ILM’s Top 77 Tracks of 2018

it's true about how tight the points still are, damn

Her best album imo

It's crazy that we're still at 336 yeah

oh this was my guess for #1

love it and had it pretty high, it's very prince-derived obv but she still makes it her own with the build and the "it's just the way that i feel!" bridge. so good

xp point totals start opening up A LOT with the #7

I'm too busy at work to fully catch up with today's rollout, but from what I can see this has been a great day. Almost nothing but classics!

Just saw an interview with Mitski where she was asked about The Cardigans. She's a long time fan, but was not thinking about them specifically when she wrote this song. However, she says she hears the same similarity that everyone else is hearing there.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Thursday, January 31, 2019 1:32 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's splitting hairs but it's more "carnival" than "lovefool" for me

Make Me Feel is my 3rd or 4th favorite from Dirty Computer, but it definitely seems to be the consensus pick from that album.

it's certainly the prince-iest

didn't love the album, but this song grabbed me right away. a lot of people imitate prince, but few people can do that kind of hermetically sealed groove and actually pull it off.

Still waiting for the silent majority.

yea she's one of the few who can get away with doing this

I've cooled on Dirty Computer since it came out, but this track is undeniable.

"Make Me Feel" blew me away with its greatness the first time I heard it but I've cooled on it since. Still love the descending sequence of notes in "sexual tender." Don't think I buy it when she says "Good god" and "Damn."

amazing colours on that image

I've kept Monae for the album poll but Make me Feel is exactly the kind of jam I expect ILM to promote. The quality of the songs was a pleasant surprise, very focused, not too "conceptual".

I think now would be a good moment for Sonini to place

http://i.imgur.com/kI6stuv.jpg

7: Jessie Ware – “Overtime – 364 points – 12 votes – 1 first place vote
video

Jessie Ware - 110% (and everything else she's done)

Can we get a whole Jessie Ware & Bicep album? – ufo

The slightness of the production gives her so much space to command, there's a genericness that in lesser hands would be anonymous rather than formulaic impressiveness, the point where a template becomes a model. - boxedjoy

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=26460

Last year, Jessie Ware began podcasting with her mother, inviting guests around to her house — the likes of Clara Amfo, Sadiq Khan and Nigella Lawson have made appearances — for a meal, and recording the ensuing conversation. Listening to the way Ware playfully teases her mother as they talk about desert island meals and culinary propriety has inspired me to throw my own dinner parties, which I find fulfilling and an antidote to the loneliness often involved in “going out.” “Dinner party music” is a descriptor that’s been attributed to Ware’s oeuvre since the beginning of her career, and especially to her most recent record Glasshouse, perhaps her coziest and most sentimental album, in spite of its severe title. It’s a term that suggests something pleasant and non-irritating, but also bland, as if it’s only worth hearing in bits, between mouthfuls. It’s an unfair term I think, because dinner parties shouldn’t be bland — they should be filled with vibrant laughter, plates of warm vegetables slathered with butter and salt, simple pleasures, invigorating discussion. It sort of makes me think that those that use “dinner party music” as a pejorative just haven’t been to any good dinner parties. Certainly they’ve not been to a dinner party where, once dessert is over, the chairs are shifted aside and the highlights of Overpowered are thrown on at a loud volume. I’ve no doubt that, on certain occasions, this is precisely what happens chez Ware when the Table Manners microphones are turned off, and “Overtime” and its hollered, dazzling disco chorus seems to confirm my theory. – William John

Jessie Ware is usually at her best when she finally embraces the house vocalist she is destined to be, but “Overtime” succeeds for other reasons. Here, she finally mingles her initial work’s penchant for pensive, reflexive, soulful pop — the musical equivalent to a beautiful yet harmless painting standing over at a museum — and her most recent output, the cathartic pop whose emotional outpouring needs immediate release. It’s the stylistic crossover that feels logical when given thought, yet pleasantly unexpected. For the first time in a while, her whispers are not only romantic suggestions. They come off as a command. – Danilo Bortoli

yes good

excellent

Lol, if Ariana has the top two spots...

ha, called it

Still not crazy about Monae, sorry.

perfect combination of two perfect acts

oh hey good a surprise!!!

also i love this song that i didn't vote for

ooh the janelle graphic is great!

Glad to see High Horse place higher than Slow Burn given my earlier comments. That's the track I voted for and the one I think will be most memorably of this time and album in ten years' time. It's also just a ton of fun and such a break out moment for her and country internationally.

monae gives me the same ilm-bait vibes as that big boi record that won the albums poll here and then no one really talked about again

"Overtime" has made briefly excited again bout Jessie Ware.

monae gives me the same ilm-bait vibes as that big boi record that won the albums poll here and then no one really talked about again

― ciderpress, Thursday, January 31, 2019 3:48 PM (

except that people under 30 love Monae and look at me funny when I say she released her best album last year

I didn’t spend a lot of time with this song - soooo many other sounds taking priority - but it sounds extremely good now. I’ll take it.

List needs more Patapaa, is the gist of it though.

7 is a banger

I first heard about "Overtime" via a tweet by the Lex that referenced "Imagine It Was Us," and I immediately sought it out. Was not disappointed.

perfect backing track for her

effortless

monae gives me the same ilm-bait vibes as that big boi record that won the albums poll here and then no one really talked about again
― ciderpress, Thursday, January 31, 2019 9:48 PM (forty-one seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I had Shutterbug on and off my running playlist for a good while

will be very disappointed if ware doesn't finally make her dance album this year

Completely forgot about this or else I'd have given it a vote of my own.

The Jessie Ware track seems more ILM-baity than Janelle Monáe's (the latter obv. trumps the former).

yeah for tracks poll sure

somehow missed this one, my gym needs to pick better music

Quick reminder to any of those mystery 10k readers that you can play along on the 77 with the Spotify playlist here:
https://open.spotify.com/user/forksclovetofu/playlist/4cb2Ds6UBJ5UmU2iFlp9uT

on the other hand im probably the biggest pusha t fan on ilm so i shouldn't really throw stones

Here's a ninety point leap for you.

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

6: Ariana Grande – “thank u, next – 457 points – 16 votes
video

Ariana Grande - "Thank U, Next" (the album)

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=26590

Sweetener capitalized on its three most out-there tracks, but the other cuts approximated Grande to an organic, twinkling sonic palette favoring crushed velvet beats and free-flow melodies (plus a healthy amount of yuhs). “Thank U, Next” is that album’s spiritual successor, a minimal, shimmery R&B-pop number that floats like a cloud through synth blips and luscious harmonies, doubling down on the feel-good - yet bold - artistry. The title encapsulates the lyrics: gratitude and willingness to move on, the first anchored to exes with earnest name-checking, the second stemming from new values instilled upon Ari in the emotional aftermath. It could be a sanitized kiss-off, immaculate and frictionless, but the lyrics don’t smooth out the past but pick up from a point of underway recovery, inhabiting a lilac microcosm of serenity and warmth. No wonder the single’s become her first US No. 1 and found credence among so many demographics, with how regenerative, lush, and immersive it is. If Sweetener was the advent of an imperial phase for Grande, this single cements it — all while abandoning the very notion of imperial pop. – Pedro Joāo Santos

I initially thought about “Thank U, Next” as a reflection of the ways streaming has changed music, not just turning everything into depressive Muzak, but gradually making Spotify no different from Instagram or, importantly, Twitter – it’s a Twitter thread, possibly a Notes screenshot, as a song. “Thank U, Next” uses the rapid pace of social media to its advantage, to the point where the pre-chorus is a pretty great meme in and of itself. In twenty years, the names, loaded with context and meaning now, will mean as much to younger listeners as Monica, Erica, Rita, and Tina. But as has beenreferenced before, in 20 years we may all be dead anyway. There’s no reason for songs to be timeless classics when we’re apparently headed toward the end of time, so why not live in the moment? Why not try to better yourself, become more self-sufficient, learn gratitude while having people think you’re either coming out or outing Drake? There’s enough depressive music on the Hot 100 as is. Real, hard solutions are needed instead of vague gestures toward self-care. This is what separates “Thank U, Next:” it uses being Extremely Online to its advantage, and exposes Ariana as the definitive millennial star all along, raised on the Internet, coming of age as the world falls apart, facing trauma and trying to cope with it when your brain is irrevocably changed. By that point, the rest is simple: You release two albums in a year, be as self-referential as possible, compress the last two years of your life into three and a half minutes, and fast-track it to release half an hour before SNL. “Thank U, Next” is the apotheosis of incorporating a public persona into music. In a vacuum, it’s not that great a song musically, but it’s rare that you remember a Twitter thread two weeks after it’s gone viral either. This will be remembered, if only to show how Ariana adapted perfectly to the culture of 2018 by proving that she was in tune with it the whole time. – Joshua Copperman

phew

Damnit, there was countdown happening and I missed it?

(this is fine but would have been a boring #1 imo)

Next

good not great song that mostly stands out in comparison to how mediocre a lot of her output last year was

Happy if that means that "No Tears Left to Cry" finished higher

awesome top 10 so far

the woman who gave me my last tattoo did this one for a mitski fan:

https://i.imgur.com/PtZscmw.jpg