UK Songwriting Contest results

The results of the 2010 UK Songwriting Contest were posted early yesterday morning.

We had two songs in the competition - Spin Doctor and More Than Just Your Face - in the "Pop" category. Deciding on the category to enter was almost half the battle, since most of our music straddles the divide between folk and pop, with occasionally a bit of (very) light rock thrown in. Still, we figured Pop was close enough, and any claim to be entirely folk may have been met with derision on the part of the judges.

This did, unfortunately, put us into the fiery pit of hell as far as competition was concerned, as "pop" is probably the most oversubscribed category in the whole thing. This year there were over 5,000 entries in the overall competition, and judges commented that they had all been much stronger entries than in previous years.

So, I guess, on balance, with that level of competition and given that it was our first attempt, we should be fairly pleased with the results. Both our entries received a "Commended Entry" Certificate, and both received scores of 5. The scoring is explained on the UKSC website like this:
"A score of 4 or 5 indicates that this is a good song and it will receive a Commended Entry Certificate. A score of 5 indicates that the song very nearly made the semi finals. All songs with a score of 4 and 5 are considered for the semi finals."....

At the moment I'm still flipping between being happy that we did as well as that (and that we even bothered to enter, which I guess is something), and disappointment that we didn't make the semis. Being able to badge our songs "UKSC Semi-finalist" would have been really something. Commended doesn't have anywhere near that same cachet. But I always was my own worst critic. Some people would put the maximum possible positive spin on this, whereas I'm struggling to see it as anything other than another comment that my work is good, but not quite good enough.