ILM’s Top 77 Tracks of 2018

oh yeah the radio edit's ending is incredible

10k reads in the past five minutes makes me think we shoulda done the roll out on twitch and bought a condo with the proceeds but monetizing has never been my strong suit, oh well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YvAYIJSSZY

honestly releasing the video/album version at all is an awesome act of self-sabotage. I respect it xxp

everybody reading this please send 1 bitcoin to forks at Pueblo, Colorado, 81009

Yesssasssszzz at KKB making top 10, poll is redeemed, go on have your 9 1975 tracks now I don't care

ooh love this song

verses really remind me of blondie

didn't revisit the album too much unfortunately

im not convinced those numbers are accurate for 5 minutes but im sure theres eyes on these threads from other corners of the music internet

Totally love 'Only Acting'; voted for the album (again).

video version of Only Acting is the superior one btw

how do you see that "top 50 most read" page?

yay all the rollouts today! :D

On second listen, I need to give the album a second chance.

obv video is best version

eephus: it's at the bottom of the "Boards" page

xp Yes, OBV!

never had any doubt in kkb but lovely to see them so high

really surprised at the complete lack of consensus this year, there hasn't really been any sort of points jump at all

"high horse" was the weakest track from that album, i wish it sounded like air france or phoenix or any of those comparisons from the thread but it just felt a bit forced

Wasn't familiar with the video version. I've upgraded my cautious enthusiasm to a quasi full endorsement.

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

9: Mitski – “Nobody” – 328 points – 9 votes – 1 first place vote
video

Mitski

There's a brilliant song in there trying to get out, but the way the band attack every beat of the bar with the same emphasis just traps it. The whole album feels stymied by these galumphing arrangements; the disco guitar sounds rhythmic and limber, but good god those piano chords, those drums, just bashing away with equal emphasis on every beat. – Matt DC

"Nobody" isn't disco. It's disco-influenced, uses disco as one might a citation in a paper. – Alfred, Lord Sotosyn

"Nobody" has a really nice build to a fairly predictable place, musically. But that’s enough for me because that chorus melody is incredible. – voodoo chili

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=25894

An ode to nobody which brings to mind another — but where Toni Basil decries the body and wishes to dissipate altogether, to become nobody (“no body”) in a world that’s too full of senses and responsibilities; Mitski feels the absence, and wants something tangible and real in a world that feels like it’s disappearing. She wants a faceless “somebody”; she wants a nobody with a body. She forgets who she is and needs some one to be the mirror. (Who are we without one another?) Well! You know what, like the Toni Basil song, it’s existential, it’s depressing — and it’s a bop! – Rebecca A Gowns

When I first heard this I thought it was far slighter than “Geyser,” its indomitable predecessor; it wasn’t the disco beat itself, but how tinny it sounded, the guitars sounding like peashooters scratching into the side of my skull. Mitski’s melody was also off — a wandering thing that seemed to drift in and out of coherence before dissipating into nothing by the song’s end. And yet I still felt drawn to “Nobody,” listening to it over and over again as I laid in bed on a foggy June morning. And yet repeated listening brought me no closer to an understanding of “Nobody,” only a realization of its sublime jankyness. It’s a song about the vagaries of loneliness, of seeking connection in half-made up moments and glances, of blaming yourself and begging for something from the world, and it sounds like all of these things reflected through the facets of a disco ball. It’s triumphant in its own way, with its piano and guitar overwhelming you, tricking you to dance with its own ghost of a lyric. “Nobody” is slight because it has to be and because it wants to be — to accommodate the depth of its loneliness and make clear its magnificent strangeness. – Jacob Sujin Kuppermann

Too low.

I guess this is a weird thing to be glad for, but I'm glad no Low tracks placed, would have hated to see anything divorced from the album

Especially in light of what'll inevitably ensue.

OK LOL I never even knew the radio edit of 'Only Acting' existed! Yeah the noise blowout ending is key for me.

the ending of "Nobody" creeps me out every time

"Too 'Low'"

guessing that either "anna wintour" or "overtime" is yet to place and the other is 78

or maybe "boo'd up" is 78? it didn't get nominated until super late?

Fantastic, wonderful song. It's about the seventh-best on the album.

wtf is " kero kero bonito "

az banks is absolutely not placing

First time you've truly edgelorded ITT.

2xp

This was my #1. "I know no one will save me / I'm just asking for a kiss" gets me every time.

I threw a LOT of points at Why Didn't You Stop Me? as I said before - but so many songs deserved votes. It was a shame to limit myself to one track per artist

imo this is a pretty good cardigans song

I like the implied existence of Lit Review Rock in Alfred’s comment

That's good. The Cardigans are good.

Mitski rubs me the wrong way. Her songs ooze off negative energy and creepy lethargy.

No one's mentioned it so far but could 'We Appreciate Power' still make it?

This Kero Kero Bonito song is really good. They are a band that showed up in my spotify discover weekly a couple of times and I enjoyed those tracks, but not enough to check out more stuff. This is much better than what I expected.

Negative energy and creepy lethargy are my jams.

^sounds like good double bill

No one's mentioned it so far but could 'We Appreciate Power' still make it?

absolutely not, but actually it would have been a great fakeout entry

imo this is a pretty good cardigans song

I like we appreciate power a lot and voted for it but grimes has fallen out of favor on ilx for reasons having little to do with her music and I'm fairly certain that song won't place

xxxp

we appreciate power was like fine but not really on the level of her past singles

Poppy - X maybe ? Not that I hope for it.

Grimes is #78.

i thought my #1 was a lock but maybe not

i voted for We Appreciate Power, not sure it'd make it. ILM turning on her would be v predictable of course.

Mitski rubs me the wrong way. Her songs ooze off negative energy and creepy lethargy.

― Nabozo, Thursday, January 31, 2019 8:25 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

mitski is a better songwriter than ilx deserves

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

8: Janelle Monáe – “Make Me Feel” – 336 points – 13 votes
video

Janelle Monae

Janelle Monáe - Dirty Computer album/film

The way “Make Me Feel” builds and builds and then explodes in the bridge is so good; this is maybe her best single yet. - ufo

“Make Me Feel” is pretty good but I think they went one too far bringing in the guitar lick on verse two; it just brings the "Kiss" comparison a little too in focus. – upper Mississippi sh@kedown

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=25156

The overwhelming pushing pleasure of it, from the mouth clicking, to the tidal synths, and the stabbing horns–plus all of the ways her voices work–the whisper and the belt, has a polymorphous quality that is not quite perverse. When she sings about being a “sexual bender”, all of this pleasure centers into a very queer channel. I keep thinking about that idea of bender, and kids these days–their identities more labile, children who refuse the binary, and see someone like Monáe, who is butch/femme in ways that are ever blooming, ever variant, and am so overjoyed a hero exists, and is making music about that which cannot be defined. There is a lot of talk about this inheriting Prince, which is inarguable, but it’s as much that as James Brown, Little Richard, Sylvester, or Gladys Bentley. The music slaps and tickles through a century of black gender variant weirdness, making formal statements about the liquidity of queerish pleasures, but makes sure that one can dance. This is a movement, but one that moves indefatigably through every dance floor it can conquer. – Anthony Easton

Here, finally, it is: after years of “homages” suggesting our Prince might forever remain in another castle, a track that invokes him not via vague funk and dutiful sexiness but through virtuosic glee in musicianship and uncontained, full-throated libido. And, unlike too many inferior homages, it doesn’t rely on its pastiche; the squelchy track, like soap on rubber, Monáe’s sly chromatic verse-endings and the bridge breakdown would be revelatory even for someone who hadn’t heard a note of Prince. – Katherine St Asaph