Section 1 – General

Last time out, there was nothing to choose between The Innocents and Chorus but this time around, with fans allowed to vote for multiple albums, we have a clear winner. For the first time ever, I Say I Say I Say drops out of the top four with Wild! taking its place and there is a notable new entry at #7 in The Violet Flame. Unsurprisingly, the bottom 7 albums are from 2000 onwards.

It comes as no surprise, especially having won this category three times previously, that the iconic A Little Respect is overwhelmingly voted as the fans' favourite song. The ever-popular Phantom Bride continues its rise and breaks into the top four for the first time. Only two songs from the 21st century (Breathe in joint 12th and Sacred in joint 18th) make the top 20. I've made a Spotify playlist of the Top 50 Songs for your enjoyment.

Despite coming in for a fair amount of criticism upon its release in 2016, From Moscow To Mars is triumphant in this new category, receiving over a third of the total vote. Pop! and Total Pop! each received 25% of the vote, with the remaining compilations barely registering – and surely the single vote for Essential was a mistake?!

Not a lot has changed in this category since the last time out with Crackers International sweeping up well over half of the vote to be victorious once again. Second placed ABBA-esque received 30% of the vote leaving the remaining EPs to fight over the scraps. It's been nearly a decade since the last EP was released – I can't help feeling we're due another one soon.

Having won three out of the four previous polls, Don't Suppose cements its place as the band's most popular b-side after this convincing victory. Having finished second last time, Tenderest Moments inexplicably plummets to 10th spot. Die 4 Love is a high new entry in 5th spot and is the only song from this century to feature. Rightly or wrongly, I don't class When I Needed You or The Hardest Part as b-sides – for those that do, they would have charted at joint 5th and 13th respectively. Fancy a listen? Check out my Top 20 B-Sides Spotify playlist.

Not a great deal of movement from last time out with the top four being exactly the same as in the previous poll. Dodo makes a surprise entry into the top 10 at #6, along with Snappy in 7th place. The most recent instrumental, Nothing I Could Say just fails to make the grade down in 13th place. Some of these tracks have some limited vocals, but we'll bend the rules a little...

As always, the excellent I Say I Say I Say artwork absolutely destroys the competition registering more than twice as many votes as the Chorus album in second place and over a quarter of all votes cast. Once more, the top 4 remain the same as previously, although there is a notable new entry in 7th place in the form of the World Be Gone album.

Four consecutive victories for A Little Respect in this category, to go along with its dominance in the Favourite Song category. Always has always been another popular choice but was 6 votes shy of the top spot. Breathe remains the only video this century to make the top 12, now that the once popular Make Me Smile (Come Up & See Me) has fallen out of favour.

Well, I've a confession to make here... I've messed up on this particular category. In the previous poll I mistakenly omitted Wild! from this list and this time around I've forgotten to include Total Pop! Deluxe – The First 40 Hits. That renders these results pretty much flawed, but given the massive lead The Tank, The Swan & The Balloon has enjoyed both times I very much doubt the winner would have been any different even if I had included all the options on the poll!

Ever since its release in 2003, Solsbury Hill has always won this category and history repeats itself again here. There's a high new entry at #7 for Atomic, which much like fellow Blondie cover Heart Of Glass has only been released as a live rather than studio recording. Not a single cover from Snow Globe makes the top 15, although Gaudete only just missed out down in 17th place.

With so many remixes existing, the votes were spread very thin resulting in many remixes receiving the same number of votes. Despite that, we have a clear and extremely worthy winner in Dave Bascombe's Am I Right – Grid Mix which topples Supernature – William Orbit Remix from the summit. The host of new entries in the rest of the top 10 show there isn't much of a consensus among the fanbase it would seem. You can listen to these on my Top 10 Remixes Spotify playlist.

Over a third of the vote goes to Phantasmagorical Entertainment as it reclaims its crown as the best tour. There are high new entries for the two most recent tours in the World Be Gone Tour and the Violet Flame Tour but if history is anything to go by their time near the top will be short lived – the Tomorrow's World Tour has plummeted from 2nd spot last time out to 12th this time, picking up only 1% of the total vote.

Poor old Loveboat! Ever since this category was introduced, the 2000 album has always been voted the least favourite, although it's lead over Other People's Songs is a slender one. The top 4 remain unchanged, with the top 9 all being albums from this century (only Nightbird in 14th place stops the 10 albums released since the turn of the millennium making up the entire top 10).

In some categories in this poll we've only ever had a single winner and it's no different here as La Gloria continues to be regarded as the fans' least favourite song. Album filler Sixty-Five Thousand finishes 2nd for the fourth time (and has never been lower than 3rd). Freedom is the highest ranked single (although I find it inexplicable that The Circus also makes the grade down in joint 11th place).

A clear and obvious choice tops this category with the disingenuously named Essential receiving over half of the total vote. Interestingly the favourite winner From Moscow To Mars is the third least favourite – highlighting how much this particular compilation has divided the fanbase.

This new category sees a near reversal of the results for the Favourite EP category with the Moon & The Sky Plus EP receiving the unenviable least favourite EP title. The releases from the 80s and 90s make up the lowest ranked EPs - but I'll never understand how anyone, let alone 11 people could possibly vote for Crackers International here!

Another new category and another inaugural winner in the form of No G.D.M.. Quite a few of these tracks are instrumentals or have very limited vocals. The newest song here is Better from the year 2000 which bucks the trend somewhat as in most other least favourite categories the more recent releases have dominated.

The usual suspects are present and correct here but with the notable addition of the Elevation video, which although fairly slick, was completely devoid of any character (and Andy and Vince for that matter!). Interestingly, both Always and Sometimes make the top 10 on both the favourite and least favourite video categories.

Another new category and I can't think of a more worthy winner than the awful Video Killed The Radio Star. Seven out of the top 10 tracks are from Other People's Songs – in fact all songs from that album make the top 15. Despite being the least popular b-side, No G.D.M. is only down in joint 10th position.

When oh when will people learn that Phantom Bride was released as a single? I appreciate the 53 of you who voted for this song, which would have put it miles out in 1st place, were saying it should have been released in 1988 and not 21 years later but I simply can't accept the votes for it in this category! Some cracking songs do make the grade though and it's interesting to see two b-sides in Supernature and Die 4 Love in the top 10.

I've always found this to be an interesting topic as I don't believe that the songs listed above are voted for because people think they are bad songs, but for other reasons like not being very radio friendly or there being better album tracks that should have been released instead. Regardless, Stay With Me reclaims its top spot, but this time has to share the spoils with Freedom.

Section 2 – Album Ratings

For this category, fans were invited to rank each album out of 10 with the average scores listed above as a percentage. Unlike in the Favourite Album category, it is Chorus and not The Innocents that triumphs with an impress score of over 91%. There's not a lot of movement in the top 10 whilst at the foot of the table it's not the Least Favourite Album winner Loveboat in last but Other People's Songs instead.

Section 3 – About You

Nothing much has changed in the gender of the average Erasure fan in the 18 years I've been running these polls with the vast majority of the fanbase being male.

What a loyal bunch we Erasure fans are. As each poll goes by, the average age goes up as the fans stick by the band, but few new, younger fans enter the fray.

It comes as little surprise that the band's 1986 breakthrough hit Sometimes spawned so many lifetime fans but even before the hits the band still had started to build its fanbase as chart flops Oh L'amour and Who Needs Love (Like That) are in the top 4. The most recent track is Always, which incidentally was the song that started it all for me!

For the first time compilation albums were added to the options that people could vote for to see what difference that would have on the results. In reality, it didn't really change the complexion of things a great deal as the top three remain unchanged. It would appear the last album to significantly gain new fans was I Say I Say I Say back in 1994.

Some things never change! Five polls conducted over nearly two decades and the top two in this category have always been the same. The make-up of this list has barely changed either over the years with the bands and artists who made their names in the 80s dominating. Indeed, you have to go down the 26th in the list to find a band from this century in CHVRCHES.