2010 Magazine's Albums Of The Year Thread For Posting Lists and Discussion

already digging the kevin gorman track. sounds awesome.

is there any list out there that includes "miami 2 ibiza" aside from mine? like, is there any dance crit site that takes populist dance music seriously whatsoever? it seems like theres some wild double standard w/ rap where everyone takes Drake soooo seriously, and dance music where we're only reviewing obscure german 12"

James Blake aside, that Juno list is great. The Midnight Magic/Jacques Renault record is a jam and the whole Permanent Vacation comp it comes from is ace.

Virtually every other song with Tinie Tempah on this year is better than Miami 2 Ibiza.

miami 2 ibiza rules wtf

im not concerned w/ tinie tempah im concerned w/ big populist dance music that critics pretend doesnt exist

like taio cruz?

I think dance music criticism and populist dance music do sometimes stray closer to one another but they're very far apart indeed at the moment, if only because the David Guetta/Swedish House Mafia school is so awful. They were much closer when people like Mylo or Felix or Zombie Nation were having huge hits.

& i dont mean 'populist' as in popular with fools gold fans who are willing to put up w/ 4th rate strictly rhythm bites but 'populist' as in, crosses over to huge dance audiences

I think dance music criticism and populist dance music do sometimes stray closer to one another but they're very far apart indeed at the moment, if only because the David Guetta/Swedish House Mafia school is so awful. They were much closer when people like Mylo or Felix or Zombie Nation were having huge hits.

― Matt DC, Thursday, December 9, 2010 6:36 PM (8 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you could say the same thing about rap right now, except that for some reason, (and im not saying this is true on ilx), critics at certain places that i might even write for are still repping for some super lame pop rap

Yeah but a significant number of rap writers have spent the best part of the decade fighting the corner for mainstream/commercial rap whereas in dance music its more about crate digging and highlighting the best stuff for DJs. The critical landscape is totally different.

Mostly amateur DJs I think...

is there any list out there that includes "miami 2 ibiza" aside from mine? like, is there any dance crit site that takes populist dance music seriously whatsoever? it seems like theres some wild double standard w/ rap where everyone takes Drake soooo seriously, and dance music where we're only reviewing obscure german 12"

This is true, but I think the bigger issue is not whether post-Guetta stuff or Swedish House Mafia is good or not but rather how it's conceived and categorised. Stuff like "Dynamite" and "Club Can't Handle Me" really is the pop-dance of now, this is the kind of stuff that gets played at christmas office parties whereas 4 years ago it might have been "Drop The Pressure" and "Call On Me". And then of course Gaga as well.

The effect of which is that the entire substratum of chartbound populist dance has now blurred to the point of indistinction from actual pop/r&b. The Kylie collabo with Taio is very telling in this regard.

Even 3 or 4 years ago pop-dance in the sense of dance producers releasing non-star-based songs that would go to the top of the charts was its own distinct thing and merited attention as a genre in itself. I'm not sure if that's true at the moment, though obviously any such remission is directly inversely proportionate to how much more dance-pop-ish pop/r&b happens to be.

And of course non-charting populist dance is always one of the most ignored areas of music (see also non-charting populist rap or non-charting populist R&B) - see UK funky obv!

And I'm pretty sure no actual dance music review site has ever taken pop-dance seriously.

tinie tempah album is pretty rubbish for the most part imo but miami2ibiza is slightly better than most of the shm/guetta shit. would rather listen/dance to crookers type stuff but there seems to be no actual charting/populist dance stuff in my top 100 tracks apart from uh telephone if that counts. maybe i can find a seamus haji remix of something to boost if desperate.

actually its the passion pit remix of telephone which def doesn't count

Yeah I think the Guetta track that's likely to get closest to any of these lists is actually a Kelis song.

i forget that i quite like Acapella and 4th Of July

what are the biggest dance tracks of the last year or so?

as in sales / mnstrm exposure obv

UK funky has really replaced my pop-dance fandom over the last few years. I still liked a fair amount of stuff last year like the Ducksauce tune but this year the only thing i've really stanned for is Chris Sorbello's "So Lonely" (in both its Club Mix and Hook & Sling Mix forms).

xp

the aformentioned kelis an anything involving guetta
we speak no americano
sidney samson - riverside
duck sauce - barbara streisand

:(

barbara streisand is a pretty boring song! love the video tho

The first Ducksauce tune was much better.

Riverside's awesome obv.

"Pon De Floor" might be the most universalising tune of the last two years in terms of critical and popular support combined...?

yeah i checked those and they seem pretty bad except for riverside....which seems alright

adam buxton showed 'pon de floor' at one of his music video showcases at the nft, replete with a careful selction of lol wite ppl youtube comments

'you had to be there'

i guess commerical dance had a brief mid-decade convergence with 'critical trends' before returning to its early 00s nadir

And of course non-charting populist dance is always one of the most ignored areas of music

what to you is the difference between non-charting populist dance and non-charting non-populist dance?

i kind of agree in theory that commercial dance should be taken more seriously but swedish house mafia and david guetta just suck ass and can jump off a cliff as far as i'm concerned

so odd that the one artist i felt actually did the otherwise awful trend du jour with panache and creativity - kelis - actually ended up completely flopping

The curse of La Roux

la roux didn't end up on the album in the end, thankfully!

Your voodoo hex worked! (I assume you arranged for one.)

more like a hitman

i kind of agree in theory that commercial dance should be taken more seriously but swedish house mafia and david guetta just suck ass and can jump off a cliff as far as i'm concerned

― lex lex lex lex lex on the track BOW (lex pretend), Thursday, December 9, 2010 9:17 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol

what to you is the difference between non-charting populist dance and non-charting non-populist dance?

This wasn't some kind of snarky comment I was making, and is separate to the discussion we were having earlier this year re mid-00s dance criticism vs dance criticism circa 2010 (though that may not have been clear). I'm talking about the ultra ultra populist stuff.

Like, this week I had to review a single by a local duo called Scarlet Belle (or something, i forget), who are comprised of a former OZ Popstars group member and a former Australian Idol contestant, and who make mildly r&b-ified vocal-house that's kinda wannabe Freemasons. This stuff is basically designed for gay clubs and suburban pubs (despite the almost antithetical nature of their respective audiences). Sometimes it charts but for every such track that becomes a hit there's like 10 that hardly anyone hears. I can feel already this one's gonna flop.

This is non-charting populist dance. A lot of it isn't very good and doesn't deserve to be reviewed - as per a lot of most genres.

In the same way that there's reams of non-charting teen-pop and non-charting populist R&B.

And all of these "scenes" have individual critics or non-critic fans who over-fetishise it all to death, but media publications tend to shy away from any such thing if the non-charting side of things can't be fashioned as a kind of "underground" of sorts (uk funky is a bad example in this regard because it clearly can fit an "underground" narrative - the reasons for the media ignoring it are different and more complex).

Thing is, as far as I can tell there's simply a lot less populist dance being made these days. I used to get about 2 pop-trance singles per week in my review pile, but no longer.

so wait, who are the people ignoring or not writing about uk funky? i'm curious. and the reasons are complex! i smell intrigue...

is there foul play afoot? i really need to get to the bottom of this.

This thread has convinced me to come out of retirement. Thanks! (Also to listen to some records I haven't heard. Thanks for that too.)

so wait, who are the people ignoring or not writing about uk funky? i'm curious. and the reasons are complex! i smell intrigue...

It's not terribly intriguing. To be reductive, uk funky is "underground" enough that it's likely only going to be on the radar of dance music publications with an emphasis on explicitly (or purportedly) progressive/forward-slanted aesthetics, but doesn't chime in sufficiently with the other signifiers associated with that aesthetic(s) so as to generate much critical enthusiasm. So it falls between two stools.

Whereas pop-trance, say, is entirely off that radar.

isnt that forward-thinking kind of mindset entirely ridiculous at this point, though? why are ppl still on this "pushing things forward" approach. why is there still so much centrality given to it?

like do the visual arts still rely on this linear idea of art history

idk im out of my league in art critcism but it seems absurd that ppl would still cling to this idea of 'progress' instead of a messy topo-geographical sort of situation

A hangover of dance music being "the sound of the future" X well it does care a lot about sound design X faster turnover of sonic trends than other genres, at least at its critically endorsed end X the progressive indiefication of all crit-focused dance music criticism.

At any rate the only reason I raised all of this was in answer to the question "why don't dance critics talk about 'Miami 2 Ibiza'" - I don't think this is a new thing.

The separate thread is what nakh refers to as the mid-00s convergence - when what was popular and what was critically endorsed were more interchangeable than before or after.

ahh. yeah i mean i was more wondering if there was any sort of entertainment crit out their for dance fans along the lines of, like, R&B fan blogs etc.

but maybe mainstream R&B just has a higher success rate

this is a tricky way to generalize but i think that 'pop' dance tends to be more functional than aesthetic - not sure its really listened to often enough in the right context to provoke that kind of discussion

wld kinda love it if 'miami 2 ibizia' got repped in eoy lists tho

Pop female artists who I was hoping for would make it big this year vs. pop female artists that did made it and secretly hope they would flop:

Nina Sky YAY!
Kelis YAY!
Amerie YAY!
Cassie YAY!
VS
La Roux NAY!
Lady Gaga NAY!
Ke$ha NAY!
Robyn NAY!

if its any consolation, robyn didn't really make it

lol

Well of course she didn't made it in the same degree as sat ke$ha or lady gaga but I did hear some of her songs on the radio this year frequently and I've heard my brother and his friends - who have a pretty mainstream taste and are my basis for what is becoming popular out there in the real world - playing her music on their gatherings. In any case she became more ubiquitious in my world than I expected her to be.

While I'm at it Janelle Monae and YahZarah also deserved more attention this year. I get Janelle Monae was pretty popular amongst critics this year but it didn't feel to me like her singles 'tightrope' or 'cold war' made as much a popular stirring as they wanted them to or at least not where I come from... come to think of it I don't think I heard anyone drop Janelle Monae out of my room this year.

Monae was the house band at the ESPY Awards, fwiw.

Monae needs to be more famous than she is imo