For the first episode of 2024 we're going back almost 30 years to 1995 to completely ignore britpop and talk about much, much better music that was happening at the same time.

We've each chosen our 10 favourite songs of the year and sent them over to Colin's wife Helen, who put the playlists together and distributed them so we were each given a playlist of the 20 songs from the other two hosts, along with our own 10. We then ranked the playlists in order of preference and sent them back to Helen, who totalled up the points and worked out the order.She also joined us on the episode to read out the countdown, which we found out as we recorded so all reactions are genuine.

Now, admittedly, in parts we're a little bit brutal to some of the songs in the list as we're three separate people with differing music tastes, but please remember that to be in this episode at all the songs have to have been in one of our top 10's of that year.

Bands featured in this episode include (In alphabetical order, no spoilers here!) - At The Gates, Bjork, Cathedral, Clutch, Dubstar, Faith No More, Fear Factory, Foo Fighters, Fugazi, Garbage, Green Day, Emmylou Harris, The Jayhawks, Low, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, Radiohead, The Smashing Pumpkins, Smog, Spacehog, Sparklehorse, Strapping Young Lad, Matthew Sweet, Teenage Fanclub, Therapy?, Tindersticks, Whale, White Zombie, The Wildhearts, & Yo La Tengo.

This episode is dedicated to the memory of the legendary music journalist and bloody lovely bloke Neil Kulkarni who sadly and suddenly passed away last week. You may know Neil from the Chart Music Podcast, from his writing for Melody Maker, Kerrang, Vox, The Quietus, Plan B, Metal Hammer, DJ Mag & more, or you may have heard him when he guested on Colin & Ian's other podcast Free With This Months Issue in August last year. Neil's death sadly leaves his two daughters without a parent so his Chart Music & Melody Maker cohost David Stubbs has arranged a crowdfunder. please donate if you're able to do so - https://www.gofundme.com/f/neil-kulkarni?qid=17adb77df59eabad52ce7dca32d49510

Find all songs in alphabetical order here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4t3vB1jZf6lxQZMBIuTYhx?si=288cce79f5654ce9

Find our We Dig Music Pollwinners Party playlist (featuring all of the winning songs up until now) here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/45zfDHo8zm6VqrvoEQSt3z?si=Ivt0oMj6SmitimvumYfFrQ

If you want to listen to megalength playlists of all the songs we've individually picked since we started doing best of the year episodes, you can listen to Colin's here – https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5x3Vy5Jry2IxG9JNOtabRT?si=HhcVKRCtRhWCK1KucyrDdg
Ian's here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2H0hnxe6WX50QNQdlfRH5T?si=XmEjnRqISNqDwi30p1uLqA
and Tracey's here - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2p3K0n8dKhjHb2nKBSYnKi?si=7a-cyDvSSuugdV1m5md9Nw

The playlist of 20 songs from the other two hosts was scored as usual, our favourite song got 20 points, counting down incrementally to our least favourite which got 1 point. The scoring of our own list of 10 is now slightly more complicated in order to give a truer level of points to our own favourites. So rather than them only being able to score as many points as our 10th favourite in the other list, the points in our own list were distributed as follows -

1st place - 20 points
2nd place - 18 points
3rd place – 16 points
4th place – 14 points
5th place – 12 points
6th place – 9 points
7th place – 7 points
8th place – 5 points
9th place – 3 points
10th place -1 point

Hosts - Ian Clarke, Colin Jackson-Brown & Tracey B
Guest starring Helen Jackson-Brown.
Playlist compiling/distributing – Helen Jackson-Brown
Recorded/Edited/Mixed/Original Music by Colin Jackson-Brown for We Dig Podcasts
Thanks to Peter Latimer for help with the scoring system.

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You can also find all the We Dig Music & Free With This Months Issue episodes at www.wedigpodcasts.com