ILM’s Top 77 Tracks of 2018

five would be wretched, especially as imo LIIWMI is the only great song this time around. the last album was so much better!

okay, let's give something completely different a try.

http://i.imgur.com/GbYx0K7.jpg

26: The 1975 – “Give Yourself a Try” – 254 points – 9 votes
video

the 1975

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=25726

“Give Yourself a Try” spills over with sincerity and solemnity. These characteristics have always been present in The 1975’s music, hidden with irony, or in the last two tracks of a long, long album, or buried in parenthesis — “Before you go (please don’t go)” — but they have never been so pronounced. From the gentle encouragement of the title to the wise old man lyrics (a sort of millennial “My Way”), any worries of self-help corniness are instantly dampened by Matty Healy’s careful, generous, knowing delivery. The characteristic musical steals are earnest too: Joy Division, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Postal Service, all bashed-up CDs on a Mancunian teenager’s shelf; the return to the parental home in a crisis. There are quotes from their own songs, too, because The 1975 are the only (white, rock-adjacent) band audacious enough to position themselves as equals to their greatest musical influences. Irony is present (“getting STDs at 27 really isn’t a vibe”), but spoken in the deadpan voice of a friend who has only ever been able to tell you that he wants to kill himself in the format of a joke. There are the familiar competing layers of profundity and jokes psyching each other out: Matty’s wide-eyed tribute to sincerity in the context of getting clean and surviving his 20s that introduced the song’s first radio play is repeated almost verbatim from a therapist’s couch by the coked-up rock star cliché he plays at the start. He knows that advice from a famous rich man is laughable, but he’s going to do it anyway… and I’m glad he has. Maybe I’m projecting, but I can hear the exhaustion that comes from rapidly switching emotional states for months and, specifically, the hopeful exhaustion of getting to the other side. It’s a culmination of the self-knowledge, the diagnosis, the reflection, the therapy. Even though I don’t know him, and it’s childish, it feels like Matty is two steps ahead of me, like he always is. Listening to “Give Yourself a Try” feels like readying myself to be exposed to the viscera of life while having my hand held by the person I love the most after months and months and months of mutual struggle. – Claire Biddles

Millions of people in their late 20s will deeply relate to the words of Matty Healy in “Give Yourself a Try”, not because he’s a bearer of truth — he’s equally prophet and charlatan — but because these are times so confusing, we tend to turn to the unreliable narrator to make some sense of them. Only in this generation, where the lines between irony and sincerity are so blurred, could we use (and need to use) the language of self-deprecation to convey hope, speak of isolation to form of communal bond, and co-opt a freakin’ Joy Division guitar line for a track that we all agree to call uplifting. - Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa

Both albums are equally bogged down by the leaden ballads.

xpost

come on

I mean at least it's outside the top 25

lmao

I like Boys better than Juice. That first 1975 song wouldn't make my top1000. That second one is just as bland.

lol

lmao

All 1975 from now on, maybe we'll get 1950 as a break?

hahaha

wrong way round imo, i like "give yourself a try" a lot but i wish it switched things up a little bit more as it went on rather than just changing the guitar line in the third verse

also not sure what alfred is talking about, the last album wasn't anywhere near as heavy on the ballads and they were largely stronger ones too

personally i think this is the right way around

the chorus is so simple and yet it's the perfect amount of liftoff for the rest of the song

well, I lasted a minute and 25 secs into TOOTIME, which is about 40 seconds longer than the last track to place. Sounds like Owl City.

1 minute 10 = me giving Give Yourself A Try a try

Sounds like Owl City.

i'll never get this comparison that everyone makes

tsj blurbs not doing this one any favors christ

i'm just assuming no one making that comparison actually remembers what owl city sounds like because it's been like a decade since "fireflies" now and who would want to remember that

don't blame me I voted for "I Always Wanna Die"

Haha, I voted for both of these and I'm much less enthusiastic about The 1975 than most people on here. They are damn catchy songs though.

the only apparatus required for happiness is your pain and fucking going outside

is that Mike Pence on guitar?

it's a personal tradition to always post this if someone mentions owl city: https://youtu.be/ECN7C1QQyqk

^^^ thank you rob

I don't love either of these 1975 songs, but I totally get how someone could listen to the album a lot and get these songs embedded so deeply that it feels natural to vote for them at eoy time, despite them being super flimsy out of context.

HOT TAKE ALERT: i've listened to more 1975 than I ever had in organizing the poll. if i squint REALLY HARD i guess i can see what everyone likes so much about it but mostly this is as interesting to me as Oasis.

lol i'd never heard that rob

my personal favourite owl city video is this truly bizarre live version of fireflies: https://youtu.be/I6NSS-CC93o

would you believe that yours is the normal take, not the hot one xp

I'm certainly glad for Claire she can hear sincerity in an indie rock song.

I liked "Give Yourself a Try", but that's the first one

xp to brad - i suppose i would! but i'm in a strange sample size where everyone likes this stuff so i'm a little defensive.

were there really no ilm posts about this song to harvest

lol

Surprised to see Give Yourself A Try place, I thought it was seen as a slightly underwhelming lead single. I can definitely see the other two singles appearing now equaling the amount of songs that made it from the last album. No Haim style drop off for these guys!

I’ve mostly stayed away from caring one way or the other about The 1975, but “TooTime...” won me over. I think I had it at #3 on my ballot (love the video too).

"Toast" is awesome, thanks to whoever mentioned it

sorry for complaining about the blurbs so much forks, you're doing a great job on your own and i'm thankful for it, just a little cranky this morning

s'all good. there wasn't much revealing commentary on that song in the 1975 thread; trust me, i've looked. feel free to post anything you think i've missed... or better yet, talk about it here!

anyways, let's do the next 1975 song

http://i.imgur.com/xa9qH52.jpg

25: Christine and The Queens featuring Dam-Funk – “Girlfriend” – 256 points – 10 votes – 1 first place vote
video

Christine And The Queens (the Héloïse Letissier thread)

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=25642

I will always rep for the “Tonight I Celebrate My Love For You” electric piano preset. – Kat Stevens

The lightbulb-like synths of “Girlfriend” are too airy to provide full camouflage for Héloïse Letissier’s unparalleled braggadocio, which she exaggerates to extremes here in her first new single since 2015. It’s interesting to contrast the lyrics of the chorus to “Girlfriend” and its French counterpart “Damn, dis-moi“; the word “girlfriend” is not included at any stage in the latter, and interrogatives are used in a resigned way, as though it appears the song’s protagonist has realized that a façade of armor is not worth “trippin'” over. The song generally flows better in French and I suspect that was how it was originally conceived, but I do like the slyness of the English version’s chorus, and how it reflects Letissier’s willingness to challenge traditional notions of gender and relationships. As products, I find both songs are best consumed one after the other, while dancing ’round a room in a crisp white shirt, brogues and culottes. – William John

Chris!

I'm still shocked this wasn't a massive hit.

I'm still kinda shocked that 'Tilted' was.

oh i wasn't quite expecting this to do better than "doesn't matter" but great track too

i've lost hope for "baby don't stop" at this point, guess kpop thread will have to try better next year

I'll take Greta Van Fleet over most of this stuff. 70s worship is less stale than its 80s counterpart in 2019 AD.

whose son is this

Jacob Bunter 6 months ago

my 40 year old dad binge listens to this song like wtf dad

I voted for "When the Curtain Falls", tbh. xp

I'll take Greta Van Fleet over most of this stuff. 70s worship is less stale than its 80s counterpart in 2019 AD.

now *that* is how you do a hot take

'did we really need another song like that' is my angle but i guess we did -_-

s'all good. there wasn't much revealing commentary on that song in the 1975 thread; trust me, i've looked. feel free to post anything you think i've missed... or better yet, talk about it here!

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Thursday, January 31, 2019 8:30 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i feel extremely owned by these lyrics

― J0rdan S., Thursday, May 31, 2018 1:03 PM (eight months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink