ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2019

I don't rate Polachek as a songwriter and her presence is irksome at best imo. A shame as this is easily something I could have liked

You don't like the songwriting or the performance but you could easily have liked it???

lol I'm assuming he means its trappings are to his liking.

not deconstructed enough for y’all eh

I'm more of a "Door" man

― bold caucasian eroticism (Simon H.), Tuesday, January 28, 2020 12:43 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

me too

I could have liked what was being aimed at! Arty playful pop with attitude etc etc

Vossi Bop is the only one of these records I've ever heard before! (and quite a lot). Sort of endearing, best one so far along with Jamila Woods.

https://i.imgur.com/Pbk6c6S.jpg
33: Lizzo - “Juice” - 263 points - 12 votes
video

Lizzo - Big GRRRL Small World

“Lizzo releasing a clarion call to the ballroom this luminous in early January might seem perplexing, but I think it can be rationalised in one of two ways — either she’s particularly fond of her fans in the southern hemisphere and wished to impart on them a summer’s gift, or she figured that in early January, where most of us oscillate between feeling hopeful for new beginnings and hopeless at the thought of another year ahead on this slowly burning furnace of a planet, songs which resolutely emphasise the joys in drawing confidence from oneself become imperative. No matter the reason, it’s here, it’s big, and it sounds at once like the beach and a wedding and a rainbow-lit club and the sort of thing I’d wiggle my bum to while washing up. Whether it will stick around long enough to impact the northern hemisphere summer is a question yet unanswered, but we can hope and dance contentedly in the meantime.” - William John

“I had to go back and check, but yeah this may be even more unrestrainedly, exuberantly joyful (not to mention motivating – I might need to start playing this for myself every Monday morning) than “Good As Hell”, and that song already made me feel like I could punch the ceiling off of whatever room I’m in.” - Ian Mathers

https://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=26919

I voted for a different Lizzo track, but I could have easily had this one in its place.

NFM (Not For Me)

wondering if "truth hurts" is gonna place and bend time backwards again

Juice feels like it came out way more than a year ago

xp I like the trappings and the vocals and everything, it's very fun!

Xp It did, Jan 4 2019, scrapes in just.

this is the only lizzo song I really like (that I've heard)

not enough flute on this one

the 30s have been great but lizzo bores me to death. my 5-year-old does like this one though...

"so hot you're hurting my feelings" was one of two really fantastic singles polachek released last year but i ended up voting for "door"

I like 'Juice' but it got way overplayed and I ended up voting for no Lizzo at all.

I voted for a different Lizzo track, but I could have easily had this one in its place.
ditto

heh, forgot all about Polachek. "Door" is the keeper, but this song is pretty good. A less baffling placement to me than, say, Hatchie.

this is the one lizzo track i don't reflexively turn off due to massive overexposure

yeah this was less of a viral hit than it was in like 15 different movie trailers

lizzo's charm is just undeniable for me

It's still so weird to me that Lizzo had two massive hit singles last year and Juice wasn't one of them.

Boys is still my Lizzo song of choice but Juice hasn't lost any of its charm. Ended up just missing my top 10.

https://i.imgur.com/fvTNeDS.jpg
32: Wiley, Stefflon Don, Sean Paul & Idris Elba - “Boasty” - 266 points - 7 votes
video

"I provided all the pies" - a thread for Wiley's 'The Godfather'

“ The video for “Boasty” is brilliant, the energy and momentum of a one-take video but with cuts as precise as Henry Schholfield’s previous videos for Dua Lipa and others. Stefflon Don emulates Nicki Minaj’s flow down to the stutter effects at 1:05, Sean Paul remains Sean Paul, and Idris Elba’s verse is unexpectedly goofy (“I write for myself, no ghosty”). There isn’t much else to say about this, but it makes me miss uptempo music and I want this to be as big as possible.” - Joshua Copperman

https://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=27285

Sean Paul is still around? Heh.

Anyway, this ain't #32 material but it's a lot of fun.

Don't know if it's a difference in UK and US play, but I thought 'Juice' was completely inescapable!

helps that it's a way better song than truth hurts

truth hurts was the truly inescapable one over here

Whenever people are all “idgi” re: Lizzo, I point them at pre-game tracks like “Batches and Cookies” and “Werk Pt II”

So… go check those out

Is the image for #32 not showing for anyone else?

yah me

Truth Hurts is biggest in mass us culture, juice biggest among the exteeeeeemely online, and good as hell biggest among Gen x white ladies.

i will never get tired of "Juice" it saved my life 100 times last year and fuck all of youse TOO LOW

"I write for myself no ghosty"

^^^ this really tickled me for some reason

https://i.imgur.com/fvTNeDS.jpg

Link to image in case it’s not working. I can’t check because I’m on mobile but it’s opening for me?

I might have messed up something in the code

Last one for me!

I might not be around for the top 30 :( have fun and I’ll see you on the albums rollout!

https://i.imgur.com/0F51b6Y.jpg
31: Billie Eilish - Bad Guy - 308 points - 11 votes
video

billie eilish

Done well, it’s enjoyable to hear a musician having such fun, but especially so when one unexpected element of a song comes in to underline just how much fun they’re having. In this case, it’s the gloopy searchlight noise, playing out like the theme tune to a 1970s cop show set in space, in a way that cannot be anything but gleefully goofy. Such bold and playful invention is something pop music would suffer without. Extra points for the consideration to leave a gap before the outro so that radio stations can cut it out. - Scott Mildenhall

Nothing clicked for me with Billie Eilish until “Bad Guy.” I understood the appeal intellectually, because it has sometimes been my wheelhouse: “Prodigy-cast makes off-kilter pop music from a perspective with more than a little precociousness and possibly a feminine spin that serves to disrupt rather than reify” is my jam for months at a time, sometimes. But some combination of prodigy and precociousness sometimes striking me as preciousness — something that I’ve occasionally found issue with in the work of Sky Ferreira and Solange and Lorde and Cher Lloyd and fka twigs and Haim and Kacey Musgraves and Lana Del Rey and so many women who have occupied this same treacherous lane where deviating from delivering what is expected from a young woman making pop music can offend the sensibilities (or engage the biases) of even someone who has strained to stave off the stupidity of dismissing music made by young women and largely intended for young women — and what I read as a deliberately dark and standoffish aesthetic put me off of Eilish, whose stuff just didn’t compel me. Everything clicks for me with Billie Eilish now that I’ve heard “Bad Guy,” which I reckon is pathetic on my part, because so much of the DNA of “Bad Guy” is in other work she’s done that the things that differentiate it as The Hit and The Breakthrough come down to tempo and a kooky synth run in the hook that every third YouTube commenter thinks is stolen from Plants vs. Zombies. But “Bad Guy” is also an unassailable pop song and has come along at a time when bulletproof ones are not occupying the charts — the closest competition in the current top 40 by my sight is, like, a Katy Perry song whose verses let down its magnificent hook, a bunch of drowsy-to-dire Khalid and Halsey tunes, a C- effort from Taylor Swift, and a microwaved Lizzo track that I’ve known of for a while and don’t consider her best stuff — and so it stands out even more from the pop metagame than the larger Eilish oeuvre does from a host of less realized tunes. And I’m a sucker for an unassailable pop song, especially one with a vocal initially delivered so low that it demands attention to the dial in the car but that is by turns brightly funny (“…duh!”) and world-weary and campy to the hilt (the titular phrase being stretched to a titanium crocodile’s rasp), a relentless bass line that sounds like a monster’s heartbeat echoing in a cave, and lyrics that constitute a semi-sincere embrace of some Lolita tropes and a more powerful sarcastic destruction of them while somehow also being fully ready for Instagram captions and Twitter display names and … well, no one’s on Tumblr anymore. But that’s hardly Billie’s fault, and I’m not docking points for only barely failing to raise the dead with a virtuosic song that makes me this glad to be alive. - Andy Hutchins

https://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=27769

Fare there well, moka!

Thanks for the work accomplished so far, Moka!

Thank you, Moka!

Also: this is surprisingly low?

Oh yeah I see now. The “boasty” song is missing “.jpg” in the url. Can a mod fix it please?

<3

great work moka

I voted for a different Billie, and whiffed on voting for the album (oops, but I'm sure it will do fine). Bad Guy is dope tho

not the Eilish I voted for but I ain't mad even if I find the "might seduce yr dad" line extremely cringe

eilish will hopefully appear again in the rollout. i voted for a different song and a bunch of people on the campaign thread indicated they voted for a different different song

Akulaleki and Dumebi back to back is perfection. Too low tho natch.

moka the design work was really great thanks for taking the time to do it.

/is really great

"DUH!" - best moment in music 2019