Deli Readers,
Our Best of Nashville Poll for Emerging Artists has been – as usual – a lengthy and painstaking journey which took us through prairies of numbers, horizons filled with band names, and a dense, (mostly) joyous rain of music, but we have finally arrived at destination: we can announce the final results. This year we heave a very eclectic chart – at least for the top positions.
Once all the votes were tallied (you can find out more about our methods below), All Them Witches emerged as the clear winner. Winning the contest will earn them not only serious bragging rights, but also a nod in our SXSW print edition. We first covered All Them Witches way back in the long-forgotten year of 2013, and we’re thrilled to see them getting some love from our jurors. Their 2015 Sweet Release EP is a journey and a half filled with long jams and tasty riffs that’ll have you doing that weird air guitar impression people do where they wiggle their fingers in front of their nipples for a couple seconds. The band shows no signs of slowing down in 2016, having already announced an overseas tour as well as a handful of US festival appearances.
Coming in second are local 70’s groove revivalists Savoy Motel, though to place them in a neat genre like that is a bit of a disservice. Their music is less of an old style in a modern context and more like an alternate universe, "what could have been" trip into uncanny valley. It’s all kinds of groovy and catchy, but there’s a certain unease that separates it from the pack. These guys don’t have a lot of material online yet, but we encourage you to dig on what’s available.
In third place is electro-pop songstress REMMI. Her recently released New America EP is up there with the best of what you’ll hear on any top 40 station with its crisp production and sad-dancing overtones.
Check out our poll’s top 15 below, and don’t forget to get even deeper, exploring all the finalists organized by genre:
ALT FOLK – ALT ROCK – AMERICANA –
ELECTRONIC – INDIE POP –INDIE/PSYCH ROCK –
REVIVAL ROCK – SINGER-SONGWRITER
| BEST OF 2015 POLL FOR EMERGING NNASHVILLE ARTISTS ****** FINAL RESULTS – TOP 15 ****** |
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If you wonder how this chart came into existence, here is how it all went down: first, we let the local bands submit their music (for free), and got our Deli editors to pick the nominees. Then we polled a list of 15+ Nashville scene expert (our jury) and asked them to nominate 3 more bands of their choice each (3 points for the top choice, then 2 and 1). Then we polled our readers. We tried to keep things open for each single genre, from Indie Rock to Roots Music to Hip Hop.
If you are a geek interested in all the subtelties related to how this poll works, you can read its rules here (happy reading!). But if all you care about is the awesome new music Nashville produced in the year 2015, this list is all you need. Enjoy!
Many Thanks to our Jurors: Ron Brice (3rd and Lindsley), Brendan Donohue (Pureform Media), Staff, (Lockeland Springsteen Music Blog), Staff (Grimey’s), Jay Gregory (Sad Spaceman Promotions), Steve Cross (Concert Photographer), Jared & Kristen Corder (East Nashville Underground), Robert Bragdon (Break on a Cloud ), Andrew Minske (Show This ), Brian Waters (DJ/Lightning 100), Tyler Walker (Queens Art Collective), Michael Eades (We Own This Town), Stephen Tragdser (Nashville Scene), Wes Davenport (Mercy Lounge), Crying Wolf, Christopher Paxton (Event director), Mistaa Gattii ( ACME Feed & Seed), Jesse Baker (Exit/In), David Oakleaf (The Building). Many other jurors were asked to send us their preferences but chose not to do so.
Hope you’ll find some awesome new artists you weren’t aware of!
The Deli’s Staff