Year-End Critics' Polls 2012

ENTER SHITARI - see what you did there.

Amazing to think those guys started out playing at the same local venue I promote in and now they're topping the Kerrang list.

I suspect the thing that's most enraging the comments box crew is the Carly Rae/Usher double whammy at the top and being angry about mainstream pop and/or R&B isn't really something that's confined to older people.

I dunno, I think any poll trying to second-guess or consciously cater to the tastes of a readership as broad as the Guardian's would just end up kind of glom-in-the-middle or fail at its stated aim anyway. Especially in a year like 2012 without any real defining narrative. That way lies modern-era Village Voice cobblers.

it's the people who don't enjoy Call Me Maybe OR Guardian commentalists i feel sorry for greatly admire

the lower rungs of that Guardian poll are infinitely more interesting than the top 10.

good to see early 90s riot grrrl band Blood Sausage bouncing back and getting K! kudos

It's always the dumbest voices which are the loudest.

― besides Sunny Real Estate (dog latin), Friday, 14 December 2012 12:39 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

http://i.imgur.com/yveQv.png

Gorblimey.

I'm trying to get my head round exactly how awful a Green Day album would have to be to only make #100 on a Kerrang! list.

xxxp on the Kerrang list ha! Wasn't me, I copied and pasted as was.

8 BLOOD SAUSAGE - FUNERAL BEACH

preferred their previous album Big Bottomed Bird

xpost

you have mistaken my facile lazy comeback w/ a 'point', rtc

hah just remembered that p much the only graun commentator i'd ever thought seemed cool turned out to be sharivari in the end

92 YOU SLUT! - MEDIUM BASTARD

it's odd to see people assuming that the guardian's EOY lists are reflective of pushing a particular musical policy rather than throwing all the contributors' semi-unpredictable taste into a hat and seeing what comes out in the wash, and also that the taste of the "guardian readership" is at all homogeneous itself

and yeah almost every guardian section gets this to an extent, the music section doesn't even get the most hatred or outrage. the only articles with pleasant comments are the really niche ones that only enthusiasts will care about in the first place

also it's not exactly pushing a mainstream pop line when only 5/20 of the top trax were top 40 hits

yeah the comments thing is a problem everywhere, really, not just the guardian. look at the number of people who just post "tony b liar" or whatever on any/every political thread.

they're not even representative of anything, i bet a huge majority of people, probably even their core audience, don't ever post a single comment, on anything, let alone on the music site. i don't have any proof of that statement except that i know they've started using community co-ordinator's to go below the line and try and make the debates more interesting and productive.

the reality is that most commenters just want to say whatever three opinions they have about something and get angry about them if at all possible, for whatever modern-day substitute for counselling or general stimulation it offers.

a greengrocer's apostrophe in there, jesus

Mmm...I wonder if Frank Ocean was a known homophobe (you know...like most of the R&B scene), would he have won???

xpost Speaking seriously - as someone who is white, middle aged, likes guitar music best, and writes about music for the Guardian – it does sometimes concern me that print coverage is given to music that most of the print readership are not going to care about for a second. For so long, print was about chasing the youth, and it seems there's still a lot of that, even though the youth have completely given up on print. I'm among the oldest of the regular music writers, and I know I'm a decade younger than the average age of a print reader. These days the people writing the music coverage are a great deal younger than most of the people reading it.

there's a bit of a problem whereby a lot of people who like non-rock music don't necessarily like reading about it.

I'm not sure how much of that older print readership overlaps with the angry comments box dudes though? I wonder how much of that print readership would even care that much if you blanketed the section with bands like Django Django or Tame Impala, who aren't going to be any great mystery to older readers.

I mean generally speaking there just aren't as many of those kinds of acts around any more, relative to 10 or 15 years ago. So you either up the amount of classical or jazz content or start doing a lot of Mojo-style heritage writing.

But given the print readership is a small proportion of the overall readership these days you'd end up with a pretty artificially skewed editorial line.

xp another problem is that they might want to read about that music but not in a national newspaper. non-rock music coverage developed in specialist mags for years, then online thru all kinds of outlets. more recently you have a situation where a national newspaper appears unrivalled (to other newspapers) in its coverage or even compared to floundering mags like NME who presumably don't get quite as much comment-hate for their lists tho perhaps still a reasonable amount (regardless of what's actually on the lists).

FACT tracks list is up:
http://www.factmag.com/2012/12/13/top-100-tracks-of-2012/

Bit of a click-fest, can spoil the surprise if you like...

FACT - The 100 best tracks of 2012

01: ANDRES ‘NEW FOR U’ (LA VIDA)
02: JULIA HOLTER ‘MARIENBAD’ (RVNG INTL.)
03: KING BRITT ‘THE CHASE’ (from CHASING RAINBOWS EP, HYPERDUB)
04: KENDRICK LAMAR FEAT. GUNPLAY ‘CARTOON AND CEREAL’ (SELF-RELEASED)
05: JESSIE WARE 'RUNNING (DISCLOSURE REMIX)' (PMR)
06: ZEBRA KATZ FEAT. NJENA REDD FOXX ‘IMA READ’ (JEFFREE’S)
07: KUEDO ‘LIVE WORK AND SLEEP IN COLLAPSING SPACE’ (LAUREL HALO REMIX) (PLANET MU)
08: ODD FUTURE ‘OLDIE’ (from THE OF TAPE VOL. 2, ODD FUTURE / SONY)
09: VATICAN SHADOW ‘CAIRO IS A HAUNTED CITY’ (from SEPTEMBER CELL EP, BED OF NAILS)
10: BLOOM ‘QUARTZ’ (GOBSTOPPER)
11: ALDEN TYRELL ‘TOUCH THE SKY’ (CLONE JACK FOR DAZE)
12: RICK ROSS FEAT. GUNPLAY, STALLEY, WALE, MEEK MILL & KENDRICK LAMAR ‘POWER CIRCLE’ (from SELF-MADE VOL. 2, MAYBACH MUSIC GROUP / WARNER)
13: FRANK OCEAN ‘THINKIN BOUT YOU’ (from CHANNEL ORANGE, ISLAND DEF JAM)
14: DARQ E FREAKER FEAT. DANNY BROWN ‘BLUEBERRY (PILLS AND COCAINE)’ (SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY)
15: GIRL UNIT ‘ENSEMBLE’ (CLUB MIX) (from CLUB REZ EP, NIGHT SLUGS)
16: JEREMIH ’777 LOVE’ (from LATE NIGHTS WITH JEREMIH, MIXTAPE)
17: KODIAK ‘SPREO SUPERBUS’ (NUMBERS)
18: CONRAD SCHNITZLER ‘ZUG’ (MAX LODERBAUER & RICARDO VILLALOBOS SORGENKIND-MIX)(from ZUG – RESHAPED AND REMODELED, M=MINIMAL)
19: PREDITAH ‘CIRCLES’ (EARTH616)
20: FUTURE ‘TURN ON THE LIGHTS’ (from PLUTO, EPIC)
21: USHER ‘CLIMAX’ (from LOOKING 4 MYSELF, RCA)
22: SILENT SERVANT ‘TEMPTATION & DESIRE’ (from NEGATIVE FASCINATION, HOSPITAL PRODUCTIONS)
23: GRIMES ‘GENESIS’ (4AD)
24: JOY ORBISON & BODDIKA ‘SWIMS’ (SWAMP81)
25: BOOKWORMS ‘AFRICAN RHYTHMS’ (L.I.E.S.)
26: JAI PAUL ‘JASMINE’ (XL)
27: OBJEKT ‘CACTUS’ (HESSLE AUDIO)
28: NAS ‘THE DON’ (ISLAND DEF JAM)
29: EVIAN CHRIST ‘MYD’ (from KINGS AND THEM, TRI ANGLE)
30: WILEY FEAT. RIKO, MANGA & FLOW DAN ‘F OFF’ (SELF-RELEASED)
31: LOGOS ‘KOWLOON’ (KEYSOUND)
32: AMBER LONDON ‘LOW MF KEY’ (from 1994 EP, SELF-RELEASED)
33: TINASHE ‘BOSS’ (RYAN HEMSWORTH REMIX) (SELF-RELEASED)
34: MYKKI BLANCO ‘WAVVY’ (from COSMIC ANGEL: THE ILLUMINATI PRINCE/SS, UNO NYC)
35: EVY JANE ‘SAYSO’ (KING DELUXE)
36: MADTEO ‘RUGRATS DON’T TECHNO FOR AN ANSWER’ (from NOI NO, SAHKO)
37: LE1F ‘WUT’ (from DARK YORK, GREEDHEAD ENTERTAINMENT / CAMP & STREET)
38: BLAWAN ‘WHY THEY HIDE THEIR BODIES UNDER MY GARAGE?’ (HINGE FINGER)
39: MELÉ ‘GOLD CASIO’ (from VANELE VOL.1, MIXTAPE)
40: AVA LUNA ‘ICE LEVEL’ (from ICE LEVEL, INFINITE BEST)
41: MIGUEL ‘ADORN’ (RCA)
42: HOW TO DRESS WELL ‘& IT WAS U’ (from TOTAL LOSS, WEIRD WORLD)
43: M.I.A. ‘BAD GIRLS’ (INTERSCOPE)
44: TNGHT ‘HIGHER GROUND’ (WARP / LUCKYME)
45: A$AP MOB ‘BANGING ON WAXX’ (from LORD$ NEVER WORRY, MIXTAPE)
46: CASSIE feat. YOUNG JEEZY ‘BALCONY’ (BAD BOY / INTERSCOPE)
47: S-TYPE ‘BILLBOARD’ (from BILLBOARD EP, LUCKYME)
48: SCHOOLBOY Q feat. A$AP ROCKY ‘HANDS ON THE WHEEL’ (from HABITS AND CONTRADICTIONS, TOP DAWG ENTERTAINMENT)
49: BENEATH ‘STILL HURTS’ (from NO SYMBOLS 002, NO SYMBOLS)
50: GEEEMAN ‘BANG’T’ (CLONE JACK FOR DAZE)
51: MIKEQ feat. JAY KARAN ‘LET IT ALL OUT 2012’ (from LET IT ALL OUT EP, FADE TO MIND)
52: TESSELA ‘D JANE’ (PUNCH DRUNK)
53: BUSTA RHYMES feat. CHRIS BROWN, MISSY ELLIOTT & LIL WAYNE ‘WHY STOP NOW’ (REMIX) (CONGLOMERATE / UNIVERSAL)
54: BAAUER ‘HARLEM SHAKE’ (JEFFREE’S)
55: FUNKINEVEN & FATIMA ‘PHONELINE’ (EGLO)
56: JUICY J feat. LIL WAYNE & 2 CHAINZ ‘BANDZ A MAKE HER DANCE’ (TAYLOR GANG / KEMOSABE / COLUMBIA)
57: CHROMATICS ‘BACK FROM THE GRAVE’ (from KILL FOR LOVE, ITALIANS DO IT BETTER)
58: LUKID ‘USSR’ (from LONELY AT THE TOP, WERK DISCS)
59: ANGEL HAZE ‘NEW YORK’ (from RESERVATIONS, MIXTAPE)
60: ACTION BRONSON feat. RIFF RAFF ‘BIRD ON A WIRE’ (SURF SCHOOL)
61: MALA ‘STAND AGAINST WAR’ (DMZ)
62: CHAMPION ‘CRYSTAL METH’ (BUTTERZ)
63: SKY FERREIRA ‘EVERYTHING IS EMBARASSING’ (CAPITOL)
64: MAIN ATTRAKIONZ feat. DAVINCI ‘DO IT FOR THE BAY’ (from BOSSALINIS & FOOLIYONES, YOUNG ONE)
65: BOBBY WOMACK ‘PLEASE FORGIVE MY HEART’ (FUNK VERSION) (XL)
66: KOWTON ‘DES BISOUS’ (PALE FIRE)
67: KCAT ‘BROKEN’ (MIKE DELINQUENT RADIO EDIT) (MINDSET DANCE)
68: BANDSHELL ‘DUST MARCH’ (HESSLE AUDIO)
69: GUNPLAY feat. TRIPLE CS ‘FUCK SHIT IN MY LIFE’ (from BOGOTA RICH: THE PREQUEL, MIXTAPE)
70: BLACKSMIF ‘…AND THE SUN ROSE OUT’ (SYNCHRONICITY)
71: JOHN MAUS ‘NO TITLE (MOLLY)‘ (from A COLLECTION OF RARITIES AND PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED MATERIAL, RIBBON)
72: ALUNAGEORGE ‘JUST A TOUCH’ (from YOU KNOW YOU LIKE IT, TRI ANGLE)
73: DVA feat. NATALIE MADDIX ‘EYE KNOW’ (from PRETTY UGLY, HYPERDUB)
74: DISCLOSURE ‘BOILING’ (EL-B REMIX) (SELF-RELEASED)
75: THROWING SNOW ‘CLAMOR’ (from CLAMOR EP, SNOWFALL)
76: CHIEF KEEF feat. LIL REESE ‘I DON’T LIKE’ (from BACK FROM THE DEAD, MIXTAPE)
77: BONDAX ‘BABY I GOT THAT’ (JUST US / RELENTLESS)
78: KANYE WEST feat. BIG SEAN, PUSHA T AND 2 CHAINZ ‘MERCY’ (from CRUEL SUMMER, G.O.O.D. MUSIC / DEF JAM)
79: CONTAINER ‘PARALYZED’ (from LP, SPECTRUM SPOOLS)
80: SPACEGHOSTPURRP ‘MYSTICAL MAZE’ (from GOD OF BLACK, MIXTAPE)
81: ANDY STOTT ‘LUXURY PROBLEMS’ (from LUXURY PROBLEMS, MODERN LOVE)
82: KITTY PRYDE ‘OKAY CUPID’ (SELF-RELEASED)
83: TRIM ‘LORD OF LORDS’ (from BANDOOLOU, FREE MIXTAPE)
84: DEAN BLUNT & INGA COPELAND ‘9’ (from BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL, HYPERDUB)
85: JULIO BASHMORE ‘AU SEVE’ (BROADWALK)
86: DJ Q ‘ALL JUNGLIST’ (UNKNOWN TO THE UNKNOWN)
87: KEITH FULLERTON WHITMAN ‘ISSUE GENERATOR (FOR ELIANE RADIGUE)’ (from GENERATORS, EDITIONS MEGO)
88: GRASS WIDOW ‘GOLDILOCKS ZONE’ (from INTERNAL LOGIC, HLR)
89: SCOTT WALKER ‘SEE YOU DON’T BUMP HIS HEAD’ (from BISH BOSCH, 4AD)
90: HOLLY HERNDON ‘BREATHE’ (from MOVEMENT, RVNG INTL.)
91: SUPREME CUTS & HALEEK MAUL feat. DENIRO FARRAR ‘THE DUMMY’ (from CHROME LIPS, MISHKA)
92: TRENDS ‘GREEN FOREST’ (FREE DOWNLOAD)
93: JUSTIN MARTIN ‘DON’T GO’ (DUSKY REMIX) (from GHETTOS & GARDENS REMIXES VOL.1, DIRTYBIRD)
94: RANDOMER ‘GET YOURSELF TOGETHER’ (HEMLOCK)
95: 5KINANDBONE5 ‘RESET’ (UNKNOWN TO THE UNKNOWN)
96: KAREN GWYER ‘NO MOONDOGGIES FOR THREE WEEKS’ (from I’VE BEEN YOU TWICE, KALEIDOSCOPE)
97: RIHANNA feat. FUTURE ‘LOVEEEEEEE SONG’ (from UNAPOLOGETIC, DEF JAM)
98: WBEEZA ‘BILLY GREEN IS DED’ (THIRD EAR)
99: MO KOLOURS ‘RIDDA MOUNTAIN’ (from EP 2: BANANA WINE, ONE-HANDED MUSIC)
100: JESSIE WARE ’110%’ (PMR / ISLAND)

no carly rae #OUTRAGE

whats the king britt record like anyone? (cant play at work)

54: BAAUER ‘HARLEM SHAKE’ (JEFFREE’S)
55: FUNKINEVEN & FATIMA ‘PHONELINE’ (EGLO)
67: KCAT ‘BROKEN’ (MIKE DELINQUENT RADIO EDIT) (MINDSET DANCE)
86: DJ Q ‘ALL JUNGLIST’ (UNKNOWN TO THE UNKNOWN)

^ these were all new to me but I liked them quite a lot on first listen

I like Andres but i can't imagine being that enthusiastic about him

overplayed record but no surprise as a no 1 result

Funkineven is consistently great, more ppl should know about him

I don't think I've knowingly heard that Andres record.

ya me either

what an ugly person list

I'm more rolling my eyes at voting a Julia Holter album track at #2 and I actually like that album.

i don't think i've heard a quarter of those tracks TBH... Lists like that make me wonder what I did listen to in 2012.

dont know most of the stuff in most of the lists maybe you just played stuff you were into and didnt worry about it too much

8 BLOOD SAUSAGE - FUNERAL BEACH

I'm assuming this isn't the '90s band. When oh when will people learn to check their band name before releasing records?

i assumed it was an ILX joek.

Oh, ha, fair enough.

i dunno though

xpost They may be only a tiny fraction of our readership, the older readers. But they are, literally, the only ones who give us money.

38: BLAWAN ‘WHY THEY HIDE THEIR BODIES UNDER MY GARAGE?’ (HINGE FINGER)

okay this is awesome

^^^^^^^^

I seem to remember Dog Latin raving about that earlier in the year?

lol this is also retroactively getting me into "Getting Me Down"

He's got a style and he's not afraid to use it. I like that style. Getting Me Down and Bodies are two sides of the same light/dark coin

the rap picks on fact are pretty good

Power Circle's not great though is it

xp Wow, never heard of Enter Shitari. Kerrang may be good for laughs, but there's some great stuff sprinkled in that's mostly neglected elsewhere -- Orange Goblin, Black Moth, Saint Vitus, Alcest. I can't believe this is the first list with Alcest! I had no idea Therapy was still around.

i think it's kinda underrated xp

87: KEITH FULLERTON WHITMAN ‘ISSUE GENERATOR (FOR ELIANE RADIGUE)’ (from GENERATORS, EDITIONS MEGO)

Very happy that someone besides me likes this!