ILM'S TOP 77 TRACKS of 2010

Lady Gaga - Telephone, covered by Pomplamoose

Download this cover on iTunes:

the thumping beat at the start of the video is about 789797924445564x better than the song

what is the single best LADY GAGA post in the history of ilm?

lj fuck's sake dude, start I Love Prog and kick it over there

I love how people come on to this thread just to kick LJ off...

love lady gaga, but telephone should have placed way higher. so great.

"Telephone" is OK. It will be interesting to see if, in 2011, Gaga can maintain the mosty upward curve in the quality of her singles.

None of the ten things I voted for appear in 41-60. However, if I'd had more than 20 minutes on an unfamiliar computer to complete and submit the ballot - and ##11-25 on my tracks ballot had gone in as planned - then "Mean" would have gone up one place and "Roman's Revenge" a massive 13 places.

some comments i wrote on freaktrig when this came up in their poll:

# Tom † on 7 January 2011

(Actually I don’t think the club is a metaphor. But the song isn’t about the problem of her guy calling her, it’s about the problem of her relationship with the guy breaking down and how she’d rather be out partying instead.)

# Lex † on 7 January 2011

I think the relationship is the metaphor! It’s tapping into the trope of the club as historical site of escapism and liberation and adapting it to a world in which we’re meant to be connected to everything all the time – our Blackberrys continually buzzing, phones always going off, the stress and malaise of technological ubiquity and the expectation of constant communication. Possessive boyfriends are part of that, but it is this Brave New Digital World that is really the possessive boyfriend here.

And the club is somewhere where you shouldn’t have to be subject to this – it’s the place where you dance all night, become wholly human again. It partly rings true because so many clubs have shitty reception.

# Pete † on 7 January 2011

Or doesn’t ring at all cos of the shitty reception.

I can't remember if I'm one of "Telephone"'s voters or not. I love it, but she and all her singles have become so ubiquitous (for which I'm grateful) that it seems like they've all been around for a decade...when really it's only been a very short amount of time.

these are all pretty good but overall i liked yesterday's run a lot more. makes me wonder what great tracks didn't make the cut ;_;

I remember where I was the first time I heard at least a couple of Lady Gaga songs...

Is Lady Gaga—the self-proclaimed “fame monster” so well known for her enticing pop music, outrageous fashion, and elaborately staged spectacles—involved in a pseudo-religious conspiracy of global moment? The answer is “yes”—but not for the reasons that the conspiracy theorists believe.

One main source for theories concerning the prevalence of occult symbols in Lady Gaga’s oeuvre is the intriguing (and highly speculative) set of analyses penned by the anonymous author of the Vigilant Citizen, an enjoyably paranoid e-zine devoted to exposing secret forces at work in mass media and popular culture.

Taking seriously its motto (attributed to Confucius) that “Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws,” the Vigilant Citizen (henceforth VC) seeks “to understand the world we live in,” by “[going] beyond the face value of symbols in pop culture to reveal their esoteric meaning.”

For instance, in “Lady Gaga, the Illuminati Puppet,” VC finds in Lady Gaga’s name and wardrobe allusions to MKULTRA, a “covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program,” that pioneered a “mind-control technique which exposes the subject to a trauma so violent that his/her mind creates a dissociation.” “Gaga” evokes the absentmindedness resulting from the dissociative trauma, a name that says, according to VC: “I’m a lady and I’m empty-headed. This empty head can filled with any crap you want. Imitate me, young people. This state of mind is achieved after successful mind control.” The eventual transformation of the traumatically emptied personality is likened to the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly—hence the use of butterfly patterns in Lady Gaga’s wardrobe.

Lady Gaga’s (non)religion can thus be summed up in Baudrillard’s words: today, we have moved “from a theology of truth and secrecy… [into] an age of simulacra and simulation, in which there is no longer any God to recognize his own, nor any last judgment to separate true from false, the real from its artificial resurrection.”

Lady Gaga is nothing other than an artificial resurrection. Like the ostensibly esoteric symbols that are so prevalent in her spectacles, she is a sign devoid of deeper meaning. A self-created simulation, Lady Gaga is no puppet, mindlessly executing a secret agendum; she is a self-styled, self-aware, and charismatic mannequin—an artificial person—who knows how to exploit, extend, and exacerbate the contemporary zeitgeist in her exploration and cultivation of fame.

― Crocodiles Gonna Croc (King Boy Pato), Tuesday, 25 January 2011 07:34 (12 hours ago)

telephone isn't the worst song in isolation (although it's kinda indistinguishable, it has spirit and is performed with a flourish) but the whole aesthetic makes my skin crawllll

telephone is the best song posted itt in ages

I still find Gaga annoying and don't really like either this or Bad Romance, although Beyonce does her best here.

feel like pato is onto something there tho tbqfh

Lady Gaga - Telephone, covered by Pomplamoose

Download this cover on iTunes:

― normal_fantasy-unicorns (contenderizer)

I don't know if I'm just too tired by work and gym but I can't stop cracking up at this one.

there's always a first time xp

I'm not a Gaga fan, her tunes just don't grab me for whatever reason.

I actually liked today...def. seemed the songs that didn't grab me were all bunched up together, and there were actually songs that I actively disliked in this run, but there were also more songs I really really loved today...

lj fuck's sake dude, start I Love Prog and kick it over there

so someone likes non-consensus music, so what? don't get why this gets people so het up.

I think the relationship is the metaphor! It’s tapping into the trope of the club as historical site of escapism and liberation and adapting it to a world in which we’re meant to be connected to everything all the time – our Blackberrys continually buzzing, phones always going off, the stress and malaise of technological ubiquity and the expectation of constant communication. Possessive boyfriends are part of that, but it is this Brave New Digital World that is really the possessive boyfriend here.

And the club is somewhere where you shouldn’t have to be subject to this – it’s the place where you dance all night, become wholly human again. It partly rings true because so many clubs have shitty reception.

^ this is such a great piece of pop analysis, btw

In retrospect Gaga feels like an oasis when paired with lady antlebeum and ke$ha but yeah, her music and attitude feels very flat to me.

you may not have noticed but making multiple neg posts about a tracks/albs result tends to annoy folks!

thx! xp

i love every song really

actually Telephone is pretty great, though I do like Alejandro a little more...

I wz looking this morning through the tracks noms and put together a 15-song ballot that I wouldve sent in; Alejandro was on that...

contenderizer otm re: Lex too; that's some pretty great writing there.

recap:

77. DIDDY-DIRTY MONEY "Ass on the Floor" [222 points, 7 votes]
76. VAMPIRE WEEKEND "Giving Up the Gun" [222 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
75. AZARI & III "Reckless (With Your Love) (Tensnake remix)" [228 points, 8 votes]
74. CRYSTAL CASTLES "Celestica" [232 points, 8 votes]
73. TAYLOR SWIFT "Mean" [232 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
72. MARINA & THE DIAMONDS "Shampain" [234 points, 10 votes]
71. RIHANNA "What's My Name" [234 points, 11 votes]
70. THE FIVES ft. VANYA TAYLOR "It's What You Do (Hottest By Far)" [236 points, 5 votes, 1 first place vote]
69. YUNG HUMMA ft. FLYNT FLO$$Y "Lemme Smang It" [236 points, 8 votes, 2 first place votes]
68. RICK ROSS ft. STYLES P "B.M.F. (Blowin' Money Fast)" [238 points, 12 votes]
67. THE KNIFE "Colouring of Pigeons" [242 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]
66. CASSIE "Skydiver" [242 points, 8 votes]
(TIE) 64. KELIS "Acapella" [242 points, 9 votes]
(TIE) 64. FOUR TET "Love Cry" [242 points, 9 votes]
63. JAVIERA MENA "Hasta La Verdad" [244 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
62. SWANS "No Words/No Thoughts" [248 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]
61. GAMES "Strawberry Skies" [250 points, 7 votes]

60. TAYLOR SWIFT "Mine" [250 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]
59. LCD SOUNDSYSTEM "I Can Change" [250 points, 8 votes]
58. GIL SCOTT-HERON "Me and the Devil" [254 points, 10 votes]
(TIE) 56. KE$HA "We R Who We R" [254 points, 11 votes]
(TIE) 56. NICKI MINAJ ft. EMINEM "Roman's Revenge" [254 points, 11 votes]
55. JUSTIN BIEBER "U Smile (Ambient Version)" [256 points, 9 votes, 1 first place vote]
54. DRAKE "Fireworks (Deadboy Slo Mo House Edit)" [260 points, 10 votes]
53. LADY ANTEBELLUM "Need You Now" [262 points, 11 votes]
52. BEACH HOUSE "Zebra" [266 points, 9 votes]
51. GAYNGS "The Gaudy Side of Town" [266 points, 13 votes]
50. TAIO CRUZ "Dynamite" [270 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]
(TIE) 48. KANYE WEST "All of the Lights" [270 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
(TIE) 48. ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI "Bright Lit Blue Skies" [270 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
47. TAYLOR SWIFT "Back to December" [270 points, 10 votes]
46. JANELLE MONÁE "Cold War" [272 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote]
45. NICOLAS JAAR "WOUH" [274 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
44. CARIBOU "Odessa" [278 points, 11 votes]
43. EL GUINCHO "Bombay" [280 points, 11 votes]
42. HOT CHIP "One Life Stand" [288 points, 11 votes]
41. LADY GAGA ft. BEYONCÉ "Telephone" [294 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote]

nice job filling in today bro

yeah thanks jf

awesome job Johnny Fever

forgot about Gil Scott Heron!...that was great too!

thanks everybody

think ILM is open to nonconsensus opinions but when someone (anyone, not just LJ) comes on this thread of songs that lots of people like and dismisses each song individually, with separate posts, it's a little irritating

yeah cheers JF, I wouldn't get such lenient treatment from JS! ;) good thing I'm out tomorrow...but yeah, nicely done :)

Scott-Heron, Monae and Jaar the *undisputed* discoveries of today

Five of my votes placed today, can't complain.

i think u can say once "i don't like that" and state yr case or whatever but if you're killing some song over multiple posts ppl are justified in saying stfu

good job, good list. like the variety. wish ilm could contain its dickishness when it doesn't like something but that is like one of the laws of the universe.

so someone likes non-consensus music, so what? don't get why this gets people so het up.

― normal_fantasy-unicorns (contenderizer), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 8:18 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, i feel bad abt that being my only post in a thread that i am enjoying keeping up with and sorry y'all. it was just the constant "i demand more of you people, wtf are you thinking?" tone that i was getting from dude (sorry to you too jagz) got to me for a second. anyway, good going poll and yeah diddy track is a sick start

yeah soz abt that, gotta remember this is a consensus thing...

everyone is free to comment on every track. in fact i'd like it if everyone who wanted to did. :)

ty johnny, jordan, everybody

77. DIDDY-DIRTY MONEY "Ass on the Floor" [222 points, 7 votes]
75. AZARI & III "Reckless (With Your Love) (Tensnake remix)" [228 points, 8 votes]
70. THE FIVES ft. VANYA TAYLOR "It's What You Do (Hottest By Far)" [236 points, 5 votes, 1 first place vote]
69. YUNG HUMMA ft. FLYNT FLO$$Y "Lemme Smang It" [236 points, 8 votes, 2 first place votes]
68. RICK ROSS ft. STYLES P "B.M.F. (Blowin' Money Fast)" [238 points, 12 votes]
(TIE) 64. KELIS "Acapella" [242 points, 9 votes]
58. GIL SCOTT-HERON "Me and the Devil" [254 points, 10 votes]
54. DRAKE "Fireworks (Deadboy Slo Mo House Edit)" [260 points, 10 votes]
51. GAYNGS "The Gaudy Side of Town" [266 points, 13 votes]
(TIE) 48. ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI "Bright Lit Blue Skies" [270 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
41. LADY GAGA ft. BEYONCÉ "Telephone" [294 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote]

i fuxx w these
havent heard jaar yet tho

sort of feel u don't really need to have an opinion on gaga because lots of other people have opinions and some of them are probably right, so the sum of human wisdom is not really advanced by someone who doesn't care that much about gaga feeling obliged to formulate an opinion, especially if they have to exagerrate its valency in an attempt to make it more of a talking point

applies to most other popstars of gaga level

Yeah, there's a lot of participation in this thread, but if everyone who actually voted was here to talk about their votes, we'd be up to 6,000 posts by now. xps

multiple appearances:

taylor swift (3 - fever tay)
rihanna (2 - once as lead artist + featured on "all of the lights")
cassie (2 - once as lead artist + sampled on "love cry")
alicia keys (2 - featured on "fireworks" and "all of the lights", even if uncredited here)

also, two separate artists who use $ instead of s in their names

77. DIDDY-DIRTY MONEY "Ass on the Floor" [222 points, 7 votes]
61. GAMES "Strawberry Skies" [250 points, 7 votes]
44. CARIBOU "Odessa" [278 points, 11 votes]

^added to the itunes

xp - Participation is good though! And people bringing opposing opinions to the board, as long as they don't start shouting at each other.

Oh, I agree. Re-reading my post, it sounds like I was discouraging more posting. I wasn't. I'd love if this thread had 6,000 posts right now.

don't forget drake in multiple appearances!

jk