ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2012

Alright, everybody...let's meet back here in a little less than 11 months and do this again. Also, find me good shit to listen to/vote for, because I've apparently grown lazy.

"Adorn" hit Top 20 in America.

none of the r&b acts in the top 10 have had a uk top 40 hit

this is crackers

Jessie Ware's biggest UK single is Wildest Moments at #46. Frank's is Lost at #53. Adorn reached #176! I just find that unfathomable.

no church in the wild got to 32, but yeah it doesn't really count.

I don't think the UK counts in this case, ha.

Frank Ocean is huge though, right? What about others lower on the list?

Frank Ocean is "internet huge".

Like "Snakes On A Plane?" And Ron Paul?

he's also real world huge

Is he? I don't follow charts or sales figures, like, ever...but I had the impression he still had a modicum of undergroundness.

great results btw. Would have voted for miguel #1 and nothing else as putting my trax ballot together drained the life out of me. but felt sheepish

Jessie Ware and Frank Ocean have both had top five albums in the UK now (top 2 in Frank's case). Miguel doesn't really have much of a profile over here at all, although I did hear a car playing Kaleidoscope Dream really loudly this morning.

Frank Ocean is approaching household name status in this country for coming out if nothing else. He's properly huge in the way that I dunno The Weeknd or someone isn't.

I don't really think of Frank Ocean as an internet phenomenon at all really, just a mainstream popstar.

Miguel's sales are way better cumulatively than Ocean's.

he's real world huge as in obese like max

According to stats linked on Wikipedia Channel Orange has sold 500k+ in the US, Good Kid 675k and Kaleidoscope Dream 270k (All I Want Is You is 400k). Taylor Swift's Red has sold 3.3m. So I don't know about "huge" but, like Matt DC says, Frank seems to be culturally big in a way that goes beyond his sales.

they play frank all the time on the radio here in switzerland

I have heard the following albums at dinner parties and other social gatherings this year:

Beach House
Miguel (four times! He seems to garnering a following among p4k types)
Kendrick Lamar
Cat Power
The XX
Band of Horses
Frank Ocean
A$AP Rocky

Well, I don't mean an internet phenomenon like Rebecca Black or Psy (who has obvs crossed over at this point), but that his most vocal supporters and his platform seem more web driven than a trad label-backed star.

but it's a stretch to call Ocean a pop star

jesus why am I just hearing this miguel album now, this is AMAZING

I loved art dealer chic too so I really have no excuse. Kinda took a year off from music in 2012, there was a point when the only new albums I'd spent any time with were leonard cohen & dawn richard (good albums to play back-to-back actually, what with the religio-sexual epics of incomparable beauty)

armor on sold 30k :/

frank was on SNL this year (with John Mayer in his backing band) but so was Karmin, so

Miguel (four times! He seems to garnering a following among p4k types)

i have played miguel at a dinner party! jessie ware was the repeat dinner party soundtrack of 2012 for me though (along with the xx). crucially in all cases no one actually hates them or would object to hearing them

One reason I would attend a lex-thrown dinner party is that I could be relatively certain I would hear no Death Grips.*

(*They are okay, but not while I'm eating kthx)

all the Death Grips stuff I've heard has been terrible

I like to play the sound of animals eating other animals while I eat.

Jessie Ware goes splendidly with before-dinner martinis and Brie.

Form a band Death Cruts

xps

Death Grips dinner party would rule, as long as Death Grips wasn't actually there

Death Grips would enter through the window and take your Brie.

ofwgkta would pile in, nibbling everything in sight

oh damn

who plays death grips at a dinner party

Kendrick would chill with Jessie Ware on the divan with a craft brew.

farrah abraham is an aspiring sous-chef! her concoctions seem as bizarre as her music

In "Food with Farrah 'Inspire & Admire,'" amateur cooking-show personality Farrah demonstrates how to make something she calls a "mobile salad"—a concoction of parmesan, yellow onions, mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, chick peas, Florida avocado, and some bok choi and white asparagus sautéed by hand, all crammed into a hollowed-out artichoke and drizzled with fig tahini dressing.
At one point in the video, she admires the large Florida avocado. Cheerfully, she tells the camera: "I myself have never tried this before, so it could be a new experience for you as well!"

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/09/the-scary-misunderstood-power-of-a-teen-mom-stars-album/262237/

omg wins

armor on sold 30k :/

― lex pretend, Thursday, January 31, 2013 4:36 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is pretty good imo considering a lot of factors (nature of the release, sales figures for something like electrik red, all the great r&b singers that are stuck in mixtape hell)

wasn't Farrah's cooking video posted on her thread?

based on that recipe and the fact that i'm pretty sure at some point during her album she sings through a vacuum, there's a chance that farrah abraham is actually l0u1s jagg3r

lol j0rdan

haha

The reason I asked was because I find it interesting that mainstream R&B does somewhat well on critical lists whereas mainstream rock music generally does not.

I live in Philly. The local R&B station is playing Miguel (#2 on their playlist right now, actually). Whereas the big songs at WMMR, our rock station? Soundgarden, Shinedown, Alice In Chains, Volbeat, Linkin Park. Not artists whose new material are getting crit love for the most part.

In fact, compare the playlist at WMMR with the one from WDAS and you will find a lot more critical overlap with the R&B station than the rock station.

This interests me.

modern rock is a wasteland.

Not even bringing modern rock into the discussion though for shits and giggles, here is the WRFF playlist. I don't see very much critical love for most of this either.

nor should there be

Yet there is for mainstream/popular R&B and pop music.

The critical choice is not so much between modern rock and pop/R&B, but between modern rock and indie rock.

These bands are losing column space to Alabama Shakes not Miguel.

And what of rock rock?

radio rock is incredibly stagnant compared to the amount of innovation happening in pop music. 'modern rock radio' is basically targeted at people who grew up in the 90s hence endless grunge/alt-metal rehashes