ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2014

I don't hear what's so special about this song that the voters picked it over the other 50 similar sounding songs this year.

I think in Alvvays' defence, while the melodies are very basic, the execution has some power

I also think there's a discussion to be had concerning the almost 100% crossover rate of those boosting (and those violently repulsed by) Hey QT and Shamir. Are both songs indie disguised as pop? Are they both far too inflected with a kiddish sense of avant-garde to succeed in some minds as Serious Pop? Can fucking around be serious - does seriousness matter? Why are so many people personally affronted by music that fucks around? So many questions!

I will add that everyone who likes both songs almost certainly does so because they find them catchy as fuck (see Sund4r thread! Welcome, friend!) and not because they're going out of their way to be wacky - but what sort of catchy is it?

Shout-out to dayo as well - I posted on the AM! thread when the album first came out! It feels at once like a big statement and a comforting blanket.

Sund4r upthread, even

I listen to one Javiera Mena track every January and I'm always happy at having done so, was loving this one in a kind of Santa Etiena way until the switch up right near the end and man that was a joyous moment.

Crying while driving a car at night, crying with $50 bills around the table, crying at the beach, crying at the top of Sears Tower, crying while smoking a cigarette with a tie loosened

crying at the anomie that success brings as it removes me from my peers and into a world where everyone seems fake and the modern world is confusing but i dont know how to admit to it, im not sure if im sad if im autotuned its not really me its this other sad me that lives inside, there are two me's the successful one and the one that only shows emotion in my car at 4am and its raining you'll end up running someone over soon if you drive like that

― saer, Wednesday, January 21, 2015 7:21 AM (2 hours ago)

Booming posts.

The Shamir track and Hey QT aren't remotely the same thing, the Shamir track is sincere party music in a way that's annoying if you don't like that sort of thing, Hey QT is all dead-eyed cynicism and faux-conceptual distance. Katy Perry is all dead-eyed cynicism as well but but of a different kind.

Crying while driving a car at night, crying with $50 bills around the table, crying at the beach, crying at the top of Sears Tower, crying while smoking a cigarette with a tie loosened

crying at the anomie that success brings as it removes me from my peers and into a world where everyone seems fake and the modern world is confusing but i dont know how to admit to it, im not sure if im sad if im autotuned its not really me its this other sad me that lives inside, there are two me's the successful one and the one that only shows emotion in my car at 4am and its raining you'll end up running someone over soon if you drive like that

― saer, Wednesday, January 21, 2015 7:21 AM (2 hours ago)

Booming posts.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, January 21, 2015 9:52 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes

(Basically I'm down with people actually liking Hey QT but unless people are also stanning for Aqua/The Vengaboys/some super hyperactive K-pop then I'm going to assume it's the arched eyebrow that's actually the main appeal and that the "hey it works as pop!" is secondary)

Can fucking around be serious - does seriousness matter?

Yes but it depends what seriousness really means.

I'm in favour of playfulness in records, but what does that mean? Well I guess it means whatever I want it to mean, which isnt necessarily helpful - deftness of touch? light-footed? something like that

But a big element of playfulness is surprise, either when a track does something playful or silly when its not expected - or in a mix, a transition from a deep record into something light-footed which you would never have thought to try yourself, but makes perfect sense

Its like going for a walk in a deciduous forest, and enjoying a genial atmosphere with a bucolic vibe and then turning a corner and well will you look at that funny little cabin, how on earth did that get there! its not serious at all, far from it, but it has added to the experience and hats off to whoever put it there, great job!

(im not talking about any of the records on this thread. they are more like receiving bad news in the post)

i do like that rita ora song, though it's probably about as corny as it is catchy. it does feel a bit machine-produced in a daytime-tv pixie lottish way, but also it's like someone has snuck back in after-hours to add lots of extra little features to the generic build: that momentary catch in the chorus that i think cad commented on, the guitar player that sounds like they were supposed to be at the steve malkmus session next door instead, murakami's wind-up bird putting in an appearance on the verses, even the objectively terrible 'whoops!' all over the place... i like all these things i think

^lol xp

DC, you're wrong, and you join a significant majority of those posting in this thread who are also wrong. Shamir and Hey QT are both fucking around in the service of fun. You are not required to join in.

I could argue that there's far more cynicism in writing a safe, radio-friendly hit guaranteed to boost label revenues and score millions of Youtube hits, but this thread would just turn ugly, so I won't.

NickB got Hey QT right upthread - it's a catchy, slyly-composed displacement of the pop sound into an expressly artificial realm - kettles serenading staplers or whatever - but also an intensification of certain aspects of that sound. If this comes off as overly academic, or cynical, or dead-eyed, then you're just not engaging, and good luck to you.

Barbie Girl is a classic, obv. Going To Ibiza is moronic horseshit with no kitsch value at all. Loads of k-pop is great. Marina & The Diamonds won't make this poll because her music is too ambiguous. Everyone who likes Hey QT likes pop, myself included. There is little accounting for taste, unless we all analyse our formative (y)ears. Leave PC Music alone!

of course the surprise can only be part of it, it can only surprise us the first time, but we remember the surprise, and then later on well you know that cabin is still there, but when you go on the walk it doesnt matter, you turn the corner and look, theres that cabin again! and this particular walk, how did it ever not have a cabin there, its so obvious now that there needs to be a cabin, and the surprise is now an old friend not an irritating show off, because it was judge just right, so another element of playfulness has to be restraint. dont build a funfair, just build a funny little cabin and tuck it away somewhere

How is "Hey QT" catchy, sly-composed or a displacement of the pop sound into an expressly artificial realm or indeed an intensification of certain aspects of any sound in a world where happy hardcore exists?

I mean, go ahead and like it, but why make grand claims for it which are patently hollow?

I like the use of the word 'composed' here, I feel reassured that this music is indeed in the lineage of Beethoven, Brahms and Xenakis.

My main gripe with 'Hey QT' is that I just don't think it's a very good pop song - it's got one hook, and it's an incredibly annoying one. The conceptual element to PC Music doesn't really bother me but it isn't particularly interesting either.

None of mine have placed yet although I did vote for different Terje & Katy B tracks. Not expecting any of my non-hive mind tracks to make it. Was hoping Vesuvio Solo or Roisin Murphy might have sneaked in.

Also voted for Style for what it's worth.

I think yesterday's results were good on the whole though - I voted for Javiera Mena and the False Indie stuff in the 50s. The D'Angelo and Aphex tracks are good too but they definitely feel like part of their respective albums rather than great standalone songs.

Best discoveries of the countdown so far: Ninos du Brasil and Holly Herndon.

"On the Regular" = clearly made for maximum tumblr impact. Shamir's a talented kid with much better songs imo - voted for "If it wasn't true" myself, and I loved "I know it's a good thing" even before I knew the 30-something female vocalist I was hearing was in fact a gay teenager from Vegas. He has a lovely countertenor and is best as a male diva house vocalist than he is as a second rate Azealia. Don't really know what he has to do with Hey QT though, totally different approaches to pop.

Anyway, really not feeling this list much at all - most of these I had heard before but didn't vote for. Of the ones I hadn't, my favourites so far are Ninos Du Brasil and Shakira. The Rita Ora track is surprisingly not bad but wouldn't know it was her if no one told me - she has pretty much no personality at all as a performer. No idea what an Alvvays is, but couldn't get past the first minute of it. Vaguely wondering whether Twigs' video for "Pendulum" was a secret FU to all the twilight fans who wanted RPattz to play the lead in 50 shades.

To flip it around: why did, say, the poptimist crew fall so hard for Scooter's "The Logical Song"?

And I suspect part of it is that it achieves many of the things that imago claims for "Hey QT" without explicitly making those claims for itself, so the realisation - this this is a really fucking strange, intense, transportive record - strikes you as if from out of leftfield, an unlooked for gift, what Frank Kogan would call a "free lunch".

Whereas "Hey QT" feels like the opposite, the embodiment of enthusiasm gap: I find myself looking for that objet petit a which imago et al seem to discern and just getting frustrated that it doesn't emerge, like it's a picture that looks like a magic eye picture and presents itself as a magic eye picture but turns out not to be one.

Minipops was ranking fairly high in DJ charts throughout the last few months of the year, I'm kind of curious as to the extent to which it appeared on actual dancefloors (and how it went down).

Hey QT isn't gonna get anyone into PC Music who wasn't already tbh. It got votes bcs it would e felt weird to not have PCM represented this year and it was arguably the most visible song to emerge from their stables.

Wish people would have voted for a good example then: at least I can see what is both interesting and fun about, say, "Bipp".

Well, I voted for 2 GFOTY tunes higher in my ballot *shrug emoji*

Hey QT just got me looking up platnum and old bassline pop hits.

Saer in this thread you remind me of one of those celebs who goes into I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here or Big Brother or whatever and everyone's like "oh no not them!" But then over the course of the series their character comes out and they end up winning the whole thing.

^lol otm

Trying just to lurk and enjoy this thread, but christ, enough with the "Other people like this because _______, therefore it's bad" - hugely reductive, very patronising. You don't like it, say why, that's enough, fucks sake.

Apparently I had no idea what Shakira sounded like although surely I must have heard bits of her World Cup song multiple times, still I opened 'Empire' in another tab while reading this thread and figured the first 15 seconds was some kind of advert for a new Alanis Morissette album or something until it went on for too long and I clicked back over. Really liked it.

As much I loved Katy's early UK funky singles and her first album I found it impossible to care about anything she did this year.

― The Reverend, Tuesday, January 20, 2015 8:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Same here.

Starting to wonder if Los Awesome or Collard Greens is going to place.

― xelab, Tuesday, January 20, 2015 9:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Gave some unweighted points to Los Awesome.

Cabin in the woods image may be saer's best work yet

I can't imagine how anyone could've avoided Shakira altogether? You've never heard "Hips Don't Lie"? Or "Whenever, Wherever"?

xpost

LJ what do you think of hot fruit? http://youtu.be/9HAEqvP_Cgw can we talk about this video (Hot Fruit's "Falling off the Grid")

Waaaaaaaaaah sooooo great

Shit, I forgot about Hot Fruit. Wonder what they're up to these days?

Didn't they place that year?

63

Still going, the last thing I saw was a spacey Italo disco type live jsm, pretty fun.

*jam

Most of the people throwing around the "you don't really like pop" accusations don't really like actual pop music either, they like their carefully-constructed version of what they believe pop music to be and nothing else.

I still lack the cynicism to enjoy this with a straight face.

Not sure why you want to enjoy something with a straight face, tbh. I find enjoying things while smiling and laughing is much more pleasurable.

I can't imagine how anyone could've avoided Shakira altogether? You've never heard "Hips Don't Lie"? Or "Whenever, Wherever"?

― Tuomas,

if there's anything we've learned in a decade, it's that there are people who don't listen to the radio for some reason.

LJ what do you think of hot fruit? http://youtu.be/9HAEqvP_Cgw can we talk about this video (Hot Fruit's "Falling off the Grid")

― 龜, Wednesday, January 21, 2015 12:02 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

reader, I voted for them

I dont even have a radio

i'm glad that hot fruit made a good jam

a happy ending all round imo

reader, I voted for them

― telling like hot takes (imago), Wednesday, January 21, 2015 7:18 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Got it *closes book*

Most of the people throwing around the "you don't really like pop" accusations don't really like actual pop music either, they like their carefully-constructed version of what they believe pop music to be and nothing else.

who do you even mean apart from lex

Yes, you know what this thread really needs is me listing a bunch of people who I think are pretentious assholes. That'll help us all out. Great plan, Tim.

Not sure why you want to enjoy something with a straight face, tbh. I find enjoying things while smiling and laughing is much more pleasurable.

― emil.y, Wednesday, January 21, 2015 12:16 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^righteous

as to the first part of emil.y's post, I could be coaxed into joining the rumble ;)