Magazine/website/record store BEST OF 2011 end-of-year list pile-up

xpost not that repetition is a bad thing, I mean one of my favourite songs of the year was King Creosote's "Your Young Voice" which is essentially a one-line tone poem. But this is done very deliberately. There's no meat to that Adele song.

I don't think I've actually heard Rolling In The Deep, so I'll listen to that when I get home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dis1iGn48EE

There's no meat to that Adele song.

gonna let this one pass, i think

anyway i always forget that year end time on ilx drives me up a wall bcuz dog latin comes back and starts saying inane shit

was there much love for blaqkout in that year's non-ILM lists?

― lex pretend, Wednesday, December 7, 2011 11:03 AM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

it had a pretty healthy showing on P&J (#62) and Pitchfork (#25), certainly a larger critical profile than Book of David anyway

I think 'Rolling in the Deep' is a pretty good song, though I get the feeling I might have only heard a remix? I wasn't feeling the X Factor version until the rap, but then I was really impressed with her. I think one thing about X Factor versions is that they aren't really 'songs' but more presentations, right? Because her version doesn't really make any narrative sense at all, but as a presentation of "look, this is what I can do and this is the style I can work with" she's quite compelling.

Is that Amazon list supposed to be the 10 bestselling mp3 albums of the year? How many people bought “A Very She & Him Christmas”???

"Someone Like You" is very droning and monotonous imo, it's really a shame that THAT is the first #1 piano-and-vocals-only ballad in US pop history because it really doesn't do much with those tools

I think one thing about X Factor versions is that they aren't really 'songs' but more presentations, right?

yeah i'm not sure whether this is intent (on the programme/contestants' part) or just a function of the songs having to be edited down to 2.5 mins (cher lloyd managing to cram the backing vox, lead vox and queen pen rap of "no diggity", PLUS a tears for fears chorus in the middle of it all, last year was some mind-boggling feat of timing)

anyway i always forget that year end time on ilx drives me up a wall bcuz dog latin comes back and starts saying inane shit

― v-shasty, Wednesday, 7 December 2011 17:09 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

hmm... this is the first negative thing i've had to say about pretty much anything on these lists so far. And face it like-it-or-not, Adele isn't the most exciting music out this year. I'm not saying she doesn't have talent. She has got a great voice and her songs are pleasant enough. I just don't think anything this tepid should be hitting the high marks in these polls.

half the albums on all these lists are pretty fucking tepid! bon iver, fleet foxezzz! adele is no more tepid than they are

trolling in the deep

No, come on. There are fantastic pop songs out there that don't rely on bludgeoning repetition and inertia to get the point across. I found that song infuriating because it was a pleasant idea utterly wasted. There's nothing to come back to - no uplift, no tension, no bridge, no nothing -just the same melody repeated over and over in this really uninspiring way. I call this the Beautiful South effect. You can sing the song in 20 seconds and just paste it back-to-back on itself for four minutes and boom: there's your hit. That's not songwriting - that's coming up with a catchy riff and forgetting to finish the job.

Sorry, this entire paragraph is flat-out wrong.

The song clearly follows the pattern intro-verse-prechorus-chorus-verse-prechorus-chorus-bridge-chorus-chorus-outro with slight variations in the melody in each section with the one strict constant being the arpeggios in the piano up until the third chorus. The entire song does a series of swells that builds to the bridge, which relaxes into the third chorus and crescendos directly into the repeated chorus.

It's not a complicated song, but it is not underwritten or underperformed.

Now, I will say that the piano part is really, really, really simple, like Alicia-Keys-first-album simple, and that has a tendency to overwhelm the song; that's an arrangement problem, and one that I found pretty easy to overcome when I started focusing on what she was doing.

adele has been dominating every album and singles chart and industry awards literally the entire year, it's just kind of boring and silly to pop up with "what a disaster that some magazines put adele on their lists" griping in december

yeah the simplistic piano on "Someone" really bothers me -- if you're going to have only piano accompanying a voice like hers the playing should be equally rich and technically accomplished imo

http://topnews.co.uk/images/imagecache/main_image/Biffa-truck.jpg

bon iver, fleet foxezzz! adele

xpost to the lex

I'm not defending Bon Iver or Fleet Foxes either. My aversion to those bands is the similar as yours to The Weeknd and Frank Ocean. It's like, people assume I must like them, but in fact I find them awfully dull and I get a bit RME when I think about how many other things came out this year that do a similar job but a squillion times better and don't get half way as many props.

i'm finding it rather ironic that there's this deluge of EOY lists when i'm still majorly anticipating albums that are either coming out now or in a week or two - robin thicke, rebecca ferguson, anthony hamilton, young jeezy...

although they have been helping me catch up with several i missed too. zodiac free arts club, kendrick lamar, gazelle twin, gloria estefan, julia holter...

SO MUCH MUSIC

yeah the simplistic piano on "Someone" really bothers me -- if you're going to have only piano accompanying a voice like hers the playing should be equally rich and technically accomplished imo

Not if the intent is to showcase Adele; I think the logic was to make the piano part a simple platform upon which Adele could place a delicate vocal performance, to switch up from her usual "hey I am hollering at you and you love it" style.

The song clearly follows the pattern intro-verse-prechorus-chorus-verse-prechorus-chorus-bridge-chorus-chorus-outro with slight variations in the melody in each section

She does a very good job of covering this up ;-)

Okay, I'll shut up about Adele now as it's upsetting people. Obviously, she's not my style or forte, but I still don't think I'm gonna get convinced that she's any more than the Coldplay/Fleet Foxes of her niche.

i'm finding it rather ironic that there's this deluge of EOY lists when i'm still majorly anticipating albums that are either coming out now or in a week or two - robin thicke, rebecca ferguson, anthony hamilton, young jeezy...

From a strictly PR standpoint, I'm still kind of surprised that people schedule these high profile type releases in mid-to-late December. They miss out on the EOY list stuff and, 9 times out of 10, they are completely forgotten about by the time next year's lists come out. I get its partially a holiday buzz thing to get people to buy the album's as Christmas gifts - but thats usually reserved for box sets and cash-grab remix collections or w/e.

yeah i'm sure there is a compositional logic of "Someone" but it doesn't really work for me. usually when there's a rare hit with zero drums (John Legend's "Ordinary People" or Jazmine Sullivan's "Lions, Tigers & Bears") it feels like a nice little breather on radio playlists, but "Someone" kind of feels like dead air to me when it comes on.

From a strictly PR standpoint, I'm still kind of surprised that people schedule these high profile type releases in mid-to-late December

I'm facing this now with the Diddy and R. Kelly.

rap blogs always refer to lower profile december releases as "tax writeoffs" but i have no idea if there actually is some kind of financial reality that makes it profitable for major labels to keep throwing out so many albums just before christmas.

i do feel sorry for december releases when it comes to these things, yeah.

I was excited about Thundercat album when it first came out, need to revisit it.

If you are a record company trying to hit your balance sheet for the end of the year, and you have a guaranteed banking seller, do you care most about 1) lots of sales at a time when people who are not particularly into music are buying things or 2) critical acclaim?

Come on, it's hardly rocket science.

Well, sure, I guess I shouldn't have used "high profile" to cover all these. If we're talking an R. Kelly guaranteed seller, I get it, but say, someone like Anthony Hamilton who isn't QUITE at that level yet and would probably benefit from some critical buzz.

it's definitely the xmas gift market! which is why most of these december releases are in commercially-oriented genres - the big pop, r&b and rap albums all often come out in nov/dec. those artists tend not to focus on EOY lists.

It just means the label/artist doesn't care enough about critical rep, either because the artist is just being shoddily handled or because the artist is so massive they'll sell truckloads anyway, especialy a couple of weeks before Christmas. No one's going to hold that Susan Boyle album over til January so it can appear in 2012 lists.

anthony hamilton makes traditional r&b. traditional r&b doesn't GET critical buzz, no matter when in the year it's released

the Hamilton record is excellent, lex.

Guys, I do get why they are released now, I'm just saying that it doesn't make sense if they are looking for critical acclaim on these type of lists. If you're a label that drops the album on December 20th, you lose the right to bitch about it not showing up on EOY lists.

i still feel sad that i never got to put my #1 album of last year (diddy dirty monet) at the top of any of my lists ;_;

Ha, good point lex.

(xpost)

I'm anxious to hear the Hamilton.

(diddy dirty monet)

inadvertent display name

i put LTTP as my #2 after listening to it twice. not it'd be my #1 but still i'm glad at my rash decision last year. this week i'm trying to cram in some 11th hour listening to see how many impulsive changes i can make to my top 10.

yeah i had it #3 on my p&j last year, behind titus andronicus & flockaveli. i'd bump it to #2 now.

Do crits not get promos a month before release date anymore? You'd think they would do that aggressively for the December releases. Or maybe they don't care as the lists aren't proven to affect sales much?

it was fucking EIGHTH on my p&j ballot o_0 iirc i'd bumped it up to 2nd by the time of my ilm ballot, behind ciara. obviously 1st though.

hahahahahaha at the idea of critics getting advance promos for major label shit

seems like most critics these days get the same 'advance' (i.e. internet leak) that everyone else gets for upcoming releases, with some big mags still getting intensely protected previews of major albums

interscope were willing to fly me to LA to interview yelawolf, but not to let me hear the album at any point prior to my copy deadline

sometimes there are "listening parties" which basically mean getting to hear the album played at a stupidly loud volume, once, in a room full of other journalists, and occasionally some nasty sandwiches if they want to push the boat out (rihanna)

what's in those nasty sandwiches

at a Rihanna party? I'm guessing Spanish fly and panties

prepackaged cheese. going for an "eat what you hear" thing i guess

it's definitely the xmas gift market! which is why most of these december releases are in commercially-oriented genres - the big pop, r&b and rap albums all often come out in nov/dec. those artists tend not to focus on EOY lists.

I guess the inverse of this is the 'critic-bait' records that tend to come out in January, which is the best time for catching critics' attention, because they're all desperate to find the first great release of the new year to get their lists started.

ROLLING STONE TOP 50 ALBUMS:

50 The Lonely Island – Turtleneck & Chain
49 Wavves – Life Sux
48 Charles Bradley – No More Time For Dreaming
47 PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
46 White Denim – D
45 Tedeschi Trucks Band – Revelator
44 Raphael Saadiq – Stone Rollin
43 The Kills – Blood Pressures
42 Destroyer – Kaputt
41 Little Dragon – Ritual Union
40 Gary Clark Jr. – The Bright Lights
39 Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring For My Halo
38 Mastodon – The Hunter
37 Panda Bear – Tomboy
36 Stephen Malkmus And The Jicks – Mirror Traffic
35 Dawes – Nothing Is Wrong
34 SuperHeavy – SuperHeavy
33 Josh T. Pearson – Last Of The Country Gentlemen
32 Big K.R.I.T. – Return Of 4Eva
31 Miranda Lambert – Four The Record
30 Tom Morello, The Nightwatchman – World Wide Rebel Songs
29 Pistol Annies – Hell On Heels
28 Das Racist – Relax
27 Florence & The Machine – Ceremonials
26 St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
25 Beyoncé – 4
24 Frank Ocean – Nostalgia, Ultra.
23 Tom Waits – Bad As Me
22 Drake – Take Care
21 Bon Iver – Bon Iver
20 Foo Fighters – Wasting Light
19 Eric Church – Chief
18 Feist – Metals
17 TV On The Radio – Nine Types Of Light
16 R.E.M. – Collapse Into Now
15 Cage The Elephant – Thank You Happy Birthday
14 Beastie Boys – Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2
13 tUnE-YarDs – w h o k i l l
12 The Black Keys – El Camino
11 My Morning Jacket – Circuital
10 Robbie Robertson – How To Become Clairvoyant
09 Wild Flag – Wild Flag
08 Wilco – The Whole Love
07 The Decemberists – The King Is Dead
06 Lady Gaga – Born This Way
05 Radiohead – The King Of Limbs
04 Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
03 Paul Simon – So Beautiful Or So What
02 Jay-Z & Kanye West – Watch The Throne
01 Adele – 21

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/50-best-albums-of-2011-20111207

ROLLING IN THE DEEEE- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Z681OSWYw

pjh resting at no. 47 in rolling-stone's year-end poll.

sweeeeeeeeet.

ROLLING STONE TOP 50 SINGLES OF 2011:

50. Red Hot Chili Peppers, 'Adventures of Raindance Maggie'
49. Pains of Being Pure at Heart, 'Heart In Your Heartbreak'
48. Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, 'The Death of You and Me'
47. Atlas Sound, 'Mona Lisa'
46. Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire et al., 'The Last Huzzah'
45. Cass McCombs, 'The Same Thing'
44. The Joy Formidable, 'The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie'
43. Hayes Carll, 'KMAG YOYO'
42. Eleanor Friedberger, 'My Mistakes'
41. Coldplay, 'Paradise'
40. Girls, 'Vomit'
39. EMA, 'California'
38. Middle Brother, 'Blue Eyes'
37. Nas, 'Nasty'
36. Tom Waits, 'Satisfied'
35. R.E.M., 'We All Go Back To Where We Belong'
34. Das Racist, 'Girl'
33. Beastie Boys feat. Santigold, 'Don't Play No Games That I Can't Win'
32. Tune-Yards, 'Bizniss'
31. Killer Mike, 'Ric Flair'
30. Eric Church, 'Springsteen'
29. Adele, 'Rumour Has It'
28. Dawes, 'Million Dollar Bill'
27. Lady Gaga, 'You and I'
26. Miranda Lambert, 'Mama's Broken Heart'
25. Lykke Li, 'Youth Knows No Pain'
24. Smith Westerns, 'Weekend'
23. Tyler, the Creator, 'Yonkers'
22. Bon Iver, 'Holocene'
21. Paul Simon, 'The Afterlife'
20. Jay-Z and Kanye West, 'Welcome to the Jungle'
19. Lucinda Williams, 'Blessed'
18. Black Keys, 'Little Black Submarines'
17. Wilco, 'I Might'
16. Fleet Foxes, 'Lorelai'
15. TV on the Radio, 'You'
14. Sleeper Agent, 'Get It Daddy'
13. My Morning Jacket, 'Circuital'
12. Lloyd feat. Andre 3000 and Lil Wayne, 'Dedication to My Ex (Miss That)'
11. Foster the People, 'Pumped Up Kicks'
10 The Decemberists – “Don’t Carry It All”
09 Lil Wayne – “Six Foot Seven Foot” (Feat. Cory Gunz)
08 Beyoncé – “Countdown”
07 Lady Gaga – “Edge Of Glory”
06 Radiohead – “Lotus Flower”
05 Paul Simon – “Rewrite”
04 Foo Fighters – “These Days”
03 Britney Spears – “Till The World Ends”
02 Jay-Z & Kanye West – “*****s In Paris”
01 Adele – “Rolling In The Deep”

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/50-best-singles-of-2011-20111207