TOP 10 NOW: \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\shawty got poll poll poll poll poll poll poll (part II: 2008 ALBUMS)/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

srsly tho if people thought something was really good, all you had to do was plug it a lot on the nominations thread like that school of seven bells record here or the ida maria song on the tracks charts. Both didn't really get a lot of ilm love until near the end of the year but had at least one enthusiastic proponent swaying the votes. ilm-ers *are* an inquisitive bunch and i don't know anyone here who wouldn't at least check a few songs out if someone pointed something interesting their way.

Sorry. I shouldn't let myself get worked up like this. But plenty of good things were overlooked in favour of utter fucking shit like The Ting Tings or Katy Perry, and in my opinion there's some weak-ass listening habits contributing to this. Maybe I'm being harsh. I probably am in fact, and I should probably accept the vagaries of taste. I'll give a few more of them a listen.

roz otm - that SVIIB record really is a great case in point. in the end its main enthusiast didn't even vote here, and it still placed. it's not something i'd ever have checked out by myself but the way kate repped for it convinced me.

fwiw my 20-trax ballot contained all of two top 40 hits - this is not v poptimist at all.

OH hang on if your tirade is actually directed at the ting tings and k perry, i am 100% with you on that!!

Lex, I don't actually think you're a particularly bad offender; you tend to get very much into your taste and explore it quite freely. I am a bit miffed about the DIVERSITY of tastes here, is perhaps the point.

katy perry was nowhere close to the poptimist poll fyi

Didn't much care for the Ting Tings song that ranked, but would've supported "Great DJ." I'd only vote for Katy Perry if she slept with me, though.

i think katy perry did win "worst thing of 2008" in the poptimist poll

At least the lex was willing to check out Boris. Even if he probably wont like it.
I cant understand why the ting tings get so much love but meh who cares about them.

diversity of tastes? too many people liked the same thing? in a poll?

ha yeah, katy perry with a landslide in "most horrible thing of 2008"

Sorry. I shouldn't let myself get worked up like this. But plenty of good things were overlooked in favour of utter fucking shit like The Ting Tings or Katy Perry, and in my opinion there's some weak-ass listening habits contributing to this. Maybe I'm being harsh. I probably am in fact, and I should probably accept the vagaries of taste. I'll give a few more of them a listen.

― Robin van Injury (country matters), Monday, February 9, 2009 4:15 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

louis, what you're doing here is arguing that everyone who voted in the poll - or who votes in polls - should pay close attention to the fringe indie rock you listen to. obviously, this is never going to happen in any situation. katy perry and the ting tings were two of the biggest pop acts of 08 in their respective countries, and though i don't really care for either, i'm not surprised that either placed. when you have a consensus poll it usually coalesces around the - no duh - consensus! and it's hard for something to become consensus when they haven't heard something, and the amount of ppl who heard katy perry and the ting tings is incomparable to the number that heard the rock music you are vouching for. this is really nothing new, my man.

I mean, I can hang with The Lex's tastes, because they're not really herd-influenced, they're inquisitive within his chosen fields (and even slightly outside). Of course, we each hold standards which clash fairly dramatically, but live and let live with an open mind :)

(although I am not gonna open my mind to any fukkin Ting Tings track any time soon) :P

OK, the Poptimist strawman was lazy. I'm more talking about an attitude which champions singles ahead of album tracks, pop above rock &c &c when it should be a level playing-field IMO

J0rdan is actually OTM and I am zipping it now :)

I only liked 3 tracks in the top 50, and knew about two of them already, but for me the whole thing was worth it for "Fascination". If you start fretting about the terrible things other people like, you'll never get anything else done. Just think of it as tourism. Cheap tourism you don't even have to spend vacation days on.

Or, if you prefer polarizing inanity to cheerful can't-we-all-just-get-along: I voted for Katy Perry in both trax and albums, and you are cordially invited to suck on a kerosene-dipped whatever it is you think I ought to have voted for instead.

45 - Girl Talk - Feed The Animals
86.5 points, 8 votes, 1 #1 vote
15 in P&J, 35 in p4k

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/1830/feedtheanimalsnewswi1.jpg

Is it really so hard to like both way out stuff and charting pop at the same time? My music collection says it's easy. xxxxp

I've had the Girl Talk album since last summer and still haven't listened to it. Should get on that.

figured the backlash would have kicked in by the time the voting happened.

lol yeah. i had no idea ilm-ers liked girl talk.

it placed pretty high in lots of year end polls

Why do poptimists hate Katy Perry? I admit I only heard Hot n Cold because my parents had guests over a few weeks ago and i never listen to radio and i never watch the music channels on digital tv , but I've heard far worse than that song (hello keane,ting tings, coldplay,estelle). I don't know that big hit of hers, so maybe if i did that will explain it?
x-posts

Is it really so hard to like both way out stuff and charting pop at the same time? My music collection says it's easy. xxxxp

indeed!!

hey this is the first instance in the albums poll that i can seriously get my hate on. fucking girl talk! i thought mash-ups had died out by 03.

yeah, but this is ILM! do the brits like girl talk?

xxpost

dunno for some reason i always had the impression that there was a lot of gt hate on this board. could be my own hate talking.

xxxp ha

the dubious qualities of 'hot n' cold' were discussed on the trax poll (plodding, boring beat + she's awful human being). but still better than her other hit(s?), which were just appalling and offensive to boot.

xxpost

there is, but lots of people who vote in these poll don't discuss things on the boards - if you read the GT thread re feed the animals, it's basically me, whiney g and jaymc vs ethan and deej - none of us voted for girl talk

I don't know that big hit of hers, so maybe if i did that will explain it?

ha probably. it's actually quite interesting that the sort of people who normally rally round the big summer anthems of 'umbrella' magnitude all seemed to react with total kneejerk hatred of katy perry. anyway, there were a number of good reasons for the hate in her thread - katy perry - what do you think?

I like Night Ripper OK in a novelty kinda way but FTA would barely have made my top 50, let alone 20. IMHO pretty lah.

OTOH that Kleptones/Queen/hiphop mashup record is one of my fave things this decade, fwiw.

too many abbrevs, sorry.

I think a lot of people won't mention they like certain bands due to ilm's hate of "corny indie fuxxors" and they dont want called out on threads for it, but will always vote in polls as they can remain anonymous.

probably, yeah.

(lah = BLAH)

Night Ripper good in more-than-novelty way, but I don't think there needs to be anymore than that. should leave it for american indie rockers to dance to bcz that's teh closest they come to 'clubbin'.

didn't meant that to sound so snide, actually.

Surely it's the disavowed middlebrow-ness of Katy Perry and (esp.) The Ting Tings that seems kinda annoying rather than their pop-ness - as in, it's hard not to suspect that the person who checks for them thinks they're really daring and challenging artists (however this suspicion is probably neither fair nor correct).

I got the impression that the people who like The Ting Tings on this board are mostly American, perhaps it's easier for them to look past or be oblivious to the aspects that will clog up a UK listener's experience. This often happens with UK music - it seemed like everyone from the UK had really specific and elaborate "takes" on M.I.A. (positive and negative) whereas so many US listeners were saying "hey I like that 10 Dollar song."

i voted for GT. lj, i'm interested to see what albums you voted for. hell, i may even give a couple of them a listen someday.

I'll post my ballot at the end. I'm expecting at least 8 of my top 10 not to feature :D

And I will try to be open-minded about anything that features here. Thanks for articulating it Tim - my problem IS with what I perceive as unambitious, middlebrow low-denominator music that nonetheless may well just connect with the sweet spot for others.

But plenty of good things were overlooked in favour of utter fucking shit like The Ting Tings or Katy Perry, and in my opinion there's some weak-ass listening habits contributing to this.

hold on there kiddo. i had both k.p. and the ting tings on my trax ballot, because i like pop songs (even though i mostly do not like katy perry -- i would've voted for "hot n cold" by just about any chirpy girl singer). i also had what i assume were the only votes for two arab pop singers who i imagine you haven't heard of, which is fine with me -- i don't know much about arab pop myself and don't expect anyone else to either. but the absence of arab pop on the top 50 trax list isn't a sign of "weak-ass listening habits," any more than a vampire fucking weekend song making the list is (and i would spend a week listening to katy perry to avoid hearing that vampire weekend album one more time). it's just a sign of people liking different things. part of the fun of these kinds of lists and polls is finding out about some of the things other people like, possibly discovering you like them yourself -- or not, either way -- and just sort of comparing notes from different fields of interest.

xpost: well ok then.

Also, I think Blind is a great #1 track, although I stick by the Frankie Knuckles vers as the definitive

(interestingly, I'm expecting pretty much my entire 11-20 to be in here somewhere...coz that's when I started voting for stuff like Portishead/The Hold Steady etc) :D

tipsy mothra, I do like discovering new sounds! Sorry for harshing your buzz but some of the stuff in the top 50 I found to be (subjectively) limited. For all the talk of diversity, I don't think that sonically the list went TOO far beyond well-produced dancepop. And when it did, stuff like VW and TVOTR wasn't exactly straining at the creative leash. Anyhow, enuff. Let's see what happens in this one!

Yeah but you seem to be assuming that we're all listening for mad crazy shit that inverts the paradigm whereas really maybe most people just want stuff that sounds really amazing in their car.

I kinda want both tbh, which is why I'm holding out for The Chap, as I'm sure you are :D

44 - Jay Reatard - Matador Singles 08
87.5 points, 7 votes
78 in P&J

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/8364/ole822matadorsingles08ls1.jpg

jay reatard matador singles '08

some of the stuff in the top 50 I found to be (subjectively) limited

me too. just probably different stuff than you did. and a trax poll is almost inevitably going to trend toward the dancefloor (but not nearly enough for actual r&b/hip-hop/dance-music heads). just like the album poll is going to inevitably trend rock-ward.

the hivemind at work. hmm, with one glaring exception, i don't think i voted for what i assume will be the top 5 or so.

"inverts the paradigm" is maybe a bit far, I'm more for people who make striking, original, memorable artistic statements that also stimulate one's enjoyment receptors

Yeah, consensus material often tends to be the stuff that goes halfway to pleasing everyone, there are exceptions, but there is a tendency

As someone who loved the shit out of Night Ripper, Feed the Animals is just kinda more of the same and blah.

There are a lot of vocal Girl Talk haters on ILM, but that doesn't take away from the fact that there are plenty of people who liked it, too.

I do agree with you quite a lot LJ though, but I also know that there's hardly gonna be a consensus on niche things I like, or even that certain things don't translate into tracks, I would never have thought of isolating one track from the Carlos Giffoni album, maybe one of my most listened to albums but I really hoped for Chris Brown since I listened to his singles an insane amount this year

yeah, I was just messin' with you on that too LJ

Louis you're setting yourself up as some kind of mirror-image Lex (or perhaps even Geir) which is ignoring things like diversity of opinion or interesting tangents in individual tastes in favour of creating some sort of ideological bogeyman to rage against, even when it doesn't exist, or not in the form you think. It's always beyond tiresome when someone does it and its why ILM threads tend to get derailed into everyone beating on one person.

The problem with music that can fall under the term "striking, original, memorable artistic statements" is that it tends to get hyper-specified in particular genres that it's not possible for everyone to be an expert on, let alone to agree where the striking, original, memorable artistic statements are being made.

Like, I think The-Dream album is one of the most striking, original, memorable artistic statements I've heard in ages (I hope it charts) but I can see why anyone who was not already a massive commercial R&B fan wouldn't get this.

This is a perspective thing that comes with knowledge-of-genre: what strikes the invested listener (close up) as a topography of daring strikes the outsider (standing further away) as undistinguished and insignificant musical wrinkles.

i agreed with your assessment at first, Rev, but after a couple of months found myself liking it even more than the debut. the samples seemed to be a lot less obvious + FTA sounded much more densely mixed overall to my ears.

xps