The Killers – Mr Brightside reigned supreme at the top of our recent Song of the Decade (SOTD) vote. SOTD attracted an amazing 78,000 votes, making it by far the highest audience participation Absolute Radio has ever achieved in an on line promotion or event. Closer analysis reveals however that Mr Brightside was just one of the 3,694 tracks that received at least one vote. And the breadth and variety of voting in SOTD was further demonstrated by the 1,318 different artists who received votes.

‘The Long Tail‘ is a term borrowed from retail to describe when a large number of items sell in fairly small quantities.

Applied to the SOTD it means that many, many songs received at least one vote producing a ‘long tail’ as can be seen from the graph. If anything it shows that music (like one’s politics or religion) remains something people are passionately opinionated about. 3,694 songs from one decade testify to that .

So Mr Brightside might have been Top Dog on this occasion but he sure had one mighty impressive long tail!

[Click on the chart above to read the song titles better, but of course, only a fraction of the 3,694 song names are being displayed]