other words, the friend is the sort of person who occasionally pops up on the org to ask whether it's worth buying Parade and is mercilessly ridiculed for asking such a stupid question.

You want your friend to get turned on to Prince and maybe go with you to the next concert. Maybe you don't even know the person very well yet but you want to get to know them better--in other words, you have more than one reason for wanting to bring the person to that concert, if you get my drift. (I made a mixtape for my wife before our first date, as I recall--do people still do that?) You could, of course, include your own favorite tracks, which might include certain obscure or unreleased tracks that only hardcore fans know about. But your friend might have a somewhat different taste in music than you--and might not be quite as sick of hearing the biggest hits. Your friend might turn out to like "When Doves Cry" better than "Moonbeam Levels" even if "Moonbeam Levels" is your all-time favorite song and you can't stand to listen to "When Doves Cry" anymore after hearing it 1,000 times already.

Wouldn't it be useful to have a list of the songs that were voted by the org as being the best overall? Then you could put those songs (or the ones that you also happen to like) on the playlist for your friend and see if it will hook your friend on Prince. There may already be polls by critics or others about which Prince songs are the best. But with the possible exception of Prince himself, nobody knows Prince's music better than people on the org, and some of his unreleased/associated artist/rare tracks may really be among the best in our collective opinion. We'll find out from the final polling. If people on the org end up agreeing that "Moonbeam Levels" is one of the all-time best, then maybe you should put it on that playlist after all.

If you still don't get the point of this, well, you can just ignore these Condorcet threads. There are lots of threads where you can discuss your favorites without any formal poll: a new one seems to pop up at least every week. These Condorcet polls are different because they use a more sophisticated polling method, that's all. It looks like the SOTT revote may be getting close to 70 votes, so at least some people seem to enjoy this.

[Edited 10/13/11 7:52am]

i dont think any one on here has heard 'when doves cry' 1,000 times .. maybe 100,000 would be more accurate

2nd moonbeam levels will not crack your top 25 .. so there ya go .. poll solved .. no need to continue .. just put on computer blue, if eye was ur girlfriend, purple rain and 17 days .. if that don't turn them on then just say the word and they are gone .. no need to waste ur time with such people of poor taste

TrevorAyer said:

i dont think any one on here has heard 'when doves cry' 1,000 times .. maybe 100,000 would be more accurate

2nd moonbeam levels will not crack your top 25 .. so there ya go .. poll solved .. no need to continue .. just put on computer blue, if eye was ur girlfriend, purple rain and 17 days .. if that don't turn them on then just say the word and they are gone .. no need to waste ur time with such people of poor taste

Gotcha. Let's talk about the new Prince album instead. I heard he was recording recently--big news, right? Or we could speculate about where in the world he will hold his next concert--always an interesting topic.

electricberet said:

For those who might be wondering about the point of these Condorcet polls, suppose that a friend of yours who's only heard a few Prince songs or saw him on TV a couple of times asked you to put together an iTunes playlist to understand why some people are so into Prince's music. The friend is open-minded but just doesn't "get" Prince yet and doesn't want to listen to all the albums in order as you insist. In other words, the friend is the sort of person who occasionally pops up on the org to ask whether it's worth buying Parade and is mercilessly ridiculed for asking such a stupid question.

You want your friend to get turned on to Prince and maybe go with you to the next concert. Maybe you don't even know the person very well yet but you want to get to know them better--in other words, you have more than one reason for wanting to bring the person to that concert, if you get my drift. (I made a mixtape for my wife before our first date, as I recall--do people still do that?) You could, of course, include your own favorite tracks, which might include certain obscure or unreleased tracks that only hardcore fans know about. But your friend might have a somewhat different taste in music than you--and might not be quite as sick of hearing the biggest hits. Your friend might turn out to like "When Doves Cry" better than "Moonbeam Levels" even if "Moonbeam Levels" is your all-time favorite song and you can't stand to listen to "When Doves Cry" anymore after hearing it 1,000 times already.

Wouldn't it be useful to have a list of the songs that were voted by the org as being the best overall? Then you could put those songs (or the ones that you also happen to like) on the playlist for your friend and see if it will hook your friend on Prince. There may already be polls by critics or others about which Prince songs are the best. But with the possible exception of Prince himself, nobody knows Prince's music better than people on the org, and some of his unreleased/associated artist/rare tracks may really be among the best in our collective opinion. We'll find out from the final polling. If people on the org end up agreeing that "Moonbeam Levels" is one of the all-time best, then maybe you should put it on that playlist after all.

If you still don't get the point of this, well, you can just ignore these Condorcet threads. There are lots of threads where you can discuss your favorites without any formal poll: a new one seems to pop up at least every week. These Condorcet polls are different because they use a more sophisticated polling method, that's all. It looks like the SOTT revote may be getting close to 70 votes, so at least some people seem to enjoy this.

[Edited 10/13/11 7:52am]

One thing I don't understand is how you can measure a top 25, if you are not placing all the songs in the same poll. I hardly think the best song off of For You or Planet Earth would rank as highly as even the three best songs off of Purple Rain.

irreverence said:

electricberet said:

For those who might be wondering about the point of these Condorcet polls, suppose that a friend of yours who's only heard a few Prince songs or saw him on TV a couple of times asked you to put together an iTunes playlist to understand why some people are so into Prince's music. The friend is open-minded but just doesn't "get" Prince yet and doesn't want to listen to all the albums in order as you insist. In other words, the friend is the sort of person who occasionally pops up on the org to ask whether it's worth buying Parade and is mercilessly ridiculed for asking such a stupid question.

You want your friend to get turned on to Prince and maybe go with you to the next concert. Maybe you don't even know the person very well yet but you want to get to know them better--in other words, you have more than one reason for wanting to bring the person to that concert, if you get my drift. (I made a mixtape for my wife before our first date, as I recall--do people still do that?) You could, of course, include your own favorite tracks, which might include certain obscure or unreleased tracks that only hardcore fans know about. But your friend might have a somewhat different taste in music than you--and might not be quite as sick of hearing the biggest hits. Your friend might turn out to like "When Doves Cry" better than "Moonbeam Levels" even if "Moonbeam Levels" is your all-time favorite song and you can't stand to listen to "When Doves Cry" anymore after hearing it 1,000 times already.

Wouldn't it be useful to have a list of the songs that were voted by the org as being the best overall? Then you could put those songs (or the ones that you also happen to like) on the playlist for your friend and see if it will hook your friend on Prince. There may already be polls by critics or others about which Prince songs are the best. But with the possible exception of Prince himself, nobody knows Prince's music better than people on the org, and some of his unreleased/associated artist/rare tracks may really be among the best in our collective opinion. We'll find out from the final polling. If people on the org end up agreeing that "Moonbeam Levels" is one of the all-time best, then maybe you should put it on that playlist after all.

If you still don't get the point of this, well, you can just ignore these Condorcet threads. There are lots of threads where you can discuss your favorites without any formal poll: a new one seems to pop up at least every week. These Condorcet polls are different because they use a more sophisticated polling method, that's all. It looks like the SOTT revote may be getting close to 70 votes, so at least some people seem to enjoy this.

[Edited 10/13/11 7:52am]

One thing I don't understand is how you can measure a top 25, if you are not placing all the songs in the same poll. I hardly think the best song off of For You or Planet Earth would rank as highly as even the three best songs off of Purple Rain.

You do it through multiple rounds of polling that include more than 25 songs. For example, say you have about 75 songs in the first round of polling, including more songs from the top-ranked albums and fewer songs from the lower-ranked albums. Most of the songs from the lower-ranked albums probably won't make the top 25 in that first round. However, if the one song included from "For You" happens to crack the top 25, then you put the second-ranked song from "For You" into the second round of polling. If that second song doesn't make the top 25 in the second poll, then no more songs from "For You" will be included in future polls. On the other hand, if all the songs included in the first round from Purple Rain make the top 25, then you'll include more Purple Rain songs in the second round. The second round could have the same number of songs as the first round. If you need to add, say, 15 songs to the second round to follow the rules above, then the bottom 15 songs in the first round get eliminated. For the final round, you might take the top 50 from the last round prior to the final round.

It sounds complicated, but in application it may not be so complicated, because, as you suggest, most of the songs from lower-ranked albums will not make the top 25 in the first round. We can (and should) debate the best way to structure the rounds of overall polling. I think we can agree on some system that will give us a meaningful list of songs for the final poll and a meaningful ranking among those songs.

[Edited 10/14/11 6:07am]

electricberet said:

irreverence said:

One thing I don't understand is how you can measure a top 25, if you are not placing all the songs in the same poll. I hardly think the best song off of For You or Planet Earth would rank as highly as even the three best songs off of Purple Rain.

You do it through multiple rounds of polling that include more than 25 songs. For example, say you have about 75 songs in the first round of polling, including more songs from the top-ranked albums and fewer songs from the lower-ranked albums. Most of the songs from the lower-ranked albums probably won't make the top 25 in that first round. However, if the one song included from "For You" happens to crack the top 25, then you put the second-ranked song from "For You" into the second round of polling. If that second song doesn't make the top 25 in the second poll, then no more songs from "For You" will be included in future polls. On the other hand, if all the songs included in the first round from Purple Rain make the top 25, then you'll include more Purple Rain songs in the second round. The second round could have the same number of songs as the first round. If you need to add, say, 15 songs to the second round to follow the rules above, then the bottom 15 songs in the first round get eliminated. For the final round, you might take the top 50 from the last round prior to the final round.

It sounds complicated, but in application it may not be so complicated, because, as you suggest, most of the songs from lower-ranked albums will not make the top 25 in the first round. We can (and should) debate the best way to structure the rounds of overall polling. I think we can agree on some system that will give us a meaningful list of songs for the final poll and a meaningful ranking among those songs.

[Edited 10/14/11 6:07am]

Oh, okay, interesting. Thanks for explaining.

irreverence said:

I think your polls are great, but I don't get the idea of 25 best songs as the only purpose. The reason I participated was to see the score of each album.

I personally like NEWS, but that's not the point for me, just that you have included all other officially released albums.

In my opinion it would be nice to have a poll of all the internet releases as well.

Javi has started a poll to rank the songs on N.E.W.S.:

http://prince.org/msg/7/369087

This doesn't remedy its lack of inclusion in the original album poll, but it will allow us to choose the best song for inclusion in the first round of overall polling.