ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2014

A huge thank you to gr8080 for the rollout and the effort that went into the graphics. And also to everyone else that was involved in the poll. Looking through the results justifies the reason I enter this poll. It's surely the only place where Becky G, DeJ Loaf, Hodgson and and Kira Isabella can come within 7 places of each other.

As rob mentioned up thread, it is disappointing not to see any dancehall again this year, although, as we discussed on the thread, it was always extremely unlikely given the lack of contributors and consensus. The more disappointing was the lack of R&B which seems to have a bigger constituency and had a strong year in terms of quality. Although Miguel releasing his E.P. earlier would of surely increased the numbers.

P.S. I was the first place voter for Tinashe.

P.P.S. to Matt D.C.
Any prize would be greatly appreciated.

i didn't realize Vic Mensa's song charted all over Europe...never even really heard of it until the list. i just remember when he released a mixtape and what little i heard of it was not interesting at all so i kinda tuned him out.

for the most part the biggest, most media-saturating mainstream pop music DOESN'T place or even come close to it here -- we have minor successes by relative no-names like becky g doing far better than "all about that bass" and "happy". occasionally it all lines up and we have the whole forum stanning for "call me maybe" but more often we end up snubbing the biggest hits like e.g. "rolling in the deep" and "thrift shop". meanwhile the most hyped mainstream indie songs (#1 placers on p4k, p&j etc.) are nearly without exception guaranteed a placement here even when it remains an utter mystery who here is actually voting for it.

― dyl, Friday, January 23, 2015 1:47 PM (2 hours ago)

This is self-flattering to some degree. Pitchfork's #1 this year was "Seasons", which came it at #6 here, no big difference. "Tuesday" was their #2 and "Two Weeks" their #3. Along with those, the upper half of their list includes tracks from ILM favorites Tinashe, Young Thug, Nicki Minaj, Todd Terje, QT, Shamir, Future, Vic Mensa, Bobby Shmurda, Charli XCX, Aphex Twin and Taylor Swift. These may or may not be the biggest pop hits in the land, but they're all among the moment's consensus classics, tracks and artists that dedicated followers of pop culture & criticism have been steered toward throughout the year by a series of tubes. Caribou & War on Drugs tracks did come in much higher on the Pitchfork list than ours, but that hardly suggests that they're questionably sourced interlopers carrying an alien indie taint (yum). Overall, I see much more commonality between the ILM and Pitchfork lists than radical divergence, and that's hardly limited to card-carrying indie.

The Pitchfork list leans more indie, overall, no argument there. It includes fewer left-field choices, though it's not entirely devoid of interest. For instance, I'd have liked to see Swans and Grouper show up here, though I can't really complain as I didn't vote...

I never got why ilx didn't like rolling in the deep, great single

we did we just like 77 songs more

OTM here too. Afaict, "Blank Space" and "Rather Be" were the only songs in the top 10 that went top 40 in Canada. I hear pop radio all the time and work with kids part-time and have never heard of most of these things.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Friday, January 23, 2015 1:40 PM Bookmark

"2 On", "No Flex Zone", and "Lifestyle" all reached the top 40 in the US.

My friend came round and we drank beer and danced around to all the hip hop tracks in this thread. I totally get No Flex Zone now.

to beer

it knows better

forks just sent me some more breaking news about Bobby Shmurda

http://nahadaily.com/celebrity-news/shmoney-dancing-with-nypd/

http://nahadaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/cops2.jpg

L to R - al, me, jord

j0rdan's gonna be so pissed that you made me gyllenhaal

man i am bummed that i never voted in this.

This is self-flattering to some degree. Pitchfork's #1 this year was "Seasons", which came it at #6 here, no big difference. "Tuesday" was their #2 and "Two Weeks" their #3. Along with those, the upper half of their list includes tracks from ILM favorites Tinashe, Young Thug, Nicki Minaj, Todd Terje, QT, Shamir, Future, Vic Mensa, Bobby Shmurda, Charli XCX, Aphex Twin and Taylor Swift. These may or may not be the biggest pop hits in the land, but they're all among the moment's consensus classics, tracks and artists that dedicated followers of pop culture & criticism have been steered toward throughout the year by a series of tubes. Caribou & War on Drugs tracks did come in much higher on the Pitchfork list than ours, but that hardly suggests that they're questionably sourced interlopers carrying an alien indie taint (yum). Overall, I see much more commonality between the ILM and Pitchfork lists than radical divergence, and that's hardly limited to card-carrying indie.

The Pitchfork list leans more indie, overall, no argument there. It includes fewer left-field choices, though it's not entirely devoid of interest. For instance, I'd have liked to see Swans and Grouper show up here, though I can't really complain as I didn't vote...

― deliberately clunky, needlessly arty, (contenderizer), Friday, January 23, 2015 4:57 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree with all this! i may have miscommunicated my point earlier b/c i'm not actually sure what if anything this contradicts that i said earlier

Take a look at the 2010 EOY tracks list which showcases both the typical picks (Diddy/Big Boi/Badu/Dream/Waka) of the v strong poptimist/goon/bobbins consensus that hangs out here AND a bunch of albums tracks that seem culled from theQuietus EOY list (Swans/Gayngs/These New Puritans, along w Mark McGuire, the Knife, Bieber x 3000). Ppl kvetch about P4k around here but the truth is this year it rallied itself around a Letterman performance and an album of avant-80s MOR. There's nothing wrong with ILX as a whole deciding that this was not where the zeitgeist was.

I never got why ilx didn't like rolling in the deep, great single

― Wu-Tang Clannad (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 23, 2015 8:23 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it is kinda funny that this was one of the more dramatic instances where P&J/everybody else zigged and ILM zagged. maybe it being inescapable for a whole year before the EOY poll hurt it but shit, even i voted for it.

it seems like ilm hasn't ever been interested in adele, which is probably more of a death knell than vocal dislike. and "rolling in the deep" is a very 7/10 song that doesn't quite make people's ballots. overwhelming rejection of "fancy" was probably more notable this year.

"Fancy" not placing was not a surprise at all

fancy that

if Charli hadn't had a solo hit, "Fancy" might've gotten a good number of grudging votes on here and P&J (with "JUST THE CHARLI PARTS, NOT THE IGGY PARTS" write-in notes galore), but once she did that ensured that "Fancy" would have minimal presence on year-end lists.

personally, i think becky g is by far the weirdest artist to have shown up

― lex pretend, Friday, January 23, 2015 8:57 AM (Yesterday)

how so? i don't know anything about her, but the song struck me as one of the least formally adventurous of the rollout (not a criticism).

if Charli hadn't had a solo hit, "Fancy" might've gotten a good number of grudging votes on here and P&J (with "JUST THE CHARLI PARTS, NOT THE IGGY PARTS" write-in notes galore), but once she did that ensured that "Fancy" would have minimal presence on year-end lists.

always found these qualifications slightly weird. ranking "fancy"s component parts

fake-mustard beat >>>>>>>> chutzpah of "first things first, i'm the realest" > charli's middle 8 > rest of iggy's rapping >>>>>> lurching chorus cut-and-pasted in from a completely different song

I voted for fancy for JUST THE CHARLI PARTS, NOT THE IGGY PARTS fwiw

I can't remember the Iggy parts at all but we sing the chorus around the house all the time in a BLODD SAWSIGE accent

Who were the biggest victims of vote splitting ie several tracks nommed and none placing?

all this hand-wringing about indie is funny, except for when it sounds dangerously close to 'People fought and died so our generation could listen to something better.' (I'll note too this board had a not-so-long-ago infatuation with Radiohead, from perusing the super Pitchfork-y 2000-2004 albums list. It's ok. I hate all my ex's too.)

As the #1 vote for Spoon, I'll chime in with a couple of more thoughts-if 'The Rent I Pay' had shown up, I could see the sui generis indie point. I think half the people that blew up must have just seen Spoon and said F that noise, because aside from 'The Ghost of You Lingers', it's pretty unique within their catalog. It's fine if people hate indie; fwiw, I'm pretty closed off to metal, it annoys me culturally (too macho) and musically (either too prog-y or too hXc), and if any had made the top 77 I doubt I would have given it the time of day. but at least I'l just come out and say it!

looks like it's The Juan Maclean - 21 votes, 7 tracks nominated, none placed. It'll do well on the albums chart though.

One Direction also had 7 tracks nommed, but only 12 voters. xpost

YG (6 tracks, 8 counting features), One Direction (7 tracks), The Juan Maclean (6 tracks), The New Pornographers (5 tracks), Popcaan (5 tracks), Miranda Lambert (5 tracks), Migos (5 tracks), Lana Del Rey (5 tracks), K. Michelle (5 tracks), Jenny Lewis (5 tracks), Ariel Pink (5 tracks), Ariana Grande (4 tracks, 6 counting features)

xpost

er maybe i miscounted w/ the Juan Maclean

yeah Juan Maclean had 7 tracks - one track was oddly listed without the 'The' in front.

ah that explains it

Oof, I thought I caught all those.

I would like to retract everything I said about 808 rap jams upthread. can't stop listening to these.

Telling ya! Following the results have been worth it just for getting me to listen to Dej Loaf, who is my new favorite home-state music act

lex never told me what was weird about becky g ;_;

:(

She scoops up roadkill and puts it in the local library with a newspaper on top of it

That's so Becky lol

classic becky

Tried to warn ya about ninos and becky g

I think the failure of "Rolling in the Deep" to make the list had to do with it's timing. It got 4 votes in 2010 and 7 votes in 2011, for a total of 306 points, which would have been enough for it to make top 40 either year

i think that becky g record sucks azz, shit is way too twee, but i liked this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwSHgcjEZNw

lol i like "can't get enough" a lot too

she sound like iggy oz

'fancy' was kind of underrated around here but i think ppl are afraid they are killing hip hop by liking it

ppl broadly i mean, not ILM per se, but it gives it a Problematic Aura

she sucks imo but that song was cool

she is literally worse than hitler

was hoping 1d voters would congregate around "fireproof" but oh well