ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2020

the inauguration came just in time!

day 2 gets off to a promising start! great song that I didn’t vote for from a great album that I did vote for.

forks, J Hus has his own thread too!

j hus - dem boy paigon

founded in 2015!

I figured even more of the Americans would find voting in a music poll low on their priority list.

on the contrary, this poll is a Warren G. Harding-esque return to normalcy for me

good look on snagging the j hus thread; i was likely searching for "jhus"

Seeing y’all tripping out about “Jazzidisciples” as if it were the only afrohouse track that was going to chart on the 77 was fun because SPOILER ALERT fam: it ain’t just gonna be all T-Swift from here on in.

I have a "Jerusalema" earworm & this is my current favourite dance video for it. 😆 pic.twitter.com/etAEKa3CwQ

— Ottilia Anna MaSibanda (@MaS1banda) July 23, 2020

https://i.imgur.com/nBLpC4P.png
#59: Master KG and Nomcebo Zikode - “Jerusalema” - 152 points - 7 votes
video

Rolling Afropop / Afrobeats 2021
rolling afro 2020

singles jukebox

Bolobedu House

yeah that's what i wanna hear

too low although it did get shoved from my ballot at the last minute

i like the j hus + koffee one, hadn't heard that before!

not so keen on 'jerusalema' though. are those the same chords as 'you'll never walk alone'?

I prefer 'Jazzidisciples'. Not keen on the lead vocal of this (the rest of the track is cool though).

usually I can appreciate ILM's afropop picks but I think this is a bad song. I'm sorry.

It sounds to me like Hip Christian Music, which, er, I guess it is, from the title?

I think Jerusalema is the closest to a global SA House or Amapiano crossover, right? It lurked about the lower reaches of the UK top 100 for a while and I definitely saw it on MTV Base. Plus all the dance videos per forks' post above.

every time i listened to that hook last year it's like it cleared out all the bad air in the room

I do really like the bee-boop sound that goes through it. Trying to keep up posi vibes here.

it's a very cool beat but yeah it does tend a little too towards that sort of cheesy worship music in its melody which is why it didn't make my ballot, i can't quite vibe with it

This was an unlikely hit worldwide and I thought it was funny it was frequently requested as the “Y yo no lo se” song (spanish for “And I don’t know”) since “Ngilondoloze” sounds a lot like that phrase.

Wikipedia tells me it reached no.1 in Belgium, Netherlands, Hungary, Romania and Switzerland and top 3 in France, Italy and Germany. Never heard in the wild in Britain but then I avoided people all of the year.

"Jerusalema" was a massive hit in most non-US non-UK countries last year. I voted it #11 on my ballot.

wow i had no idea it was such a hit in most of europe, that rules

It was a hit in Mexico too. Heard it frequently on the hits radio and latin tiktoks.

Yes I do still listen to the radio and watch tiktoks every couple of weeks to hear what’s going on out there.

"y yo no lo se" detail is fantastic

I will readily cop to not really understanding the endless critical love for Katie Crutchfield’s brand of chicken fried indie folk, but our #58 comes closer to clarifying the hullabaloo than anything else I’ve heard from her. “Fire” sounds to me like a sad day going nowhere, sitting in a tobacco barn, hoping to find the strength to make up an answer.

https://i.imgur.com/uqFnLhQ.png
#58: Waxahatchee - “Fire” - 154 points - 4 votes
video

Waxahatchee - Cerulean Salt

singles jukebox

Love love the J Hus and Koffee song, both artists firing on full power.

"Jerusalema", I'm so-so on. Did this blow up because of a viral vid? It sounds like a Disney-fied version of stuff Master KG did before (which I preferred)

oh, this is the stuff!
this was a last-minute cut from my tracks ballot for last year (it came out in November 2019 and became the big "December"/Xmas holiday number 1 in South Africa), but I made up for it this time.

so much to say about this track, the biggest international African pop hit of this century, and arguably since what... "Pata Pata" or something? only because it has (so far) not really caught on in the UK, the US and
Australia many people here may not be aware of that fact.

my biggest ILM regret of 2020 was not starting a thread for this track back in February or March when I first noticed all the crazy dance videos people all over Africa (but Angola in particular) were making for this track. and then later in June, when it started catching on in Portugal and then France and then gradually started spreading over the continent (enhanced by the remix with Burna Boy), and it became kind of the international stay-strong-in-desperate-corona-times anthem.

I have probably played this track over a hundred times over the past 14 months, and I will never not love it.
I'm moved (sometimes to tears) every single time Nomcebo Zikode starts singing that bridge. truly a Hymn for
all Seasons (the name of the thread that never was).

anyway, I'm at work and I shouldn't be doing this, so catch you all later

It sounds to me like Hip Christian Music, which, er, I guess it is, from the title?

― emil.y

Lyrics are definitely Christian. Not a huge fan of the song, but it might just be one of the best Christian hits I’ve heard.

I had to chuckle a little because it looked for a moment like beastcrawl was waxing enthusiastic about Waxahatchee

Prefer this track, Skeleton Move, by Master KG. much the same vibe, just on the right side of corny

incredibly boring melody and then there's a millennial whoop at the end. yr all banned

fuck waxing a hat imo

one positive re: "Jerusalema" not catching on in the US is that we didn't have to deal with a remix featuring Justin Bieber

idk i definitely prefer "jerusalema" to "skeleton move" (the only master kg track i was previously familiar with), "skeleton move" was just a little too disjointed and still has that sort of worship feel to its melody thats a bit much for me

"fire" is very pleasant even though i didn't quite get the level of overwhelming critical praise she got this year

*yawwwwwwwn*

lol DJP

This is her best album and I'm not a fan. I prefer her as a frontperson in a band rather than just a guitar.

*as a singer with her guitar

this is the official Spanish remix, but there are many covers, in various languages:

Master KG ft. Micro TDH & Greeicy & Nomcebo Zikode • Jerusalema (Remix)

also, search for Jerusalema Dance Challenge or similar on YouTube or anywhere, and be amazed at what you'll find (and look at the view counts for some of them!)

I have 0 interest in Waxahatchee. I just find the aesthetic they are going for fundamentally uninteresting. I'm glad this wasn't higher.

Waxahatchee: Is this what all the critics have been raving about? Okay.

DJP OTM about a Bieber remix. There's also something about "Jerusalema" that tips it just a little too much into the cosy realm of 80s/90s capital-W "World Music" for me and I'm not sure why

I am listening to Waxahatchee for the first time

The singer sounds like Taylor Swift with a head cold

This is not my bag at all

I don't get waxahatchee at all and I like a lot of theoretically similar artists

oh the spanish remix is cooler, the guests really take it in an interesting direction. i would have voted for that

this was the first new waxahatchee material i've heard since out of the storm(?) and i can't say i love the new style as a bed for her voice

Swearin' >>> Waxahatchee IMO

one positive re: "Jerusalema" not catching on in the US is that we didn't have to deal with a remix featuring Justin Bieber

― Hello Nice FBI Lady (DJP), dinsdag 26 januari 2021

it might happen yet! they don't call this song "the Macarena of the 21st century" for nothing!

(sigh... didn't I tell myself to get back to work?)

Swearin' >>> Waxahatchee IMO

― american primitive stylophone (zchyrs), Tuesday, 26 January 2021 15:25 (twenty-seven seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

definitely

Swearin' >>> Waxahatchee IMO

― american primitive stylophone (zchyrs), Tuesday, January 26, 2021 8:25 AM (twenty-six seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm though i always feel weird comparing the projects bc they're sisters and the bands are v different at this point

Fuck me, that vocal is truly horrible.

Spotify started playing "Pig Feet" immediately after "Fire" ended, kind of like it was apologizing for what I had just sat through