ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2012

I hope it was Slayer doing "Oh L'Amour" and Erasure doing "Reign In Blood"

Yeah, bit of a missed opportunity for Erasure's covers album, that.

anco and ariel pink certainly come lower than keef in terms of artists i would want at my table

Going back to Miguel, we've been arguing about indie R&B for over a year and then here's this album that's almost as much classic rock as it is modern R&B showing up at the top to near universal delight. Like while lesser artists (especially from the rock side) would just awkwardly cut-and-shunt elements of the two together Miguel does it by understanding what the two genres have in common and building out from there.

::"i don't like"/picky eater joke::

I'd invite Scott Walker to my dinner party as long as he promised not to do any le pétomane shit. I'd serve pork obv

Scott Walker seems like a dude. He'd definitely be invited to my hypothetical dinner party. As long as he didn't mind just eating takeaway pizza.

Ariel Pink would be incredibly low on my dinner party guestlist, and I like the guy's music for the most part. He's a massive bellend.

lol gr8080

what's the deal w/ariel pink as a person, did i miss something egregious in '12?

this: http://thequietus.com/articles/10133-ariel-pink-beta-male-misogyny

specifically, this quote: "beta males have got it figured out so that they don't have to chase or rape their prey, so to speak"

Bisexual shaming, trans* shaming, misogyny. Even if it was playing up to a character/trolling, it's a shitty level of discourse, and he's a dick.

xps

answering my own question: a bit of research reveals that the last time any jazz made the list was 2007, when both ornette coleman & ayelet rose gottlieb placed. Doesn't seem to happen often though.

All the more impressive in 2007, when the rollout only consisted of 50 albums.

Honest question from someone who doesn't spend much time with mainstream music:

My impression is that critically acclaimed R&B stuff (i.e. stuff that placed in this poll) tends to be fairly commercially successful as well. Is that accurate?

Miguel, yes. Dawn Richard, not so much.

none of the r&b acts in the top 10 have had a uk top 40 hit

UK Top 40 blows

wow, ariel pink...

miguel has obv had huge commercial success in the US (but not on the hot 100, iirc?)
dunno if frank's had a breakout single but i gather the album has done well
same for jessie
dawn is doing her solo career with a team of 5 people and a budget of $5

Alright, everybody...let's meet back here in a little less than 11 months and do this again. Also, find me good shit to listen to/vote for, because I've apparently grown lazy.

"Adorn" hit Top 20 in America.

none of the r&b acts in the top 10 have had a uk top 40 hit

this is crackers

Jessie Ware's biggest UK single is Wildest Moments at #46. Frank's is Lost at #53. Adorn reached #176! I just find that unfathomable.

no church in the wild got to 32, but yeah it doesn't really count.

I don't think the UK counts in this case, ha.

Frank Ocean is huge though, right? What about others lower on the list?

Frank Ocean is "internet huge".

Like "Snakes On A Plane?" And Ron Paul?

he's also real world huge

Is he? I don't follow charts or sales figures, like, ever...but I had the impression he still had a modicum of undergroundness.

great results btw. Would have voted for miguel #1 and nothing else as putting my trax ballot together drained the life out of me. but felt sheepish

Jessie Ware and Frank Ocean have both had top five albums in the UK now (top 2 in Frank's case). Miguel doesn't really have much of a profile over here at all, although I did hear a car playing Kaleidoscope Dream really loudly this morning.

Frank Ocean is approaching household name status in this country for coming out if nothing else. He's properly huge in the way that I dunno The Weeknd or someone isn't.

I don't really think of Frank Ocean as an internet phenomenon at all really, just a mainstream popstar.

Miguel's sales are way better cumulatively than Ocean's.

he's real world huge as in obese like max

According to stats linked on Wikipedia Channel Orange has sold 500k+ in the US, Good Kid 675k and Kaleidoscope Dream 270k (All I Want Is You is 400k). Taylor Swift's Red has sold 3.3m. So I don't know about "huge" but, like Matt DC says, Frank seems to be culturally big in a way that goes beyond his sales.

they play frank all the time on the radio here in switzerland

I have heard the following albums at dinner parties and other social gatherings this year:

Beach House
Miguel (four times! He seems to garnering a following among p4k types)
Kendrick Lamar
Cat Power
The XX
Band of Horses
Frank Ocean
A$AP Rocky

Well, I don't mean an internet phenomenon like Rebecca Black or Psy (who has obvs crossed over at this point), but that his most vocal supporters and his platform seem more web driven than a trad label-backed star.

but it's a stretch to call Ocean a pop star

jesus why am I just hearing this miguel album now, this is AMAZING

I loved art dealer chic too so I really have no excuse. Kinda took a year off from music in 2012, there was a point when the only new albums I'd spent any time with were leonard cohen & dawn richard (good albums to play back-to-back actually, what with the religio-sexual epics of incomparable beauty)

armor on sold 30k :/

frank was on SNL this year (with John Mayer in his backing band) but so was Karmin, so

Miguel (four times! He seems to garnering a following among p4k types)

i have played miguel at a dinner party! jessie ware was the repeat dinner party soundtrack of 2012 for me though (along with the xx). crucially in all cases no one actually hates them or would object to hearing them

One reason I would attend a lex-thrown dinner party is that I could be relatively certain I would hear no Death Grips.*

(*They are okay, but not while I'm eating kthx)

all the Death Grips stuff I've heard has been terrible

I like to play the sound of animals eating other animals while I eat.

Jessie Ware goes splendidly with before-dinner martinis and Brie.

Form a band Death Cruts

xps

Death Grips dinner party would rule, as long as Death Grips wasn't actually there