Most Embarrassing ILM Top 3 Albums 2014-2002

Though if someone really wants to try to figure out what 2003 would be, there is this thread.

the one with "A Grand Don't Come For Free" in it, by default

2011

2014: D'Angelo - Black Messiah / Taylor Swift - 1989 / FKA twigs - LP1
2013: Haim - Days Are Gone / Daft Punk - Random Access Memories / My Bloody Valentine - MBV
2012: Miguel - Kaleidoscope Dream / Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d city / John Talabot - Fin
2011: Destroyer - Kaputt / PJ Harvey - Let England Shake / Katy B - On A Mission
2010: Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot / Lindstrøm & Christabelle - Real Life Is No Cool / The-Dream - Love King
05-09: Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part One / Portishead - Third / The Knife - Silent Shout
2009: Fever Ray - Fever Ray / The-Dream - Love vs. Money / The xx - xx
2008: Portishead - Third / Hercules & Love Affair - Hercules & Love Affair / Lindstrøm - Where You Go I Go Too
2007: LCD Soundsystem - / M.I.A - Kala / Radiohead - In Rainbows
2006: The Knife - Silent Shout / Ghostface Killah - Fishscale / Clipse - Hath No Fury
2005: M.I.A - Arular / LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem / Spoon - Gimme Fiction
2004: Kanye West - College Dropout / The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free / Annie - Anniemal
00-04: Radiohead - Kid A / Daft Punk - Discovery / The Streets - Original Pirate Material
2002: The Streets - Original Pirate Material / 2 Many DJs: As Heard On Radio Soulwax Part 2 / Sleater-Kinney - One Bea2

2006 probably my favorite, 2008-11 the most ILX definitive (for better or worse), 2013 the dullest

lol, sorry for the repost. last line is all i meant to say.

none of these are really that embarrassing overall, the embarrassing picks are pretty evenly distributed throughout. though that big boi record feels like a really uncharacteristic #1 with hindsight

Ghostface Killah - Fishscale / Clipse - Hath No Fury

lol

oh wait i was thinking that was the first clipse record for some reason. 06 probably the most embarrassing then

there are a few years where i heard none of the albums (2011, 2008, 2005), but i'm more tempted to vote for 2010 because the Big Boi and The-Dream albums are nice competent records that really got a ridiculous boost from affection for their earlier work. 2006 is also pretty corny considering all the stuff that came out that year.

^ yeah duh, i had lord willin and hath no fury mixed up (tho i shoulda knowed the former came out nearly half a decade earlier). '06 support much more conditional now :/

i do love silent shout tho, and fishscale isn't bad

thought i'd be voting for the kaputt travesty automatically but wow a lot of these are embarrassing

2013 is the only year where i like none of the albums
2002 has dated incredibly badly, i don't think i would've thought at the time that the only album i'd love from it now (or even a couple of years later) would be sleater-kinney
some dude otm re: 2006 corniness (but a great winner) and 2010
2011, 2007 and 2005 get your outraged angry squawks for destroyer/radiohead/spoon but actually 2011 redeems itself best out of them all - the best albums by a non-habitual placer and a brilliant debutante
the actual worst album on any of these isn't even the shit indie, it's a grand don't come for free, 2004 has to be considered just for that, the definition of what-were-you-thinking embarrassing that transcends just disliking a genre

tbqh though i don't think half-decade polls should have been included it's actually quite hard to see beyond 00-04 as a trifecta of dullness, but actually quite ilxy dullness

oh man just looking at these albums has me teary-eyed.

i still think that 2006 as a year is underrated. but not b/c of the knife, ghostface, and clipse.

We really used to take The Streets seriously, huh? Shameful.

I might vote for 2013, though, because even loving Haim as I do it doesn't make up for how lame the Daft Punk and MBV albums were.

Original Pirate Material really was one of the biggest cases in my life of the discrepancy between reading the rave reviews and the hearing the actual album, with its mediodcre bedroom beats and amateurish lad "raps". I guess you had to be British to appreciate it, but I wasn't and I didn't.

Being British made A Grand... even worse fyi

2013 looks like a no-brainer

One of these:

2010: Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot / Lindstrøm & Christabelle - Real Life Is No Cool / The-Dream - Love King
2007: LCD Soundsystem - / M.I.A - Kala / Radiohead - In Rainbows
2002: The Streets - Original Pirate Material / 2 Many DJs: As Heard On Radio Soulwax Part 2 / Sleater-Kinney - One Beat

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Tuomas otm re: the Streets

agree the stuff I don't like is p evenly spread throughout, as is the stuff I do like so... yeah one of the years with the Streets it is I guess

oh i only just realised the 2007 lcd soundsystem is sound of silver - that tips that year for me, two totally shit albums not just one

I don't think any of these are particularly embarrassing per se. A lot of it looks just pedestrian.

Was Sir Lucious Left Foot a good album? I remember really disliking it.

it was a really weird #1. i liked it fine at the time but haven't listened to it since the year it came out

even loving Haim as I do it doesn't make up for how lame the Daft Punk and MBV albums were.

this is the exact opposite of how i feel

The idea of listening to Random Access Memories again fills me with sadness. Maybe I'd check out MBV if I was stoned.

those two records feel like 1000 years ago.

the sir luscious leftfoot album was great, i thought.
the first two streets albums were good at the time, bit embarrassing to listen to now.

all of these streets albums are lol. and I always forget how much of a hard on ilm has for lindstrom

my vote is 2002

not embarrassed by any of these b/c it's music, w/e, but the most wtf to me is 2004: the Kanye record is good, but lol Britishes and then Annie?

from 2008 on these are good though!

2010 is by far the worse, with "00-04" second.

it's so obviously 2013. despite it being a great year all-round, two okay-but-ultimately-lacklustre comeback albums and a Haim record aren't representative. I even like bits of all those albums, but I don't see myself coming back to any of them any time soon.

Hmm... Original Pirate Material is a bit of landmark record for me. It's no more embarrassing today than it was then.

That said, I have no strong desire to revisit it! Maybe one day.

I revisited it recently. Still quite good. A Grand Don't Come for Free, though...

I'd sooner check out Oxide & Neutrino's Execute or sumthing :)

execute is amazing and nothing about it sounds embarrassing in 2015

they're not really the same thing at all though?

The Streets is kinda the same white british cooption of nuum-music that uk has seen from RDJ to James Blake, but it still stands out, in that it doesn't just put a forced academization on it, turning it into the 'intelligent' version, giving it the capability of creating something as intellectually demanding as a Feist-cover. Instead, The Streets puts his Pirate Material through a meta-filter, making a concept album on the role of this music in the life of an everyday britishes young male. It is still the sort of second, more distant, version of the original material, but it did dig out a new development for this kind of music, a new, different, exciting way to coopt it. But nobody followed up on that, Mike Skinner himself became more and more pretentious and unsufferable, and a year later Boy in Da Corner delivered the coherent masterpiece that people didn't usually think the 'streets' (as in, black london) could create on their own.

This is dumb, I was 15 at the time, and am not from britain. Don't know what I'm talking about, grain of salts apply aplenty.

Seems like a fair assessment, but the gap sonically and lyrically between Original Pirate Material and Boy in Da Corner is pretty staggering re: Rap Garage to Grime.

Not sure why I mention O&N, just thinking about other stuff from that era. I never had a copy of Execute, listening to it only once in a HMV on headphones in "the Dance Zone."

Almost all of these are saved by at least one good album.

Weird to see how aligned ILM was with everyone else until 2007/08 and suddenly it gets weird. Really weird.

Still thrilled by New Amerykah's rebound in the half-decade poll.

There weren't that many consensus albums elsewhere 2005-onwards but Destroyer, Big Boi and Miguel as number 1 is kind of weird and I like those albums.

There's a lot of music crit consensus post-07/08 still. Let England Shake, good kid, m.A.A.d city, Random Access Memories, Black Messiah...

I think 2012 is my favorite for whatever it's worth.

You could throw Haim, Taylor Swift and FKA twigs into the consensus pile for good measure.

I think all I've learned is that defining ILM albums don't really show up in the top three. Like The-Dream, Miguel and Destroyer maybe...

But in those years there's also stuff like Studio, Diddy Dirty Love or Fall Out Boy.

Diddy Dirty Money, that is :/

Spiritual successors to the Streets incl, to some extent, Lily Allen, Katy B and Kate Tempest. But yeah, The Streets didn't have that much to do with actual grime/garage. It was conceptual pop, not far off things like Parklife, with 'nuum signifiers/filters. Despite being sonically similar, OPM and AGDCFF are really quite different propositions. Whereas the first attempted to present itself as an actual product of the UK dance scene (despite a number of hark-backs to things like two-tone), AGDCFF wasn't even pretending. Songs like Blinded By The Lights acted like a meta-commentary on dance music; a 'Sorted For E's and Whizz' for the early oughts in a way. That might sound like a desperately uncool right now, but I loved it at the time and would happily listen to AGDCFF today, if only for nostalgic purposes. I have a clear memory of buying the album on the morning after a full night out dancing and listening to it just before going to bed - quite an affirmative experience.

Never really thought of Haim as having a strong critical consensus, at least in terms of topping year end lists. They seemed like an act that would appear on a bunch of lists, but hardly any would place at number 1.

Weird to see how aligned ILM was with everyone else until 2007/08 and suddenly it gets weird. Really weird.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Friday, February 6, 2015 3:19 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not really sure I agree with this either?

2007 and 2008 look pretty normal to me too.

For 2008, Third is definitely a consensus pick but iirc, elsewhere the albums most people were talking about were not Lindstrom nor Hercules and Love Affair. I remember more fuzz was made by albums from artists like Vampire Weekend, Fleet Foxes, Badu, Lil Wayne, Bon Iver, Santogold to name some.

The albums in 2010 also are very ILM centric. The consensus album that year was definitely by Kanye West not by Big Boi.

Every other year seems normal-ish, maybe consensus music got weird in general. But 2008 and 2010 are definitely more unique picks.

Yeah, and that TV on the Radio album was a pretty popular pick in 2008 as well.

I tried to listen to those two Streets albums again last year and my was it disappointing. Kinda like MC Chris but less funny. My brothers were really into him - "no, no, listen to the lyrics, he's brilliant", they'd say

like the tune which was "here's a really mild-mannered stoner, also some drunks like to get really violent"...and it's called "The Irony Of It All" !?!?

i didn't realize that 2010 has the third the-dream album in it, now def voting 2010.

Hmm... Original Pirate Material is a bit of landmark record for me. It's no more embarrassing today than it was then.

Yeah more or less agree. Best thing it has going for it now is probably the strings tho - like it far more than the follow-up.

like the tune which was "here's a really mild-mannered stoner, also some drunks like to get really violent"...and it's called "The Irony Of It All" !?!?

― Abstinence Hawk (frogbs), Friday, February 6, 2015 4:37 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

am i pointing out the obvious when i say the point of the song is that herb is illegal and relatively harmless compared to legal alcohol, and that's the irony?

I liked the one about listening to too much Brandy.

oh no I get what the "irony" is supposed to me, I just find it incredibly dumb

voted 2007 obv

sorry DJP but it's mostly for LCD

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

that haim alb still kicks ass but yeah

Destroyer was robbed.

Results are exactly right imo

no way those are three solid albums

that haim alb still kicks ass but yeah

otm

m b v was gr8 imo

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