ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2014

CLUB GOING UP ON A MONDAY

http://open.spotify.com/user/forksclovetofu/playlist/57m9LpUGkWDzGOiIgNsTeR

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

77 NICKI MINAJ "Lookin Ass" [203 points, 5 votes, 1 first place vote]
http://youtu.be/2mwNbTL3pOs

just as i'm going to bed!

good song, wish more of the pinkprint rolled as hard

ooh loving the imagery

feeling good that my first place vote prob helped this brilliant statement of intent to make the 77

awesome start

nicki dropping this and "boss ass bitch" back to back at the beginning of the year felt so incredibly exciting. and promising...

quite funny that despite a record number of ballots, the #77 track only needed 5 votes (last year, #77 got 9 votes)

bears out what matt dc was saying -

Feel like there are relatively few consensus tracks this year, there's a load of stuff that could sneak in that might not in any other year.

― Matt DC, Thursday, January 15, 2015 10:01 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

presumably/hopefully there'll be some curveballs today

it's a good point - i'm guessing the proof would be a significant increase in nominated tracks?

How many total ballots were submitted?

147 I think

Lookin Ass [song + video] was definitely a high point of 2014, though it was one of many difficult cuts for my ballot.

yeah 147 ballots were submitted

hooray! we've started!

♫ it's the most wonderful time of last year ♫

i'm guessing "boss ass bitch" will place. maybe "anaconda"? idk if it's a consensus song but it was certainly the think piece single of the year.

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

76 OWEN PALLETT "Song for Five & Six” [208 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote]
http://youtu.be/vr_SbrFIuKA

hope every track has one first-place vote

i voted for this!

there aren't any bad moments on the album and so many highlights it was incredibly hard to choose a favourite, but after quite some weighing up, it was this one for the 'do you agree? / i disagree' part.

yeh great album
nommed the riverbed rather than the album but a few considering this were in contention

I forgot to vote but I will cheer and boo from bleachers although no reason to do the latter yet.

xp not sure why i wrote considering instead of including

I like the choreography in Owen's video!

wow that's a cool song, I'm gonna give the album a try

do it, you won't regret it

this song like the whole album is utterly brilliant. did not vote for it but 'the riverbed' got an exceptional placement instead. very glad this has shown up

is the title a John Cage ref.? also the video has the people dancing, not random enough tho'.

Love the OP album and it has a bunch of special moments inside songs, but I don't really think I have a favourite track.

^same

Do you agree or disagree?
There’s a gap between what a man want and what a man will receive.
The sun has set on me.

is it 'do you agree or disagree?' or 'do you agree? / I disagree'?
always heard it as a dialogue. small differences, but whatever.

Yeah, I've had a different favourite every time I've played In Conflict. Happy to see this one make it. Looking forward to seeing where the album places next week.

Not sure how many of my faves will place this year, but whatever, this is a good start!

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

75 TUNE-YARDS "Water Fountain" [208 points, 9 votes, 1 first place vote]
http://youtu.be/jbiFcPhccu8

First two are unlistenable:(

great tune
surprised it dnp on pitchfork, thought they lauded everything tune-yards?

This album has more standout tracks than whokill even if it's not as memorable, if that makes sense.

And i already know that one from the radio

First three are unlistenable

A friend recommended the album but it really set my teeth on edge at first. Seeing her at a festival really turned me around though and Water Fountain was prob the highlight. Only voted for the album mind you.

Think if you're expecting a bunch of anonymous deep house saer you may be disappointed.

never really got in to tune-yards but i loved this on first listen & still do

Voted for the album rather than any of the tracks, though if I did, "Sink-O" would've been my pick.

The album was the final one cut from my ballot, so I placed the single a bit higher on my trackballot to make up for it. Good song, good band. Album not as good as last one.

Think if you're expecting a bunch of anonymous deep house saer you may be disappointed.

― ewar woowar (or something),

Im not expecting anything!

Cool start imo! Also, great graphics idea!

corny

That comment from flopson a few years back about listening to tUnE-yArDs is like accidentally walking into a room where someone is vigorously masturbating has never really left me I'm afraid :/

nicki (or more accurately, young money as a "movement") almost always rubs me the wrong way but i still gotta give lookin ass a few more listens before i dismiss this outright. it didn't do much for me at all when i first heard it and I much prefer the hot stylez version

5&6 is prob my fave on the album but i think 'in conflict' deserves acclaim as a complete statement more so than chopping it up into pieces. in any case, this is gorgeous

i voted for water fountain though i'm not generally so taken with 'nikki nack'. 'WhoKill' and 'birdbrains' had a stridency and vitality 'nikki' is missing, though there's enough quality on here to not dismiss it entirely (Time of Dark, Wait for a Minute, Left Behind and Rocking Chair are other standouts). Nikki sounds like an artist trying to decide what they want to say next, which is fine. I'm into merrill for the long haul. Water Fountain is pretty massive tho; prob the best white girl struggle track of the year.

I lump Tune-Yards in with Fiery Furnaces and Planningtorock - woozy electronic indie which I admire for its originality, but find just too abstruse to listen to for more than a couple of tracks.

I had a bunch of anonymous deep house on my ballot fwiw.

it's like Seth Rogen cutting off Angela Lansbury.

it's clearly not as awesome as Seth Rogen cutting off Angela Lansbury, come on

or for that matter Angela Lansbury doing "Uptown Funk"

i dunno, i like it. switches the track up a bit and provides a foil to Tinashe's hazed-out delivery. I haven't spent enough time paying much attention to the lyrics tho

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/31300000/Angela-Lansbury-angela-lansbury-31302683-1232-1874.jpg

"Don't believe me? JUST WATCH"

Gawker, gimme money I'll write about this

i love q verse

I love the Q verse too but it would be kind of great if Seth Rogan spent his off-time butting into Angela Lansbury's conversations

whos to say he doesnt, frankly

ANGELA: But, sheriff, you are aware that ptomaine poisoning is one of the most common -

SETH: Gargle my balls!

DON: Well, yeah.

The lads put some music on in training in yesterday and i recognized a few from here

http://news.images.itv.com/image/file/585113/stream_img.jpg

i think tumoas is otm, waiting for rev to chime in

I have no strong feelings about his verse but I am generally Q-positive and still sad I forgot to vote for "Los Awesome", which would have pushed it onto the list.

making up for earlier hijinx
http://www.billboard.com/bobby-shmurda-jail-rikers-interview

Has it been hard on you?
Not that hard. I get a lot of love in here.

People in there know who you are and know "Hot Boy"?
Yeah, everybody. Every time I walk the halls, I see people and they yell out "Ah Ah!" or something.

There are so many rumors, like, that you got stabbed.
It's nothing but rumors, man. I'm good. Everybody knows I'm good. I'm chilling. We over here -- we over here thugging it out, man. [Laughs.]

WHOTHEFUCKTOLDYOUTHATTHUGGERDONTFUCKWITHTHEBEAT?

'faneto' a lock in surely

― out here like a flopson (tpp), Thursday, 22 January 2015 20:50 (six years ago) link

haha ... a prophet in tpp ...

Also this song was absolutely massive right around the world which is more than you can say about all the wonky voiced Soundcloud rap in this list.

― Matt DC, Thursday, January 22, 2015 1:05 PM (six years ago) bookmarkflaglink

what music what matt talking about here?

LOL the pre streaming paradigm in effect...

2014 an incredible year to revisit. One of my favorite years for music in the last decade, no question. The range of styles, the explosion of afropop, deep tech, the ty dolla sign stimulus, thug + keef expanding the grammar of music, rae sremmurd bringing back commercial teen rap, the evolution of chicago drill, the commercial peak of mustardwave before it became clammy and dead, the stuff bubbling with no streaming to channel it. it was so easy to find cool shit! underrated shit, especially. i miss that era of internet and music discovery so much.

actual rap music in an ilm eoy poll, wow

2018 was the real drop-off for rap representation

like did we lose a bunch of posters/voters around then or something?

People started aging out

i also forgot about "prayer" placing, it's great but i don't usually think of that as a major black messiah highlight.

maybe it would help if the main hiphop thread wasn't basically hidden, and most other mentions of hiphop weren't met with "holy shit someone on ilm listening to hiphop?"

new Injury Reserve is pretty good, right? too white? fk me

just revisiting my 2014 summer jams pl - so many bangers
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3o7Ka4JYXLMSSht9YTlrPZ?si=f99291ffe83f4b60

injury reserve is definitely on my list and the hip hop thread is called “rolling thread 2021 (deluxe edition)”

let's do it!!

Looking back, this was one of the best years of my life so in always going to have good memories associated with it

haha i just looked up the stats for this and i had the highest hivemind score… this poll was good

LOL at Future Islands and Clean Bandit in the top 5. I think we've all cooled a lot on these

(and I say that as a big FI proselytiser in the day)

nah that song still goes hard

It was quite something when it came out. Shame they never really seemed to have any more ideas after that (although not heard all of the last album)

both hold up pretty well still, like i would easily take "seasons" over most of the decade's critical fav indie singles

I still have a lot of love for Seasons and that band in general. They do seem to be in a bit of a holding pattern, but there's something so comforting about them they kind of get away with it. The Far Field was a better album than Singles. Last album was great too.

to me they're a band that seemed like they were always on the verge of making an excellent album and then it just never happened, they just ran out of ideas

Seeing as I discovered this band much later do you think the future islands singer was inspired by the young gods ? Thinking of like “did you miss me”

see no connection between Seasons and Did You Miss Me

im talking about the vocal style. you see **no** connection??

no, not really, except that they're both straight guy songs

future islands singer does occasionally delve into that territory but its pretty much always a bad idea when he does

don't mean it as a criticism. No Flex Zone and especially No Type are total straight guy stuff but are two of my favorite tracks of 2014. I like Seasons also

I’m talking about how he makes his voice sound in the parts that made their one famous song go viral. Not sure what it has to do w being straight, I just mean that the way he growls sounds like he might have been a fan 🤷🏻‍♂️

That's just the heavy metal cookie monster growl. I mean, maybe he was influenced by that but it's in a lot of other music (not so much synth pop though)

"Vermillion" still bangs

true!

it's silly that 2014 was ten years ago like how

Three of the albums in my current top five "ever" came out within months of each other, summer to early autumn 2014. I didn't find them until much later but the season has taken on this beautiful retroactive glow now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eh8DLrjinc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thvOBC2jlz4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOSvzRHgifc

Not wanting to reignite a nine year old argument, but every year I save a handful of votes for things I discover on the nominations list. It's a fun part of the process for me and it feels nice supporting someone else's choices. Plus it's not like my ballot is the absolute definitive list of my favourite tracks of the year anyway.