ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2012

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?

There's a collaborative one near the top.

http://open.spotify.com/user/awesomewells/playlist/0MVP8scsWPfbXQ4ji7RoUI
http://open.spotify.com/user/awesomewells/playlist/0MVP8scsWPfbXQ4ji7RoUI
http://open.spotify.com/user/awesomewells/playlist/0MVP8scsWPfbXQ4ji7RoUI
http://open.spotify.com/user/awesomewells/playlist/0MVP8scsWPfbXQ4ji7RoUI

Morning-after thoughts: well done ILM! Miguel/CRJ/Terje definitely the biggest event songs of the year (though not necessarily my favourites), they deserved to be 1-2-3 in some order. "Inspector Norse" was in the lead from the third ballot and was never caught. Miguel clearly the Beyonce of 2012, getting three in the top 40 but missing the top spot.

Terje has been my go-to soundtrack for trudging through the snow this week, definitely a good time to feel like a bouncy Norwegian. Wish I'd had the opportunity to hear it out somewhere.

My #1 (KFW) and #3 (Cherry Thing) placed, as well as five others, making it a good year for me; in 2011 none of my top four tracks got a single vote from anyone else iirc. Favourite new discoveries were "Lapaz Toyota", "Ima Read" and "Time". Overall the results did feel a bit different this year but I don't know if there's an easy explanation for that. If you view ILM as a collection of overlapping voting blocs, then small shifts in bloc consensus and turnout can have dramatic effects. Was it last year that half the goon crew forgot to vote? If there had been maybe two more rabid K-Pop fans voting, they could have flooded the first half of the rollout. Dilettante crew did suffer from the demise of Outloud as a way of building consensus (Plug.dj never really took off for some reason).

yeah, i miss outloud.fm. found out about so much stuff via that, and it worked better than a rolling alt-music thread.

lol @ lex thinking that Willow Smith track is gothy.

it's pretty morbid stuff for the 12 year old daughter of will smith though

Good job on the top 20 finish for Blawan.

Lol @ goth boundary police.

Lol @ dance music boundary fascists lolling @ goth boundary policing.

well isn't this fun

lol @ dog latin having fun

I suppose the difference is that every genre has its gothy end (apparently even tween-pop) and as Doglatin says this is pretty gothy for a 12-year old.

The delight of the EOY thread is seeing everyone come out of the genre based threads with a solid year or arguing discourse blah behind and laying out the issues in a thread where many of the participants don't give a crap when x awful track from said genre makes it.

Genre fascism => caring to a ridic degree => entertaining and a good thing generally.

sucks i had to miss all of yesterday but it was fun to read up on (and i've got a couple new things to check out from it). great work as always by our polling team.

11. ERIC CHURCH "Springsteen"

SERIOULSY???

haha, i'm gonna have to check out this springsteen track.

Don't do it, dl. It isn't worth it. Save yourself.

^^^ otm

I always thought goth had the most flexible boundaries of any genre anyway i.e. any song can be gothy if the person performing it is dressed gothily.