Year-End Critics' Polls 2012

Yeah I concur with the Fiona on the list, only direct overlap (on the last 50) was w death grips

Did people really rate "Bad Girls" that much?

I didn't expect much of what i've bought this year to place in the RA poll but didn't expect it to be quite so divergent

"Those strings. It was impossible to escape those strings in 2012."

This is the line that makes sense of the Andres record for me. I used to be part of the clubbing world and now I'm not so I can't get a handle on why that record is #1 from hearing it at my computer but I can when I imagine it as a feature of so many nights out. I love how the dance press's EOTY lists address a specific subculture where this is ubiquitous as Call Me Maybe is for everyone else.

Yeah, but danceworld is so fragmented that it was completely possible to go clubbing fairly frequently throughout the year and not hear it if you weren't going to house nights.

Yeah but RA is predominantly centred around a certain type of European house and techno night, although it's covered more post-dubstep in recent years, there's still a sense that it's addressing a particular defined community.

I mean I'm sure I'd have heard the Andres record if I'd been proper clubbing more than twice this year. It could well have been as ubiquitous as a Mouth To Mouth or a Rej for all I know.

4. Kendrick Lamar - Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe

^^completely bizarre choices off albums i love

Really? This seems like the most portable, single-y track from the Kendrick album. Not a bizarre choice in a consensus vote, imo.

was gonna say itt that i was happy at so few tracks lists this year having "Swimming Pools" on it, as a hit single from an acclaimed album it's really kind of shit.

i just really fucking hate "bitch don't kill my vibe"

always loved "swimming pools", though not necessarily as a single

one would think tracks lists are the ideal places to recognise "cartoon & cereal"

two months ago I skipped it, now I play it all the time.

I've seen Backseat Freestyle popping up in a few lists but it's not really an album with proper singles on it. So yeah Cartoon & Cereal or even The Recipe would be fine but I get the feeling people just want to throw out a vaguely pointless shout to the album.

lex honestly you've stated your case about "vibe" and i think now you can just let that song be mentioned without making a big deal about it every. fucking. time.

i'm not going to be lectured about posting habits by anyone who pulled the shit you did in the shanell thread

Tim F's write-up for 'Turn On The Lights' on th pfk countdown is great! This bit in particular
"His lyrics simultaneously raised and lowered the bar for spur of the moment profundity as his hook-laden yet tone-deaf emphysemic mutterings nestled into the cracks between rap and R&B, while Auto-Tune choruses left him sounding like gloriously damaged goods." kinda nails a big part of why I love Future so much.

ha i barely posted in the shanell thread, and only obnoxiously half the time, and then left it alone compared to the several people openly trolling it

xpost yeah i loved that write up

noz on keef is fire also

Asking here cuz somebody should know: will there even be a Best Muscle Writing 2012 ?

here it is, ray:

https://www.christianwritersguild.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/writing-muscle-slider1.jpg

comparing "I Don't Like" to "The Message" was a little over the top, i thought

reassuring that PF can still be relied on to say 'Call Me Maybe was nice, yes, but Grizzly Bear definitely wrote a better song this year'

i just really fucking hate "bitch don't kill my vibe"

--lex pretend

Go on.

i'm with lex here, might be my least favorite track on the record

My only point upthread was that, even if you're not fond of it, would you concede that it's probably the most obvious track on the album to be a consensus favorite?

I'd say "The Art of Peer Pressure" or "Poetic Justice."

no! none of those! all of those are deep cuts and sound like them. either "swimming pools" or "the recipe" as the singles, "cartoon & cereal" as a much-hyped (with good reason) stand-alone non-album cut, or possibly "money trees" as a track that seems to encapsulate a lot of the album's themes

would you concede that it's probably the most obvious track on the album to be a consensus favorite

I do actually like it, but I don't see how this is true at all really, other than it appears early on in the album.

For a tracks poll, the Pitchfork list looks awfully like a singles list, to be expected I guess near the top but I think the entire top 30 are singles or lead off downloads from the record.

Oh good! No consensus then

comparing "I Don't Like" to "The Message" was a little over the top, i thought

― some dude, Tuesday, 18 December 2012 13:20 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

maybe, but after a year of endless surrounding grumbling and murmuring and whatnot about the track it was effective just this once to bang a fist on the table with a historical juxtaposition and clear the fug for a sec. besides it wasnt "this is as good as" or "the 2012 version of", he used the comparison (and well i thought)

did anyone mention the jacob korn record yet? have come back to it a few times over the course of the year. #faintpraise.

meant that for the dance thread actually, but it's here forever now. i'll let history judge me.

I spoke to Tony Blair and he said he preferred the Petar Dundov album.

the ruth saxelby bit for alunageorge is quite good just for placing them in about the right critical spot ("1980s UK electro pop duos, from Yazoo to Eurythmics") where it's been so easy to tip too far either side of the dance/r&b question. felt like a sensible clarification for me anyway.

"this isn't the time for soundbytes. but today i truly feel the hand of house on my shoulder." xpost sorry carry on

I've heard of Jacob Korn without ever having bothered to look into him but having realised he had a hand in Philipp Dolphia I'm going to check him out immediately.

the ruth saxelby bit for alunageorge is quite good just for placing them in about the right critical spot ("1980s UK electro pop duos, from Yazoo to Eurythmics") where it's been so easy to tip too far either side of the dance/r&b question. felt like a sensible clarification for me anyway.

the "hook so pop it hurts" is a bit "uhhhh really?" though

liked katherine st asaph on angel haze a lot

in general the p4k lists crystallises this sense across most EOY lists i've seen that it's even more about ring-fencing and aesthetic branding than ever this year. on a related note, i was really happy to see rich juzwiak pick keyshia cole for this:

http://www.thefader.com/2012/12/17/20-musicians-tastemakers-and-other-weirdos-pick-their-favorite-music-of-2012/

If I had to listen to only one song from 2012 for the rest of my life, it would be the second single from Keyshia Cole’s Woman to Woman album, “Trust and Believe.” No commercial track I’ve heard this year understands where R&B is and was quite as well. Seething with sound, its snapped beats reverberate into hisses, its snare fills throw tantrums while Cole sings furiously, balancing heartbreak and righteous indignation. This should be the ballad that defines the 31-year-old’s career.

Four tracks in, “Trust and Believe” is Woman’s showstopper. It’s almost bizarre, then, how consistently entertaining the album goes on to be. Its backbone is old-school hip-hop soul, the kind of minimal, breakbeat-based R&B that Mary J. Blige (without whom Keyshia would not be possible) used to sing over. Cole’s endless supply of hooks keep midtempo from sounding mundane, but it is the album’s eventual sense of adventure that makes its 15 tracks fly by. Darkchild’s “Stubborn,” (which Cole pronounces “stub-bron,” lest you think she’s become entirely refined by Album No. 5) bridges the gap from trap to house more convincingly than even “Mercy.” “Hey Sexy” is to Mtume’s “Juicy Fruit” what Miguel’s “Adorn” is to Gregory Abbott’s “Shake You Down” (Cole previously sampled “Fruit” in “Let It Go,” here she just invokes its spirit in a more sophisticated tribute). She samples “Theme from Shaft,” duets with Ashanti on the title track (not a remake of the Shirley Brown Stax classic) and enters the canon of great R&B first lines on the airily modern “Forever”: I’m not easily impressed, but you got me fucked up.

The story of R&B’s phenomenal year centers on the heady, atmospheric turn it has taken and the men who have popularized it. Woman to Woman acknowledges the sound of Frank Ocean, The Weeknd and Miguel, but it offers a much wider palate—there’s a sense of grounded soul tradition here guided by Cole’s still-feral pipes. Woman to Woman is the alternative to the alternative, a commercial R&B record delivered with so little hype, it was easy to miss. It’s destined to be an underrated gem, just like they used to make.

Fuckin Rich will send me scurrying back to the Cole.

i like that grimes's "oblivion" is getting a lot of praise now, not only b/c it is the only track on the album that i ever felt compelled to revisit much but also b/c it seemed like hardly anyone ever mentioned it in reviews of the album (even tho the music video was out and everything)

if hearing keyshia cole as anything more than passable/tedious and schlocky is to be the real r&b rubicon then ima hand in my gun & badge right now

the ruth saxelby bit for alunageorge is quite good just for placing them in about the right critical spot ("1980s UK electro pop duos, from Yazoo to Eurythmics") where it's been so easy to tip too far either side of the dance/r&b question. felt like a sensible clarification for me anyway.

Or 1990s UK electro pop groups like Sneaker Pimps.

well, i liked them too

Sneaker Pimps implies a level of dead-eyed monitor lizardity that I'd be loath to apply to AlunaGeorge. Morcheeba, maybe.

I thought "Nightmusic" was gonna be the runaway song from Visions, but I don't think the album version (or video) storms the keep the way it does in a live setting

XLR8R's Best of 2012: Tracks #25-#1
http://www.xlr8r.com/features/2012/12/xlr8rs-best-2012-tracks-part-two

The RA #1 track by Andres reminds me of Roule/Cryadamoure output circa 1998. So, I quite like it.

(Crydamoure, even)

if hearing keyshia cole as anything more than passable/tedious and schlocky is to be the real r&b rubicon then ima hand in my gun & badge right now

― r|t|c, Tuesday, December 18, 2012 7:17 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

word. and I realize she's not as bad about it as she used to be, but I can't take the way she sings.

i would probably have been with you before i heard her latest - when i listened it was so refreshing both because she'd unexpectedly improved and because only hearing that emo MJB style done so sincerely and unashamedly did you realise just how far out of the critical discourse it's got

I've got Elle Varner for that (although not really emo).