ILM'S TOP 77 TRACKS of 2010

I don't really think that "it's because you're suspicious of common everyday emotions" is even remotely a decent explanation for why someone might like one bit of mainstream pop and not another.

...but, trangression issues aside, the thrill of "Need You Now" comes from the sheer emotional heft of the song and the performance. Everything aligns. Like Lex, I find it incredibly moving.

I mean, Tim's very specific contrasting of Mariah with Liz Fraser doesn't actually map onto this discussion very well at all, because Liz Fraser has kind of a unique position in music and music fandom and Dorian isn't actually offering up anything as oppositional to Lady Antebellum at all.

I think the reason why people like neither Mariah Carey nor Lady Antebellum is because their music is the aural equivalent of an emetic. Puke puke puke puke puke.

That Lady Antebellum is pure late night cab ride music.

74. CRYSTAL CASTLES "Celestica" - Voted for this, I'm hardwired to love swoony electro goth with a pumping bassline.
70. THE FIVES ft. VANYA TAYLOR "It's What You Do (Hottest By Far)" - I know fuck all about uk funky, but it reminded me a bit of Kyla's Do You Mind? Love stuff like that, need to get me a mix. Nice synth thing where it takes those wonky steps down at the end of each line, I'm a sucker for that trick. Sweet vocals too.
69. YUNG HUMMA ft. FLYNT FLO$$Y "Lemme Smang It" - Gross.
61. GAMES "Strawberry Skies" - Voted for this, even though I cannot deny that it's essentially a chillwave version of Like To Get To Know You Well by Howard Jones.
58. GIL SCOTT-HERON "Me and the Devil" - Love the album, but didn't vote for this. I feel like this song is as much about the last minute as it is about the catchy shit that precedes it. Still not quite figured out what the hell it all means though.
54. DRAKE "Fireworks (Deadboy Slo Mo House Edit)" - This is great and I wish I'd heard it before. Sad and beautiful with an anxious banging heartbeat.
52. BEACH HOUSE "Zebra" - These guys stopped me from checking out Best Coast due to bandname confusion, so fuck 'em in the eye.
51. GAYNGS "The Gaudy Side of Town" - Originally thought this was some awfully sparse and tedious shit, but once I got properly tuned in, it turns out it's actually amazingly lush. Some boss playing too, though I do hate that porno sax.
42. HOT CHIP "One Life Stand" - Avoided this album cos the last one was mostly weak bollocks iirc, so I never really heard this. Did enjoy it, gotta say they're a solid (and sometimes even brilliant) singles band.
39. LIL B "The Age of Information" - Lol'ed at the portentous voice announcing 'Everything is now - on the internet!', but the rest of this was lovely.
38. KATY B "Katy on a Mission" - Why didn't I vote for this? Cos this is ace. Voted for 'Lights On' and 'Perfect Stranger' instead.
33. THESE NEW PURITANS "We Want War" - Voted for this. Will probably say more about TNP on the albums thread, but for a band that I had thought was probably just some indie nonsense, hearing this for the first time was a total revelation.
32. TENSNAKE "Coma Cat" - Voted for this, I actually dance around the kitchen to it with my kids. Fun times, but y'know sometimes it sounds so impossibly beautiful for such a simple song and it just totally stabs me in the heart.
21. JOANNA NEWSOM "Good Intentions Paving Company" - Listened to the first disc of this album a couple of times, don't remember this track particularly. Is it maybe that one long rambling one? BTW the road to hell is paved with copies of the second and third discs that no-one ever got around to listening to.

Stuff from my ballot that has shown up so far
beach house
joanna newsome
lcd
nicki minaj 'rr'
wiz khalifa

stuff i voted that I was confident would place but now that we're at the top 20 now realise won't
kingdom 'mind reader'
vampire weekend 'i think ur a contra'
sleigh bells 'tell 'em'
nicki minaj ' massive attack'
diddy-dirty money 'hate that i love you'
yelawolf 'pop tha trunk'

stuff i voted that I think will still show
arcade fire 'sprawl II'
girl unit 'wut'
kanye 'monster'

omg sleeve+wife are stealthily my musical doppelganger

think u mean dreifachgangers in this instance

http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/5096/dreifachgangers.jpg

Think "Monster" is a given.

emi.ly you could not be more RONG if you tried

still have my fingers crossed that Undertow will show up :/

Is it maybe that one long rambling one?

Description of 90% of the songs on Have One On Me.

Not that that's a bad thing....

okay, so i decided to revisit the sade track, "soldier of love", due to the insistence of some trustworthy ilxors that i'd too casually dismissed it. made sure to do so in high quality, with full attention and on decent headphones. it's pretty great. love the vibe, heavy and portentious, yet run through with grim determination and even hope. there's a (clearly intentional) spaghetti western quality to the production, from the "wild wild west" scene setting and opening horn call, to the way the morricone style guitar squiggles hang in superscope space. everything about the music is amazing, especially the pulse of doomy strings as they drive that military snare along over caverns of bass.

on the other hand, the track's greatness has little to do with sade's vocal performance, which while quite strong, can't match her past glories. i still like her voice and like what she does with it here, but she seems to have lost some of the creamy depth and flexibility that once seemed so effortless. that's to be expected, i suppose, and given those constraints, it's hard not to count "soldier of love" a triumph. it's a triumph of tone, and i still think it lacks the indelible pop hook that might make it a classic, but that aside, i'm convinced. it at least deserves a place in the "good" column.

xpost Yes, I like Tim's point vis a vis Liz Fraser and Mariah but it has nothing to do with why I find the Lady Antebellum song so boring.

Fingers also crossed for Undertow. Voted for Elephants too but I never expected that to place.

Ambient Bieber's presence on this list feels especially disappointing to me because I voted for a real Justin Bieber song that I know has no chance of placing.

― The Reverend, Wednesday, January 26, 2011 5:47 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Ambient Bieber is disappointing to me cos there were a bunch of good ambient things that came out this year that no-one gave a shit about cos they weren't basically novelty records.

― seminal fuiud (NickB), Wednesday, January 26, 2011 5:54 AM (Yesterday)

so so true. ambient bieber is zzzzzz to the max, sigur ros for people who used to like sigur ros in 2001-05 and are now poptimists, but still get a kick from a teenage pop-star gone "ambient" -- so sad that this is probably the most-heard ambient record in 2010 (can't think of anything else ambient in 2010 that would have close to 2,000,000 listeners)

Oh we're into the inane strawmanning bit of the thread right?

"baby," "one time," "somebody to love" and even the original "u smile" slay that ambient bullshit 1,000x over and back again

xp to self

That Lady Antebellum is pure late night cab ride music.

― Rejoice that you weren't eaten (chap), Thursday, January 27, 2011 7:48 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

I was not aware of what this was called or who it was by before this poll, but I heard it many times in my car & at the gym in 2010. It is some Carrie Underwood x Coldplay stone-cold calculated MOR & I want to deny its charms, but then the slide-guitar hooks kick in on the chorus & I just get played for a sucker once again.

so so true. ambient bieber is zzzzzz to the max, sigur ros for people who used to like sigur ros in 2001-05 and are now poptimists, but still get a kick from a teenage pop-star gone "ambient" -- so sad that this is probably the most-heard ambient record in 2010 (can't think of anything else ambient in 2010 that would have close to 2,000,000 listeners)

― the new mordant & zingy ilxor persona (ilxor), Thursday, 27 January 2011 15:12 (11 seconds ago)

ilxor is so slow that he doesn't need an ambient re-edit

and yeah i give u permission to use that as yr dn

hah thanks. ilxor is catching up on this thread b/c he has other things to do @ work than refresh every 2 min and try to keep up ;_;

feel that repping hard for sigur ros in 2k11 would be pretty avant-garde

Re: Lady Antebellum, I like Jody Rosen's Slate piece on them:

The group's defining quality is a kind of nebulous in-betweeness. They're not quite country, pop, or rock. They're neither soft nor hard. Their tempos are stubbornly mid-; whether exulting in a "perfect day" or lamenting a doomed romance, the emotional temperature in their songs remains mild to lukewarm. In "Need You Now" they sing, "It's a quarter after 1/ I'm a little drunk/ And I need you now"—a little drunk, not too. Aesthetically, spiritually, sonically—Lady Antebellum stand for moderation.

http://www.slate.com/id/2279588/

i'd agree that the lady antebellum album is a snooze, i guess - was really excited to listen to it but really nothing matches the title track.

would be interested to see what lady antebellum admirers or even detractors think of this song (sunny sweeney's "from a table away"), which is the AOR country ballad that really hit me hard this year, but with much more singularity in the song's perspective and in sweeney's voice. the details in the songwriting slay - the bleak resignation of it. i know xhuxk and frank kogan also love it, though i've officially given up hope of it placing. (maybe next year, like "need you now"!)

Looking through the Traxx list to see if a couple of songs I really liked on Tues morning, I drew up a hypothetical 15-song ballot of stuff I very well could've voted for. Here it is:

1. The Fall - Weather Report 2
2. Warpaint - Undertow
3. Erykah Badu - Window Seat
4. Earl Sweatshirt - EARL
5. Gorillaz - Stylo (even tho the album blows)
6. Lady Gaga - Alejandro
7. MIA - Born Free
8. Tame Impala - It's Not Meant to Be (though if Alter Ego had been nom'd, I would've put that in top 5)
9. Jerusalem & the Starbaskets - Room 8
10. The Swans - No Words/No Thoughts
11. Erykah Badu - Umm Hmm
12. Rangda - Jar of Plains
13. Salem - King Night
14. Vampire Weekend - Cousins
15. Die Antwoord - Beat Boy

keep in mind this is based on what I have heard (or would've wanted to give points to) last week--if I was doing a time-traveller ballot, based on stuff I heard since Monday, this would be a lot different...

oh look, it's my #2 song, getting 50 points

;_;

xpost But the song wouldn't work if the protagonists were stone cold sober or totally bladdered! It captures a state of being emotionally on the cusp, just about managing to hold it together, but suffering none the less. That's not the same as moderation!

if I was doing a time-traveller ballot, based on stuff I heard since Monday, this would be a lot different...

I'd be surprised if everybody didn't endorse this sentiment to some degree.

nicholas jaar, janelle monae and smang it have an outside chance of breaking into my list, i suppose

not really been blown away by anything but i am yet to check yesterday's haul

there have been a few atypical songs in this countdown, and i have voted for them all :P

but really with 7 and counting (altho probably just 7) charting i can't complain

xp Not me. I've definitely discovered some songs that I quite like, but the common factor of the songs I voted for is that they're all songs I repeatedly went back to and still like well after I first heard them. Maybe in a couple months, I'd feel comfortable calling "Lemme Smang It" one of my favorites of 2010, but it's currently too fresh for me to pass that kind of judgment.

SORRY LJ u_u

I'd feel comfortable calling "Lemme Smang It" one of my favorites of 2010, but it's currently too fresh for me to pass that kind of judgment.

― Tyler/Perry's "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" (jaymc), Thursday, January 27, 2011 9:39 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalin

bad example this one is an immediate 100% classic
otherwise i agree

I've never liked anything by the Knife before, but I keep coming back to "Colouring of Pigeons" which sounds totally different from anything I've heard by them previously. Is it because of the collaborators (who I don't recognize)? I like the percussion on this too. I mostly like the parts with the operatic vocals (which is itself a little odd considering my general non-love for operatic vocals). It's like their 80s revivalism has expanded to include NYC's downtown new music scene. Anyway, this is the only thing on the list so far that I've heard that feels like a big discovery to me, but I haven't been checking everything out. I like being able to just let the tracks play via grooveshark, incidentally, so thanks for that whoever is doing that.

VERY taken by Taylor Swift's "Mean", the first of the previously-unheards to grab me hard. The Fives should be right up my street, but I can't yet hear what makes it so special. "Lemme Smang It" is a grin-inducing hoot. Can't stand Rick Ross; never have, probably never will.

Not sure the results so far would have had any significant effect on my ballot, partly because I'd already heard most of the list before. There's a few new ones I like though, I can definitely see the Wiz Khalifa becoming a favourite.

And Lemme Smang It, I must admit...

fyi matt BMF was a huge hit here & is one of those songs that just becomes, like, *the* rap anthem, along the lines of a 'lean back' or 'in da club,' although i dont like it as much as either of those

have only made it up to #28 but here are 10 things I love about this poll so far:

44. CARIBOU "Odessa" [278 points, 11 votes] This is FANTASTIC! I know what I like about it too: reminds me of Liquid Liquid. But like an alternate-reality reformed Liquid Liquid that has never heard any MIA and is trying to reconstruct Bird Fu based on a poorly-written review of Kala.

31. EARL SWEATSHIRT "Earl" [344 points, 10 votes] I know I'm going to get ninety-nine percent killfiled for this shit, but EARL = witch-house Madvillain, and is therefore one of the coolest songs ever...

62. SWANS "No Words/No Thoughts" [248 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote] Full disclosure: I had only heard the first two minutes of this song before Monday. Have the album, just haven't gotten around to giving it a full listen. Hell, have heard of the band for like ever, but just put off by too much of the pigfuck s&m stuff they get labelled with to investigate. But this is some epic abrasiveness when and where I least expected it. Thanx ILM for forcing me to listen.

38. KATY B "Katy on a Mission" [322 points, 13 votes] Not so much this song individually, but more just introducing me to Katy B. Lex is right; the appeal for me here is following this girl through the rabbit hole and into the many different UK dance musics that I've been reading about forever...

54. DRAKE "Fireworks (Deadboy Slo Mo House Edit)" [260 points, 10 votes] Great stuff, love the swirly sped up vocals over the slowed-down beat. Great head music.

58. GIL SCOTT-HERON "Me and the Devil" [254 points, 10 votes] Definitely the type of song that you expect to take you to the closing credits on an episode of some hypothetical HBO drama (<-real genre) but still adds a great element to the countdown. Will be checking this album out.

39. LIL B "The Age of Information" [302 points, 11 votes] Wow.

34. M.I.A. "Born Free" [340 points, 13 votes] I actually think this is a p great song but I'm not going to hammer out a long-winded defense of it right now. Let's just say that MARTIN REV LORDS OVER YR PUNY EARS, MUTHERFUCKERS!

55. JUSTIN BIEBER "U Smile (Ambient Version)" [256 points, 9 votes, 1 first place vote] Anybody whose sneers at this bcz it's a 'novelty hit' is a dunderhead. The great thing about this is the fact that it proved that we never needed indie (or p4k) bcz Bieber fans were destined to create their own Sigur Ros...

29. GYPTIAN "Hold Yuh" / "Hold Yuh (Funkystepz remix)" [380 points, 12 votes] I'm def. not at all sure how intelligent I've come across on this thread, but I'm reasonably sure I can't write about why I like this song w/o sounding like an idiot. Let's just say that it's an odd choice for the ubiquitous 'song of the year' chat I've read in this thread. A song like, say, "Umbrella" or, hell, "Dynamite" is pretty obvious: they are jampacked with hooks, set off one after another like firecrackers. but "Hold Yuh" is not at all like that.* It's much more low-key, but in a way I like. The fact that this was played in clubs makes me v happy...

*I have yet to listen to the Funkystepz remix, perhaps that changes everything...?

put off by too much of the pigfuck s&m stuff they get labelled with to investigate

elaborate?

love the fake scratching in "age of information"

elaborate?

they started off as an insanely brutal, 80s-era "pigfuck" noiserock outfit and spent years lyrically exploring extreme degradation-trip S&M stuff. after wallowing in that gutter for a while, they lightened and expanded (gothified?) their sound and considered a series of kinder, gentler dungeon scenarios.

thanks! "pigfuck" is a genre, huh.

is j0rdan up yet

Xgau coined the term to describe a bunch of atonal 80s underground post-punk, post-"No Wave" bands that were preoccupied with perversion and seediness. Idk how much Swans were a part of this, but I know early Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, Butthole Surfers, and Big Black were a part of this...

(don't tell me I just turned Lex off the Swans ;_;)

+ the jesus lizard

Let's get going! I'm off out to a gig tonight so going to miss the culmination anyway, but want to catch as much as possible before I have to leave.

i think it's johnny, not j0rdan, who's at the helm today - he said noon his time but i, er, don't know what his time is.

imo the pigfuck aesthetic is most visible in certain '90s films such as Kalifornia, The Doom Generation, and Natural Born Killers

(^but I could v. well be proven wrong about that...)

i'll spare the thread a big, serious, metaphor-strewn "review" of it, but i've also had a moment of revelation with that swans track. it again required headphones and a shit ton of volume. fucking amazing, one of the best things on here, complete 180 from my initial, bored "eh." basically, i was listening to it through shitty computer speakers at low volume yesterday, so all the noise and texture got lost. all i heard was the drony build and gira moaning. and unlike most of the other unfamiliar tracks that didn't impress me on the first pass, i didn't go back to make sure.

gonna go buy the album today.

i'm surprised u haven't already heard it dude