ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2023

Hi, there. Usually forks was the one who did the honors of doing this opening post, but since he is sorely missing this time around, you'll be stuck with me as your lesser host until someone who is actually good at this steps up for the job.

As I'm not very good at doing the writing thing I'll try to keep it short and informative, but first, a round of gratitude:

Thanks seandalai for helping me organize this, I don't think I'd have the energy to pull it off without you!

Also thank you so much to each one of you who took the time to nominate, campaign, vote and/or comment on the music that mattered to you the most in 2023. I fall in love with our list every year.

Here’s the Top 77 Tracks of 2023 Spotify Playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1P8nwagAPBtvJmHmfaM8PL

Apple Music Playlist

Tidal Playlist

If anyone wants to build a matching YouTube / Tidal / Apple Music / Amazon Music - please share it. I'd like to request the mods if said playlists are shared please be so kind to add them to this opening post for visibility.

Your poll runners this time around are myself (posting, playlisting, graphics) and Seandalai (organization and vote tabulation).

As usual every winner in the poll is accompanied by a Youtube video (unless there isn't one) and a small blurb taken from somewhere else in the internet... some of these songs are more obscure than others so a few of them might not even have a very interesting blurb or one at all. Due to me not being very well versed on which rolling ILM threads are the appropriate ones for further reading and discussion about each placement, I wont be adding links to them this time around. If you feel like directing us to them please do so.

Poll starts around 9am EST tomorrow. Here's for another year of music! See you tomorrow!

I apologize for the inevitable writing mistakes I did and will do throughout this whole thread. English is not my first language and I'm always sleep deprived.

I look forward to waking up to this!

THANK YOU Moka and Seandalai!

Going in blind, not having seen the nominees!

sorry in advance for forgetting to vote for "chale"

I quite liked Chale. That'll do, right?

much love to Moka and Seandalai. Thank you so much.

Wahooooo! Exciting! Thanks Moka, thanks seandalai

many thanks, Moka and seandalai - absolute champs! excited for the rollout

Looking forward to this.

This year I got as far as listening to all the noms for the first time, but still did not manage to vote. One of these years!

Can’t wait!

aussie crew set cycles to nocturnal

Midnight start? Nah, I’m just here for the daily recap. Sorry, maybe I should move to the I “Kinda Like” Music forum instead. Consider this thread lurked!

Great stuff

Excellent! Thanks again, mods!

Great stuff! Feel like long-absent king returning from travels afar to reclaim his rightful though beneficient domination over places 285 to 327 in the list. All praises to Moka and Seandalai!

An Apple Music playlist would be welcome; I didn't browse the noms list because I don't have Spotify or Tidal.

will miss the superior rollout coming first— i have always been an albums guy, even when i was a dj— but i will settle for the catnip this week.

say this every year but tracks is way more fun imo

funny i saw the latter roll-out as the "main event"

though i didn't get it together to vote tracks, i'm looking forward to it most.

Last year the tracks were way more fun, but I'm normally more interested in hearing some great new albums.

I think tracks are more exciting with the uncertainty and the immediate reactions they grant - so they are like starters and amuse-bouche before the "plat de résistance".

keeping poptimism alive single handed here

41-minute tracks at a time

Tracks = a good time, lots of excitement, stoked to find a few new bangers

Albums = I have arrived at the top of the mountain

The tracks roll-out is often more fun because you can listen along more easily if you don't know stuff. I did wonder when Moka was debating which to do first if one poll was more likely to 'spoil' the other (e.g. if there are loads of tracks off an album making it, is it therefore inevitable that album will be #1, or would a notable omission in the albums poll give away that someone won't make the tracks poll either?). But ultimately I reckon that's too much fretting about something that would have a very minimal impact if any.

Yes, I also find tracks is more fun precisely because it’s easy to follow and react on those songs you don’t know about. I have found some of my favorite albums via a retroactive listen to the albums poll, though.

It’s usually tracks first, then albums. Last year we did a switch up because forks was busy to run the tracks poll atm and he asked me to start albums first… it wasn’t a conscious decision, rather a scheduling conflict.

And it all starts with a big bang…

https://i.imgur.com/imMYV5a.jpg
77. 96 Back - Laco 111 points - 3 votes
Video
You know what’s good? Weird, droning synth noises - always. And all the more so when turned into massive dance-floor bangers, as Manchester’s 96 Back does on this banger for Local Action. The key, I think, is that 96 Back doesn’t overcomplicate things: he’s got a couple of excellent, ever so slightly sickening, noises that he knows will work wonders on the dance floor and he lets them play their merry game. If you hear this in a club you will vomit with excitement.

I voted for this, a track I discovered while listening to the nominations, glad my vote pushed it into the top 77

for anyone using Tidal, I'm doing a playlist here: https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/be8be68e-7326-4eee-9a60-afa7fc838ef8

I will try to keep it as up-to-date as possible

lol that is exactly the type of club track that i despise, a sound palette of the most obnoxious sounds ever created standing in place of any groove

This track is fun and it definitely grooves

Throwing everything but the kitchen sink, but strangely coherent and minimalist and menacing. Fitting opening for the Top77. Reminds me of Shanti Celeste.

the thing about this track is that it's a relatively simple thing done extremely well, very satisfying to listen to. The main riff to this track is not at all obnoxious to me.

Ultimately I couldn't talk myself into voting this year (and probably going forward), but I look forward to hopefully discovering at least a dozen new jams here

lol that is exactly the type of club track that i despise, a sound palette of the most obnoxious sounds ever created standing in place of any groove

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Monday, January 22, 2024 9:18 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

SO funny you say this b/c as i'm listening to this track for the first time i thought of that obnoxious peder mannerfelt track i posted a couple years ago that you got mad about and i was wondering if you'd hate this one as well lol

(the track in question for anyone curious: https://hectoroaks.bandcamp.com/track/a1-peder-mannerfelt-the-b-20 )

It's like if Akai made one of those giant machines that shreds everything

Great pic layout
Was trying to work out for a while what IUN meant on the right lol

yeah it looks great moka

Iirc this guy's dad is closely associated with the early days of Warp records, just in case you were picking up afx vibes

https://i.imgur.com/jxotkNj.jpg
76. Men I Trust - Ring of Past 112 points - 4 votes
Video
A starlit jam that rides a keening keyboard pattern and a bouncy, tightly coiled bassline. Emmanuelle Proulx sings in her familiar ghostly coo, professing that "I'll always love you / Forever with you / Reliving youth through / You."  A bit more in line with the sighing lounge pop on 2021's Untourable Album than with the lean post-punk of "Billie Toppy" or the trembling baroque folk of "Girl."

96 back: I think the obnoxiousness of the sound palette is what saves this track - it's not that interesting otherwise but the queasy synths and irritating chirps are making me laugh.

Great pic layout
Was trying to work out for a while what IUN meant on the right lol

― nxd

yeah it looks great moka

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar...,

Thanks! I had a cleaner ILM monogram before this one but when doing the slightly different albums layout I thought this one looked better over there and decided to send it to the tracks poll as well for consistency.

This was on my short list, but didn't quite make the cut. I've been amazed at how much Men I Trust have blown up over the past year or two.

Not nuts about this one but that is a fantastic bass sound (I'm guessing rubber bridge?)

Men I Trust: yeah, this is fine. The synth line is very nice! But overall a pretty slight morsel imo.

96 Back is cool and fun. Men I Trust... Yeah, this type of thing is on here every year, right?

He was born old

thanks for this Moka and seandalai !

only one from my short list didn’t make it.

going to admit that i have tired of amapiano after being truly obsessed circa 2019 and 2020– i also work at a bar that hosts a lot of amapiano and afrobeats nights, which is great, but i now associate the sounds with working my ass off instead of chilling and having fun.

more of an albums guy anyway, and I know a few of my picks will place 🙂

lol of course i was asleep when a kpop track finally tops the ILM poll

Great job, everyone though tbh I also wished that "Chale" and "Super Shy" had traded spots. "Super Shy" is great, but I don't love it as much as "Ditto" or even "Attention" or "Hype Boy" from their first EP

also even more hivemind-y than usual - six of my votes in the top 10, 12 overall, feels like a record.

So I was listening to “tiny garden” by Jamila Woods and my signifcant other said “this song is totally ripping off Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn” and I was confused but now I can hear it… specifically the “It's not gonna be a big production” has the same sort of vocal melody as “I thought I saw a man brought to life”… so anyone who knows musical theory can confirm it? Are both songs in the same key or using the same chord progression or something? It never ocurred to me to compare them but now I can’t stop hearing a weird variation of “torn” while listening to it.

I’m hearing torn going from F to Am and then Bb and back to F and tiny garden going from E to D to F and back to E so it’s making sense how they’re doing the same sort of movement, but I’m just going by ear and I’m not a musician so I don’t know if I’m hearing it correctly or if it’s similar at all.

By the same movement I mean… mm Up Down Sideways Up… hahaha sorry for sucking at this I really don’t know musical theory I’m just going for how it feels.

Also want to shoutout whoever nom'd Rose Gray's "Happiness," my favorite find from the nominations playlist.

*waves*

I know some people think the "reference" is a little too on the nose but it bangs. Would also recommend checking out her Higher Than The Sun EP too

Also assume we're having the usual stats & ballots thread at some point?

Usually seandalai makes a stats & ballots thread but he’s been very quiet and I could start one and share the spreadsheet he sends me but it only has the rankings data.

No rush Moka, you're both doing a sterling job as it is.

I suppose you could maybe start a thread for people to share their ballots so this one doesn't get cluttered with them?

One track that I found in the nominations from a band I had not heard about and got obssessed about was MUNA - One That Got Away, was hoping that might turn up, but I rarely have any idea whats popular, ILM hivemind or otherwise.

Also, I was certain Carly Rae Jepsen - Shy Boy would have been a lock in. Good thing you can’t place bets on the 77.

The two of mine I thought were locks, were Black Earth WI and Sufjan Stevens' Goodbye Evergreen. Not complaining at the latter being subbed out for Affirmations, lol

xp I think the general idea is you actually have to vote for stuff to make it turn up in the list ;)

Thanks sensei :D

i would expect we were the only votes for "goodbye evergreen"

I guess he was pretty votesplit

Just caught up on the top ten. Love the top two, so good work all round. Only hated the Ratboys but the only place I want to see ILM rock is in a landfill.

part of the challenge for the indie rock guitar solo in 2023 is that tom verlaine died and some of us spent a month revisiting marquee moon etc, and I think his lesson above all was have a point, you're not just there to fill bars with iddle and diddle

Thank you, mods, for this!

xps I never noticed "Torn" in "Tiny Garden" but I have thought the part where Duendita comes in sounds like a nod to "You Gotta Be."

Goodbye Evergreen might be partly my fault. I nommed it but then didn't end up voting for it.I'm guessing it will feature in the albums poll.

Usually seandalai makes a stats & ballots thread but he’s been very quiet and I could start one and share the spreadsheet he sends me but it only has the rankings data.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka)

If there's no sign of him today, we can either start a thread up now and I can add in the voter data later via mod edit, or we could wait and maybe have a single ballots thread for tracks and albums after that roll-out is done?

I mentioned before that I might be able to help out more next year if you two are finding it tough to manage this year. I'm honestly probably not the best or most organised person to help but if nobody else is willing then I'll try to step up.

Olivia Rodrigo is firmly in the category Subject For Further Research. (I realize that people put out albums and people listen to albums and look forward to learning how to do the latter myself.) Anyway, hadn't picked up on the Lemon Bagel Surfers* rhythm and it's definitely there. Fwiw, Dave (first) and some others of us over in the People's Pop Polls have been noticing the similarity between "Get Him Back" and late '00s Dr. Luke, e.g. Avril Lavigne "Girlfriend" and Megan McCauley "Tap That."

"Tap That" > "Get Him Back" > "Girlfriend"

*As Smash Hits once deliberately mistranscribed the band's name in a Johnny Depp interview.

And I'll echo others in saying thanks to Moka and seandalai.

I mentioned in the Olivia thread a while back that "Get Him Back" inspired me to revisit "Girlfriend," confirming my memory that that song fucking sucks (and I am/was an Avril fan). I had never heard "Tap That," but just checked it out... I wouldn't really file it alongside "Get Him Back," but it also doesn't hold a candle to it (IMO)

i will always love "girlfriend"

Hi! Sorry for being so quiet, things got overwhelming outside of ILX.

I will share the voter results on Sunday - I need to get back home to get them calculated

anyone should be able to access this for the full results now: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vNxMvx9lbpBiti4X26n6gZcXVDplKWF3jLjX3rU4Mto/edit?usp=sharing

Am I the only one who thinks there are two giant frontrunners this year? Caroline Polachek and Super Shy seems like ILX catnip to me.

― Frederik B, 20. januar 2024 19:36 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

One down one to go :) The thing about Super Shy is that not only is it ILX catnip, it was also the first song nominated, so, I assume, the first song on the spotify list. That always gives a boost.

Big thanks to the pollrunners! And a less big but still quite big thanks to everyone who voted, the results were great again. I thought the 1-2 last year was amazing, but it might have been even better this year.

Don’t worry seandalai! Got you covered

ILM 2023 Tracks Poll Ballots/Stats/Banter/Recriminations Thread

Here are the over-overdue voter stats: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1v_JKWPSBEKh4ftwwZKJ3glcr-OuvUYgcTLEeScGxkew/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks so much for running this, Moka & Sean - really fun countdown. Lovely to see a Kylie renaissance - Aussie queer comedy-noir TV show Deadloch had great extended Kylie banter as well.

I was just wondering if this would show up, it was my #1

― Muad'Doob (Moodles)

Wait are you sure? Spreadsheet marks 0 #1 votes

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, 24 January 2024 16:47 (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

in case Moodles is still wondering about this, Avalon Emerson was their #2 and Lone was their #1 vote

Ahhhh, I forgot about my last minute write in vote

Thanks to the pollrunners for putting this together.

It was one of the hardest ones to predict this year and looking at the top 77, it was noticeably lacking a lot of our regular names. Obviously some artists didn't release anything like The 1975 and Beyoncé. Róisín Murphy was ignored for obvious reasons. Artists who've done well in the past such as Jessie Ware, Carly Rae Jepsen, Paramore, Taylor Swift, Susanne Sundfør, The Beths, Caroline Polachek and Dua Lipa were all nominated and missed out. It kept the results feeling quite fresh this year. It'll be interesting to see how the albums look tomorrow.

there are pretty obvious reasons for most of those - ware album was a disappointment, crj released an outtakes album without a strong single to rally around, the beths song was just an outtake, the main singles from the polachek album came out last year or earlier, dua lipa singles were underwhelming, paramore were less pop and the strongest single was released last year, swift's singles were a song from 4 years ago and 1989 vault tracks

In fairness, the vault tracks were “new,” really good, and (IMO) better than “Anti-Hero” which placed last year (…I voted for “Slut!,” no one else did!)

Carly Rae Jepsen one was a surprise to me as I thought this album was so much stronger than The Loneliest Time which had three songs place in our 2022 list. I thought songs like Shy Boy, Psychedelic Switch and Kollage (my number one) which were all nominated were better than any of those three songs. Jessie Ware surprised me a bit too as Glassheart got an even more lukewarm reaction and Midnight still made that year's list. I assumed Begin Again would be in there. I can see her album being very low down or missing out completely.

I did see a few reactions online that a lot of the best songs on the Carloine Polachek album had already been released as singles before the album came out. It wasn't really like that for me as Butterfly Net, Fly To You and I Believe are my favourites. Bunny Is A Rider is one of the lesser songs on there to me.

tracks that get released as singles are much better at attracting votes, as a rule

i would be a bit surprised if the ware album didn't place at all but i don't expect it to be super high. if "psychedelic switch" had been the lead single for the loveliest time it probably would have placed

Looking back, the results suggest that a big part of the 2023 vocal aesthetic was to land somewhere between sounding like a sexy alien and an acerbic baby.
Not styles I especially enjoy, myself, but that's my hot take all the same

not sure how representative ilm's vocal taste is—or is it a general trend to vastly prefer women singers?

still catching up on the playlist... the hidden gems so far have been concentrated in the stretch from #22-31. every song in there is excellent

32-41 for me, but this poll feels like it's split into quite neat stylistic segments

https://i.imgur.com/mPmLdPq.jpeg
16. Carly Rae Jepsen - The Loveliest Time 402 points - 13 votes
Carly Rae Jepsen • The Loneliest Time
The Loveliest Time is a solid counterpart to its sister album, trading quiet, introspective power for brassy, headlong joy.

oh shoot wrong thread lol--ñ--

It is lovely!