ILM's 2021 End of Year Tracks & Albums Poll / VOTING THREAD

sounds good to me

Hold up. I'm still working on album images and we need to do base code/text.

Seems fairly simple but there's actually a lot of work behind the scenes! We'll stick to the usual schedule of tracks first, then albums. Better not to rush it!

It's worth it, though. I know I say this every year since I've been on the eoy team, but results are interesting! I don't know if my musical taste was very insular in 2021, but think this is the first year that I'm not acquainted with most of the tracks/albums that made it. I still haven't listened to the winners, I'll wait until the actual rollout to discover them.

I don't mind waiting a week. I don't expect more than a couple things I voted for to place anyway and I have no idea what the ILM hivemind even looks like anymore. At least there wasn't a 1975 album afaik.

We're all still waiting for Johnny Fever to announce that #1 Boys was a joke entry.

Come back in 2027. It's a ten year reveal.

I expect Low will win the album poll in a cakewalk. Tracks I think is anyone's guess.

I didn't vote because I genuinely thought we had another week, boooo

otoh i feel my selections were mostly pretty ilm hivemindey... and yet i didn't vote for Low. sorry Low

Depends. We're all still waiting for Johnny Fever to announce that #1 Boys was a joke entry.

Otm

I have nothing against Low but them winning again would be kind of a bummer. Does that album have its own thread? searching Low threads is a pain

I'm torn. It would be a bummer for variety's sake, but it is a more interesting album than the one they won with the first time. Made my peace with it tbh

xp I mean that Low record was one of the best of the year, if it wins, it deserves it.

I had a really intense period of listening to Hey What when it came out and haven't really touched it since. It'll be interesting to see if the longevity is there.

I'm all about the Karima Walker album at the moment. I doubt it'll place but damn it's so beautiful.

I haven't heard Hey What. I have never quite warmed to Low and have given them many many chances, but I suppose I'll try it when it places. Anyway, I just meant what imago said: we've never had a repeat artist #1. OTOH I have zero idea what would be a more logical winner. It would also be a little disappointing if ILM simply ratified the FP/Pharaoh S record

No idea who/what Karima Walker is, will put that on now :)

I love Low but didn't get around to this one - I feel like I already have so many albums of theirs that I love that I should wait until I'm properly feeling like I need a new one, rather than feeling pressured into listening just because it's new.

I definitely feel this. I've had a better pandemic than many others, but I can't remember a year when I was so disengaged from music and other interests...even the releases I liked were "more of the same".

Yup - I bet many artists feel this too. Honestly it felt like this year was a relatively uninspiring year in music. Perhaps this is me projecting my ennui and despair and but I can't shake the feeling it also feels like 2021's music was the result of the degradation of conditions conducive for creativity and collaborative inspiration. The focus on old music feels like a nostalgic escapism that helps to distract us from the utterly disgusting and horrifying contemporary realities we live with atm

imo, as someone who's tried to listen as exhaustively as possible since about 2014, it WAS a relatively weak year, yes - but there was still plenty of brilliance, as we'll hopefully ;) see

we've never had a repeat artist #1.

kendrick won in 2015 and 2017 (and susanne sundfor was second both times too)

Ah, missed it. Thought it was 31st, too many polls to get my head around.

I still submitted a full ballot of 25 albums, there was indeed a lot of great stuff, but compared to years like 2018, where my entire top 10 felt like AOTY candidates and timeless classics (many of which I still listen to and inspire me), this year feels like a sigh.

xp oh lol you're right ufo, not sure how I missed that

this year was about as strong as ever for me and much better than 2017 and 2014 which were the two noticeably weaker years in recent times for me

For me it was one of the strongest year ever, but I also got a job registering music for a radio station, so I've spent seven hours listening to new music three days a week. Still, for the first time in a while it felt to me like new stuff was happening all over the place, in drill, footwork, hyperpop, hardcore, jazz, etc. If someone had told me last winter that I would be disappointed by the new music from Lorde, Lana Del Ray, Billie Eilish and St Vincent, yeah, I would have thought it would be a weak year too. But then different stuff made up for it.

I feel like I'm living on a different planet than many of you. I thought it was a great year for music, just perhaps not for pop music. Jazz, experimental, fusion, ambient— so many great records from these genres.

Tbh a little mystifying to me, but i also pay *no* attention to pop music, and don't care to.

Yeah, I also had a great year.

I almost admire the self-confidence to assert an entire calendar year was "bad for music." Maybe I should toughen up, but I tend to think it's my own taste or mood or a failure to pay attention to the right corner of the world that's the cause. It's tempting to conclude things like "rap no good now" but if I think about it more, I usually switch to "I'm not in sync with contemporary rap"

To me, my ballot felt relatively weaker than prior years, but I also think that there was a ton of really good music this year, just not so much truly great. So my top 10 felt weak compared to prior year but I bet my 100th favorite song was better than my 100th favorite song of any other year.

2019 and 2020 were hopeless for me, but I got back into things in the second half of 2021, and discovered loads of good stuff via the Hype thread and Tom Ewing's World Cup of 2021 polls. The areas of music which I Just Do Not Get have widened, but other areas have opened up, so it's all good.

for me it's 100% me being stuck in a rut, I'm sure there was awesome music but I didn't have the energy to seek it out

As a big "if you think there's no good music any more you're just not looking hard enough" person, I actually think the last couple of years are maybe the only time when one can validly complain about certain aspects of music being fallow. My ballots had almost no DIY guitar bands on, and this year I'm not sure if it's because I just wasn't in tune with the scene or if covid has made it too tough for that sort of band to get together and do stuff, and my (informed-by-experience) suspicion is that it's the latter.

And obviously certain scenes being fallow doesn't translate into a bad year *in general* for music, but it does mean that there's more of a chance of not being able to find exactly what you're looking for even if you are looking hard.

I think that makes sense, emil.y. The only guitar led band that I really loved this year was Ducks LTD.

hi dere
ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2021