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

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