ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2012

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.

definition of goth = outright refusing to acknowledge one's gothdom.

Aye, to be fair I was more lolling at it being 'the gothiest', but that track's more 'angsty' than 'gothy', really.

Eric Church just outside the top 10 was by far my favorite surprise of the poll.

not that "Springsteen" is especially representative of mainstream country, but nobody hating on it even listens to that stuff anyway, do they? i've held my tongue on a LOT of stuff in this poll that is just not my scene.

That's certainly true of me but there has been stuff like Lady Antebellum that I've really, really dug. Hell, there was even a weird period of time where I liked "Before He Cheats" and my general stance on Carrie Underwood is that she should be crushed by a steamroller.

Aye, to be fair I was more lolling at it being 'the gothiest', but that track's more 'angsty' than 'gothy', really.

― emil.y, Friday, 25 January 2013 15:21 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is true. There is a fine line.

yeah LA has some good singles that can appeal to almost anybody. i just think it's awesome that any non-Taylor country record did that well in an ILM poll, seems kinda unprecedented.

if you adjusted the pitch up on "springsteen" it would sound exactly like bowling for soup

lol croup

i mean do you need to be particularly steeped in mainstream country to "get" springsteen? i'd think for a song to place that high it would hold some more universal appeal but it....does not

i've held my tongue on a LOT of stuff in this poll that is just not my scene.

Hehe, yeah I've tried to be good too, but I think it's it's kind of fun in these EOY threads to see people get up in arms about things they just don't have any frame of reference for. Something I've missed in this thread so far. Feels like people are pretty reticent to say "HEY THIS IS SO SHIT WHY ARE YOU LISTENING TO IT?". I refer to jjjusten's honest-to-a-fault commentary on the 77 board.

77 != ITR

Among the other things I learned during this poll, I learned that the "Taylor Swift dubstep song" was Trouble and that I have no idea what dubstep is because to me that sounded like a pretty normal pop song.

xpost my bad

i enjoy seeing any commentary tbh, positive and negative. even if someone doesn't like one of my personal favs at least they listened to it.

i did hold back on the trax that were so far out of my wheelhouse that it was less about me disliking it as just not remotely getting it, eg japandroids. but in general i enjoy reading any ilxors' thoughts on any of the trax. sadly there seem to have been fewer rundowns of that ilk this year so far!

i mean do you need to be particularly steeped in mainstream country to "get" springsteen? i'd think for a song to place that high it would hold some more universal appeal but it....does not

honestly "modern country" stans are mostly just addicts of guitar-based pop songwriting going where the action is, you don't have to understand "country" to understand eric church anymore than you have to understand "country" to understand bryan adams or fastball

very predictably, after finding "Ima Read" incredibly boring on first listen it has started earworming me

I still kind of wish I was listening to "If Madonna Calls" instead tho

Honestly I can't imagine anyone wants to hear what I think about most of these songs. I don't even want to hear what I have to say.

Also that is otm re: Eric Church -- part of what I don't like about it is that it's pop hamburger covered in gloppy country sauce, and that doesn't interest me.

Also I wanted Hot Cheetos and Takis to place so bad and it didn't :(

i guess, it's got a strong-ish chorus but he's not much of a singer and the way the "springsteen" line just hangs out there, not attached to anything, drives me fucking crazy

I'm listening to Eric Church now. This isn't as awful as I expected, and I find most pop-country utterly repellent. I wouldn't listen to fun, but it's at least fairly memorable, the piano motif is simple but catchy, the guy's voice isn't unpleasant at all. since I started singing in a band, I've found myself appreciating country-style inflections and harmonies a lot more.
It could have come out in 1992 for all I care, and it's pretty MOR by all accounts, but it could be played next to something like Gotye in this emerging continuum of neo-adult oriented pop that's been raising its head over the last couple of years. That said, it's nothing special - certainly not top 10.

omg who is rawhit3 on Spotify, lololol

i mean do you need to be particularly steeped in mainstream country to "get" springsteen? i'd think for a song to place that high it would hold some more universal appeal but it....does not

honestly "modern country" stans are mostly just addicts of guitar-based pop songwriting going where the action is, you don't have to understand "country" to understand eric church anymore than you have to understand "country" to understand bryan adams or fastball

― da croupier, Friday, January 25, 2013 10:36 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i wasn't suggesting at all that "Springsteen" is for real country goonz only -- the poll results clearly indicate otherwise. i'm just thinking that most of the people griping about it would never like anything by Eric Church or someone who sings like him though?

the way the "springsteen" line just hangs out there, not attached to anything, drives me fucking crazy

Ha yeah OTM, I thought the song was ok overall but this is pretty annoying.

I'd be happy to hear more modern country stuff as I don't follow it but there are probably a small handful of singles I'd like each year (the big one for me for 2012 was Eli Young Band - 'Even If It Breaks Your Heart', which I think I found from Al's blog). The top 77 is handy like that, I have the same thing with dancehall.

Also I wanted Hot Cheetos and Takis to place so bad and it didn't :(

― this customer is a jerk (La Lechera), Friday, January 25, 2013 3:38 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I am also very sad about this :(

Woke up this morning with Ima Read playing in my head, it's still there.

For Americans, hating on anything country is like hating on religion: it kinda sounds like your childhood, & YOU'RE NOT A CHILD ANYMORE.

obv "Springsteen" was my #1

I wish I'd heard Kacey Musgraves' "Merry Go Round" before nominations, only got into it over the holidays but that's a real keeper of a song

For Americans, hating on anything country is like hating on religion: it kinda sounds like your childhood, & YOU'RE NOT A CHILD ANYMORE.

lol pls confirm that you're joking

'bandz a make her dance' shouldve placed, cmon ppl

D'oh on Cheetos & Takis.

I should've voted.

my tongue's a bit in cheek but it still said the words

'bandz a make her dance' shouldve placed, cmon ppl

― johnny crunch, Friday, January 25, 2013 3:53 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i did my bit

lol ok, it's true my childhood was all chevy trucks and dirt roads and (eric) church on sunday