ILM’s Top 77 Tracks of 2018

Here’s the Top 77 Tracks of 2018 Spotify Playlist:
http://open.spotify.com/user/forksclovetofu/playlist/4cb2Ds6UBJ5UmU2iFlp9uT

If anyone wants to build a matching YouTube/Tidal/Apple Music/Amazon Music/2025 Neural Net Music Service We Don't Know About Yet Playlist, please post on thread.

In case you’d like to listen to the total talent pool, click below for playlists or direct URLs for every one of the 1300+ nominated tracks:
ILM's 2018 End of Year Tracks & Albums Poll / VOTING THREAD

Your poll runners are myself (posting, playlisting), Moka (graphics) and Seandalai (organization and vote tabulation).

With each winning song, I will be posting links to appropriate ILX artist/song/album/genre threads for further reading; ILXor quotes from those threads on the songs/artists in question may also be included. Additionally, whenever possible, I’m linking to the Singles Jukebox review of the song in question, along with published comments from writers there. There’s a brisk crossover between the ILX and SJ population and the encouragement for slightly longer-form writing at SJ often leads to thoughtful and worthwhile consideration of the songs in question. Juicy bonus content! Who could complain? Just kidding, I’m sure someone will complain.

Ongoing thread side bet: see if you can be the first person to name #78 for bonus bragging rights.

Okay, that’s enough prelude. 77 unpredictable tracks ahead. We’ll get into it in about a half an hour.

WHOOP! WHOOP!

*womp womp

extremely ready for this

DILLY DILLY?

[excited reaction gif]

How many tracks ballots were counted this year btw?

"Counted" sounds weird. Submitted, I mean.

TOO LOW

Seandalai would need to chime in with numbers.

http://i.imgur.com/6ktxZUL.jpg
77: Kali Uchis – “In My Dreams” – 162 points – 6 votes
video

Kali Uchis

I’m very late to this party but holy shit at this chica. - Thee Macallan 18 Year

Super stuff, exactly what I want from a pop record. The occasional sci-fi touches are the icing on the cake. - Jeff W

ooh i love the image format, great work Moka

"In My Dreams" is pleasant but i don't feel too strongly about it. very reminiscent of The Cure's "Close to Me"?

Beautiful work moka (and voters!).

162 the lower bound this year - up on last year's 146!

Very pleasing for one of the last things I cut from my tracks ballot to appear at #77.

Also - first appearance from Damon Albarn! Will there be another?

Every December I discover an album I should've blasted earlier in the year.

This December it was Kali Uchis'.

Great start, probably my favourite track on the Kali Uchis record. Great image too.

I wish "Your Teeth in My Neck" had been a single.

http://i.imgur.com/wC4LrbU.jpg

76: Red Velvet – “Bad Boy” – 164 points – 5 votes
video

Kpop 2018

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=25005

The vocal performances are great, the melody is sticky, and it’s one of the few songs I can think of that actually feels sexy rather than aiming for it and missing. – Alex Clifton

That subtle “way-o way-o” buried in the chorus is the tune’s most insidious hook, though it took a couple plays to find. – Al Soto”

I only cast an albums ballot but gl hf all.

Al Soto?! Is my dad writing reviews too?

I always mean to check out more kpop during the year, but the poll always ends up being where I find out about it all. This is good.

not one of my kpop picks this year but still a delightful track, very happy to see this place. love the way the vocal lines intersect in the chorus

you'll always be al to me

love this one

xp (if you'll be my bodyguard)

fuck the images are OUTSTANDING

"Bad Boy" also got an official English version for those curious: https://youtu.be/1_0LRhtdUBo

Yay. "Bad Boy" was produced by The Stereotypes and I really enjoyed this video about how they made the track.

both the Korean and English "Bad Boy" are on the playlist fwiw; that'll be the plan for anything that has multiple language versions

Don't forget to vote in the metal poll! Voting is only open for two weeks!

The 2018 ILX Metal n' Heavy Rock Poll VOTING + CAMPAIGNING thread! Ballots due Saturday, Feb. 2nd!

\m/

hoping for 1 or 2 metal-adjacent things in this poll. let's seeeee

"in my dreams" is quite delicately framed

"the moments we are happiest are the moments that we don't exist"

which way are ppl taking this?

Good start to the countdown. I voted for a different Kali Uchis song, but In My Dreams is a lovely song. Certainly the best thing Damon was involved with this year.

i voted for 2 kpop tracks this year up from my usual 0 so you folks finally got me

http://i.imgur.com/viLzKw7.jpg

74 (Tie): Laura Jean – “Girls on the TV” – 164 points – 6 votes
video

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=25856

A tale of dashed female friendship akin to Who Will Run the Frog Hospital or Cat’s Eye; what it loses in prose it gains in a kaleidoscopic, wistful arrangement. It fills its six minutes well; like memory itself, it alternates between immediate and almost photorealistic (that one deep synth around 0:30), then languid and ungraspable. – Katherine St Asaph

I’m unaccustomed to hearing such brusque, direct, and yet tender third-person storytelling in modern synth-pop. Jean’s memories of sitting in front of rage on a Saturday morning when young serve as an access point into an important story that deserved to be recounted. – William John

This checks off all the boxes of something I'd be predisposed to liking, but I never got much out of it. Huh.

lovely song

just a great opening run so far

wow way too low, i was hoping the TSJ high score might push this into like the top 20 as sometimes happens? my #2, just a perfect groove with an affecting narrative

i really recommend the album version which lets things groove out for another few minutes: https://youtu.be/G1egX_w_msM

Way close to my #1.

Another one that lost out in my final cull, such a beautiful track.

I've never heard of this. Do the TSJ-only quotes mean no one on ilm ever posted about it?

basically, or that commentary was limited to "i like this" more or less.
now's the opportunity to discuss!

(if i'm wrong, please post links!)

I liked the video a lot but the song just never stuck with me.

"the moments we are happiest are the moments that we don't exist"

which way are ppl taking this?

― ogmor, Monday, 28 January 2019 14:12 (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

from user hazeviii on genius.com:

This could have two meanings:

When they are the happiest, they have reached a sort of euphoria that leads them to feel as though they don’t exist. More simply, when Kali/Damon are no longer conscious and obsessive over their lives and selves, they are the happiest.

The happiest moments are when Kali/Damon aren’t in them. Because they live such tragic lives and are exposed to such horrible events, they live in dreams where their physical selves don’t exist and could never exist in.

I can see how it could read as a wish for oblivion / death / end of relationship too.

is this entire list going to be governed by a shady external institution known as 'the singles jukebox' ;)

I'd not voted before, and had little clue about the odds of selections placing. But that makes 2/3 so far.

xxp or you cld take it as arguing that happiness has an essential unreal/fantastic quality

Significant of what? Lowered expectations?

― GDPR vs GAPDY (DJP), Friday, February 1, 2019

In a way. R&B women w/out hip-hop accompaniment don't generally make the pop top ten these days.

well the subtext of my point is that there was nothing viral about the success of "boo'd up"... it's actually a song several years old that managed to find an audience which slowly gathered until "boo'd up" was one of the most omnipresent songs of the year. so as opposed to the way a lot of big hits happen now -- preordained in a lot of cases bcuz of the way streaming allows fanbases to immediately mobilize around a new release -- there is something about "boo'd up" as music qua music that really resonated with people, and i personally get it when thinking about the songwriting

I think it's fair to say that "Make Me Feel" is Janelle Monae doing a Prince pastiche; that doesn't make "Make Me Feel" a bad song, it doesn't mean Monae does a bad job of it, and it doesn't mean that the structural similarities between "Make Me Feel" and "Kiss" go beyond the superficial "they are both sparsely arranged songs that use a blues progression" (which, in fairness, may be all that people hear when they play them next to each other).

― GDPR vs GAPDY (DJP), Friday, February 1, 2019 4:10 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark

idk there's something more specific about it to me sonically and structurally especially going in and out of the chorus

bland, safe-sounding Starbucks-corporate-soundtrack-approved song and I'm surprised that people are finding any hook in it on which to hang emotion.

btw, this is kiiiiiiinda how I feel about the Kac3y Musgrav3s tracks... (but, you know, it's all good).

I mean you could safely play at least 3/4 of the 77 in a Starbucks

you could play mo bamba at a starbucks if you wanted to tear the fucker up

2018 was the year where I kissed a girl in March and moved in with her in September, and 'Boo'd Up' was the one song that felt like that. Like, really getting caught, trapped, and loving every moment of it.

To test the song, you should kiss her in a Starbucks.

the starbucks on 43rd and madison by my old office was always playing R&B from like 98-06 and "boo'd up" could definitely have gotten some burn in there

I mean you could safely play at least 3/4 of the 77 in a Starbucks

Hmmm...

I'd like to point out that being Starbucks-worthy isn't in and of itself a bad thing; my issue/point is that I don't have a place for this song in my life aside from ignorable background wash and I'm surprised that others do.

timewise, half of the 77 is that one autechre track

that's how i feel about "trip" which is just a transparent rewrite of "boo'd up" but which seems to have established its own independent popularity nonetheless xp

does anyone wanna go to the mat for the ella mae album? i never ended up listening to it

I haven't encountered "Trip" yet, or if I have I don't remember it.

I nomm'ed tracks that could def. be played in Starbuxx (and maybe are); but if I had heard them for the first time in such a setting, I would have gone -- "What is this?"

"screwed" is easily the best song on that album to me

and

I also preferred Screwed, but thought it didn't have any traction, otherwise would have voted for it instead.

My #1, we could've made it happen!!

you could play mo bamba at a starbucks if you wanted to tear the fucker up

― simmy simmy ya, simmy yam simmy yay (voodoo chili), Friday, February 1, 2019 3:41 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

does anyone wanna go to the mat for the ella mae album? i never ended up listening to it

― J0rdan S., Friday, February 1, 2019 4:50 PM

I don't know about going to the mat, but it's pretty good if too damn long.

I voted for Americans, but would definitely had put Screwed on there as well if I'd thought it had traction. Love both tracks, the highlights of the album.

she definitely walks a tightrope with that stuff but given 1) the fact that her and Prince were buddies 2) Prince's recent death and 3) Janelle being an equally electric performer I think it gets a pass. I don't think it's inferior to "Kiss"...just, sorta the same. Ditto for "Americans" and "Lets Go Crazy"

― frogbs, Friday, February 1, 2019 2:37 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Tip on it!

https://t411435.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/tightrope-cover-photo.png

Also would have voted for She Works Out Too Much by MGMT and 5 Dollars by Christine & The Queens

like not everyone could agree on the more scrambled and runic autechre tracks from the sessions but almost everyone agreed that “all end” melted their brain down into pancake batter

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Friday, February 1, 2019 8:00 AM (eight hours ago)

👍

The first part of the Kero Kero Bonito didn't really entice me at all but after the discussion of it getting noisy, I listened to the whole thing and, wow, it did not go where I expected. By the way, if you like the CD skipping trick, check out Theo Bleckmann's and Ben Monder's version of "I Remember You" - they do the trick live in real time.

I guess I hadn't realized how, uh, disco new country could get, listening to the Musgraves.

I had been foolishly hoping and assuming that "post-flamenco art-pop" meant there would be rasgueados on nylon-string guitars but "Pienso En Tu Mirá" is interesting anyway.

I know you’ve all been waiting for this one, a valuable tradition started (afaik) by Lex, here it is, beter late than never...

YOUR OFFICIAL COUNTRY BREAKDOWN:

AUSTRALIA (4): Hatchie, The Chats, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Laura Jean
CANADA (2): Marie Davidson, Drake
COLOMBIA (5⁄6): [Cardi B ft. Bad Bunny &] J Balvin (⅓), Kali Uchis (½)
DENMARK (1): Kasper Marott
FRANCE (1½): Christine and the Queens [ft. Dâm-Funk] (1½)
GERMANY (4⅓): Die Wilde Jagd, [Talaboman/] Superpitcher (⅓), Kim Petras, DJ Koze, Helena Hauff
HONDURAS (½): Empress Of (½)
IRELAND (2): Krystal Klear, Roísín Murphy
ITALY (1): Donato Dozzy
JAPAN (1): Mitski (2 x ½)
NEW ZEALAND (2): The Beths (2)
NIGERIA (1): Starboy ft. Wizkid, Terri, Spotless & Ceeza Milli
PUERTO RICO (⅓): [Cardi B ft.] Bad Bunny [& J Balvin] (⅓)
SOUTH AFRICA (3): Simmy (ft. Sun-El Musician) (2); Prince Kaybee ft. Busiswa & TNS
SOUTH KOREA (2): Peggy Gou, Red Velvet
SPAIN (2⅓): Rosalía (2), Talaboman [/Superpitcher] (⅓)
SWEDEN (1⅓): Robyn, Talaboman [/Superpitcher] (⅓)
UK (14): The 1975 (4), Ella Mai, Jessie Ware, Kero Kero Bonito, Tirzah, Tracey Thorn, Let’s Eat Grandma, Peach, Autechre, Jon Hopkins, Fabiana Palladino
USA (325⁄6): Lana Del Rey (2); Ariana Grande (2), Janelle Monáe, Mitski (2 x ½), Kacey Musgraves (2); Sheck Wes, Julia Holter, Pusha T, Empress Of (½), Eris Drew, Rae Sremmurd ft. Juicy J, [Christine and the Queens ft.] Dâm-Funk (½), Lizzo, Octo Octa, Khalid ft. 6LACK & Ty Dolla $ign, Valee ft. Jeremih, Doja Cat, Beach House, MGMT (2), Mr. Twin Sister (2); Natalie Prass, Hop Along, Cardi B [ft. Bad Bunny & J Balvin] (⅓), mewithoutyou, Toni Braxton, Soccer Mommy, Ravyn Lenae, Parquet Courts, Andrew W.K., Kali Uchis (½)

Of course, Drake cheated by crediting neither Big Freedia, nor 5th Ward Weebie, nor Lauryn Hill, and DJ Koze would have done well to credit Gladys Knight - but then again, US artists are overrepresented anyway \_(ツ)_/¯

Please report any mistakes or oversights to me, so I can do the whole damn thing over again. Thank U, next!

lol thanks!

i’ve never been in a starbucks and i’m not interested in the sort of music they may or may not play inside

Their coffee is way burned.

i’ve never been in a starbucks and i’m not interested in the sort of music they may or may not play inside

― budo jeru, Friday, February 1, 2019

I dont believe you

lol

what do they play in dunkin donuts tho

it makes me happy that "It Makes You Forget (itgehane)" won this poll

I dont believe you

”You’re a liiiiiar! Play it fuckin’ loud!

https://gaslightrecords.com/assets/img/feature/dylan-1966-melbourne.jpg

he acts like he’s never drank dreck

i’ve never been in a starbucks and i’m not interested in the sort of music they may or may not play inside

― budo jeru, Friday, February 1, 2019

I dont believe you

― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday,

these lads need to get thisen in a Greggs, £1.40 brexit beans coffee, fist bumps and garage bangers all before 11am

thanks to Moka and forks and all the voters! pretty good consistency this year, with no insanely wild highs, nor hideous turds apart from The 1975

anybody NOT want me to go ahead with this? Just want to make sure i don't get yelled at in an hour.

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Friday, February 1, 2019 6:53 AM (two hours ago)

yes, me, I'm having trouble keeping up obv (and so was another following-along exlxor I talked to in a bar last night)

Today makes two months since I've last smoked a cigarette after smoking for 26 years, so I'm pretty over them now. That's a hot photo though.

CONGRATULATIONS JOHNNY FEVER!

NB to UK/AU ILXors: i had never heard the term "Smoko" before this song

had UK ilxors?

or you can listen to it here: https://autechre.bleepstores.com/release/98703-autechre-nts-sessions-1-4

I accepted cookies in two different browsers and this still didn't work. now Sheffield has my n00dz and I have to buy an industrial fan instead

Did you know “Hang With Me” is a cover? The original is an shy, intimate, almost folky love song, to which Robyn adds the “recklessly, headlessly” chorus

worth noting the reversioning, but Klas Ahlund re-arranging and re-recording one of his own songs (yet again) isn't exactly Robyn covering. since the Body Talk writing credits* break down when she contributed lyrics to a song, seems likely that the new chorus was him too.

*(16/19 by Klas, 14/19 by Robyn)

going back to Robyn's earlier work after Honey was disappointing, a fair few great singles but not any great albums

tbf she's only had two proper solo albums (post her teenpop era), and this is the first one released in the US

monae gives me the same ilm-bait vibes as that big boi record that won the albums poll here and then no one really talked about again
->
I had Shutterbug on and off my running playlist for a good while

I went back to a few jams from the album last month, still bangs

I rate the Janelle album very highly and it made the top three on my ballot I think but 'Make Me Feel' is the only one I ever feel the urge to skip, it's just too on-the-nose as homages go. (And it's definitely a homage first and foremost rather than a pastiche, although it might be that as well).

I realize I've been sort of conflating Kero Kero Bonito and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. I'm probably not the first.

Please report any mistakes or oversights to me, so I can do the whole damn thing over again. Thank U, next!

I voted for Americans, but would definitely had put Screwed on there as well if I'd thought it had traction.

I thought 'Americans' was the best song on the album, and have a strict 1-song-per-artist rule, unless there's a good reason to have two songs on, such as Screwed having a shot at making it.

Ok, I get it, but based on the discussion here it seems the reason "Screwed" didn't have a shot at making it was because people who liked it thought it didn't have a shot at making it. So, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

_ Please report any mistakes or oversights to me, so I can do the whole damn thing over again. Thank U, next!_
Since your list seems to be based on country of origin and not residence, according to Resident Advisor Peach is a Canadian who lives in the UK.

i’ve never been in a starbucks and i’m not interested in the sort of music they may or may not play inside

― budo jeru, Friday, February 1, 2019

the world is a starbucks by war

saw this in tunbridge wells earlier today, good luck uk

https://i.ibb.co/jbBx1py/4-B076-D0-D-F9-E1-4-EE7-89-B8-763544455-A89.jpg

__ Please report any mistakes or oversights to me, so I can do the whole damn thing over again. Thank U, next!_
Since your list seems to be based on country of origin and not residence, according to Resident Advisor Peach is a Canadian who lives in the UK._

Thanks, Tuomas. Yes, I went with country of origin and/or self-identification, more or less. DJs seem to be more elusive than most in this regard, or require a bit more googling at least. Hope I didn’t make too much of a shambles of it...

and I have to buy an industrial fan instead

walked through a downtown commuter tunnel that's about to be filled with concrete yesterday, with industrial fans thundering breathable air from the streets above, and thought of this

i give "boo'd up" extra points for sounding distinctly like a huge R&B hit circa 2005. i thought it was telling that mariah basically repaid the homage by getting dj mustard to produce the same sort of glassy R&B song for her own album. the emancipation of mimi influence snake eating its own tail.

the starbucks on 43rd and madison by my old office was always playing R&B from like 98-06 and "boo'd up" could definitely have gotten some burn in there

I dipped into this thread briefly a couple of days ago, but just getting around to fully catching up with it now - I can't believe 'Give Yourself a Try' placed and 'It's Not Living (If It's Not With You)' didn't. Can't fault the other 1975 tracks that placed.