Iron Maiden Survivor 2016 - Brave New World - Round 4

[425]

Round 3 Results:

Brave New World - 1 vote - 4.3%
The Mercenary - 17 votes - 73.9%
The Thin Line Between Love and Hate - 12 votes - 21.7%



Eliminated:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8. The Mercenary
9. The Fallen Angel
10. Out of the Silent Planet


The Mercenary's out in a landslide.

____________

Okay, I'm good with that. Now we're definitely down to a bunch of very strong songs. But the big trend for the ones I'm coming after next is that they have one-line repeated choruses. I'll go for any of Blood Brothers, Brave New World or The Wicker Man right now. Other things equal I'd probably go after Blood Brothers, but with Thin Line potentially in jeopardy I may hold back a while.

[Outcrier]

The Thin Line Between Love and Hate

[MirrorMask]

The Thin Line Between Love and Hate

Yup.

[Tomislav95]

The Nomad

[MirrorMask]

Okay, I'm good with that. Now we're definitely down to a bunch of very strong songs. But the big trend for the ones I'm coming after next is that they have one-line repeated choruses.

I trust that you'll appreciate how the two longest songs of the next album, Dance of Death, one has a chorus repeated only twice, and the other has no chorus at all.

Actually I wish they would have went this route more times in recent years...

[IDontNotDoThings]

Going to cast a controversial vote against the title track.

[MirrorMask]

Going to cast a controversial vote against the title track.

Well, it's a fairly standard song with a repetitive chorus, it's not that a vote against it sends me in "OMG PEOPLE TASTES ARE SO WEIRD" mode, I can see myself voting it in a round or two.

[jjrock88]

The Thin Line Between Love and Hate

[cramx3]

The Nomad

[425]

Okay, I'm good with that. Now we're definitely down to a bunch of very strong songs. But the big trend for the ones I'm coming after next is that they have one-line repeated choruses.

I trust that you'll appreciate how the two longest songs of the next album, Dance of Death, one has a chorus repeated only twice, and the other has no chorus at all.

Actually I wish they would have went this route more times in recent years...

I do appreciate that they knocked that approach to chorus writing off in recent years. DoD was definitely an improvement over BNW as it only has one song of "Song title! Song title! Song title! Song title!" and a couple others that repeat one line as the chorus, one of which is Paschendale in which it is not at all annoying.

It kinda stuck around on AMOLAD; The Longest Day should be 2 minute shorter than it is. But For The Greater Good of God is the rare song where I actually think the "Song title! Song title! Song title!" chorus works. Then they did it exactly once more: on the first track of TFF ("The Final Frontier! The Final Frontier! The Final Frontier! The Final Frontier!") and then kicked it to the curb, hopefully for good.

But yeah, it's a serious fault that BNW has. Out of 10 songs, five have choruses that get old for me by the end of the song. It's a big part of why I don't rate BNW as highly as I do AMOLAD and TFF. The songwriting on BNW is some of their best, except for the chorus repetition part, which is enough to tank it slightly in my eyes. Even just cutting half the repetitions on some of the songs would help—you could easily do that on Blood Brothers, The Mercenary and The Fallen Angel. Maybe Brave New World, too: "A brave new world, in a brave new world, in a brave new world, a brave new world." And toss the "Thy will be done... Burn on the sun" back into The Wicker Man and that improves. Unfortunately, they didn't do those things, and it feels like for some of those songs, particularly Brave New World and The Mercenary, they get some momentum going and then sit on one or two lines for entirely too long.

[Mladen]

The Thin Line Between Love and Hate

[Evermind]

The Nomad

[pantsofeternity]

I got no problem with the repeated choruses.  I wanna hear the chorus of Wicker Man like 4000 more times in that song.  But I get that's not everybody's boat.

This is tough, as I don't really think any of the remaining songs is particularly weak.  Gonna go with Nomad, as I think it's distinctive but doesn't quite get me amped as some of the others.

Yo, Thin Line is an awesome song IMO.  Team Thin Line.  It's kind of unusual for a Maiden song and that's why I dig it.

[cramx3]

Yea, Thin Line is a fantastic song.  Very different for IM.  Granted, I'd vote for it next, BUT for me, there is a huge difference in quality of songs from whats been eliminated PLUS Nomad vs what would be left.

[Kwyjibo]

The Thin Line Between Love and Hate

[CharlesPL]

Blood Brothers

[Scorpion]

Voting Thin Line to save The Nomad.

[El Barto]

Blood Brothers. Generic Maiden song crafted solely for the big, giant live singalong.

Nomad is awesome. Its musical style is perfectly tailored to its subject matter. I don't think Maiden does that often enough, and when they do they do it very well. Reminds me of To Tame a Land in that regard.

[Tomislav95]

Blood Brothers. Generic Maiden song crafted solely for the big, giant live singalong.

Nomad is awesome. Its musical style is perfectly tailored to its subject matter. I don't think Maiden does that often enough, and when they do they do it very well. Reminds me of To Tame a Land in that regard.

I feel bad for voting for it. But I did it just to try to save The Thin Line. There are worse songs than those two left IMO

[Kwyjibo]

Nomad is awesome. Its musical style is perfectly tailored to its subject matter. I don't think Maiden does that often enough, and when they do they do it very well. Reminds me of To Tame a Land in that regard.

This.

[cramx3]

Nomad is awesome. Its musical style is perfectly tailored to its subject matter. I don't think Maiden does that often enough, and when they do they do it very well. Reminds me of To Tame a Land in that regard.

This.

I can totally agree with the music matching the subject.  Same with The Clansman, but I just felt like the Nomad was just not that good as a song overall.  I really do enjoy the instrumental section though.

[Outcrier]

I got no problem with the repeated choruses.  I wanna hear the chorus of Wicker Man like 4000 more times in that song.  But I get that's not everybody's boat.

This.

[425]

I'm fine with it in some cases, as I referenced earlier. I don't mind it at all in For the Greater Good of God, and I don't think it's a big issue in The Wicker Man or The Final Frontier either. But when so much of the song is the same melody and same words repeated a bunch of times it just reaches a point with me where it's like "okay, can we move on now?" But I guess I'm pretty sensitive to overly repeated choruses, particularly when they aren't that great in the first place—not just in Iron Maiden, I often find myself thinking "did we need the chorus this many times?"

Yet I really like The Angel and the Gambler.