ILM’s Top 77 Tracks of 2018

xps judging by hatchie's twitter she's almost done with her album so it's probably not too far away

would be very surprised if TFS don't at least do decently in the albums poll

Yay for double Simmy! Two tracks from my #1 album! I voted for “Umahlalela”, hoping to push it even higher here after the TSJ boost (it was their highest-scoring song of the year). Although I love “Ubala” as well, it doesn’t do nearly as much for me.

Womp Womp is good.

http://i.imgur.com/M3fyNby.jpg

35: Let’s Eat Grandma – “Donnie Darko” – 223 points – 8 votes
video

Let's Eat Grandma

I never thought I'd actually like a track called "Donnie Darko" but here we are. – Ned Raggett

oh hell yeah

let's eat gyllenhaal

hellll yeah

Didn't vote for this but it's really good imo. The album wasn't consistent but the two long songs at the end were killer. I might even have voted for Cool & Collected if someone had nominated it. This is great too though

let's eat gyllenhaal

https://www.pride.com/sites/www.pride.com/files/2019/01/14/velvet-buzzsaw.jpg

nice album closer

wasn't even nommed but "i will be waiting" was the track off this record i came back to the most

let's eat gyllenhaal

― my tweet portal is whack (voodoo chili), Wednesday, January 30, 2019 10:31 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hellll yeah

― resident hack (Simon H.), Wednesday, January 30, 2019

fuck yes

went for the album instead but this would have been the track to make it

"Falling into You" was one of the last cuts from my tracks ballot but i'm very happy to see anything from I'm All Ears place

Awesome! This was the song that won me round on them. The highlight of the year's biggest surprise for me.

Listening to Doja Cat for the first time now

https://media.giphy.com/media/gFwZfXIqD0eNW/giphy.gif

idg Let's Eat Grandma at all. I tried them in the wake of praises sung by people with good taste, but eeesh no thanks.

V much in the 'first album good second album meh' camp regarding LEG

Ugh. I hope when they try to eat Grandma she lays them both out with a shovel to the head.

This is also a rare example of a song named after another cultural object capturing the essence of that object almost exactly

Who wouldn't rather eat Jake than Grandma?

song only really gets going at about 8 minutes in when those big guitars come in

I'm listening to "Go to Town" rn and it is much more my speed

― resident hack (Simon H.), Wednesday, January 30, 2019 7:32 AM (fifty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Roll With Us and Candy are my favs off that album

if someone w/ music theory chops beyond grade 1 cld pin down what is going on with the beat/flow interplay I wld be v curious because I am a slave to it

― ogmor, Wednesday, January 30, 2019 10:25 AM (fourteen minutes ago)

these are just slow-motion triplets right, ogmor?

― imago, Wednesday, January 30, 2019 10:28 AM (eleven minutes ago)

I don't have those chops but the way the vocal melody descends has to be part of it too

damn y'all have a lot of time for long-ass songs this year

http://i.imgur.com/cZ2VYzW.jpg

34: Tracey Thorn – “Queen” – 224 points – 6 votes – 1 first place vote
video

Tracey Thorn

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=24957

“Queen” is an entirely different song depending on whether you think Thorn has found love, and is marveling at the million tiny ways the world could have changed to prevent that (and a different song still if the thought makes her terrified, not awed), or if she hasn’t, and is scouring the past for the mistake. I think she means the former, but the song sounding exactly like “Thank God It’s Not Christmas” (“great things to say or do / aren’t done by you / obviously”) tips it back toward the latter for me. So many people I know feel as if the world’s been kicked out from beneath them. It’s not only the political climate — though that certainly doesn’t help — but the sense that their life suddenly happened and then unhappened. Everyone describes it differently, but they all independently come up with Hollywood terms: dying sitcoms, ex-child stars, the US version of royalty. Sometimes I imagine that myself-from-my-old-life is still out there, “Evil Doppelgangers“-style, younger, in a much glitzier locale, with more to say to more people. Is she queen? Does she ever find love? Whose odds are better, hers or mine? “Might have been” is a lot less limited than “is.” - Katherine St Asaph

“She’s blown her pipes,” I thought at first. On second listen, the newly serrated edges of Tracey Thorn’s voice add sardonicism to another synthed-up chapter in her ongoing project of limning the quiet lives of men and women who deserve more than they’re getting. “Am I queen or something else I might have been / a star backseat of a blacked-out car?” she sings, as usual, keeping her head while others lose theirs. – Alfred Soto

nice!

No Xgau quote? Lol

Never heard of #35, but with an artist name - song title combo like, it would take some effort to convince me to listen to it.

do i ever find loooooooooove

My #1

good song

Oh wow, I didn't see this coming! So great to see Tracey making such excellent music this late into her career. Her solo albums have all been so strong and Record is up there with the best she's ever done. Queen is a great opener and I even dig the low budget video.

Okay so this list is definitely the right way round. Today >>>>> last couple of days.

Tracey Thorn is a treasure.

I finally got around to reading her 2013 memoir, and, well, holy shit.

Oh, this is good. Nice blurbs also.

The Grandma song was taking too long to do anything.

Yeah but it does do something! Unlike...well unlike some other songs

I came back to this song (and to a lesser degree the album) so many times this year that it would've been dishonest for me to put anything else at the top of my ballot. Her finest single piece of work in 30+ years of doing it imo.

I have a tough time deciding between Queen and Dancefloor as my favourite song on Record. The whole thing is so solid though.

"Air" is so good.

"Sister" was my album highlight iirc

Given how irritating the apparently bottomless 80s-pop fetishism has become here, I liked Donnie Darko a lot more than I expected to. I'd prefer a different vocal approach though--they're sooo declarative and only work for me during the climax when they're not front and center

Tried to like the Let's Eat Grandma album but "Donnie Darko" was the only track that ever did anything for me. Length felt key to that.

Speaking of length, thanks for the Talaboman remix! - loved "The Night Land" but slept on the remix EP and missed this on the nom list.

"Air" is so good.

― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

Love the Shura cameo on that one.

feel a bit saer-ish about Queen, though I'm not sure which depressing modern social experience to namecheck

on second thought, this would make good hold music

>:(

Just barely.

good hold music would be good

It's cool we got some middlebrow synthpop to wash the taste of weird elongated synthpop out of our mouths