ILM’s Top 77 Tracks of 2018

Yes this is the fourth double... might be a record:

Simmy, the 1975, Rosaliia and Ariana so far.

I don’t know stats from previous years but this year’s results have also been fronted by women led acts in almost 70%

Also the year with most LGBT winners?

Yes.

xp

This Is America has definitely been 78ed.

Forgot there was a Jessie Ware song at all this year tbh but overjoyed to see her make the Top 10 with what is clearly her best song in years.

and ILM has been 75'ed

two sada baby tracks coming right up

very excited for the Tropical Fuck Storm hat trick

Yesss

Look who showed up!

Fake Love by Wizkid must be #1!

Holding out for that bloom and my my my double

#1 = BB
#2 = Alarms
#3 = Song to a Succulent

http://i.imgur.com/q82gDc5.jpg

4: Lana Del Rey – “Venice Bitch” – 674 points – 19 votes – 4 first place votes
video

Lana Del Rey

She reminds me of Roxy Music a lot and this is her “Mother Of Pearl”. – kornrulez6969

“Venice Bitch" is not a second too long. It's a wonderful song ballad flowing gracefully that takes its time. There is indeed an early Mark Kozelek vibe in there. – alex in mainhattan

“Venice Beach”’s mood and guitars remind me of “Les Fleurs” by Minnie Ripperton; it’s oddly elegant. - Moka

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=26341

From its first lines, this feels overwhelming and intimate all at once, like finding a diary in the ruins of an ancient city. “Venice Bitch” still works on every level, with its psychedelic, proggy form, studded with guitar solos and synth breaks and false outros pairing perfectly with the kaleidoscopic, fractured lyric that Lana delivers, a sort of “Tangled Up In Blue” pastiche. She’s in prime form here, finally reaching a sort of apotheosis of the sepia-tinged love and obsession tales of the American West that she’s always told, delivering it with the exact combination of sincerity and camp that it deserves. – Jacob Sujin Kuppermann

Short pop songs are a product of format constraints and capitalism, so let’s be happy that any established pop artist is deciding to make her ten-minute track into a single. Fortunately for us, “Venice Bitch” finds Lana Del Rey at her most convincing. Her songs are somnolent drugs meant to slip listeners into a nostalgic bliss, a falsely created America that is nonetheless a panacea for troubling times. The future looks grim, so why not pine for an ostensibly better past we weren’t able to experience? Her music is thus a peculiar problematization through embrace; the myopic liberalism that shouts “America is still great,” she is not. On “Venice Bitch,” Lana Del Rey finally transmits the failure of “American-made” patriotism by capturing the final flickers of summer — the most American of seasons, surely. In the song’s first half, she’s at her most achingly romantic. Accompanied by her least tiresome arrangement to date, her vocal melodies swell with a grace that has you believing in these idealistic images of old: “You’re in the yard, I light the fire”; “You write, I tour, we make it work”; “Give me Hallmark: one dream, one life, one lover.” Her pouting and sass flesh out the persona and performance, contributing to the lyrics’ believability. Before long, it transforms into meandering psychedelia complete with wonky synth melodies and skronking guitars. It’s in this meditative stretch that one can envision the onset of fall. The reddish-browns of leaves, the subtle shock of crisp air, the warmth of layered clothing — they overtake the golden hue of summer twilight, leaving it beyond the point of periphery. What initially feels like words to a song suddenly becomes palpable when out of focus. The source of all emotional weight has transferred to something strictly instrumental and we’re faced with this transitory place between art and life, past and present, imaginary and real. As “Venice Bitch” closes, we hear Lana deliver a final line: “If you weren’t mine, I’d be jealous of your love.” It’s here that we fully recognize that this love she spoke of was never really hers — that is, Elizabeth Woolridge Grant’s. The American Dream was really just that. – Joshua Minsoo Kim

Unreserved love for “No Tears Left To Cry”

we’re way too fly to partake in all this hate, we’re out here vibin’, we’re vibin’, we’re VIII-bin’

WOOOOO

ahhhh fuck i had a meeting from 230 to 4 and i was like "well at least we're done for the day"

that was a lot of rollout to miss

anyway, nobody too low

this is def going to be my highest placing vote

LDR i lurve her

wow @ 4 #1s!!

This is actually quite nice

Decent. Gonna mention Weyes Blood again and leave it there. ILM be selectively listenin'

venice bitch the best ldr track ever

boo'd up
itgehane
love it if we made it

would love any combination of these three tbh

I was being a dick pro forma re: 'No Tears Left to Cry', it's actually a good song.

'Venice Bitch' is alright. No Weyes Blood, that's for sure.

2xp

My #1, thank u three other ppl

I like Weyes Blood but I don't see the connection, they're after different vibes here

who was the person who said that venice bitch is like the millennial astral weeks? was it m@tt?

it's accurate.

I might very well end up voting for "Andromeda" next year

<3

i really value "no tears" for the way it takes pop modes of the relatively recent past and presents them in a futuristic vehicle. the vocal melody reminds me of the sleek maximalist curves of martin pop from the late-'90s and early-'00s and there's the faintest hint of two-step in the drums and it feels like a portal to the pop of a lateral present

who was the person who said that venice bitch is like the millennial astral weeks? was it m@tt?

― simmy simmy ya, simmy yam simmy yay (voodoo chili), Thursday, January 31, 2019 2:27 PM (twenty-two seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

damn, best music writing 2018

Voted for this, it's a great song despite the needless outro jam. Would be every bit as good if it faded out after 3 minutes.

Whoever said that must not think very highly of Astral Weeks.

i really value "no tears" for the way it takes pop modes of the relatively recent past and presents them in a futuristic vehicle. the vocal melody reminds me of the sleek maximalist curves of martin pop from the late-'90s and early-'00s and there's the faintest hint of two-step in the drums and it feels like a portal to the pop of a lateral present

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Thursday, January 31, 2019 4:28 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i agree with this, it's like if max martin's past five years and next three all folded in on themselves

The long, long narco-outro jam lifts this to its classic status for me, as does the noise freakout at the end of Only Acting.

great post brad

and yeah the epic nature of venixe bitch is what makes it

still not ruling out two mote 1975 placements lol

*more

i find venice bitch hollow at its heart but i can see where that's obviously not true for everyone

Isn't that her whole shtick though?

I always read that hollowness as part of her whole disaffected ennui

god I would kill for LDR to open one of her songs with "this california noir shit, it's not for everyone, it's a motherfucking vibe"

pomenitul has xposted us both now

Woo, my #1! I'm not even that huge a LDR fan but this song really floored me. I am probably alone in this but the thing it reminds me of the most is 'Rain Song' by Sunny Day Real Estate...

Well deserved placings for both Lana songs. She's been very consistent on our albums lists but isn't this the first year she's made the tracks list since Video Games?

venice bitch is like the millennial astral weeks

This would explain why I find it perplexing that people like it so much.

that SDRE album was one of my albums of 2018 fwiw

I was on smoko, what'd I miss?

people always talk about the noise jam but no one ever talks about that beautiful coda

SDRE comparison makes sense actually!