ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2014

enjoying this
liking the backing echo-y pooleys

deej turned me on to this track last summer when he dragged me to this west african party at tiny club with an exquisite sound system

still sounds good on youtube but i really need to make it back to that party to hear this banger in its full glory again

forgot to vote for it

thank you emily!

xxposts

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.

I havent' really listened to radio since the 90s, and I still managed to hear those tunes all the time! They were pretty ubiquitous: you could hear them on the telly, or the DJ would play them at a club, or some friend would play them at a house party, or someone would link to the parody video of "Hips Don't Lie" on Youtube, etc.

― Tuomas, Wednesday, January 21, 2015 12:30 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yah, don't listen to the radio, no music at work, don't go to clubs/house parties. Oh and I don't have any friends, so unless something is played over some montage at the start of a sporting event chances are I weren't have heard it. My whole ballot was rap.

First time hearing 'Pooley' - works for me. Actually, really enjoying this. And then they drop a super-neat synth ascent in there, yeahhh.

"Pooley" features one of my favorite musical qualities, something I call for lack of a better term "triumphant backup chorus"

Yeah I like this one a lot.

"pooley"! not one of the afrobeats i voted for but very happy to see it here.

as far as i can tell being more than a casual radio listener just means you wind up with stockholm syndrome about unexceptional rita ora and katy perry songs. most times i listen to the radio i end up turning it off when a song i dislike comes on.

if emil.y could actually explain what she means re: "carefully-constructed version of what they believe pop music to be" re: me or anyone then maybe i won't assume she's talking bullshit

Excellent, this is rewind worthy.

Conceptually speaking, QT is catering to an art-sy, intellectual market. And I 'get it' they're not really trying to make a real 'pop' song as they are making some sort of social comment on consumerism and fame and whathaveyou. It's the uncanny valley of pop music. I mean, the artist is supposed to be a soda can ffs. As an art project I get it and think it's sort of cool. But, lets speak about the music:

Musically speaking it seems to me that people that hate modern EDM artists love this. Matt DC made the comparison to Kpop and Vengaboys and Aqua upthread and he's right. There is nothing this song has over say 'Barbie Girl' bar the vocals which personally speaking I find very grating. The song itself isn't poorly written and with less chipmunk-y vocals I would actually enjoy it. The thing that makes me raise my brow is that some people that are saying this is amazing are the same people who generally dislike whatever hyperactive pop hit is playing on the radio because it falls under some made up genre called bubblegum bass and is about a singing soda can or whatever. If you want to enjoy generic EDM that's fine by me, but stay consistent and don't pretend you enjoy this while you dislike other EDM songs that are equally well-written and get a lot of airtime on the radio.

Please don't sully K-pop by comparing that trash to it

As one of the board's biggest Aqua stans, i agree.

99% of what's posted to 2013/2014 k-pop thread sounds nothing like QT to my ears.

tbh i'm glad everyone is delving deep into my psyche to explain exactly why i like pc music because i really can't be bothered.

some people that are saying this is amazing are the same people who generally dislike whatever hyperactive pop hit is playing on the radio

Who? I mean, 'Barbie Girl' is pretty fun but it's very very different - for one thing, it's got a pretty maximal sound, whereas 'Hey QT' is completely stripped down. They don't sound anything like each other. I guess the people who keep saying "if you don't like Aqua you have no right to like QT" (which is a ridiculous thing to say anyway, people can like whatever the fuck they want without having to tick off yr bullshit criteria first) actually believe that Aqua are bad and are somehow trying to shame us into no longer liking QT? But that doesn't work because Aqua aren't bad.

Also, yeah, most K-pop sounds nothing like this either?! Do you guys actually ever listen to K-pop? You should, there's a bunch of good stuff.

Lol tim

tbf you could scroll up & see who 'most of the ppl throwing "you don't like pop" accusations' are

I agree it's prob a bogus assertion tho

http://i.imgur.com/FwbgzC5.jpg

39 D'ANGELO AND THE VANGUARD "Prayer" [320 points, 12 votes]
http://youtu.be/pQ6ADCTmaNA

http://pix.iemoji.com/sbemojix2/0803.png

k-pop barely has the same sonix and that's before you even get to the persona aspect

pc music certainly play on ideas of "cutesiness" that are pretty hackneyed, it feels like they're trying to be kawaii or something though

uncanny valley of pop

This label works for me - ties in a bit with the ironic or not fetish for "bad" CGI aesthetics in recent years if not the last 20 (including in lots of music I like). There's too much celebrating of intentionally crude digital aesthetics for me (it's cheaper and quicker tho eh).

why would anyone ever bring up how terrible HEY QT would go over on a dancefloor as an argument against it? it's called PC music for a reason smdh

the sonorous bell on "prayer" is everything

i can see at least two more d'angelo tracks placing and the album's looking good as a #1 contender at this point too

Musically speaking it seems to me that people that hate modern EDM artists love this....

* I like plenty of modern EDM
* Go fuck yourself

^^^ otm

xxxp

it feels like they're trying to be kawaii or something though

― lex pretend, Wednesday, January 21, 2015 8:14 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

Also wrong

Love that this thread is so heated over something called "Hey QT".

I honestly don't know enough k-pop to make the comparison I was paraphrasing Matt.

Musically speaking, QT falls under the same genre as Me & My, Aqua, Paradisio, Vengaboys, ATC and for us in latinamerica, Fey and Kabah. I actually like some of that music. Paradisio's Bailando and Fey's mi media naranja immediatly take me back to my childhood, I can hear the connection to QT with the difference that QT feels cynical to me, it doesn't seem to me like the artists behind them are actually enjoying themselves but rather pretending to. It feels all very self-conscious to me to be truly enjoyable.

pretty much every single time hey qt (or beautiful) have come up on shuffle while i'm at work or in the car or on the bus or something i've been thrilled to hear it and it's put me in a better mood which very few other songs from this year have done so i guess what i'm trying to say is sorry

think ppl confusing bubblegum bass with bubblegum pop

it feels like they're trying to be kawaii or something though

― lex pretend, Wednesday, January 21, 2015 8:14 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

who doesn't want to be Kawhi?

I dunno I tried to listen to it without thinking about context and once I did that I couldn't really sense anything in the music that immediately seemed cynical or self-conscious.

I'm more intrigued by what is perceived as being new/novel/interesting in it. Other than that it sounds underproduced relative to the stuff it resembles.

It doesn't bother me that people would enjoy it obv,

Yeah tbh this particular example did strike as becoming so close to the thing it was parodying that it became the thing itself and lost its ironic distance

I don't mind people enjoying it either. As I've said, without context I think it's a great song bar the vocals which are not really my thing.

i dont know why anyone likes anything but i always take them at face value in what they say, they dont need to be consistent they can do whatever they like. I didnt like the QT because it made horrible sounds, but no worse than most of the other ones here

I think its ok for people to like music for things that arent the sounds themselves too, whatever that might be

i'm not one of those people though, for me there is either a welcoming sound or there is a blaring sound. There is a valley with some trees and the occasional cabin, or there are cars and people being run over by men who dont look where they are going because they think they own everything and think their crying is more important than having peaceful and genial sounds for everybody else.

I like this D'Angelo song ok, glad that Charade will beat it tho

Lol at comparing QT to cars and people being run over.

The point I was making with those references is that liking it for the sugary synthetic rush is perfectly fine (Emily knowing your tastes as I do I don't doubt that your love for it is 100% sincere), hence the first line of my post. But the discourse around PC Music is clearly an attraction for some other people who wouldn't go out and stan for them in the same way without it, and that's the bit I'm suspicious of.

the sonorous bell on "prayer" is everything

OTM

clicked on the PC Music thread at random coz of the ASCII filigree and opened the first Youtube, which was Hey QT, and loved it, simple as that

*the first Youtube I saw, even

yeah but you have made much more grandiose claims itt about what it is doing

we all analyse after the fact

yeah but you have made much more grandiose claims itt about what it is doing

Maybe it is doing those things for him, and who can say thats wrong?

"Pooley" features one of my favorite musical qualities, something I call for lack of a better term "triumphant backup chorus"

― gr8080, Wednesday, January 21, 2015 7:58 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes^

Pooley is so great. since he also did Lapaz Toyota, maybe Guru will be our afrobeats Javiera Mena

"Prayer," I've realized, is my favorite BM song.

Pooley is such a great track! Glad to see it placed. I love the 'Autobahn'-style rise.

I'd somehow not heard Pooley before and I was initially a bit disappointed that Ball-J had apparently decided to slow down again but then those four rising chords appeared and I was totally sold.

I too want to clear that I said SOME of the people liking it don't seem consistent. Like, you have all these hipster fans of QT and PC music with so many guilty pleasures but then comes PC music and they feel like they can enjoy this and when their other hipster friends confront them about it they can say 'no man this is different, this is a satire about a soda can as a pop artist'.

Obviously noone in this forum give a fuck what other people think about their music taste. The QT conundrum doesn't apply in here.

good point about people being run over, hey qt reminds of nothing so much as helen love sharing a bumper car with crazy frog

mad xps obv

This is my first ever participation in an ILM poll and I've found it scintillating so far, silently observing the debates trickle in throughout my work day. A couple I've voted for have showed up (Owen Pallett, the hotly debated Hey QT), and a good discovery made in Shamir! Hoping for some surprise entries of abstraction and intensity in today's batch...

On PC music (because why the hell not) - is it really so detestable to warp and play with a popular medium? Great things come from the deconstruction of art! And I'm not referring to PC music per se, but rather the fertile environment it creates for pop discourse. I don't think it intends to be wholly cynical, and there's something I love about being emotionally manipulated in this way. It is pared back enough to be uncanny; generic enough to tap into universal(ish) triggers of infectiousness; abundantly positive in spite of its contemporaneous critique... So yeah, emphatically in favour. Wooo!