ILM's TOP 77 TRACKS of 2015

Thanks for nominating and voting again this year, everyone. In the end, 137 of us cast a ballot for our favorite tracks of 2015.

While I've got your attention, please show some love to forksclovetofu for helping out not only with maintaining all the associated Spotify playlists—including the one that accompanies these results—but for assisting with the rollout as well. My work situation is not as flexible as it's been in previous years, so I'm only able to get things started in the mornings before I leave the house. That's when our pal forks will take things over each day. Please address all your "Save us, Johnny Fever!" pleas to him. ;)

So without further delay, here are ILM's top 77 tracks of 2015...

http://i.imgur.com/2lCLh7o.jpg

77 JAZMINE SULLIVAN "Mascara" (182 points, 8 votes)
Pitchfork - DNP / P&J - DNP / Youtube

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

great start too!

thanks for all the hard work; JF, seandalai and forksclovetofu!

blah, this would have been much higher if I'd gotten my shit together and voted. But I'm glad to see it made it.

don't know why consensus formed around "Mascara," would've much rather "Brand New" or "Silver Lining" but i just voted for the album and not any of its tracks

Ah, a great week on ILM.

Think we've not seen the last of Jazmine, some dude.

ah yes, cluttering the tracks poll with deep cuts from the high placing albums, a time-honored lame tradition

save us, johnny fever!

Macara is the best, but I, too, voted for the album instead of its singles.

excited! although I don't know much about jazmine sullivan

ooooooh! get acquainted - the whole album is fantastic

This was one of the two songs that caused me to submit a new ballot once I realized that I'd forgotten it. I'm guessing that it was my reconsideration that gave it that bump into the Top 77, so yay!

http://i.imgur.com/zB8L2Jp.jpg

76 RADIOHEAD "Spectre" (184 points, 5 votes, 1 first-place vote)
Pitchfork - DNP / P&J - 465 / Youtube

ah yes, cluttering the tracks poll with with tracks that people agree are the best tracks of the year, a time-honored lame tradition

traditionally, the joke result is #1 or #2

As much as possible I avoid voting for singles whose albums will appear on my list, but I can't fuck with "Mascara," which I reviewed exactly a year ago and heralded 2015's best album.

Love Mascara but Stanley has always been the standout for me.

traditionally, the joke result is #1 or #2

Yeah, imo, this succeeds neither as a Bond theme nor as an even halfway decent Radiohead song, but ¯\(ツ)/¯

take a POLL to dinner

2015 was my "year of keeping up". Listened to more new releases than ever before. Still, I expect that to pay off more in the albums rollout; I'm sure I'll still be going 'WTF is that? Never heard of it' as the tracks results appear. :)

Anyway, voted for Jazmine. Would have been a travesty had "Mascara" not made it.

I'm on holiday ftr, so my responses shall be unusually sunny. Right now we are taking high tea.

http://i.imgur.com/fGrRf44.jpg

75 THUNDERCAT FT. FLYING LOTUS AND KAMASI WASHINGTON "Them Changes" (184 points, 6 votes, 1 first-place vote)
Pitchfork - 27 / P&J - 47 / Youtube

Drums sound a LOT like Dilla.

Them Changes being the 75th best track of the year seems about right.

Didn't vote for it but that whole thundercat album was great imo

i think i avoided the thundercat album mistaking him for someone else i dislike whoops
will check it out

Not heard any of the songs yet but I gave 'Mascara' a quick listen. Strangely the first thing that came to mind was 'All Woman'-era Lisa Stansfield. I like the almost stream-of-conscious lyrics and the way I can't tell if this is supposed to be a happy or sad song (it's def bittersweet I'll give it that).

I had a Thundercats album from a few years ago and kind of dismissed him, but the more recent stuff I've heard is wonderful,

Drums sound a LOT like Dilla.

Well they are sampled from an often sampled Isley Brothers track:
https://youtu.be/etwIu8-FlGU

Radiohead are still releasing music?!

And ILM is still voting for them?

5 people out of 137, so that seems about right. I think there is an album rumored for 2016 though.

Not being a fan of Bond, I thought I'd give this Radiohead song a miss. Hmmm, nothing special. Sounds like a retread of Pyramid Song but not as interesting. Feels like someone trying to sound like Radiohead and Thom's voice is thin on this one.

Well they are sampled from an often sampled Isley Brothers track

Ah, that would definitely explain it.

Oh, sorry, I missed the post about it being a Bond theme. I guess I'm totally out of loop, I did notice there was a new Bond in the cinemas, but I didn't know they did the theme. Sounds like an awful choice for that particular franchise.

Yeah, that Radiohead track is clearly getting points for simply being Radiohead, and hopefully not also for being a rejected Bond theme.

It's not the official Bond theme. It was rejected.

Radiohead didn't do the official theme. That was Sam Smith. His version is 100000x more terrible.

^ this might be true, actually.

Seems bizarre that Radiohead would have even been considered for this, and that they would have also agreed to it, but whatever.

dog latin - fact that it's from a concept album called 'Reality Show' should clue you in a bit

i forgot this was starting, so pleased to see "mascara" made it. i voted for the superlative album but this fucking song...the nuances of the songwriting and the performance and the melodies blow me away every time.

yeah my hair and my ass fake,
but so what? i get my rent paid with it,
and my tits get me trips to places i can't pronounce right
he said he'd keep it coming if i keep my body tight

is probably up there with the best opening verses i've ever heard? i love the run-on lines throughout the whole song, every statement has a caveat or qualification or something that adds a different angle to it. and jazmine is so empathetic, she reminds me of brandy clark on this album. is the accordion line running behind it meant to be reminiscent of the-dream's "fancy"? it's retelling that story from the girl's perspective in some ways. "you're coach class and i'm in that g5" is really terius-like melodically as well, actually the entire middle 8 sceptically nodding to kendrick, terius and beyoncé in three consecutive lines works so well.

i wanted to read a million thinkpieces about this song & race & gender & economic inequality & the labour of beauty last year, it's all in there, this is just phenomenal and timely songwriting, she's the fucking best

and the one bit where she lets her voice crack, gets out of the character's psychic armour of defiance and just crumbles with "DON'T I DESERVE TO BE PRIVILEGED, DON'T I DESERVE TO GET THE VERY BEST" and strikes right at the heart of every one of those themes

http://i.imgur.com/Rdw3TUj.jpg]

74 FLOATING POINTS "Silhouettes (I, II, III)" (186 points, 5 votes, 1 first-place vote)
Pitchfork - DNP / P&J - 233 / Youtube

(yawn)

(sorry)

I can't listen to the #74 tune right now, but the combination of the band name, track name, and the image in the post makes it seem like the most boring thing ever.

the way I can't tell if this is supposed to be a happy or sad song (it's def bittersweet I'll give it that)

i think the narrator is trapped - by the conditions her men impose on her, by the poverty she came from, by the sheer work that goes into maintaining her beauty - but jazmine also makes it clear, imo, that her defiance should win out; we're not meant to feel sorry for her, the injustice is systemic, she's doing her best with what she has available to her and even if there's a weariness to her, the narrator is content with her choices and rejects any pity offered to her

great post Lex, I'll def be revisiting the song (and the album if I can get hold of it).

it's a really smart song.

tbf, this is my exact reaction to most bobbins things that have ever made the countdown. I get the appeal in the moment, but can't remember a thing about it 2 minutes later. It's like we're all wired differently or something!

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Saturday, January 23, 2016 1:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is totally understandable when it comes to club music! i don't expect anyone who hasn't been or hasn't enjoyed clubbing to get a 7-min instrumental techno track (obv you don't have to do this to enjoy it). i do expect a poll-winning track that purports to be a pop song to leave some, any impression though

It just feels like in the past the euro-pop squad would slide a "Vermillion" or something into the top 20 and that was fine, but this year it's like they took over the whole damn poll.

― The Reverend, Saturday, January 23, 2016 9:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i share a lot of your dislike for whiter-than-white europop but apart from this being really reductive about susanne sundfør (this was sort of my prejudice about her before i actually listened to her), idg this. there are as many european synthpop artists in the entire 77 as black american artists in the top 10. blame canada for the limp whiteness takeover tbh, it feels like this is that country's principal contribution to both electronic and pop music

It did on me. I've listened to it probably 200 or more times in the last year, several occasions I've even binged on it playing it on repeat, because it just puts me in a certain place that I enjoy being in. If it doesn't for you, it doesn't. No sweat.

But I've always been fairly ambivalent about Grimes, so I was surprised as anyone she made a song I liked that much.

i really enjoyed 'visions' but mostly for a couple of standout tracks. 'art angels' is one i can listen to over and over but 'realiti' was a song that i've listened to (or watched the video for) a couple hundred times, yeah. i found myself pretty moved by it, idk. and as a song it hits various sweet spots for me.

Also that Waka Flocka song that sampled Velvet Underground is kind of amazing.

co-sign, JF you need to hear this if you haven't yet

Another thanks for the ChillxWill tip. That early '90s hip hop sound is like catnip to my ears.

tbf, this is my exact reaction to most bobbins things that have ever made the countdown. I get the appeal in the moment, but can't remember a thing about it 2 minutes later. It's like we're all wired differently or something!

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Saturday, January 23, 2016 1:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is totally understandable when it comes to club music! i don't expect anyone who hasn't been or hasn't enjoyed clubbing to get a 7-min instrumental techno track (obv you don't have to do this to enjoy it). i do expect a poll-winning track that purports to be a pop song to leave some, any impression though

― cher guevara (lex pretend), Sunday, January 24, 2016 1:36 AM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hadn’t thought about it before, but this may partly explain what made Realiti so great for me last year. When I first heard it I found it both ascetic/attenuated and deep sounding, like a lot of the dance music I like, appealing 'in the moment' and difficult to remember after the fact. It didn’t wear out it’s appeal after 5-10 listens

The accrual of meaning for me occurred in the many occasions and settings that I had the chance to hear it over the next several months

I didn't vote in this, but "Realiti" would have been pretty high on my ballot, for the reasons Dan says. It's a pretty low-key pop song, plus since it's a demo, it doesn't have that mastering sparkle that songs usually have. The first listen, I liked the mood, and it reminded me a lot of "Running Up That Hill" - same lack of mastering sparkle - but it didn't grab me much. It took a few listens for the melody to really stick for me; in fact, I think I only gave it another listen because of the enthusiasm here. The same thing that made it slow to grow on me made it easy to binge on. I admire but haven't really enjoyed any Grimes songs before and since, mostly because I think her songs are kinda spiky and shrill. "Realiti" is still sublime though.

Should admit that some of my love comes from the video, where she visited a few of the same places in Asia I've visited the last year. It's like the song retroactively soundtracked my 2015.

I don't like "Hotline Bling," although I find it tolerable vs. "Right Hand" which urban radio plays a lot for some reason. That being said making some kind of ideological case against it is off base to me, like "Blurred Lines" just in a different way. I mean there's the "left out" lyric so part of the gist is he's bummed she's having fun without him.

Apologies if I'm breaking the comment rules by posting on something upthread

Yeah I think the whole "floats past you on first listen" thing seems to be a common experience (has anyone been instantly bowled over?). I would not have expected it to top my ballot in the first few weeks of listening, but the song has an odd... Resilience to it.

Xpost

a lot of grimes' appeal is stand-in shorthand or synecdochic for the teeming exhausting infinite jest we call lyfe (= listening to music) that var ppl 4 var reasons would seem to prefer to avoid. 'realiti' is a bitterly fitting #1 therefore cos it is about ilm itself and tim was right about death

signed a mountaineer

Xp

It felt like the internet went nuts over it (and the potential 'lost' Grimes album in the same vein) within hours of knowing it existed. Certainly had an instant impact for me.

Looking back, the run from 77 to 40 or so is by miles the most interesting bit of the list, above that there's a lot of middling stuff, centering on the same two or three areas. I can't imagine looking at this list in years to come and thinking 'yeah, this represents something really exciting that was happening'. FWIW I don't really feel like a lot of the rap music that placed this year was particularly interesting either, but as someone whose ballot was like 60% dancehall and afrobeats it's usually instructive to look at the areas of black music that get overlooked as well as the ones that place.

The same goes for 'euro' as well. I love the Susanne Sundfor album but in general Scandipop fetishisation is one of ILM's lamest traits, but at the same time Europe is a fucking big and diverse place producing a lot of music, the vast majority of which is entirely unrepresented here.

Also I do think the albums poll will likely be more diverse and more representative of ILM than the tracks poll, but the same has been true in a few years. Like, Dawn Richard was probably the single most gushed about artist in 2015 and she's nowhere to be seen here.

yeah a lot of people killed it in album format specifically this year, and at least there can't be multiple placing artists!

oh apart from future and young thug sighhhhh

well I doubt it will happen but *technically* there can be multiple artists there too

I must read posts all the way through I guess

Yeah I think the whole "floats past you on first listen" thing seems to be a common experience (has anyone been instantly bowled over?)

i think i was, actually; in the moment i thought "oh this is obviously grimes' best song and i have to listen to it five more times." something about the fractured drums that open it, the way the chorus literally climbs and descends, and the kind of amniotic, embracing quality of the synths; a lot of her earlier work feels skeletal, which is often where it thrills, the hooks don't have to travel very far to be visible in the mix, they sort of pulse brightly through shattering frameworks. everything on "realiti" pulses, contains depth, is enveloping. even as a demo it's an environment

again despite the above i completely get why people would listen to it and hear nothing

OTM

ego is really a jam imma have to check out the rest of that album

2shy also i def like, but truly the last like minute is all i need and fire af

everything on "realiti" pulses

Yeah the album version (which is a binus track on AA, correct?)--don't get me wring, it's really good imo as well--there is enough space and clarity to hear every word and every synth squiggle, and a lot of the song's mystique us lost. Part of why I think the demo's thjn sound suits it so well is because you really can't hear everything that goes on and so all the different effects and even some of the vocals all become indistinct, overlapping and competing obfuscations which de-center the track and allow the focus to be re-aligned on that insistent throbbing synth which is the track's rhythmic backbone and its biggest hook*. Certainly its that sturdy pulse rhythm running throughout the track, even through the drop that you can't necessarily tell is there on the first couple listens, that allows you to move through the track without necessarily realizing that you are only half-hearing everything that is going on..

(*my dn is an attempt to describe this pulsating synth bed from an earlier discarded attempt at a defense of the track)

^^good post! it really puts into words the experience of this for me

don't get me wring

unintentional genius

I've never had a problem with "Realiti" in any form because it sounds like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-PYqUHfTMA

^^^ hell yeah

lol!
take these dogs away from me

take these dogs away from me
welcome to realiti

btw here's the missing BBHMM Joey LaBeija remix I voted for

https://www.mediafire.com/?umhhwenec9nbw20

― The Reverend, Saturday, 23 January 2016 19:48 (2 days ago)

*jigglepanda.gif*

yeah good lookin' rev. couldn't find that anywhere!

I mostly played the Shoes edit, for extra dissapointment as it has a more approximate tempo to the sample and sounds like a hotline bling remix.

Moka, how have I lived all my life without knowing about Shoes? Found a compilation online. What the heck? Who are these guys?

Oh god, guys. This is terrible so far. Going to give Project Pablo a try but, really. What a mess.

Err, somehow posted this in the wrong thread. Oh well.

Lol otm

I was reminded yesterday while at an outside afternoon party in very hot weather that I was a total chump for noting for "Lean On".

for not voting for, even.

fyi forks re:spotify playlist - #89 is now available

on it, thanks.

I was reminded yesterday while at an outside afternoon party in very hot weather that I was a total chump for noting for "Lean On".

― Tim F, Wednesday, January 27, 2016 5:14 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

smh

I'm sorry. I forget how good it is in that context b/w exposure events.

deej is just mad u get to go to outdoor parties in warm weather in january

I'm mad I've ever had to hear "Lean On"

I haven't taken the plunge on the new Gesu No Kiwami Otome album yet, since it looks to be about $30, but their Dress No Nugikata EP from 2013 is available at a reasonable price, and is a lot of fun too.

KING added to playlist.
btw, the KING album is out!

Goddammit, I can't stop listening to Cool for the Summer tonight. WHY??

'cause i'm your body type

Don't tell your mother, JF.

added "spectre" and "awoo" to the playlist.

i'm still doing that 8k track playlist but i feel like i should zip through this list once or twice to see what i missed.