Yo P&J, I'm really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but ILX had the greatest 2009 poll of all time! All time! (2009 ILX Trax Poll Results: TOP TEN TODAY)

oh god

that girls song is just OK, haters should try listening to the album which is 100x worse

yeah it is. it's a huge summer record.
i can concede that it's not fun, but chilling chatting in the sun is when lyrics matter least, and it is pretty immediate and the music is such the product of summer.
i guess maybe that's why i don't listen to it right now, because on headphones i would have to hear the words and i know often their not so lighthearted.

glibly parsing the appeal of Girls' song: guy who has had really weird life moves to San Fran, falls in with hipsters and has a great time, with the aid of simple jangly-pop tunes reminds hipsters that its not so complicated being a hipster, its actually really fun.

idk, i'm not much interested in it, but i think i see why people get such feel-good vibes from it.

i personally prefer the feel-good vibes of Azari & III

i'm curious as to what people mean when they say a singer is a bad singer. as in, the guy from phoenix is a good singer and the guy from girls is a bad singer. does girls dude not hit the right notes, or does he have less range? i'm pretty sure he's as technically skilled as he needs to be in order do be doing what he wants to do. i think he sings exactly the way he wants to.

can we reroute this into a "Defend Taylor Swift" direction?

first time i heard love story on the radio back in 08 coincided w/ me falling hard for fleetwood mac. there was a second during the opening instrumental part where i was sure it was some FM song i'd never heard. that guitar part sounds so lindsey buckingham to me. been noticing their influence all over female pop-country recently.

with the aid of simple jangly-pop tunes reminds hipsters that its not so complicated being a hipster, its actually really fun

Aah, no wonder so many ilmers do not like it!

I'm just kidding. When I think of summer music I think of the Zombies, the Jacuzzi Boys, The Cramps, Kurt Vile, Gene Vincent, early Cure... that sort of sounds so it's actually the sort of music I believe is just ripe for the summertime. I do find Girls a bit annoying tho, but I'm not sure why. Probably the vocals.

also, re love story, best part of the song is the end of the 2nd verse "escape this town for a little while, UH OH!" part. gets me every time. really one of my favorite albums in a while

i feel bad about voting for "love story" now that it's been ruled out as so 2008. it's just my favourite song on the album by far and although i'm not british i only heard it this year, and i figured well since it was nom'd... i like it most because of how explosive the final chorus is. it's teen pop reaching post-rock levels of intensity through itty bitty pop-punk tricks i've heard a thousand times and it floors me every time i hear it. also i love the way she sings "this love is difficult, but it's re-eal."

I swear bookmarks aren't working for me on this thread

Someone mentioned that they didn't think Taylor was an acquired taste, but it took LOTS of exposure for her to grow on me. She's a great craftsman, really knows how to build a solid song. But yeah, she does need to expand her songs' meaning and topic base and that's why I'm excited to see what she does over this decade.

i personally prefer the feel-good vibes of Azari & III

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Saturday, January 30, 2010 11:27 AM Bookmark

Their songs are about AIDS and egotisism!

egotism*

those are the deep messages that you only get when you listen on 'phones

yeah bookmarks definitely not working for me on this thread; weird :(

@j0rdan: in all the GAPDY discussion i don't think anyone had yet made that connection between consensus and music as a communal experience and a soundtrack for a set of friends in a particular year, for a particular set of lives in time, basically. those connotations can make it an emotional thing in itself leaving aside those inherent in the music. but versions of these go on in the swag thread too, not just that consensus but reactions against wider consensus, like Shine Blockas is A+ and everyone likes it but look at where is it in this poll, has it been penalized because it makes Gucci palatable to reactionary rap fans and indie yanks? deej lols at indie kids digging Gibbs and pretty soon whiney and surfboard are treating him like some kind of joke figure, when everybody knows he's a damn good rapper with solid to beautiful production, though like shine blockas not doing anything amazingly new besides skipping a record deal and giving music away, or putting gucci over a dope old loop.

― zvookster, Saturday, January 30, 2010 2:01 AM Bookmark

Ehh, that line of thinking is very flexible depending on the individual and the subject, though. I'm probably more invested in rap than 95% of this board, but I voted for "Shine Blockas" and "Day 'n' Nite" and "Trap Goin' Ham", all of which have been decried at various points by the swag crew as rap songs that mostly appeal to non-rap fans or rap reactionaries or whatever. Why? Because they are great songs. And I'm sure everybody else has their own discrepencies with autogoon orthodoxy, as such a thing exists.

the whole "Shine Bocks and Freddie Gibbs are unimpeachably great, the only reason they're not #1 everything worldwide is a bunch of contrarian maneuvering" thing is bs too, people have different opinions and aren't just pretending to not like what zvookster likes

i've never met/spoken to anyone outside of ilm who doesn't like shine blockas

i've never encountered anyone outside of ilm or the pitchfork staff who's heard of shine blockas

^^

dude i dunno, from what i can tell it's big with indie blogs

i mean people do realize that the overwhelming majority of Outkast or Gucci Mane fans haven't even heard that song, right? not that that makes it bad, but its stature is for all intents and purposes solely among internet crits.

xpost -- i don't really read indie blogs so i haven't encountered that, although it makes perfect sense that those blogs have followed PF's lead

starting to think all you guys talk to is internet crits

but uv cuss! hence the board

i mean i'm talking largely about the internet largely: ppl dling from nahright or 2dopeboys or DGB or smoking section or noz or o-dub and passing it through email, msg board, slsk chat, IRC, old heads who don't check for new rap and indie herbs chatting and emailing me about "exhibit c" & "shine blockas"

if you dislike 'em that;s fine, i'm not saying it's pretending to like, but seems like swaggers like em just fine! maybe it's a function of the rolling threads. has word gone out on ilx about yelawolf, trap muzik or is it just in swag that no one checks for? did it go out about these that ilx ppl might like? or was there a feeling like, yeah gibbs, shine blockas, jay elect, good tracks and they'd maybe be all over it but really why push these guys and not other guys just because they aren't pushing the envelope...let's actually react against that consensus appeal

just putting it out there, i know there's a lot of assumption in it

largely largely

*pretending to dislike

if my only contact w/ anyone was crit types on the internet I wouldn't be saying "Shine Blockas" is relatively unknown among most DJs, rap fans, etc., I'd probably assume the contrary. "Exhibit C" is much more a song that is kind of mingling around out there in the world in places other than year-end lists.

surfboard seems to hate gibbs and whiney lukewarm (just looked up the review of the midwest tape: #6.5) so yeah maybe i'm just all be fair about what iiiii like

zvookster i tri mi best 2 make my posts only semi readable but fuck kudos i have no idea wtf u r talking abt

zvookster i tri mi best 2 make my posts only semi readable but fuck kudos i have no idea wtf u r talking abt

contention is that tracks like "exhibit c", "shine blockas", "county bounce", "murder on my mind" had crossover appeal to indie types, rap luddites, generalist fans due to being largely traditional & familiar in form plus being good#

contention is that swag thinks these tracks are good

contention is that these tracks did so cross over, like to p4k and o-dub who hardly writes about hip hop anymore

suggestion is there is a reaction against that from swag dudes

postulation that either swag talks them down, or rolling threads like swag might keep tracks of wide-appeal like this, if such they be, from their own polls and from wider ilx

observation is that they did not place high enough

ok dnr ringtone was called swag this yr too

i think we still prefer autogoons or goons

yeah swag seems weird, i have this image of alla u dressed like gucci in 08

maybe hoos could pull it off but like nagl 4 all of u as a rule

i've never encountered anyone outside of ilm or the pitchfork staff who's heard of shine blockas

― The Happening 2: Our Borad (some dude), Saturday, January 30, 2010 5:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

well, i guess we know different people then. i've danced to it a couple of times, talked to people about it, and seen it posted as a fb link by at least 3 different people, each time with multiple comments. i mean, it's not like everyone on the block has heard it but it's got around. people like outkast, man, it's not like this is some lo-fi blog-premiered chillwave single.

yeah i guess it is out there to some degree. but I mean compared to Big Boi's previous buzz single, "Royal Flush," which charted and really felt like it was a minor event across all sorts of different rap fan demographics, it still seems like "Shine Blockas" has a very narrow niche.

ya i agree with that, which is weird cause 'shine blockas' to me feels like an update of 'intl players anthem' in terms of sound and aspiration. it sounds like alot more like a potential pop hit than 'royal flush' anyways, which is obv great but a 90's throwback. all these big boi album release politics is the most confusing and frustrating thing ever, man.

u kno fancy is gonna place tho right?

doubt it

could, wouldn't bet on it

some ppl in the nom thread were saying that they'd dropped terius off their singles list to make room for other stuff, but left him on the albums ballot. alex in mtl was saying he had 'fancy' as number one, but it wasn't a big rallying point iirc. me, i'm rooting for 'sweat it out.'

i only voted for "rockin that shit", and while i'm a little disappointed that it placed so low i think it would be dumb if a non-single like "fancy" placed above it. i'd be really baffled if "sweat it out" beat it

I am still pondering Guido a little and I find it surprising that some people (lex in particular) are emphasizing his melodies (which I just don't hear as very impressive but maybe in the "dance"* context they are). I would have thought it had more to do with the particular combination of sounds he pulls together. If someone had said, "Well, you have to recognize all the sources he is alluding to: the disco strings (which you probably hear clearly enough as it is) and the blah blah blah blah and the this and that," I probably would have thought: okay, that makes sense. Sounds kind of like an intellectual approach, but I can sort of see how it would work. Anyway, to me, the most appealing thing about that Guido track (not that I love it) is the way it combines sounds in unusual ways.

*I still really resent the appropriation of "dance" as a label for what is actually a narrow segment of music people dance to and I'm never going to get over it.

Oh yeah, to disco strings you could add smooth jazz saxophone, but then this really blatantly electronic sounds almost like primitive academic electronic music of yore, and then the heavy bass underneath it all, which I guess would be one of its key connections to dubstep.

Sorry I keep calling it "that Guido track" instead of "The Way U Make Me Feel." (It has a Christian name!)

It feels a little like transmorgified early 80s TV theme music maybe.

Also, my favorite track here is the Kid Cudi one (which was new to me--actually I may have checked it out once before earlier in the year via ILM and then forgotten it), which I liked before Vevo blocked it because it contained some of their content.