ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2014

Was sure this morning that Queen would've been in the top 20, but by the time we got to 10 I stopped looking for it.

+ THANK YOU GR888000

Yikes, in all the hoopla I miss that Tinashe was #1. Cool song, voted for the album instead of it though

spotify:track:3ZuHoaPp0mQllnIzOyc2k6

^ Vic Mensa

109 Dierks Bentley - Drunk On A Plane

aw

Thank you based gr8080

around 8 songs in my ballot made it. I've had worse years.

disagree with playlist being 102, this is a top 77 dammit

"this track is not currently available in the US"

109 Dierks Bentley - Drunk On A Plane

aw

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Thursday, January 22, 2015 3:25 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ouch

but those are the bonus tracks. xp

Surprised by Perfume Genius no-show too.

ouch

six votes though! i was expecting two

I would've been a seventh.

thanks gr8080 for the rollout! and for ILM to have made me discover so much stuff this year, I love you all so much.

that awful schoolboy q verse

great song but yeah i hate that bit

thank you to gr8rs and feves and the boy seandalai btw, top work out there lads

Tracks that got a single #1 vote and nothing else:

Affie Yusuf - Rinse & Dry
CAZZETTE - Sleepless
Girl Talk & Freeway ft. Jadakiss - I Can Hear Sweat
Hannah Diamond - Attachment
Isaiah Rashad - Heavenly Father
Jessica Pratt - Back, Baby
Lee Ann Womack - Send It On Down
Mariah Carey - Meteorite
Róisín Murphy - Ancora Ancora Ancora (Severino & Nico De Ceglia Remix)
Samantha Jade - Sweet Talk
TV On The Radio - Careful You
The Nels Cline Singers - Companion Piece
Yhdentekevää - Pyhä Lehmä Anthem

a very fitting #1 and one of the best top 3s in recent memory. praise be for future islands getting shut out of it.

"rather be" - i hated this at first, and i still hate clean bandit for their twee, polite take on the pop-house revival. they are innocent smoothies advertising incarnate in music. song is so catchy and its ubiquity never felt oppressive though, i had downgraded my hatred to mild dislike by year-end. would really like them to fuck off now though.

"style" is a very special song and maybe the only real saving grace of 1989 - not that i don't love other songs on it but this is really peak taylor for me, and in a style i never expected she could pull off. is she really saying "take me home" at the end? i always hear it as "take me up", like despite the dysfunction of the relationship she's still going to give in to how good it feels. i also hear her "i said i've been there too a few times" not as a comment on how often she's had her heart broken, as seems to be the consensus, but how she plays the same game as he does.

i dislike "lifestyle" on a very visceral level. all their voices are like nails down a blackboard and the beat just adds to the chintziness. ugh i can't even listen to it. idk why people are surprised, if there's one thing i'm consistent in being against it's men who can't fucking sing.

future islands - thought it was funny that the indie consensus choice of 2014 depended so much on a "theatrical" attention-grabbing tv performance. like, one of the accusations lobbed at big pop stars tends to be "all spectacle, no substance" and yet i've rarely encountered a song whose popularity seemed so dependent on spectacle. do its fans think that without that tv performance it would have had the success it did? i thought the song was boring and his voice was a dealbreaker and the tv histrionics didn't even seem that notable

fka twigs - the way her vocals overlap, especially just as she starts swearing, is pure sensation.

tinashe - the way get ratchet go dumb then go mo dumb then we can keep it lit let's roll rolled off her tongue was maybe the finest enunciation in pop last year, and the moment when i first heard it last january and the sean paul interpolation dropped felt so triumphant - such utter confidence to use it at that exact moment. its placing at #1 feels very "summation of 2014" in that i'm unsurprised it got only one #1 vote: at no point in the year did it ever announce itself as The Song, but it encapsulated so many great things very neatly and honestly i can't think of anything better that deserved to be there. (so it makes sense that the dj q remix voters pushed it over the top.) i threw my vote to her album, though.

saer deserves some sort of a prize too, somebody shoplift him a gold-plated colander or something

Lee Ann Womack - Send It On Down

great song

it was a weird year for r&b

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Thursday, January 22, 2015 7:52 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it was as good a year for r&b as ever but ilx majorly diverges on r&b these days

nice words, lex

thx

looking at the whole list and i can't believe fucking "bang bang" got so close to the 77. ppl need to stop listening to the radio and giving these terrible songs the opportunity to grow on them.

country breakdown -

USA (36): Tinashe, Rae Sremmurd (x2), Rich Gang, Taylor Swift (x4), Vic Mensa, Future, Bobby Shmurda, DJ Snake & Lil Jon, Young Thug (x2), T.I., Dej Loaf, The War On Drugs, Becky G, Phantogram, D'Angelo & The Vanguard (x2), Shamir, ILoveMakonnen, Katy Perry, Spoon, Migos, Haim, Against Me! (x2), Jennifer Lopez, Holly Herndon, St. Vincent, Usher, Katie Gately, King, Tune-Yards
GBR (18): FKA Twigs (x2), Clean Bandit, Richard Dawson, Skepta, Meridian Dan, Charli XCX, Jessie Ware (x2), Hodgson, Indiana, Shift K3Y, Katy B, Aphex Twin, Rita Ora, QT, Mark Ronson, Duke Dumont
CAN (7): Kiesza, Caribou (x2), Owen Pallett (x2), Kira Isabella, Alvvays
TRI (3): Nicki Minaj (x3)
SWE (2): Tove Lo, Röyksopp & Robyn (½) (x2)
NOR (2): Röyksopp & Robyn (½) (x2), Todd Terje
CHI (2): Javiera Mena, Ana Tijoux
ESP (1): Sofi De La Torre
AUS (1): Tkay Maidza
GHA (1): Guru
COL (1): Shakira
NGR (1): Davido
ITA (1): Ninos Du Brasil

Also, the top three is entirely comprised of artists no one had heard of at the end of 2013. Big difference from the previous year's blockbuster overload.

Even less of an Asian presence than usual

looking at last year's poll and this one, beyonce really got ripped off by releasing her album when she did :/

Also, the top three is entirely comprised of artists no one had heard of at the end of 2013. Big difference from the previous year's blockbuster overload.

max was boosting FKA twigs back in december 2012!

Okay three artists who had very minimal profile a year ago, although Twigs hype was already starting to build. She's hardly Daft Punk or Kanye.

cross-post to ILX first mentions:

mike t-diva wrote this on thread Name ten artists YOU have never seen mentioned on ILM. on board I Love Music on Mar 19, 2010

Debruit
Startled Insects
KTU
Tinashe
David Bunny
Lupen Crook
Bella Hardy
The Outpatients
Unmen
Marian Montgomery

formerly known (by max) as twigs

didn't "water me" place on a tracks poll

such as last year

i also hear her "i said i've been there too a few times" not as a comment on how often she's had her heart broken, as seems to be the consensus, but how she plays the same game as he does.

This is one of my favourite moments on the album and one that bears a certain amount of close reading. It's ambiguous because it's not clear whether the meet-up is during a period where they're officially on or off, i.e. when the dude is "out and about with some other girl" is that a problem in itself or only because he's here, now, with the lights off and taking off his clothes?

So it's either the case that your take is spot on lex or alternatively you can read it as her copping to having been fixated on an ex while dating someone new (this situation crops up again later on the album but I can't remember where offhand).

People who think this song has bad lyrics aren't paying attention: I think this is in fact one of her best written songs as well as one of her best sounding.

tinashe - the way get ratchet go dumb then go mo dumb then we can keep it lit let's roll rolled off her tongue was maybe the finest enunciation in pop last year, and the moment when i first heard it last january and the sean paul interpolation dropped felt so triumphant - such utter confidence to use it at that exact moment. its placing at #1 feels very "summation of 2014" in that i'm unsurprised it got only one #1 vote: at no point in the year did it ever announce itself as The Song, but it encapsulated so many great things very neatly and honestly i can't think of anything better that deserved to be there. (so it makes sense that the dj q remix voters pushed it over the top.) i threw my vote to her album, though.

Cosign this in its entirety, and that line really pushed "2 On" over the top for me.

Water Me placed last year

I agree that Tinashe works as a "what if Ciara hadn't become boring and terrible after '1 2 Step'" thought experiment

Lee Ann Womack - Send It On Down

great song

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Thursday, January 22, 2015 3:34 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My #1. Apparently I was the only one to vote for her :\ Hoping she has more success on the Albums list.

Great job to those who did all the tabulation, pictures, etc!

Biggest ah-ha's were Vermillion, Hideaway, German Whip, Babylon System, and U-Huh.

Biggest WTFs were that God awful Richard Dawson track, the proliferation of Young Thug, and 2 On being the clear consensus (I like this song, but was surprised at the gap between it and #2).

Biggest stiff was Vince Staples, but glad "Hands Up" was the consensus among those who voted for him.

hoped nigeria & ghana would've placed more tracks.

hoped Jamaica would place a single track in the last three years

yeah after a few embarrassing years in a row this is a really solid top 3

This is one of my favourite moments on the album and one that bears a certain amount of close reading. It's ambiguous because it's not clear whether the meet-up is during a period where they're officially on or off, i.e. when the dude is "out and about with some other girl" is that a problem in itself or only because he's here, now, with the lights off and taking off his clothes?

So it's either the case that your take is spot on lex or alternatively you can read it as her copping to having been fixated on an ex while dating someone new (this situation crops up again later on the album but I can't remember where offhand).

i don't think i hear it as a problem in any context. the initial accusation - "i heard that you've been out and about with some other girl" - that's pure hurt accusation, she's wounded there. and then the next line when she captures exactly the kind of excuse he'd use and its very effective charm - "what you've heard is true but i...can't stop thinking 'bout you & i" - and how he uses tone and timing and words to manipulate her into falling for him (again) despite her hurt. and so "i've been there too a few times" could be that she's also been out and about with some other boys, but mostly because that's her territory. game recognise game.

Really thought Kitty - BRB would make it

hoped Jamaica would place a single track in the last three years
― rob, Thursday, January 22, 2015 10:03 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bou yah (vampire teeth) is an egregious omission.

also yeesh, looking at the full list, despite the #1, the r&b vote really died. i don't really count fka twigs as r&b and that pretty much leaves tinashe, king, usher, jessie ware and d'angelo (the last two are sort of outliers anyway). it's not like there weren't great r&b singles in 2014...

kelis not placing is a surprise

to me

yeah they got cut off my ballot bc they weren't as good as all the young thug features

i don't think i hear it as a problem in any context.

oh I agree - I just meant that it's an exchange that is both ambiguous and yet feels emotionally true regardless of how you interpret it.

The Anybody Wanna Buy a Heart? singles will probably be old and uncool by this time next year, so I was really disappointed Love 'Em All made such a poor showing.