Welcome to Games 15 and 16 of the Ultimate Pop Song Tournament!
These games are CLOSED.  (OPEN GAMES)
To see the complete bracket, just go here. For info on how we chose the songs and everything else Tournament-related, go here.
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Get ready for a face-off between alt-rock royalty (and one of my most personally anticipated match-ups), followed by a clash between deceptively mournful dance songs.
Game 15 (Deep Feelings Division)
“Running Up That Hill” (Kate Bush) v. “Losing My Religion” (R.E.M.)
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7. “Running Up That Hill” (Kate Bush)
This song’s full title is “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)”, and that parenthetical signals why everyone from Tori Amos to Michael Stipe to Lady Gaga is indebted to Kate Bush’s literate-yet-tuneful music. She’s not afraid to be earnest, y’all, but she knows how to marry that intensity with a catchy hook. Thirty years later, this song is still incredibly cool, possessed of sophistication that your churned-out hit o’ the week can never approach. –Mark
11. “Losing My Religion” (R.E.M.)
They’d had top ten hits with “Stand” and “The One I Love,” but “Losing My Religion” rocketed R.E.M. from college rock semi-obscurity to global pop awesomeness. On paper, it doesn’t make sense that a mandolin-fueled, cryptically spiritual, midtempo ballad would be a hit, but paper can’t capture the soulfulness in Michael Stipe’s voice or the beauty in the song’s instrumentation. –Mark
Game 16 (Deep Feelings Division)
“(Don’t You) Forget About Me” (Simple Minds) v. “What Have I Done To Deserve This?” (Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield)
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2. “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” (Simple Minds)
Hey, hey, hey, HEY! “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” is not only a kick-ass song, but also the key soundtrack cut from The Breakfast Club, which means its shimmery production values and white-boy-soul vocals are the literal sound of teenage angst. This makes me love the straight-faced delivery of the navel-gazing lyrics, and it adds a touch of wistfulness to the listening experience. Every time I hear this song, I remember when it used to sound like God’s Truth. — Mark
15. “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” (Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield)
I love the Pet Shop Boys because, like Erasure, they sing about the most depressing shit imaginable, but they score it to such a bouncy beat that you barely notice. I sometimes forget this song exists, but every time I hear it again, I remember that I want to listen to it several times a day. That half-spoken chorus sneaks into my brain and refuses to leave, and Dusty Springfield’s soulful ad libs at the end make me wanna holler praise. — Mark
26 responses so far ↓
1 Alison // Jul 27, 2011 at 9:58 am
OY. Way to make it tough for us out here, Mark. Simple Minds vs. Pet Shop Boys KILLED me. But I had to go with Dusty.
2 Maggie // Jul 27, 2011 at 10:05 am
I picked REM and Simple Minds, though to be perfectly honest I don’t have much invested in any of these songs.
I’m going to go agonize over tomorrow’s choice between “You Oughta Know” and “Sober.”
3 Hebby // Jul 27, 2011 at 10:17 am
My mum -who saw Dusty once before she was Dusty Springfield- would reach across the city and smack the back of my head if I didn’t vote for something with her in it. I wouldn’t have to tell her what I did, she’d just know.
Ditto with Pet Shop Boys and my flatmate.
4 Emily // Jul 27, 2011 at 10:21 am
Come on, baby
Come on, darling
Let me steal this moment from you now.
God, it still gives me chills. How many times did I sing this song at the top of my lungs while driving around the back roads of New Canaan? A frillion. I’ll be shattered when REM hammers my poor Kate into the ground.
5 Sadie // Jul 27, 2011 at 10:33 am
Ah, I still remember very seriously discussing Losing My Religion on a camp bus the summer between 1st and 2nd grade.
6 par3182 // Jul 27, 2011 at 10:34 am
bow down mortals – kate bush’s greatness can’t be measured by mere tournaments
7 Mark Blankenship // Jul 27, 2011 at 10:45 am
Holy cats… This is proving to be the MOST difficult bracket for me. I can’t choose in either contest. AAAAAH.
8 Chip // Jul 27, 2011 at 10:53 am
Thanks for reminding me of Kate Bush. I’d heard this song years and years ago, but I feel like I’m just getting introduced to her — and I love it.
9 Kristen // Jul 27, 2011 at 10:54 am
Losing My Religion is probably #1 on my list of turn-the-radio-when-it-comes-on songs. I just cannot stand it. But I’ve never heard of Kate Bush or that song, so I’m just voting against the icky song. I also forgot about that Pet Shop Boys song, but as soon as I started playing the video, “whathaveI, whathaveI, whathaveI” began looping through my head. THANKS, MARK.
10 Christy Baker // Jul 27, 2011 at 10:55 am
While I appreciate the Martha Graham-esque choreography in Kate Bush’s video, I had to go with REM.
11 Mark Blankenship // Jul 27, 2011 at 10:55 am
Chip, my absolute pleasure. I must give credit to Nick, though, for selecting Kate Bush for one of his 4 Byes in the tournament. He made an excellent call.
12 Erik R // Jul 27, 2011 at 11:40 am
Kate Bush getting curb-stomped by a whiny REM song is a massive Jonestown-level tragedy.
13 Guy Lodge // Jul 27, 2011 at 12:05 pm
Both strangely easy choices for me, even if I think all four songs are essential — in both contests, the Brits have it.
I come from a loyal family of Kate Bush lovers, so my heart skipped several beats when I saw “Running Up That Hill” here — but this, I suspect, is the song of hers that would hit me even if I were a casual listener of her work. The “Deal With God” title is something of a red herring, leading people into theological thoughts when it’s actually one of the saddest and frankest songs ever to deal with natural, unbridgeable chasms in understanding between lovers. (In that way, it’s kind of a neat flip side to “This Woman’s Work”.) That it does both these things — and all to that clipped, glassy, remarkably undated beat, to boot — makes it a pretty dazzling pop song.
Nick knows I adore him for many reasons, but the fact that he picked this really pushes things to the brink.
PS. Kate-versus-Dusty would’ve made a pretty great head-to-head too, what with them both being comeback efforts of a sort, in an electro-melancholic register.
14 Merediddy // Jul 27, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Love the Simple Minds song, and have been an occasional fan of the Pet Shop Boys. Voted for What Have I Done… because of Dusty. He voice floors me every time.
15 Jude // Jul 27, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Gut-wrenching! Running Up That Hill AND Losing My Religion positively blasted out of my adolescent bedroom on bad days.
A frillion times, indeed. Had to go with Kate in the end – I foresee a sound pummeling by R.E.M..
16 Nick Davis // Jul 27, 2011 at 1:02 pm
@Guy: Actually, “Running Up That Hill” and “What Have I Done To Deserve This?” are both here as two of my Byes. Love me, love me!
Clearly not catching on with most of the voters, but this is impossible to begrudge in the case of the Simple Minds song, which would be on the same Desert Island Mix CD with the other two for me.
17 Nick Davis // Jul 27, 2011 at 1:03 pm
@Emily: I am in love with the word “frillion.”
18 Dan Turner // Jul 27, 2011 at 1:55 pm
I figured to be on the losing ends of both of these two contests, but I have to plead my case. Though PSB is my favorite band of all time it’s really Dusty that shines on this track. She’s killing the vocal effortlessly. And I blame (and not in a good way) Losing for everything REM became. As opposed to the “Sophie’s Choice” meme that get’s bandied about, I keep going to the well of: “X got in but not Y because?” I love this Kate track (and voted for it), but had Sade’s “No Ordinary Love” been selected, I believe it would be positively trouncing those dirty hippies.
19 John // Jul 27, 2011 at 3:43 pm
Ok, first, the Kate Bush song is 30 years old!? Ack. Damn, it holds up really well. I can think of a slew of songs from 30 years ago that wouldn’t hold up so well.
Second, that Simple Minds song is so damned iconic. It’s mentally pinned to that mid-80′s era for me, when so much was going on and so many memorable movies came out. Could just be the “Music of My Youth” thing — you know, where songs that were playing when you were in your teens or early 20′s become somehow a permanent benchmark against which you measure all later or earlier (once you’re exposed to them) songs. “Don’t You Forget About Me” is definitely in that mental category for me.
Plus it makes me happy every time I hear it.
20 Kitty // Jul 27, 2011 at 6:02 pm
At first glance I thought that this was another tough bracket that I would be agonizing over.
But no, when I actually pause for a minute and sing the first few bars of each song in my head, I immediately have visceral (and HAPPY) reactions to 2 of the songs.
So I’m voting for Running Up That Hill and Don’t You Forget About Me.
Kate Bush is a goddess, full stop. And Jim Kerr’s voice and songwriting genius combined to create a song that defined my teen years. “Don’t You” is a touchstone for me.
21 Jessica // Jul 27, 2011 at 9:30 pm
‘Running Up That Hill’ for the first match-up, but I’m having a hard time with the second. I’m going to have to give that one more time.
22 Helen // Jul 28, 2011 at 10:11 am
How can this be the Pet Shop Boys song that made the cut? Sure, Dusty is superb; maybe she wouldn’t have it otherwise, with the 1981 cut-off? But it could have been West End Girls, It’s a Sin, Rent… as it is, my vote is going to Simple Minds, for nostalgic reasons. This was the de facto theme song for my class at the end of grade six – we’d mostly all been at the same school for seven years, so the line ‘seven years gone under the bridge’ seemed really deep to us. That, and we were all obsessed with Breakfast Club.
23 Jeff C // Jul 28, 2011 at 10:21 am
Losing My Religion is the better pop song. The Kate Bush song is kind of like the Sinead song – an art-rock/singer songwriter who had one sneak through on the strength of the critical praise for the artist.
I really like both of the 80′s synth/dance songs in the second matchup – I’ve had What Have I Done To Deserve This on iTunes for years – but Don’t You Forget About Me wins on the intro alone. I agree with Helen – West End Girls was probably the better Pet Shop Boys song.
24 robot // Jul 28, 2011 at 12:58 pm
I can’t stand REM and that song and mandolin
voted for the boring Kate bush song
Simple Minds wins the other round, it’s epic, and inclusive, PetshopBoys is weird and boring
25 bitsy von muffling // Jul 30, 2011 at 11:32 am
kate bush – absofuckinglutley
pet shop boys – of course
rem – please….whatever
simple minds – appeals to simple people
my votes have been cast
26 Nick Davis // Jul 30, 2011 at 11:33 am
Wow! She really is running up that hill!
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