It’s been a shock-free tournament so far - will the favourite win?
Votes Cave because I’ve enjoyed all his work this decade including two films and a Q&A live.
But I did listen to KL’s four albums and while they were a bit long I enjoyed them a lot so happy with him acing it.
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Both are incomparable. If I hadn’t had the experience of seeing Nick Cave live, cutting through the fog at a time when a bout of depression had robbed my experiences of most colour, I might have gone for Kendrick. I remember Oh Children and Push the Sky away felt like deliverance that night - not saying that the concert “healed” me, but it certainly helped me remember what having feelings was like.
Kendrick on the other hand is doing things with hip-hop that only one other artist (Kanye) has come near, in terms of coherent long-term statements that shame anyone who ever dismissed it as a genre. I don’t rate Damn as highly as GKMC or TPAB though - if he had come through with something as mind blowing as those two, I’d have gone for him.
So… Nick Cave edges it on personal experience. There’s my entirely subjective two cents.
(Frank Ocean was an easier decision for 3rd place)
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It’s a mark of how amazing the two albums before it are that Damn (a very fine album in itself) seems faintly disappointing.
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Yeah, it almost seems an unfair standard to hold him to, but it is a standard he set for himself.
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Kendrick and Frank for me, because for me they represent the 2010s far more than Nick Cave and Sufjan. Also, Sufjan’s 2000s were far superior to his 2010s, and while I think it’s less clear cut for Nick Cave, I don’t want to vote a band who’ve been on the go for the best part of 40 years as artist of the decade.
The result is currently 52% KL and 48% NCATBS. Last time a vote had that split the country fell apart. Do everyone a favour and vote for Cave as it’s obviously the correct answer.
Both polls on 50/50 at the moment. I don’t want to over state things, but your vote matters kids!
Out of interest, how far did Joanna Newsom get?
Joint 14th in the elimination round with 4% of the votes.
I’m going to leave the poll open until tomorrow evening so you have about 24 hours to decide whether the Artist of the Decade is really a 63 year old man who made his first record in 1979 and whether third place should go to an artist who made his last proper studio album in 2015.
Knock yourself out DIS - it’s well known that democracy always delivers the right result!
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I’m delighted that Nick Cave’s winning this…
more than a little surprised that Sufjan is polling better than Frank Ocean for 3rd though. (Much as I love Sufjan)
I reckon the artist of the decade should be someone who’s music actually reflects the mood, events and sound of the decade.
Find it quite staggering that anyone would vote for Nick Cave over Kendrick in that regard.
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Me too, much as I love Nick Cave.
My feeling is that people are looking at the head-to-heads and just voting for their favourite artist of the two. I mean, Nick Cave has been one of my favourite artists for 30 years and I’ve loved his albums this decade (two of which at least would be in my top 7 or 8 of the last ten years) but Kendrick is obviously the artist of the decade in my mind.
I like Sufjan too, but his best music mainly came out in the noughties and although Frank Ocean hasn’t released masses of material the stuff he has released, especially Blonde, has been so massively influential and of its time that he definitely deserves third place (I would put him second, personally).
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I know what you mean. Kendrick is the modern and relevant answer. But also, I dunno. I like Nick Cave and I don’t like Kendrick? 
It’s like that complicated division of what I think somebody’s ‘best’ song is and which one is actually my ‘favourite’. The two don’t always necessarily align.
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Obviously if you genuinely don’t like someone’s music you can’t really be expected to vote for them - I absolutely get that.
Given the votes at all the early stages it’s plain there are plenty of people who do like and recognise the value of Kendrick’s music, though. I would have thought that if you appreciated both him and The Bad Seeds (and I would definitely put myself in that group, which must be quite large) then voting for Kendrick in this particular poll seems obviously the right call.
But, hey, that’s democracy. I doubt this is the only vote this week that I’m going to disagree with the result of. It might not even be the most important.
Voting for Nick Cave probably does make us all look like a bunch of crusty middle-aged white people, but… * looks down at self *… well, guilty as charged I guess.
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