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)

enjoyed dr. c (&others) running down their first impressions btw, don't think i said that upthread

I think this is going a bit far. I do basically buy your premise here - Taylor Swift is your best friend who helps you sort out your situation by reminding you of stuff you already know, and Lady Gaga is definitely NOT that. But I think the fandom for her is still more visceral than you suggest, for many people... if Swift is best friend, Gaga is platonic girl crush. People want to BE her because she's so COOL and gets away with doing strange and wonderful things that you are too shy and ordinary to do (until you go to college and join some burlesque troupe or whatever). The details of what those things are - the bewildering forest of her "aesthetic self-construction" - provide lots of interest and give you something to link to almost daily on Facebook ("Grammy dress! heart gaga").... but people think she's *awesome*, not just intellectually interesting, etc.

This was ages ago but, firstly, me saying that Gaga's greatness is premised on the unmistakeable Gaga-esque-ness of her aesthetic isn't the same as saying people can't have an emotional and personal connection with her - and i basically agree with everything above.

Secondly, yeah, a friend chided me by saying "but isn't "Just Dance" about a totally relateable IRL situation" and it is, which is one of the reasons I qualified my comment by saying "(best) songs" - I think that Gaga has improved immensely perhaps precisely because she has cut the awkward ties between her larger-than-life persona and her initial run of relateable ordinary-experience pop songs; this is the big difference b/w "Just Dance" or "Eh Eh" and basically everything on The Fame Monster.

Re "Stillness Is The Move", I heard it before I'd read or heard anything about it, and while it struck me as the work of an indie group with their ears open, it would never have occurred to me to think of it as an R&B song.

What is very strange about this thread is that with all the shit being thrown around, Bob Dylan can walk straight through the middle of it singing a fucking song about Santa and no-one bats an eyelid.

I lolled

singing a fucking song about Santa

I don't want to hear about Santa fucking, thanks very much.

this is a fucking song
a song in which to fuck

ho ho ho ho

I think that Gaga has improved immensely perhaps precisely because she has cut the awkward ties between her larger-than-life persona and her initial run of relateable ordinary-experience pop songs; this is the big difference b/w "Just Dance" or "Eh Eh" and basically everything on The Fame Monster.

this is a tempting thing to agree with, then i remembered about "telephone" which is amazing but surely the most quotidian of all

I still lol that Lady Gaga had Beyonce guest on a reworking of "Bugaboo"

still blows my mind tbh that people hate on longstreth's voice, it's reall special i think, and basically one of the strongest in popular indie besides like antony?

Hearing Antony is a great way to put me off listening to music for the rest of the night/week/month.

that's because Bob Dylan is fucking awesome

that album made my Xmas - everyone who hears it loves it

yeah even my grandfather who stopped fucking w/dylan when he went electric really like it

Actually I love "Just Dance" now more than I did in 2008.

for a moment i read that as QE II's grandpa chiming in and "Just Dance" was a Bob Dylan song

also if u heard the guy singing you wouldnt really be hating on the chicks voices one bit in comparison

― plaxico (I know, right?), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 1:52 PM Bookmark

dave longstreth is why bitte orca is basically unlistenable

i love bitte orca but you have to admit it's kind of a vocal feat to be that breathy and that whiny at the same time

maybe on the fringes of the Popular Crowd (close enough to be able to speak to the hot sporty boys, at any rate), enough on the fringes to fret about acceptance into it.

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 9:38 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Sugges

Never mind me, just enjoying lex's insightful point about the class issues at stake in Vampire Weekend.

Oh...wait. My bad.

RE: Taylor, I think her strongest suit is actually not voice or lyrics but melody and most importantly structure - her songs are interesting not just because of the (fairly average/stereotypical) situations they portray (quite well, mind you) but because she had a really good grasp on how songs WORK. The way Love Story's entire plot moves forward in the changing words of the chorus, rather than the in the verses, which mostly tread water. The way the chorus in Tim McGraw never changes its words, but drastically changes its meaning/context of "Tim McGraw" and the song in question as the audience learns more information in the verses. How changing one line in the final chorus of "White Horse" somehow manages to be totally devastating. And so on. Lex is totally OTM about how she knows better than most people when to oversell or undersell emotions and situations for maximum emotional impact.

How changing one line in the final chorus of "White Horse" somehow manages to be totally devastating.

love that. it just propels her right out of the song, out of town, out of the guy's life.

xp
longstreth's voice is catnip to me. hearing him slowly screech, croon and coo through police story live w/ coffman&deradoorian backing him up is good overload like curry or really bitter ale.

xp

oh fuck! TWO LINES. I wasn't even talking about "rearview mirror" but that is totally even MORE affecting. i was referring to "find someone someday who might actually treat me well"(which is also totally reliant on the accent pattern that stresses "one"and "day" in a particularly awesome way.)

but yeah, I could do this forever. while i can't always explain the awesomeness of taylor's songs holistically, I can always describe them as collections of wonderfully evocative moments.

"my mistake; i didn't know to be in love you had to fight to have the upper hand." is another gem from white horse

and through the weirdness of brain linkage is forever tied in my mind to Los Campesinos!, viz.

I taught myself the only way to vaguely get along in love
Is to like the other slightly less than you get in return
I keep feeling like I'm being undercut

On another note entirely, I am listening to "Daniel" for the first time and really digging it. Feel like these people are on a similar kick to me personally - Yamaha chamber music. I could do with dialing down the "frosty reverb" or whatever on the vocals but this is nice stuff. #2 of the year I dunno but I have no beef with this.

"Daniel" took some time to click with me because while I really dig the vocals and I also dig the instrumental 80s wash, they felt mismatched for some reason. and then at some point everything just clicked and my brain realized how marvelous it is. the "frosty reverb" was probably my gripe as the 80s wash on the production holds it back from the totally epic majesty that i suspect is buried in here, but that's not what she's going for, i suppose.

"Daniel" suffered a ton for me because I discovered it at the same time as "What's A Girl To Do?" and the latter is like far and away a massively superior song; it took maybe a couple of months for me to go "oh wait, that other song was pretty dope too" and this was after buying Two Suns mistakenly thinking that "WAGTD?" was on it.

fwiw glenn mcdonald offered to gove ilx polls the same crazy data crunching treatment he gave pazz & jop and i think we should take him up on it

agreed

I agree very much with Alex in Montreal's string of comments on Swift and "White Horse."

Hey, do we know when the album poll results will start to be posted? Next week?

yeah monday iirc

on another note entirely, I am listening to "Daniel" for the first time and really digging it.

me too, the song has pretty amazing production. reminds me a LOT of the el perro del mar ep- if you like "daniel" pls pls check out 'love is not pop'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJn-nUCzQLk

^hoping this doesn't embed (never tried it this way, so apologies if it does)

gah, sry ppl

I voted for Love is Not Pop in the albums poll, but totally overlooked "Change of Heart" in singles voting. Wish I'd made a point of including it, even if it wouldn't have cracked the top 50.

"Daniel" and "My Girls" are both really good but not like omgwtf-awesome.. I still don't see what the big deal is with either of these. I'm ok with both of them placing so high on this list, but mostly because they've placed just as high everywhere else, which gives me a sense of "missing out.." but not to the extent where I actually care all that much. They do, however, make me wish that mainstream commercial radio would broaden their playlists to include stuff like the songs listed on this thread..

"Daniel" also reminds me of "Smalltown Boy."

I should rephrase that one sentence.. It makes me wish mainstream radio played nearly all of these songs.. I know about 15-20 of them are constantly played on there already.

I just found out that The Yeasayers boys produced "Daniel", so I guess I should give them a listen.

"My Girls" stands on its own as a good song outside if AnCo - witness the Taken By Trees version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9wX3jg1p7Y

^ if = of

I just found out that The Yeasayers boys produced "Daniel", so I guess I should give them a listen.

It shows a lot more in Odd Blood than the first album, which everyone seems to think has a couple good songs and then loses itself. Odd Blood is pretty fantastic front to back, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARs5IYQyzOQ

What does and ILXOR think of this mix by Dam Funk?

stomps out the original

Really enjoyed this - for whatever reason i always manage to miss out on even the stuff that everyone else has heard, so lurking here is just f'ing great for catching up. Any year w'out a new Fall album (best not engage in arguments about vox) is a bereft one, but hearing Trap Goin Ham on this list has definitely filled the void. If I hadn't got an internet mard on, wd've definitely voted for 9x out of 10, which I seemed to listen to pretty much on a loop throughout July, while never really getting in to the album.

Only song to really have me scrambling urgently for the off button was the Lust for Life Girls track. I'm a sucker for Taylor Swift things, so happy with the winner. Slightly ambivalent about The-Dream, think the Love v Money diptych (really lyrical, abstract, sweet and strange at the same time) is just amazing, and hoping that the rest of the album will creep up on me in the same way. Oh, love the Arming Eritrea.

Thanks musically! Looking forward to the albums.

alex is correct about the last chorus of "white horse" - not only is it devastatingly effective in itself, but it also casts a different light on the whole song that's just gone past, a slight tilt of the rearview mirror and you see everything in a different perspective.

it's probably why "white horse" is my default favourite fearless joint (it's an album where in any given hour, pretty much any of its tracks could be my favourite) - compositionally it just blows me away. i guess it's probably the best indication of how swift might progress when she can't write about high school any longer (ie, next album).

on the next album she can write about john mayer. ugh.

(i feel like i need to wash my hands just reading about sex with john mayer. taylor needs a hazmat suit.)

worst url ever :((((((((

Something kind of creepy about that on his part tbf - I mean if she was the whitebread outcast she claims to be she probably has been idolizing the guy since she was 12.

mayer is a disgusting horndog--this is well-known.

my horndog has a last name, it's m-a-y-e-r