Poll 2000-01 Results

A surprising percentage difference between male and female fans may not be all it seems. Perhaps this only goes to demonstrate that more men use or have access to the internet than women.

No real surprises here, with most fans being in their twenties. Nice to see not all teenyboppers ignore Erasure with a pleasant few under 16s being avid Andy and Vince fans. Unfortunately it looks that Erasure have little appeal to the over 40s, but perhaps once again that is down to the internet access (or lack of it) that age group enjoys.

An extremely hard thought category finally saw The Innocents triumph by a single vote. The top three perhaps is no surprise; The Innocents was a huge commercial success both in the UK and US, Chorus is one of Erasure's finest lyrical and metaphoric offerings whereas Erasure is Andy and Vince's most experimental and diverse album. The poor showing by their most recent Loveboat album is no doubt partly due to the lack of a US release of the album.

Too many of you couldn't choose just one favourite and instead listed several songs. A Little Respect was the runaway winner, taking a third more votes than its closest rival Love To Hate You and raking in nearly 8% of the total vote. Fingers & Thumbs (Cold Summer's Day) rides high despite it being a 'flop' single showing how we fans feel the song massively underachieved in the charts. Sono Luminus, Take Me Back, Alien and Yahoo! are the only non-singles to make the Top 20 fans' favourites. Surprisingly, Chains of Love, Erasure's biggest US hit only got two votes and the ABBA-esque songs only got one vote between them despite this being Erasure's only chart #1. This clearly shows chart success and favouritism don't necessarily go hand in hand.

A worthy winner here, with some voters saying how much they also enjoy the Country Joe Remix (with added banjo) of Don't Suppose. Tragic is the only instrumental track here, but of course there is a vocal mix although most pointed out they, like myself, prefer the original Andy-less version. One person was phased by the question and claims his favourite b-side is Onge's Erasure Page! Can't say I've heard that track! Nearly rans in this category were Let It Flow, Sweet Sweet Baby and HI NRG.

There was never any doubt as to who was going to win this category. I Say I Say I Say annihilated the opposition, gaining four times as many votes as Cowboy in second place. The whole sleeve design for I Say I Say I Say's singles were equally excellent, with Always getting the recognition it deserves down in joint 7th place. Some voters however were thrown by what is meant by the word sleeve, although this can be excused as many don't have English as a first language.

By-and-large Erasure's better videos are represented here, although I'm slightly surprised that A Little Respect was not the winner. Clearly not enough people have seen the likes of the Fingers & Thumbs (Cold Summer's Day) and Rock Me Gently videos, as no-one who've seen those could possibly justify voting for the appalling Blue Savannah video. Thankfully though there wasn't a single vote for Star which is quite simply one of the worst videos ever made. 30 of you have not seen a single Erasure video and so couldn't comment in this category.

Hardly surprising that the song that spearheaded ABBA-esque to #1 in the UK would be voted as Erasure's best cover version. I find this particularly difficult to accept when you consider the song has the appalling rap from MC Kinky and in my view this makes it the weakest song on ABBA-esque. It is also interesting that Heart of Glass, which was released as a b-side to Don't Say Your Love Is Killing Me managed to come joint second. Perhaps many fans enjoyed this cover so much because they first heard it at a Tiny Tour concert.

Clearly many of you regard Erasure so highly that you couldn't bring yourself to condemn any of their songs. La Gloria was the clear 'winner', with Who Needs Love (Like That) making a surprise entry into the top 5. Criminally, Vitamin C and the woeful 91 Steps only got three votes each. These instrumentals are terrible and either not many fans have endured these b-sides or were so traumatised by the experience they forever erased the songs from their memories.

Very interesting results here. How Oh L'amour, a song that only reached #85 in the UK charts and was only really a hit in France, could be the song that started it all for so many fans is anybody's guess. Likewise Who Needs Love (Like That) was not a hit but managed to win some lifetime fans. It is also surprising that Chains Of Love didn't do better, after all it one of Erasure few Stateside successes and did well domestically too.

No runaway leader here, with The Innocents's Phantom Bride claiming a narrow victory. No doubting its a quality song and I believe it could have been a big chart success. Many songs including b-sides were voted for with several songs receiving two or three votes, although a percentage couldn't think of an answer at all or gave a song that was released as a single anyway. The songs that just failed to make the table above were Alien, Perchance To Dream, Rescue Me and When I Needed You.

Perhaps the only surprise here is the margin in which Depeche Mode romped to victory over the Pet Shop Boys. Many of you were keen to point out that you were more fans of Depeche Mode's early material (like me) so perhaps their dominance with 13% of the vote is misleading. Generally Erasure fans have good taste in other artists, but the odd fan shamed themselves by admitting to being fond of The Spice Girls, Kylie, Britney Spears, The Backstreet Boys and the atrocious Destiny's Child. There really is no accounting for taste. Those who just missed out by a few votes were The Smiths, Tori Amos, Alphaville, Savage Garden, Björk, Blur, Electronic, REM and Enya. Some lesser known, bizarrely named artists like Apoptygma Berzerk, Oingo Boingo, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult and Psychedelic Furs also gained solitary votes.