ILM 2015 Tracks Poll Thread of Ballots, Statistics and Community-wide Anomie

my ballot:

U.S. Girls - Sororal Feelings
Of Montreal - Empyrean Abbattoir
Oneohtrix Point Never - Sticky Drama
David Bowie - Blackstar
Death Grips - Why a Bitch Gotta Lie
Aphex Twin - diskhat1
Grimes - Realiti (Demo)
Destroyer - Times Square
Kendrick Lamar - Wesley’s Theory
Lana Del Rey - Terrance Loves You
Beck - Dreams
Chelsea Wolfe - Carrion Flowers

I always just kind of throw something together in 5 minutes and as usual looking back on my ballot realize that some weird choices were made. I stand by my top 4 though.

I had 4 Kendrick songs on my tracks ballot because I listened to them a ton independently of the album; I ranked them in the order of frequency that I listened to them. There was no way any of them were not going to be on my ballot; in fact, if I was doing it over I would probably put a few more Kendrick songs on it because I spent a lot of time popping into that album in random spots and grooving on isolated songs, almost as much as I did playing it front to back. (Aside from possibly the Marriages album, nothing else I listened to this past year came close to receiving the same number of spins.) Dumping those tracks in the name of showing off my breadth and diversity of taste would not be a true representation of the music I spent the last year digging and it always baffles me when I see people chime in during the tracks rollout with "oh I love this song, heard it so many times, played it constantly, I took it off my ballot so I could include this K-pop song I found out about last week"

I also stand by your top 4 xp

I almost don't listen to tracks outside of the context of an album so the point is kinda moot as far as I'm concerned, my favorite tracks are most likely on my favorite albums (also I didn't nominate any of my favorite tracks anyway, as I needed the noms for my albums, so I ended up voting for what others had nominated, which obviously is not going to be very representative of my own favs)

Bold = didn't place; * = I was the only voter

Carly Rae Jepsen - Run Away With Me
Miguel - Coffee
Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment - Sunday Candy
Sevyn Streeter - 4th Street
Bjork - Stonemilker
*The Mountain Goats - Heel Turn 2
*Dar Williams - FM Radio
St. Vincent - Teenage Talk
Prince - Baltimore
Brandi Carlile - Murder in the City
Chvrches - The Clearest Blue
For Esme - Just Yet
Belle and Sebastian - Nobody's Empire
Richard Thompson - She Never Could Resist a Winding Road
Courtney Barnett - Pedestrian at Best
*FIDLAR - 40oz on Repeat
Kendrick Lamar - King Kunta
Jazmine Sullivan - Mascara
Sleater Kinney - A New Wave
*G.L.O.S.S. - Outcast Stomp
Justin Bieber - What Do You Mean?
Jeremih ft. J Cole - Planes
*Beach Slang - Bad Art and Weirdo Ideas
*Kerbivore - Opportunity Costs
Dead Sara - Something Good

I just don't consume music as albums any more, but I like plenty of album tracks, my solution is just not to vote in the albums poll at all as I feel unqualified to have an overview of the year.

There is a simple solution to this:

1. list your top X songs that impacted you in isolation; BOOM there is your tracks ballot
2. list your top x albums that impacted you as discrete musical units; BOOM there is your albums ballot
3. if there's any overlap, shrug and send that shit in anyway

― its subtle brume (DJP), Friday, January 22, 2016 4:28 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this might get to the heart of it because that's not a simple solution! putting tracks in numerical order stops making sense to me after about three or four; thereafter i feel i'm comparing so many different things as to make it nonsensical. "big pop hit that sounded amazing at parties" vs "country ballad me and my bf both loved" vs "10 min dance instrumental that is compositionally incomparable to a pop song but that i loved for different reasons" vs "summer jam" vs "winter headphones song", it feels arbitrary

so excising album artists from my tracks ballot is not being dishonest or pretentious any more than any reason for cutting any other song is, more convenient and a way to make the exercise more fun/less predictable for myself

with that approach though lex you're effectively ruling out the artists who made the best albums from the tracks poll

...which feels counter-intuitive. for, let's say, dawn richard not to have representation in the tracks 77 feels plain wrong, in fact

I had no overlap w/ my singles and albums lists. Album tracks didn't really function as good singles for me this year

the only dawn tracks i considered voting for were "james dean" and "dance" bc they weren't on the album. my votes for all her amazing tracks were contained in my vote for her amazing album

tbh in terms of listening i usually end up listening in ep-length chunks? i mean listening to An Album All The Way Through is great and all if it merits it, but one's listening time doesn't always come in album-length sizes

how i do my ballot:

Whack the whole list into Excel
Go down the list, putting a cross in the right hand column of every song I know or recognise
Sort these into known/not known
Go through these and give each mark out of 9: 9 being undroppable, 1 being... well I don't bother with those.
I end up with a longest of tracks ranked between 9 and 6, which I then attempt to rank in order.
I think about it in these turns: Would I rather hear the track after this one on the list, or this one.
Bit of chopping and changing and I'm done.

That's probably more or less what everyone does.

also my albums was kind of boring and it seemed depressing to cut away their best parts

I like the Kendrick album and I voted for it, but King Kunta is the clear standout that I was putting on playlists for myself and others over the year.

There is a simple solution to this:

1. list your top X songs that impacted you in isolation; BOOM there is your tracks ballot
2. list your top x albums that impacted you as discrete musical units; BOOM there is your albums ballot
3. if there's any overlap, shrug and send that shit in anyway

― its subtle brume (DJP), Friday, January 22, 2016 11:28 AM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes this is what i did

i appreciate others' push for diversity in their lists to give support to the widest range of artists possible but i also want to be honest about what i actually listened to/dug the most, that said there were a few last minute discoveries i had from the nominations list that i snuck in and maybe in a week or two will regret but who cares really

(Xp to lex re: rasheeda , lol thanks, good looking out)

I basically just copied the list I'd posted on my blog a month previously, however much amendment it could have used. Weighted:

Björk - History of Touches
Susanne Sundfør - Fade Away
Girlpool - Chinatown
Young Guv - Kelly, I’m Not A Creep
Jazmine Sullivan - Let It Burn
Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - Sunday Candy
Kendrick Lamar - King Kunta
Chromatics - Just Like You
Jenny Hval - Sabbath
Waxahatchee - La Loose
Hop Along - Powerful Man
Colleen Green - Wild One
Dawn Richard - Swim Free
Tinashe - Dreams Are Real
Beach House - PPP
Evans The Death - Expect Delays
Fetty Wap - Again
The Radio Dept. - This Repeated Sodomy
Miguel - Waves
Janet Jackson - Night

Field Music – The Noisy Days Are Over (519, sole voter)

Yeah! I'll be considering this one for 2016. Field Music great as ever.

lex / dan / lj: you're presenting it like it's a problem that I haven't solved. I'm perfectly happy with my methodology; it just doesn't jibe with the way you do it, which is fine.
important again as always imo to suggest that we maybe not take ourselves too seriously when discussing the intricacies of tabulating deep meaningful opinions from 130 or so music nerds. I mean _I'm_ listening of course, and the conversation is certainly worthwhile but suggesting there's a platonic "right way" to do it or to bemoan the lack of inclusion of an artist that we're all listening to already in our slambook is where you start to lose me.

Dumping those tracks in the name of showing off my breadth and diversity of taste would not be a true representation of the music I spent the last year digging and it always baffles me when I see people chime in during the tracks rollout with "oh I love this song, heard it so many times, played it constantly, I took it off my ballot so I could include this K-pop song I found out about last week"

do people have diverse lists to 'give support to the widest range of artists possible' (sorry to single out this quote, no better way to put it i think) or just because they just like diversity, seems like the latter?

each props up the other i suppose?

i guess you could think about it that way, maybe i'll give it a try

i stand with lex in this debate. when i have a list of 50-something tracks i need to cut to 25 and i'm finding arbitrary reasons to drop tracks, 'i already voted for this track along with every other track on the album in my albums list' is a pretty good reason. i also don't really quantify exactly how much i like most of the tracks i love throughout the year, i either have a good experience with a track and return to it repeatedly, or i don't. so it's not like i'm dropping 10/10's from my list and keeping 8/10's in favor of diversity.

i also don't really quantify exactly how much i like most of the tracks i love throughout the year, i either have a good experience with a track and return to it repeatedly, or i don't. so it's not like i'm dropping 10/10's from my list and keeping 8/10's in favor of diversity.

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Friday, January 22, 2016 6:31 PM (43 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

YES exactly!!!

and quantifying the goodness of the time i had between a deep cut (or even single) off a beloved album, and like a club track or stand-alone pop single, doesn't make sense to me

> do people have diverse lists to 'give support to the widest range of artists possible' ... or just because they just like diversity

I made made a preliminary list to serve as a time capsule of this year in my listening, then went through everything nominated by a half dozen ILMers with sympatico tastes, and sampled maybe 40% of the Spotify list. Guilty pleasure Fleur East, and a "new Grace Jones", V V Brown, slipped in this way (wish someone had nominated the album Glitch). Then its just prune till I'm pretty sure everything left will stand up to repeated listens, and still sparks pleasure when I hear it's opening.

As for albums, I've got 65 (well some are EPs) in the library and have sampled perhaps 100 others. Its enough to be fairly sure of my top 30 without much effort. Cut 5 that I know won't appeal to anybody else and I'm done. I'd love to have the time to delve further in that enormous Spotify list, but I suspect I'll have my blind spots filled in by the poll results and the ballots from ILMers on the same wavelength.

here's my weighted ballot. bolded stuff didn't place.

Carly Rae Jepsen - Making The Most Of The Night
White Hinterland - Chill and Natural
Calvin Harris ft. HAIM - Pray To God
Leggy - Peach
Missy Elliott ft. Pharrell Williams - WTF (Where They From)
Daphne & Celeste - You and I Alone
Miguel - Waves
Old - Dude
John Grant ft. Tracey Thorn - Disappointing
Jason Derulo - Want To Want Me
Elle King - Ex's and Oh's
Weaves - Tick
Big Quiet - Maura & Dana
Peaness - Fortune Favours The Bold
Trudy - Behave
Fetty Wap ft. Monty - My Way
D'Angelo And The Vanguard - Really Love
VARSITY - So Sad, So Sad
Brandon Flowers - Can't Deny My Love
Ne-Yo – Coming With You
Pitbull ft. Chris Brown - Fun
Pinkshinyultrablast - Kiddy Pool Dreams
Jess Glynne - Don't Be So Hard On Yourself
Dumblonde - Dreamsicle
Annie - Cara Mia

a lot of the stuff that placed most highly were songs that i couldn't stop playing either at home or on my radio show

Weighted ballot; bold placed:

Tekno - Duro (#216)
Bra Qwequ - Fraud Money (#340)
Lil Kesh - Gbese (#519, sole vote)
Kiss Daniel - Woju (#345)
Jack Ü ft. Justin Bieber - Where Are Ü Now (#19)
Patoranking ft. Wande Coal - My Woman, My Everything (#445)
Skuki ft. Olamide - Over The Mountain (#625, sole vote)
Kiss Daniel - Good Time (#134)
Fetty Wap - Trap Queen (#2)
J Hus - Lean & Bop (Extended Mix) (#89)
Olamide - Bobo (#330)
Rush - Attention (#362)
Selena Gomez - Good For You (#130)
Patoranking - Make Am (#882, sole vote)
Tekno - Anything (#483)
Victoria Kimani - Show (#939, sole vote)
Olamide ft. Wizkid - Confam Ni (#962, sole vote)
Demi Lovato – Cool for the Summer (#6)
Rae Sremmurd - This Could Be Us (#66)
Sexy Steel - Sisi (#1022, sole vote)
Justin Bieber - Sorry (#15)
Korede Bello - Godwin (#262)
EXID - Ah Yeah (#183)
Davido ft. Uhuru & DJ Buckz - The Sound (#1086, sole vote)
Ronnie Flex ft. Mr Polska - Niemand (#1099, sole vote, tie for last position!)

Dumblonde - Dreamsicle

oh yeah, this was one i was hoping would place, lol

Disappointed in the poor placing of the afropop tracks. I had expected more tracks to cloud over the Top 77, like a blessed rain about to pour down. Still hoping the niches will be un-niched some time soon.

xp

songs for which i was the only voter:
Calvin Harris ft. HAIM - Pray To God
Leggy - Peach
Old - Dude
John Grant ft. Tracey Thorn - Disappointing
Weaves - Tick
Big Quiet - Maura & Dana
Trudy - Behave
VARSITY - So Sad, So Sad
Jess Glynne - Don't Be So Hard On Yourself

a lot of them are super-twee

(not just talking about my own choices, but about afropop/afrobeats in general. same story as for dancehall and soca, I guess, as discussed elsewhere)

xp

shout out to whoever else voted for peaness!

p surprised i was the sole vote for real sisters :/

I hope to see at least one footwork track place in 2016. surprised no jlin but maybe she'll get into the albums poll. 'slim trak' by PayPal came up fairly high which was nice.

who else out there voted for julien baker aka J U _ _ _ _ _ _ _ E R aka julia hitler aka jute gybe (her)?

varsity was on my shortlist

i had literally no idea you were talking about julien baker, that's hilarious

i think she'll do well in the albums poll maybe?

hope so! something was just such a high spot for me (or low spot if you wanna talk about how emotionally devastating it is) that i thought it might get a little more shine.

Isolée - Favouride

this is such a great track - i think your whole ballot is really tight tbh

sad i missed the voting window for this :/

btw yay Moodles for voting "Stranger than Earth"; that song was interspersed throughout all of my Kendrick obsessing and also my kids do an incredibly cute freakout to it whenever the beat kicks in

Shout out to the other two voting for Zara Larsson Lush Life. Superior Swede in this setting.

Isolée - Favouride

this is such a great track - i think your whole ballot is really tight tbh

sad i missed the voting window for this :/

― -san (Lamp), Friday, January 22, 2016 2:28 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would've liked to see your ballot, lamp. best experience with favouride was playing it suuuuper late on halloween night and seeing a bunch of costumed friends high af vibing to it bathed in red light.

erykah badu - hotline bling (remix)
janelle monae & wondaland records - hell you talmbout
steve cobby & trudie dawn smith - we start over
simon peter - arc of lark
kendrick lamarr - alright
koosh - mouth full of gold teeth
isolee - favouride
pepe bradock - homo sandwichus
max skiba - shanghouse 12”
laksa - baded
fetty wap - 679
bryson tiller - dont
morgan geist - darkstar
nef the pharoah - big tymin'
vangeliss k - enigma (young marco remix)
rich homie quan - flex
i heartmemphis - i heart the quan
antenes - the track of the storm
fit siegel - carmine

order is kind of arbitrary/unconsidered since i just pulled this from a google doc. could probably get a full list of 25 if i thought more about it

My ballot technique this year was to vote for the song I hated the most because my god do most of you take this way too fucking seriously.

(hundreds of x-posts) thank u seandalai!

unweighted, bold didn't place

Beach House - Levitation
Dauwd - Jupiter George
DJ Koze - XTC
Domenique Dumont - L'Esprit de L'Escalier
Kelela - Rewind
Kero Kero Bonito - Picture This
Korallreven - Here In Iowa
LA Priest - Learning to Love
Lower Dens - I Am The Earth
Majical Cloudz - Downtown
Neon Indian- Slumlord
Petite Noir - MDR
Red Axes ft. Zidan - Hope
Rex The Dog - Sicko
Shamir - Call It Off
Sleater Kinney – A New Wave
Sophie - Vyzee
Suzanne Sundfør - Memorial
Tamaryn - Last
The 1975 – Love Me

BradNelson this is your ballot:

Carly Rae Jepsen - Run Away With Me
Jason Derulo - Want To Want Me
Miguel - Coffee
The 1975 – Ugh!
Shura - 2Shy
Janet Jackson - No Sleeep
Jeremih - Oui
Dumblonde - Dreamsicle
Heavy-K ft. Nokwazi - Sweetie
Krystal Klear ft. Yasmin - One Night Only
Tamia - Stuck With Me
Mikael Seifu - Brass
Fetty Wap - 679
Fit Siegel - Carmine
Eric Prydz - Opus (Four Tet Remix)
Dbn Nyts ft. Zinhle Ngidi & Trademark - Shumaya
Selena Gomez - Hands To Myself
Little Big Town - Girl Crush
Pitbull ft. Chris Brown - Fun
Frankey & Sandrino - Acamar
Róisín Murphy - House of Glass (Maurice Fulton Remix)
Years & Years - Shine
Lim Kim - Awoo
SKY-HI - Limo
Harry Dennis - No Matter What (DGL Mix)

yep that is definitely my ballot. thank you!