ILM’s Top 77 Tracks of 2018

Okay now that I see the recent results, I'm pretty confident my #1 was Marie Davidson's Work It (there's only one #1 vote - if it's yours, let me know!)

Literally my favorite "single" of last year. And I really want to drop it in a DJ set soon. Glad to see Holding On in there as well. I'll save my more nuanced praise for Devotion if it pops up on the albums list (and it should, damnit, if you guys have any taste whatsoever)

yeah that mlindo the vocalist record is great, really good scene going on there

Voted for: LEG. Agree with whoever said the second album is inferior to the first one, although it has some great moments. "Donnie Darko" is a bit of an outlier on it - they wrote the song some years ago and it has the strongest connection with the sort of thing they were doing circa I Gemini.

Pleased for Simmy placements as I couldn't find room for her or Sun El on my ballots. Figured they will both do fine w/o me though.

Never heard of: Peach. Sounds intriguing, will listen soon.

OMG rob listen to “AmaBlesser” right now!

― Tim F, Wednesday, January 30, 2019 3:40 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://media.giphy.com/media/HgycnYQCMeJXO/giphy.gif

Just listened to the Simmy album for the first time. It's so beautiful and just as great as the singles that placed today would suggest. This is why I love this place. Every year I discover songs/albums that don't seem to get much attention anywhere else. Previous examples, being introduced to music by When Saints Go Machine, Charly Bliss, Miguel, The Beths, Todd Terje, Crying, Japanese Breakfast, Amel Larrieux, KING and most importantly for me Susanne Sundfør before other places seemed to pick up on them (if at all in some cases). Excellent work everyone!

how had I never even heard of that simmy record. what thread was it discussed on

Sun-El Musician - Africa to the World

probably on the rolling afropop thread too, though that one can pile up with recs

My takeaway from this poll is that the afropop threads are where the action is.

hardly any mentions of simmy on the afropop thread (which I follow assiduously) and certainly no hype. oh well - pays to stray off the rolling threads I guess. good album

amablesser owns too

every year my bookmark on this thread works on my phone but not on my pc. is there some bug with apostrophes maybe?

Okay add me to the Simmy bandwagon. Definitely missed out on this. Sun-El Musician, too.

Donate Dozzy is lovely but it sounds like it’s 5.59 and the BBC is killing time till the news starts.

lmao

i might be mistaken on this (and breaststroke would likely know otherwise) but i think both simmy and sun-el popped up as extremely high rated tracks on Singles Jukebox and then migrated here
http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=24322
http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=26580

i pushed Sun-El hard on the campaigning thread last year and was deeply pleased that it caught on
Lobbying for ILM's Top 77 Albums and Tracks: Justify Your Picks

ah you're right||||||||, there's a few mentions on the rolling thread but they're cryptic if you weren't already aware of her from the Sun El one

Lol @ breaststroke. Autocorrect at work?

Donate Dozzy is lovely but it sounds like it’s 5.59 and the BBC is killing time till the news starts.

― 29 facepalms

i don't know i don't think it's _quite_ as all-time as say "a tune for lucy"

xp lol, freudian slip and slide i guess
you might also know longneck: do you remember when SA house from that crew started showing up on the afrothreads?

Was everyone else as cool on the Robyn album as I was or did she just get vote split to death? I mean, I guess she may show up in the top 28, and if it were 2010/11 I know she would, but I have doubts about 2018.

I didn't vote for any tracks from the Robyn album. I think almost all of them were nominated so vote splitting resulting in a 78'ing wouldn't be too surprising.

xxpost
I’m pretty sure that Akanamali by Sun-El Musician was the starting point.

from my ballot the only one to appear today was "Sure", which as discussed is essentially a genre exercise but is executed expertly. The way the endless, anxiety-inducing inquisition contrasts with those guitar washes meant I found it hard to stop listening to. Nice to see Simmy make a few appearances, who'd've thought she'd be the one to appear 3 times this year! (that is, presuming one of my Simmy-adjacent votes is still to place)

I'd expect the title track of the Robyn to make it at least

Was everyone else as cool on the Robyn album as I was or did she just get vote split to death? I mean, I guess she may show up in the top 28, and if it were 2010/11 I know she would, but I have doubts about 2018.

― Johnny Fever,

I'm surprised the title track hasn't shown up by now. I don't really see anything else making it. I can definitely see her being this year's SZA.

i definitely voted for the title track on the Robyn. Maybe one more. Album owns, i expect it to finish higher than any of the tracks.

It's perhaps more appropriate to think of robyn as an albums artist at this point anyway.

I didn't vote for it, but then there are about fifty 2018 albums I think are really great that I couldn't vote for so that doesn't mean much.

lol, breaststroke>crawl here (as long as it’s swimming-related I’m fine with it). We (initially ufo in particular) have most definitely been on Simmy’s case since “Ubala” and the Sun-El album. I think I called people over to the Sun-El thread for her on the Rolling thread once or twice as well. Not surprised people are falling left right and centre for her album. Pretty sure it would have done a KING in the album poll if more people had been aware earlier.

My takeaway from this poll is that the afropop threads are where the action is.

KING had the benefit of a few years' build up before the album came out (and it coming out early in the year to boot).

Hard to believe it's barely more than a year since "Akanamali" came out. Now it feels like Sun El-Musician is the established and well-known patrician of the scene.

*Sun-El Musician

You’re right on both counts. I just feel Tugela Fairy is the kind of album to sweep large sections of ILM off their feet (even more so than the Sun-El album).

Absolutely! And I prefer it slightly to the Sun-El album myself.

I prefer it by some margin. It’s just so perfectly sequenced, with those warming-up and cooling-down sections. But that’s for the album rollout!.

This is where link to Zinaro’s “Dali Wami”, a song from 2017 that I discovered last year and voted for as well. It floors me every time:

https://open.spotify.com/album/5x4YRV6l01lCwGgd1mU82z?si=5S5EbCzVQoqBL11Z8M6EBQ

(It features vocal group Thee Legacy, who have a newish song out with Mlindo and DJ Maphorisa that I will post on the Sun-El thread)

had completely blanked on the mlindo album and am playing now; it's great on first blush!

Ancestors is just painfully beautiful
https://open.spotify.com/track/2Mok61Qjkt1jsTQQzZ4IYo

It's all great but I also particularly love "Usbahle" off that album.

y’all are listing songs that made me remember albums I didn’t put on my albums ballot!

glad to see some love for the Mlindo album! that's been a favourite of mine and hopefully there's a chance of it showing up in the albums poll? exploring South African pop was a musical highlight of last year for me, there's so much great stuff coming out of there at the moment. i got into the sa afrohouse stuff via the love on TSJ for "Akanamali" and then enthusiastically kept up with everything Sun-El released leading up to his album, including Simmy's "Ubala" which lead to a lot of anticipation for her album as well.

i would be very surprised if at least one Robyn track doesn't show up in the top 20, it would have been weirder if she'd shown up by now with anything other than some album cut but you all probably nominated too many for that to have happened (and didn't even nominate the best one, "Ever Again" iirc)

i thought Akanamali placed in last year's singles poll? i swear that's where i heard it first

it did, at #6. ulysses campaigned heavily for it but i was already a fan after hearing it from TSJ

Samthing posted something about finishing an album. Highly anticipating

i voted for a different Let's Eat Grandma song and do wonder if it will still show up? i really do like "Donnie Darko" but didn't think that would be the song that placed here.

so far, four of my choices have shown up.

it's probably my fault that The 1975 song showed up in the Top 77 as i gave it a boat load of points. 2018's "Champagne Supernova" to a degree.

it's better than Champagne Supernova!

Nonsense

although it's probably actually closer to something from The Bends, "I Always Wanna Die" most reminds me of some of Shiina Ringo's power ballads like Gips in feeling: https://youtu.be/zldBTSx9JpE

That whole 1975 album reminds me of “13 reasons why” of all things.

This is not a good thing.