ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2012

Alright, but come back Monday for rekkids.

Nationality breakdown:

38
US: Miguel (3), Usher, Sky Ferreira, Chairlift, Future (2), Eric Church, Solange, Cassie, Taylor Swift(2), Frank Ocean (2), Kendrick Lamar, Angel Haze (2), Scott Walker, Zebra Katz, KW Griff, Le1f, Jeremih, Chief Keef, Kanye West, Kalenna, Death Grips, Bruno Mars, Haim (2), Santigold, Twin Shadow, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Dawn Richard (2), Ty Dolla $ign, Andres, Chromatics

16
UK: Katy B, Blawan, Saint Etienne, Jessie Ware (3), Bat For Lashes, Cheryl Cole, Spiritualized, Burial, Hot Chip, Cher Lloyd, Nick Hannam & Tom Garnett, Donkie Punch & Lorenzo, Pulp, AlunaGeorge

5
Canada Carly Rae Jepsen, Grimes (2), Purity Ring, Japandroids

3
Trinidad & Tobago: Nicki Minaj (3)

2
Sweden: Icona Pop, Neneh Cherry & The Thing
Norway: Todd Terje, Mungolian Jetset
South Korea: Psy, G-Dragon
Chile: Alex Anwandter, Javiera Mena

1
Germany: Pachango Boys
Nigeria: D'Banj
Sri Lanka: M.I.A.
Barbados: Rihanna
Spain: John Talabot
Australia: Tame Impala
Ghana: Guru

no jamaica is a shocker

no big track tho this year it seemed like

the only one that really caught my ear was "chill spot" but that seemed very ephemeral in the grand scheme

Highlight of the countdown has to be the pure hate for Icona turning into warm fuzzy love for Pachango Boys. Separate by one place.

Ah, the mysteries of poll lyfe..

ah shit i totally forgot laza morgan. should've nommed him, i would've voted for that.

Glad that we've got this out the way (I didn't submit a tracks poll this year), looking forward to the albums roll out!

"chill spot" was the jamaican one that came closest to my ballot, had various other favs by timberlee, konshens and tifa but as you say none of them felt like THE anthem

which Laza track? needless to say I am sad at dancehall shut-out. thought Ex-Man had a shot.

"gimme little"

not trying to be pointy about this but if u dont really listen to dancehall dont feel bad about not voting for it. of course there were big songs this year!

xp
lol, I nommed that and then didn't vote for it :/

Yeah, felt a little twinge coming across "Nuh Pull It Up" in the 2011 graphics imgur link, but nothing felt like a rallying point - voted for "Chill Spot" & thought "Why Yuh Mad?" might have gotten more traction thanks to the video if it'd come out earlier in the year; seems like afrobeats was the dancehall stand-in this year tbh.

ah shit i totally forgot laza morgan. should've nommed him, i would've voted for that.

― d'eejban (J0rdan S.), Thursday, January 24, 2013 5:48 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I voted for it. got 40 points just from me

it = gimme little

Yeah sorry I didn't join you. Afaict it never got an official release so we could just vote for it next year.

sounds good.

People should be mad at they selves for sleeping on "Lip Gloss"

Xxxpost:

Pachanga boys is superpitcher ÷ rebolledo so the actual nationality would be germany ÷ mexico.

wow. so i had to stop checking after sky ferreira due to life things buuuuut great results! though i will say i actually gasped when i saw miguel at number 3, i thought there was no way he wouldn't win

me too!

Thank you so much Jordan and seandelai I had to work and missed the top 15, but I was on the edge of my seat scrolling down, praying that Inspector Norse would take it. It was my single vote to place.

Amazing work with the screen caps

thanks tim

Yeah top marks on the design/rollout.

Had a great time reading this thread. I've been on ILX with different names for years, but I think this is the first tracks poll I've taken part in. Inspector Norse was my #1, so that was nice to see. Thanks to J0rdan & seandalai for your work on it.

what a great fuckin year

still catching up with everything on spotify, need to point out that the transition from "toccata" to "want u back" is all time, actually god bless spotify's lack of jessie ware

would like to see more rundowns of posters' thoughts, there were way more last year and the year before

thank you seandalai, j0rdan et al, this was lots of fun

― ogmor, Thursday, 24 January 2013 23:45 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

3
Trinidad & Tobago: Nicki Minaj (3)

I look forward to Trinidad James consolidating this success in 2013's poll.

It's nice to see results including two Korean songs, two from Chile and one each from Ghana and Nigeria not being seen as a big surprise, along with songs in Russian and Swedish picking up votes a bit lower down the table.

yh thanks seandalai and j0rdan and any other pollz crew!

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

It has been brilliantly done, as always. Huge thanks to all involved.

Yeah, great work!

As someone who listens to lol classical avant-garde most of the time and consequently doesn't follow I really liked:

70. TY DOLLA $IGN "My Cabana" [193 points, 8 votes]
68. NICKI MINAJ FT. 2 CHAINZ "Beez in the Trap" [198 points, 9 votes]
66. DAWN RICHARD "Faith" [202 points, 7 votes]
64. GURU "Lapaz Toyota" [204 points, 6 votes]
63. DONKIE PUNCH & LORENZO "Snapbacks n Tattoos" [206 points, 6 votes]
62. NICK HANNAM & TOM GARNETT FT. TOM ZANETTI "You Want Me" [214 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote]
58. ANGEL HAZE "New York" [218 points, 9 votes]
40. MIGUEL "Use Me" [260 points, 8 votes]
39. CHERYL COLE "Call My Name (Royal-T's Back to 99 Remix)" [260 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote]
37. RIHANNA "Birthday Cake (Funkystepz Miami Bass Mix)" [271 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote]
36. KALENNA "Matte Black Truck" [286 points, 9 votes, 1 first place vote]
35. KANYE WEST FT. BIG SEAN, PUSHA T & 2 CHAINZ "Mercy" [286 points, 12 votes]
21. KENDRICK LAMAR FT. GUNPLAY "Cartoon & Cereal" [361 points, 10 votes]
17. MIGUEL "Do You..." [415 points, 13 votes, 2 first place votes]
12. PACHANGA BOYS "Time" [465 points, 15 votes, 1 first place vote]
10. FUTURE "Turn on the Lights" [476 points, 16 votes]
4. KATY B FT. JESSIE WARE "Aaliyah" [866 points, 27 votes]
3. MIGUEL "Adorn" [1,386 points, 39 votes, 7 first place votes]

w/Cassie as the joker in the pack.

On this basis I would chase albs by Kaleena, Miguel, Dawn and make a comp of Funkeystepz remixes (I think I'm on my way), and certainly read more of the associated threads. Maybe that Ty mixtape but it scares me :)

The 'avant' choices didn't do much for me: the thing seems slight two days after, KFW sounds like old age stochaistic clap trap and I despise whoever was riffing off on Steve Reich as that track reminds me how clunky minimalism sounds.

Thanks to all.

Back to my bunker...

There's a free Funkystepz compilation - 'Loveshy vs Miami Bass Remixes' you can download but really you should go straight to this mix which has most of their best tunes in their rightful setting ie all piled up on top of one another. It's completely face-melting by the way.

Thanks Matt! D/l now..

I don't think anything has given me as much joy as seeing 'Lapaz Toyota' place (and get a good reaction at that), although the high finishes for 'Aaliyah', 'Oliver Twist' and 'Time' as well as Rihanna/Funkystepz cheered my heart as well.

Biggest eyerolls reserved for Chief Keef and Icona Pop.

I'm still sort of catching up with everything in this poll to comment too much. Can't say it's been necessarily reflective of my own year in listening, save for a few anomaly placements like Scott Walker and Blawan that weren't really indicative of the rest of the overall poll anyway (save Inspector Norse, which, well, it is the best track of the year innit?). I tend to use the tracks poll as a lazy-man's guide to what I missed in pop over the year, and there are always a number of things I end up discovering and liking a lot.

I like to think I've got pretty diverse taste in music and that I listen to allsorts, but the EOY tracks poll makes me realise just how ignorant I am to the general pop, r'n'b and hip-hop spheres that the rest of ILM seems to pick up on quite naturally. I'd like to change that, because there's always stuff in these polls that I end up regretting not hearing before. It's probably because I don't really go for the rolling threads so much. I don't get to listen to music at work, and what with the rolling threads largely revolving around people posting up YouTube videos, it's not ideal for me to access these while at work or on the train and when I get home the last thing I want to do is sit there watching videos on my laptop.

2012's been a weird year for me. I've found myself largely entrenched in dark, grand, epic, maybe slightly creepy music like Swans or the Blawan track. As I do a lot of my listening while walking around, I generally find it easier to discover random dance tunes I can mix together and listen to as a suite, or leftfield pop/rock albums like Bish Bosch than to follow rolling threads full of one-off tracks that I can't access so easily on 3G or at work. I prefer a break away from my computer in the evenings if I possibly can, so putting on and leaving on an album or self-made mix is ideal. Maybe I should invest in Spotify and get an app for my phone or something.

There's been some talk about a lack of a rolling rock/indie/noise/leftfield pop thread to bolster consensus in these areas, but I kind of wonder if such a thread would garner as much interest as the dance and pop ones. The nature of rock-based music is that it doesn't like to be seen as being lumped into categories, whereas dance genres thrive on this.

I'm a bit sad that no footwork picks placed, but then again I guess footwork outside of Chicago is revolving around albums and compilations more than individual tracks, and I didn't imagine people voting for something like "Welcome to the Chi" because it's really just a remix of Niggas in Paris. Here's hoping for the albums poll.

In other news, I listened to the whole of the Future album on the way up to work today. Not my usual style of music, but I quite enjoyed it, particularly the spacey production. Tony Montana and the two tracks that placed here were standouts. Probably quite naive of me to say this, but I found myself a bit perplexed by the abundance of autotune on Future's voice. I'm not against autotune, but here it's not like he's going for a wide vocal range that would benefit from the effect, neither does it seem to improve the sound of his voice, lending it a sort of signature croak that took a bit of getting used to.

Anyway, some random opinions 4 u ;-) back to work.

2012's been a weird year for me. I've found myself largely entrenched in dark, grand, epic, maybe slightly creepy music like Swans or the Blawan track

If Michael Gira is doing music anything like that Blawan track can someone please do the decent thing and shoot him thx.

Its for the good of the nation.

hehe, I wasn't comparing them, just saying if I have a goth side, it's been showing this year

dog latin this is the gothiest thing out right now

▼Arbre Mort▼ aka Willow Smith

xpost loving the fact the Blawan track has been so polarising. a lot of the reasons people have given for not liking it are reasons i like it, which i guess says something about the way perception and personal taste works.

Lex, I'll give that a listen at lunch mate.

why do they hide their bodies under mike gira?

(under michael under michael under mike gira)

A+

Thanks poll crew. Enjoyed discovering Kalenna, the Funkystepz Rihanna Remix and Lapaz Toyota and the screengrabs were spot-on as usual

Lapaz Toyota and KW Griff are my fave new ones so far.

due to lack of bobbins this list felt very Singles Jukebox-y, meaning tons of 'not bad but meh' stuff as far as i'm concerned, but all in all it was also tons of fun - thanks Jordan S for doing this, top images!

Anyone make a full spotify playlist of the list?