//////////////shawty got poll poll poll poll poll poll poll (part I: 2008 TRAX)\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Is nostalgia inherently twee?

What if you're an ageing Viking getting nostalgic for your raping and pillaging days?

It's a nostalgia for the state of child-like wonder isn't it?

marcel fucking pagnol comparison gains weight! i hated pagnol so much. i also hate the go team, yes, but for difft reasons (unlistenable non-production).

i'm not particularly down w/nostalgia generally, but when i am it's almost always to do w/specific memories or situations rather than the vague meaninglessness of "child-like wonder" - i actually have no concrete memories of "child-like wonder" at all, it's not a phrase which conjures anything up for me.

Damn, you sure got my number... (x-post)

i actually have no concrete memories of "child-like wonder" at all, it's not a phrase which conjures anything up for me.

as a parent of small children, i can attest that wonder is part of the deal -- take a kid to his first circus and watch. but only a part. there's also a lot of temper tantrums, power struggles, anxiety, confusion and fear. but you rarely hear anyone invoke "child-like terror."

it seems to me that it's one of those things that you only notice from the outside - watching kids poke around and discover the world - at the time it's just what one does. though i did spend much of my childhood trying to be a blasé know-it-all

twee black metal would be something to hear.

tipsy otm, I have no memories of 'child like wonder' but it exists as I've seen it several times, both with my son and other children and I guess my parents must have saw me responding with awe or wonder back in the day. I didn't get cynical until I was at least aged 11.

Surely the whole point of nostalgia for childlike wonder is that it's actually nostalgia for something you don't remember having experienced. It's like when you've never been in a relationship but keenly feel a sense of nostalgia for an imagined love.

I'm tempted to go a bit wanky here and start talking about "retroactive positing". Childlike wonder springs into existence at the point that you become aware that it is not something you can access. Or more simply "you don't know what you've got till it's gone".

The - yes - drugginess of Air France lies in how they play with e's ultimately unfulfilled (or at least not permanently fulfilled) promise to "restore" this sensation. That's the sense in which it can be literally comedown music, without being "chillout" as such.

That last para is pretty much exactly what I was trying to articulate.

<3 u guys who imply that "indie" tracks are never good enough for the tracks poll.

anyway, i'm thankful for the repeated exposure to GGD and the initial exposure to alphabeat (i like that song a lot though i don't know how often i want to listen to it). i agree that ida maria sounds like a lost 90s track but i'm not sure that's a good thing. love seeing those t.i. jams and still basically confused by air france. so yeah, it's been educational as always.

only version of 'Fascination' i get with

Childlike wonder springs into existence at the point that you become aware that it is not something you can access.

yeah, although i think the misleading term here is probably 'childlike.' we're really talking about wonder, period. and i guess that's where people (like, maybe, air france, and definitely, say, flaming lips) go wrong for me in sort of stipulating innocence or at least naivete as a precondition for wonder. or, more precisely, fetishizing the particular variety of wonder that arises from imagined innocence or naivete. as a grown-up, i can still experience wonder, including in music, through avenues that don't require any nostalgia at all. ornette coleman comes to mind (who arguably also fetishizes a kind of innocence, but it's of a more rigorous sort).

Geogaddi is the best example I can think of of ambient electronic music that mixes childlike wonderment with anxiety, confusion and fear. That said, I'm not sure I want Air France to become more sinister.

tipsy otm re: innocence and naivete, that's what i was trying to get at

Here we are, counting down the top 20:

20 - Jordin Sparks And Chris Brown - No Air
139 points, 11 votes, 1 #1 vote
75 in P&J

Oddly for an American Idol winner, on her own material Jordin usually performs most strongly when she realises that her baby-Mariah voice actually works best prosecuting baby-Janet material (see for example current single “One Step At A Time”): fluttery and almost ostentatiously pretty, with Jordin’s voice never resting on a single note for more than a moment – with Janet this is done to obscure her vocal limitations, with Jordin it’s a choice.

“No Air” is a bit risky therefore, with Jordin lingering lugubriously over heartbroken notes and phrases like she’s been shot in the chest. But death-fixated pop songs are the exception to every rule, and this suicide note is simply gorgeous, a deep pool of intoxicating emotion perfect for every wallower. Chris Brown also does fantastic, understated work, his gentle, yearning delivery providing a trace paper outline of a hidden mountain of regret.

If the song is devastated, the arrangement is utopian, all twinkling starlight tinkles and the most graceful stuttering kickdrum. The chorus, when the two get wrapped up in suffocating clouds of cumulus synthesiser is probably the largest moment in pop this year, like two giant space babies finding each other in a Hollywood remake of 2001: A Space Odyssey redone as a romance. And we haven’t gotten to the fabulous artificial strings in the last two minutes, then that absolutely desolate, almost discordant harmonised moan, and then the stadium drums come in, and, oh… words fail, truly they do.
-Tim F

I really don't get this list at all, I'd expected that to be much higher. I have no idea what's going to place where in the upper reaches of this, except Milli and Rolex.

Unexploded Bomb = Kings of Leon - Sex On Fire.

wow, i had not even heard of this song until right now, but tim you just sold it to me like a million times over.

think Happy House is top 5.

Tim otm above, re. the performance/production. unfortunately, the song itself isn't particularly memorable.

"No Air" - no, sorry, I just don't hear it. At all.
(But Tim F's description makes me wish that I did...)

whoops I wanted to post my favorite remix of No Air:

Benny Benassi remix

Hope its not the only Chris Brown mention here.

JS won American Idol? It seems odd that it hasn't been mentioned once in marketing her over here, although I guess it might have hindered her a little bit with the rnb audience (i have nothing to back this up though). Love the song.

I thought it was pretty heavy, but then I don't really pay that much attention to marketing unless I'm really into something already since I don't own a radio or television.

No Jeezy yet, I hope we haven't split the Recession vote by nominating too many tracks.

fuck a song - that remix is infinitely preferable!

xp's

I'd imagine "Blind" is up towards the top too. And I hope all the Crazy Cousinz votes didn't go to "Bongo Jam" and we still get "Do Ya Mind".

I assume American Boy will be top10 as well.

If it wasn't I would really wonder at the point of this site.

My guess for the top five would be some combination of A Milli, Blind, Wearing My Rolex, Time To Pretend and maybe Paper Planes, depending on how many people voted for it as a 2008 release. Otherwise replace it with American Boy or Love Lockdown.

if it's gonna be that boringly predictable how about we just stop at 11?

Machine Gun top ten or not?

because it's just a ruse and los campesinos! are actually going to fill all 10 spots.

Blackout Crew for #1.

Awesome thread, y'all - old school ILM material!

I still don't understand how so many people whose taste I otherwise respect find "American Boy" tolerable.

still surprised u hate on it this much

its really annoying

yeah, that

i like the beat OK, but the vocals do nothing for me (and the will.i.am version isn't any better).

still surprised people find it annoying

Estelle's vocals are really shrill, and the lyrics are really stupid when not completely cringeworthy. The melody is catchy, but not pleasing, and so just sits in your head being annoying forever after you hear it. Kanye is as cloying and smug as he's ever been. The way the beat is arranged discards any sense of flow it had in "Impatient". Basically, this song is garbage. I hate it more than Katy Perry.

I'm pretty sure I would love any r'n'b song that dropped Ribena though

Are most of the (non-british) people who like "American Boy" anglophiles to some degree? I find anglophilia offputting in general (which certainly isn't to say I hate English music or English people or Englishness, just Americanos who get b0nerz about such things) and this song triggers that revulsion.

Estelle's vocals are too airy to be shrill.

No, they are absolutely ear-damaging.

to me there's just something about the way her accent manifests in that song that is really bothersome to me - also the chorus "i really want tooooooo/ come kick it with yooooouuu" is like the dictionary definition of 'annoying' to me

i'm not an anglophile in the slightest (and really have trouble relating to a lot of brit music), but something about the breeziness of 'american boy' is enjoyable to me.