ILM Top 100 2005-2009: TRACKS

gaga can sing, adam ant couldn't

xp yeah but the way she slips into french just before the last iteration of it always makes me think FREEEENCH, and i'm pretty sure she was at least aware of that

I loathe and despise the production on Lady Gaga stuff. It just makes it sound so weak and joyless - I can't understand why anyone thinks it is fun.

but then again her yelping on "WATCH OUT BAD ROMANCE" sounds kind of like "WHACHOWBARUMASS" so it really could be anything

haha isn't that WANT YOUR BAD ROMANCE?

to its credit, i did like bad romance's production... and the song is good, just not terrific imo. i was actually surprised the production was done by redone considering everything i'd heard from him before was godawful.

It's only the chorus that I really hate, it's so self-consciously wacky in all the worst ways. It sort of reminds me of Boney M in a weird way as well that I can't put my finger on.

14. BURIAL "Archangel" (2007) [446 points, 17 votes]

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

haha isn't that WANT YOUR BAD ROMANCE?

ha this proves my point re: wtf did she just say?

is that the one tuomas was talking about earlier?

Archangel is the only Burial record I ever want to listen to these days, maybe the only one I really wanted to hear at the time, probably the only one you really need, and yet I still go back to it time and time again.

It's got exactly the right euphoric-melancholic balance you want in the best dance music as well, I remember Ripperton playing it in the middle of a set of ultra-dry minimal and it was like he'd suddenly sprayed the place with water. Amazing record.

Maybe it's because I wasn't listening to pop music in 1988 but Bad Romance feels very modern to me. So much current music has obvious genre touchstones but Gaga sounds like, well, Gaga.

The point is that pop music in 88 didn't sound like Gaga; one particular branch of club music (new beat/industrial) sounded like Gaga.

Bad Romance = Come On Eileen I think. It's 1982 rather than 1988 - the sort of nonsensical chorus with huge wide intervals that is designed to be bellowed as loudly as possible.

Come On Eileen + Lords of Acid, maybe?

if it was really the "come on eileen" de nos jours then i would LOATHE it => ergo it is not

burial is still nothing more than background music to me, and if i was gonna isolate any individual track it's be "in mcdonald's", not "archangel"

Yeah I think of him as background music as well but that track just has this silvery quality that the rest of them lack. Helps you can sing along to it as well.

Things are heating up. The top 20 so far paints a pretty vivid picture of the era.

if it was really the "come on eileen" de nos jours then i would LOATHE it => ergo it is not

eh, that depends on what qualities Matt is picking out that makes it the new "Come On Eileen" (which I kind of disagree with; so much of that song is built around the arrangement that I can't really translate the detail Matt picked out to "Bad Romance")

this is the first time I've knowingly heard Bad Romance and christ is it a bloated pustule of crap

Burial track has something ruminatively intense going for it but it doesn't quite leap at me - maybe I need to hear it in a club for it to fully work

You're supposed to listen to it on the night bus on the way home from the club, but it works better on an actual dancefloor I think.

That's the song I mentioned earlier. I haven't listened to much dubstep, and the few things I have heard haven't impressed me that much, but "Archangel" is a really unique and evocative tune. I should've voted for it, if I'd known the title.

this is the first time I've knowingly heard Bad Romance

Do not understand how this is possible unless you live in the most remote parts of, say, Mongolia.

Great top 20 so far. I think Paparazzi > Bad Romance (although I voted for both) but yeah, BR's huge chorus makes it sound more iconic and therefore more memorable, if that makes any sense.

Probably works well on a night-bus too. Have not heard Burial on a night-bus but have been hallooed by a hauntology blogger on the N21 before - similar sort of thing maybe

Burial track reminds me most of ICBYD-era Aphex, albeit with the edges rounded and the bass deepened

so much of that song is built around the arrangement that I can't really translate the detail Matt picked out to "Bad Romance

Yeah I'm not really talking about details, I'm talking about the feeling I get off the chorus, like I said great wide intervals that can be bellowed along to and bits in the chorus that don't mean anything.

I can't remember anything about the arrangement, it's only the vocals that stick in my mind, but I'm not suggesting the production has a Dexy's Midnight Runners quality or anything.

13. CIARA "Promise" (2006) [456 points, 14 votes, 3 first place votes]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vPyzCHgZ88

fever yr going too fast

but yeah well done ciara and the lex and all else who are ciara fans, iirc this song is quite good

burial is actually better music for when you get home and just want to vibe a bit. on the night bus it WILL make you fall asleep and you WILL end up in south motherfucking woodford.

FUCKING YES IT'S MY NUMBER ONE!

"promise" >>>>>>>>> your favourite song

I'm doing about 4 an hour, which = 20 in 5 or so hours. How much more do you want me to drag it out?

fever yr going too fast

Nonsense.

<3 <3 <3 Promise. That one really IS all about the details, so much going on in the arrangement. Would love to hear Prince cover it.

Also, three number one votes! The Lex, Kevin K and who else?

Matt DC kind of OTM about "Archangel", although I like "Unite" too. Saying it's the only track one needs by Burial is doing an injustice to the man's oeuvre (which is genius as a whole), but yeah, it's a transcendent track which sits next to "Hyph Mngo", retaining a kind of cool euphoria that only usually translates through house and trance music. The rest of his stuff is great, but it's the ardkore continuum version of something like Sunn O))), where it works better as aural texture to soundtrack your day-to-day life rather than something hooky you can play at a party. "Archangel" is both.

fever yr going too fast

Not at all.

i love that video as well

i love that "promise" has not one but two intros, and two separate spoken word sections

whoops for some reason I thought there was only a 10-minute gap there

listening to Promise now, yeah it's good - a zillion miles more natural and affecting than Bad Romance

Actually without wanting to get all Geir Hongro on you all, I think the melody in Promise is also much, much stronger than it is in other similar slow jams - ie Devotion by Electrik Red and several other Ciara tracks. The "open my heart" bit gets me every time.

I still don't get "Promise" (although I probably would if I ever listened to Ciara because of her voice). Every time I hear it, I wish someone else was singing it.

god "promise" is such an INCREDIBLE track. i didn't dislike her before or anything, but this is what really won me over to ciara. i remember the first time i heard it i was driving home and it was playing on the radio, and i was shocked that a song so good was actually being spun on top 40 formats considering i wasn't crazy about most top 40 at the time.

I feel bad now :( Sorry JF

For me, "Goodies" is pretty much all the Ciara I need (with an occasional sprinkle of "1 2 Step" and "Get Up" with honorable mention to "Lose Control" which isn't even her song)

no probz xp

Wish Girls Aloud were represented higher. I think their best stuff has aged wonderfully.. their shoddier approach to what once made them good on Out of Control sounded instantly dated, but Tangled Up still sounds like a timeless (in the literal sense), fantastich chaos and Chemistry is still as odd a mix of ballads and night-out songs and experiments like 'Biology' as it was back then. I love Biology, but they've got better tracks. Perhaps. But it's a natural choice for this time period, and Tangled Up is best appreciated as a whole, going through its highs and lows and shouts of disobedience.

It would of course have been more poetic if the girls split up after Tangled Up, instead of after Out of Control: Ever under-the-radar even when filling the tabloids, ever barely scraping through as a sound, commercial project, leaving on a high artistic note. Then OoC was released, with a brit, and then Cheryl as the ever-present mother/sister/friend. It's easier to pretend they weren't any good now than it would've been then, easier to find arguments. But they were bloody great.

(off-topic to that: "Promise" was my #1 on a decade-list I sketched at the end of 2009)

Great video for Promise too.

he "open my heart" bit gets me every time

yes, so incredible, and the way she segues into it from that intense spoken word "i will NEVER. never EVER hurt you. I OPEN MY HEART" section

btw did polow da don ever produce another track as good as promise?

I've come around to Promise, but it still feels like lesser GA. OTM about Tangled Up. xposts

I said this about "Promise" in 2006:

I must confess, I don't understand how Ciara's "Promise" has become the only single this year by the so-called crunk'n'b diva worthy of having praise heaped upon it: it's #47 on Stylus's year-end list, #42 on Pitchfork's, and Andy Kellman's AMG review calls it "tremendous, one of the sexiest, slow-tempo, non-breakup songs of the past ten years" and one of the only real highlights on The Evolution.

It's not that it's bland*, at least in terms of instrumentation and production: the slathered-on vocoder certainly speaks to me (even though T-Pain is making better use of it these days), and I'll even buy Alex Macpherson's argument that Ciara's vocal limitations are capable of creating a certain emotional effect (even though it's hard to hear her usual breathiness here as anything other than weak and unengaging). It's just kind of muddled, and there's little about the song that sticks with me at all.

Which would be par for the course as far as a lot of modern R&B goes, except for the fact that this is Ciara, and she's had two far superior singles in 2006 alone! I can sort of understand critics ignoring "So What," since it's not technically her song, although she dominates it so much, both in personality and sheer time behind the mic, that the mere "ft." credit she receives hardly seems fair. Not to mention how the blase, sing-song refrain is perfectly suited to her glamorous reserve: the Field Mob dudes sound scrappy, but she's too cool to even eke out the entire word "you" at the end of a line, rhyming "thug in yuh" with "here for yuh" as though swallowing a yawn.

The melancholy air of "Get Up" is reminiscent of last year's brilliantly simmering "Oh" (although not quite as much as Cherish's "Do It to It," which is a copy right down to the creeping chord changes), and it features the same midtempo dance-floor exhortations as "1, 2 Step" -- but it's also perhaps Ciara at her most joyous. For instance, note the playful way Ciara doubles that light pizzicato line that's introduced as counterpart several bars earlier: the tick-tock cadence ("the. club. is. jum-. pin'. now.") works as a neat build to the excited rush of "Get up!" And then what about the way that Chamillionaire's fluid rap transitions into him suddenly singing the third verse? It's unexpected -- since when does the cameo rapper ever step on the singer's turf? -- but it flows so naturally, it's a sweet bonus.

total lols at me confusing GA discussion with Promise (which is amazing, obv). loathed "love sex magic" though.

Oh and I know that must be really confusing considering my long post about GA, but the Promise I hold as my #1 is Ciara's, not GA's!