ILM’s Top 77 Tracks of 2018

az banks is absolutely not placing

First time you've truly edgelorded ITT.

2xp

This was my #1. "I know no one will save me / I'm just asking for a kiss" gets me every time.

I threw a LOT of points at Why Didn't You Stop Me? as I said before - but so many songs deserved votes. It was a shame to limit myself to one track per artist

imo this is a pretty good cardigans song

I like the implied existence of Lit Review Rock in Alfred’s comment

That's good. The Cardigans are good.

Mitski rubs me the wrong way. Her songs ooze off negative energy and creepy lethargy.

No one's mentioned it so far but could 'We Appreciate Power' still make it?

This Kero Kero Bonito song is really good. They are a band that showed up in my spotify discover weekly a couple of times and I enjoyed those tracks, but not enough to check out more stuff. This is much better than what I expected.

Negative energy and creepy lethargy are my jams.

^sounds like good double bill

No one's mentioned it so far but could 'We Appreciate Power' still make it?

absolutely not, but actually it would have been a great fakeout entry

imo this is a pretty good cardigans song

I like we appreciate power a lot and voted for it but grimes has fallen out of favor on ilx for reasons having little to do with her music and I'm fairly certain that song won't place

xxxp

we appreciate power was like fine but not really on the level of her past singles

Poppy - X maybe ? Not that I hope for it.

Grimes is #78.

i thought my #1 was a lock but maybe not

i voted for We Appreciate Power, not sure it'd make it. ILM turning on her would be v predictable of course.

Mitski rubs me the wrong way. Her songs ooze off negative energy and creepy lethargy.

― Nabozo, Thursday, January 31, 2019 8:25 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

mitski is a better songwriter than ilx deserves

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

8: Janelle Monáe – “Make Me Feel” – 336 points – 13 votes
video

Janelle Monae

Janelle Monáe - Dirty Computer album/film

The way “Make Me Feel” builds and builds and then explodes in the bridge is so good; this is maybe her best single yet. - ufo

“Make Me Feel” is pretty good but I think they went one too far bringing in the guitar lick on verse two; it just brings the "Kiss" comparison a little too in focus. – upper Mississippi sh@kedown

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=25156

The overwhelming pushing pleasure of it, from the mouth clicking, to the tidal synths, and the stabbing horns–plus all of the ways her voices work–the whisper and the belt, has a polymorphous quality that is not quite perverse. When she sings about being a “sexual bender”, all of this pleasure centers into a very queer channel. I keep thinking about that idea of bender, and kids these days–their identities more labile, children who refuse the binary, and see someone like Monáe, who is butch/femme in ways that are ever blooming, ever variant, and am so overjoyed a hero exists, and is making music about that which cannot be defined. There is a lot of talk about this inheriting Prince, which is inarguable, but it’s as much that as James Brown, Little Richard, Sylvester, or Gladys Bentley. The music slaps and tickles through a century of black gender variant weirdness, making formal statements about the liquidity of queerish pleasures, but makes sure that one can dance. This is a movement, but one that moves indefatigably through every dance floor it can conquer. – Anthony Easton

Here, finally, it is: after years of “homages” suggesting our Prince might forever remain in another castle, a track that invokes him not via vague funk and dutiful sexiness but through virtuosic glee in musicianship and uncontained, full-throated libido. And, unlike too many inferior homages, it doesn’t rely on its pastiche; the squelchy track, like soap on rubber, Monáe’s sly chromatic verse-endings and the bridge breakdown would be revelatory even for someone who hadn’t heard a note of Prince. – Katherine St Asaph

just grateful this isn't #1 tbh

Just saw an interview with Mitski where she was asked about The Cardigans. She's a long time fan, but was not thinking about them specifically when she wrote this song. However, she says she hears the same similarity that everyone else is hearing there.

it's true about how tight the points still are, damn

Her best album imo

It's crazy that we're still at 336 yeah

oh this was my guess for #1

love it and had it pretty high, it's very prince-derived obv but she still makes it her own with the build and the "it's just the way that i feel!" bridge. so good

xp point totals start opening up A LOT with the #7

I'm too busy at work to fully catch up with today's rollout, but from what I can see this has been a great day. Almost nothing but classics!

Just saw an interview with Mitski where she was asked about The Cardigans. She's a long time fan, but was not thinking about them specifically when she wrote this song. However, she says she hears the same similarity that everyone else is hearing there.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Thursday, January 31, 2019 1:32 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's splitting hairs but it's more "carnival" than "lovefool" for me

Make Me Feel is my 3rd or 4th favorite from Dirty Computer, but it definitely seems to be the consensus pick from that album.

it's certainly the prince-iest

didn't love the album, but this song grabbed me right away. a lot of people imitate prince, but few people can do that kind of hermetically sealed groove and actually pull it off.

Still waiting for the silent majority.

yea she's one of the few who can get away with doing this

I've cooled on Dirty Computer since it came out, but this track is undeniable.

"Make Me Feel" blew me away with its greatness the first time I heard it but I've cooled on it since. Still love the descending sequence of notes in "sexual tender." Don't think I buy it when she says "Good god" and "Damn."

amazing colours on that image

I've kept Monae for the album poll but Make me Feel is exactly the kind of jam I expect ILM to promote. The quality of the songs was a pleasant surprise, very focused, not too "conceptual".

I think now would be a good moment for Sonini to place

http://i.imgur.com/kI6stuv.jpg

7: Jessie Ware – “Overtime – 364 points – 12 votes – 1 first place vote
video

Jessie Ware - 110% (and everything else she's done)

Can we get a whole Jessie Ware & Bicep album? – ufo

The slightness of the production gives her so much space to command, there's a genericness that in lesser hands would be anonymous rather than formulaic impressiveness, the point where a template becomes a model. - boxedjoy

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=26460

Last year, Jessie Ware began podcasting with her mother, inviting guests around to her house — the likes of Clara Amfo, Sadiq Khan and Nigella Lawson have made appearances — for a meal, and recording the ensuing conversation. Listening to the way Ware playfully teases her mother as they talk about desert island meals and culinary propriety has inspired me to throw my own dinner parties, which I find fulfilling and an antidote to the loneliness often involved in “going out.” “Dinner party music” is a descriptor that’s been attributed to Ware’s oeuvre since the beginning of her career, and especially to her most recent record Glasshouse, perhaps her coziest and most sentimental album, in spite of its severe title. It’s a term that suggests something pleasant and non-irritating, but also bland, as if it’s only worth hearing in bits, between mouthfuls. It’s an unfair term I think, because dinner parties shouldn’t be bland — they should be filled with vibrant laughter, plates of warm vegetables slathered with butter and salt, simple pleasures, invigorating discussion. It sort of makes me think that those that use “dinner party music” as a pejorative just haven’t been to any good dinner parties. Certainly they’ve not been to a dinner party where, once dessert is over, the chairs are shifted aside and the highlights of Overpowered are thrown on at a loud volume. I’ve no doubt that, on certain occasions, this is precisely what happens chez Ware when the Table Manners microphones are turned off, and “Overtime” and its hollered, dazzling disco chorus seems to confirm my theory. – William John

Jessie Ware is usually at her best when she finally embraces the house vocalist she is destined to be, but “Overtime” succeeds for other reasons. Here, she finally mingles her initial work’s penchant for pensive, reflexive, soulful pop — the musical equivalent to a beautiful yet harmless painting standing over at a museum — and her most recent output, the cathartic pop whose emotional outpouring needs immediate release. It’s the stylistic crossover that feels logical when given thought, yet pleasantly unexpected. For the first time in a while, her whispers are not only romantic suggestions. They come off as a command. – Danilo Bortoli

yes good

excellent

Lol, if Ariana has the top two spots...

ha, called it

Still not crazy about Monae, sorry.

perfect combination of two perfect acts

oh hey good a surprise!!!

also i love this song that i didn't vote for

ooh the janelle graphic is great!

Glad to see High Horse place higher than Slow Burn given my earlier comments. That's the track I voted for and the one I think will be most memorably of this time and album in ten years' time. It's also just a ton of fun and such a break out moment for her and country internationally.