PJ Retro 96°F ☀️ The Sun Always Shines on PJ (Winner crowned ⛱️)

[klow]

Thanks to all for voting for my mid-80s AC (complete with sax solo) moment from Luba:

12: @cdd216
8: @invertedbutterfly
7: @iheartpoptarts @TéléDex
6: @unnameable
5: @If You Go
4: @Dynamo
3: @KamikazeHeart @Disco Blister
2: @Jeffo
1: @Tiger Suit @WowWowWowWow

(Just needed a 10 for bingo!)

These results, whew! Firstly, thanks so much to @A&E for doing such a sterling job with the round - great theme, great graphics, beautiful gowns, etc. I'm thrilled to see my 12 take the title, and even happier to see that was from a returning player - congratulations @NecessaryVoodoo and I hope you stick around for further rounds! There are some songs that ended up in the bottom 10 that I think are absolutely fantastic but I think that just speaks to the overall strength of the round, exemplified by how spread out the points were. Everyone brought it this month!

I would saying I'm looking forward to the next round but I can see that, in typical fashion, @WoW73 has already opened it up so let me have a squiz at that potentials list...

 

[DominoDancing]

That was fun! First of all, I am of course very happy that The Mighty Lemon Drops just about snagged a placing in the Top 10 and that quite a few of you liked it. Even though I've known the song for ages, I never entered it before because, ironically, I just expected it to be more commercially successful than it had actually been. @Jeffo, @Untouchable Ace, thank you for the full 12 points - but of course thanks also to everyone else who shared points: @Dynamo, @soratami, @Phonetics Girl, @Tiger Suit, @CatastropheBoy, @pop3blow2, @Attis, @Up N Down, @If You Go, @Maki, @unnameable and @undisco_me!

Such a good round, no surprise it was a tight race! Congratulations to @NecessaryVoodoo for the win, but really to everyone for bringing their A-game! Excellent hosting @A&E, just as @klow posted above: great theme, great graphics!

 

[Maki]

Wasn't sure how Bang Gang would fare but I guess I'll take the mid-table placement. Thanks again to all the voters!

And we thought the previous winner was unexpected - an early 70s song by a psychedelic soul group winning this contest sounds pretty much impossible, which makes it more impressive. The final leaderboard in general seems almost random. Never ever would I have guessed that Philipp Glass would be in the top 5 while Milva in the bottom 5.
Though the results were very close, especially at the top. I think we can still consider this as the record-low point winner (not counting that round 24 where it turns out that what would've been the final top 2 both got their points halved due to not voting ff, otherwise that winner would've had over 100 points), but it's not the smallest point difference between the first and last placing entries. Again, excluding round 24, I think that accolade goes to PJ Retro 84 where the winner had 98 while the last placer had 34 points.
Cool that a long-time contest absentee won with their comeback entry. We can also consider Minnie Riperton a two-time PJ Retro winner in a way.

Underrated corner: Storm (the superior instrumental entry ending up in the bottom 3), Milva (what I thought was a contender for a win ending up in the bottom 5...), Karen Marks (such an underrated gem) and The Hurricanes.

What a fabulous hosting, @A&E - thank you so much for that!
And looks like the next round opened in a record time, onto that one.

 

[Filler]

4.​

Philip Glass - Floe // Filler =

82

Blimey! In the top 4 – a really close top 4 at that – with a Philip Glass instrumental? I'm both elated and deflated – I didn't remotely expect to be a competitor here, but now I'm sad I was only 5 points away from being the most unlikely winner in Retro history. (Have any other instrumentals done this well? I'd like to think I've still earned some sort of official accolade!)

Unusually low scores at the top, so maybe this was just a round where nobody sent an obvious winner and the weirdos got to run rampant? I wouldn't have called Rotary Connection winning either (8 points from me, so no complaints).

'Floe' is a movement from Glassworks, which is basically Philip Glass's big pop girl album – "written for the recording studio" and "intended to introduce my music to a more general audience than had been familiar with it up to then". Seems to have worked! It even had a separate "Walkman-suitable" mix for its cassette release – the "Specially Mixed for Your Personal Cassette Player" version of Floe can be heard here.

You can also watch a performance of a vocal version of Floe in this video, if you like – if a studio version of that existed, it might have been what I sent here instead.

Thank you to my Glassblowers @DominoDancing, @Jeffo, @pop3blow2, @Isobel, @Disco Blister, @Verseau, @unnameable, @klow, and some special bold text for my four 12s: @berserkboi, @Attis, @NecessaryVoodoo, and @Lego! EDIT: oh the bold text doesn't show up. Well rest assured it's in the BBCode.