What looked promising in the beginning is now more like an abject travesty. To mark the 25th anniversary of the Brit Awards - the UK music industry's bun fight - a "specially-convened panel" was asked to draw up a long list of the best 25 songs since 1977. The idea was that the songs would go to a public vote (always a bad idea) and be whittled down to five and then to one, which would be announced on the night - February 9th, writes Brian Boyd.

Astonishingly, the Brits panel, who are usually irredeemably hopeless when it comes to selecting music, came up with not so atrocious a list as you would have expected. Granted, there was no sign of Radiohead, The Stone Roses or The Smiths, but they did manage to squeeze in Joy Division (Love Will Tear Us Apart), The Jam (That's Entertainment), The Clash (London Calling) and Massive Attack (Unfinished Sympathy). There were also nods for George Michael, Elton John, Queen, Seal, Spandau Ballet, Will Young, Annie Lennox and Robbie Williams, though.

The list also included The Stranglers' Golden Brown, which is an enthusiastic paean to heroin, ABC's still remarkable Look Of Love and the teenage literary melodrama of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights. Thankfully we're spared that godawful Bohemian Rhapsody (released before 1977), which probably would have won, given the ridiculous notion that some people think it's meaningful as opposed to the farrago of drivel it really is.

Elsewhere, there's the usual case of the right act but the wrong song. Couldn't The Bee Gees have been represented by something better than the banshee disco-fest that is Night Fever? Rod Stewart makes the list for I Don't Want To Talk About It, which isn't even in the top 10 covers of that particular song - the Everything But The Girl version is the best, you'll find. And isn't Wonderwall, just Oasis's Hey Jude moment?

Right from the start, the clear favourite for the Best Song award was Bowie's Heroes - a song so good that not even its use in a tacky Microsoft advertisement could diminish its powers. There was also a bit of money being placed on The Clash's London Calling given that it's as definitive as they come, while Dry Your Eyes by The Streets was also favoured - although very new, it's already a classic.

Unfortunately though, the 25 were cut down to five by a public vote. Democracy does have its uses sometimes, but not in music polls.

The problem here is that fan-club message boards start buzzing and people are press-ganged into phoning in for a particular act in a stupidly partisan way. The end result here was that Bowie, The Clash and The Streets didn't make it to the top five. To prove the point about how phone-in democracy should be made punishable by law, these three acts were replaced in the final five by Will Young - a gormless fool; Robbie Williams - a fat karaoke singer who makes Barry Manilow look classy; and Queen - panto prog-rockers who are still not forgiven for haughtily dismissing every known sanction going back in 1984 by playing gigs for money in apartheid Sun City. Their Live Aid performance? One word: guilt.

Making up the final five are Kate Bush and Joy Division, which is all very well, but it still doesn't atone for the above three. The public are again being asked to vote for the overall winner and the bookies currently have Robbie Williams's Angels as the hot favourite at 1/4 closely followed by Will Young at 11/2. To be fair to the latter, the song Leave Right Now is a very good tune, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Will Young; it could have been assembled out of the box for any of those Pop Idol muppets.

Joy Division are way out of the running at 25/1 - that is unless people suddenly go the www.brits.co.uk site en masse and register a vote for Joy Division for any of two reasons - because it's the best song in the last five/as a well-thought out protest vote against Robbie Williams, Will Young and Queen. The only problem is: who'd sing it on the night if it did win? The Brits people would probably suggest Jamie Cullum.

We didn't need any of this in the first place. If The Brits were really looking for the best ever British song, they should have ditched the 1977 cut-off point and handed the award straight over to where it rightly belongs: Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks.

bboyd@irish-times.ie