POPTIMISTS REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2008: BEST ALBUM

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

We're doing our end of year review CANON-STYLE, i.e. here are ALL the records that got nominated. You pick THREE of them (out of 26).

[Poll #1312190]

Remember to get your votes for the REALLY important poll (Top 10 Tracks) in to leagueofpop@gmail.com. I'm extending the deadline on this to the REAL ACTUAL end of the year, because I've realised I'm going to be incredibly stuffed for time next week whereas the first week of January is likely to be pleasantly quiet...

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Lil' Mama album is "VYP: Voice of the Young People" and Solange album is "Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams."

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Bah I changed all those in the code bit! But obviously it didn't carry over. :(

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Although I am like RLY fed up with Scooter dammit it's sort of great (also I haven't heard looooads of these as it appears I spent this year under a rock spelt 'jpop', I am trying to crawl out again honest).

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i had forgotten that half of the scooter alBUM was new!

[weasel-seeker.livejournal.com]

Mmm. There are albums on this that are about 50% brilliant and 50% meh, and others that have less brilliance, but are more consistently enjoyable. Splitting the difference is proving annoying.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Lots of my favourites nominated here - I picked VamWk, Lindstrom and Kanye, and felt guilty about NOT being able to pick Ne-Yo or Portishead or The Bug. The ones I did pick are more pop than those last two anyhow.

The Girls Aloud album not even nominated - how the mighty etc.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Goes to show what a great year this was...there are albums there which I'm not even considering for my three ticks, which I'd be content with as a top 3 in themselves. If that makes sense. Anyway there are, unhelpfully, four which really stand out for me - Badu by a million light years, and then Jeezy/The Bug/Ne-Yo. How to pick two of those last three, how...

(The most notable omission to me is Beyonce, but also totally understandable given how recent it is.)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

(nb - not to unnecessarily read macro themes into a disparate year, but Badu, The Bug and Jeezy seem like very relevant albums for 2008, and impressively so.)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Goes to show what a great year this was

AND IN THE LIGHT OF THIS HOW THE HELL IS VAMPIRE WEEKEND LEADING >:(

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

haha at least 2 people have picked three records in each batch

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

When the Sound of Bassline came out in January I really thought that would be the dominant sound of 2008...how wrong i was. Definitely the compilation of the year, and worthy of a top-three place, even if it seems now in retrospect to have captured something relatively short-lived.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

If the poll option had been Sound Of Bassline (disc 2) then I would have ticked it.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

VW will win I guess - BAH

Badu doing better than expected. I nominated Annie figuring no-one else would (could've done same for HL&A, hard luck guys).

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

er, i mean H&LA

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

WHUT WATE WAS THAT TWO WEEKS ALREADY? I never do my nominations for this. D:

Who nominated GnR and Vampire Weekend?!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Quickly nominate stuff in the other cats!

Street team post

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

The Jean-Jacques Perrey and Dana Countryman album is called Destination Space. It's loads of fun and totally poptimists-friendly... unless you're the poptimist who nominated Elbow ;)

Indeed, Jean-Jacques' creed is "to bring as much optimism and humour to my fellow brothers and sisters on the planet as possible". The new CD recaptures the spirit of his seminal 1960s Vanguard recordings with Gershon Kingsley but adds a few new twists too.

The fact that, aged 79, he's still producing great records and still tours (and can mime better than Britney on stage) should mean he wins the Lifetime Achievement category hands down. But hey, why not vote for the album too?

You can listen to three songs from Destination Space on JJ-P's MySpace page:
http://www.myspace.com/jjperrey

oh dear...

[(Anonymous)]

i know that i almost never post here (and i really ought to), and of course i didn't nominate anything so i should shut up, but...

this list is pretty dispiriting to me if these are really the best pop/timist-ic albums of the year. (also granted i've only heard half of them but still.) i guess it already felt like an off year for pop, but it seems more that there weren't great consensus picks than that there wasn't great pop music being made.

personally, i feel like hot chip, cut///copy, neon neon, kleerup, taylor swift, marit larsen, esau mwamwaya/radioclit and, yeah, herc & love affair should all be in contention, and probably beyonce as well. maybe cyndi lauper and lykke li too.

(on the other hand, we know that cassie and ciara and maybe keri should be on here and ruling the roost - but then by that logic why is annie up there?)

however, my two favorite pop-flavored albums of the year, by some margin, are both by swedish synth-pop acts that i now wish i'd made an effort to promote here earlier: juvelen and cloetta paris.

cloetta is a neo-italo-disco pop princess, much like sally shapiro but with more of an indie-pop heart and a slightly warmer (though still delicate) voice, and songs that have gradually revealed themselves to be a good deal more lasting. (all written by the guy who wrote "anorak christmas," if yr hip to that.) check out "broken heart tango" on her myspace (http://www.myspace.com/cloettaparis). she also does an awesome cover of elo's "so serious," which i sadly can't find a link to.

juvelen, on the other hand, hits somewhere between robyn, justin timberlake and (it must be said) prince. his most crucial hits are "watch your step," "hanna," "don't mess" all of which are up on hisspace (http://www.myspace.com/juvelen). i'm pretty sure you guys will dig.

Re: oh dear...

[gingermint.livejournal.com]

whoops, sorry; didn't mean to post anonymously

the VW bug

[(Anonymous)]

Vampire Weekend (though i like it a fair amount) strikes me as the kind of thing that would be a third-choice pick for a lot of folks who haven't heard enough of the other candidates. would be sort of too bad if it wins by default that way...

Re: the VW bug

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

VW is my first or second favourite album of the year, definitely: but yes it probably is picking up some default votes. I think it's a very pop record! Of course it's indie too, in the way that lots of things are dance as well as pop. I really like it's whole aesthetic and will happily defend it at greater length when I'm not posting on a Blackberry!

VW Coup

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to take a hit for Kanye's tally by giving up one of my votes. Anyone else with me?

Re: VW Coup

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

I am going to be sure to listen to Santogold and Kanye before the deadline runs out to see if I can legitimately give them a vote. BTW, when does the deadline run out on this?

[credoimprobus]

I feel sort of bad for not voting for my own declared album of the year, but it'd be a bit of a rubbish move strategically anyway innit. (Besides, someone needs to rep for the Nas, too!)

(And I will say a HURRAH for the extension on the top 10 tracks deadline, as I am still in the middle of my last-minute album rush and have already had to revise my list twice in the last half week, ahaha.)

ATTN LEX

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Kanye needs your vote! You've got a spare.

Re: ATTN LEX

[weasel-seeker.livejournal.com]

Sorted. On reflection b/t the enjoyable consistency of Vampire Weekend and the sporadic and strange savantness of Kanye, I finally landed on the latter. I still think Kanye will probably wear out his welcome faster, but 808s is far more the sound of 2008 (a la Erykah, Wayne, etc.) in my mind than VW, who are retro pastiche.

The battle between the two other 80s pastichers, Ashlee and Santogold, remains up for grabs. Ashlee's album is more consistent, and the songs Santi wrote for Ashlee trump anything on Santogold, but I haven't touched Bittersweet World in months, while Santogold has been slowly accumulating many many listens. Going with Ashlee because she's more "pop" but we'll see.

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Haha the "it was released late in the year" argument doesn't really apply considering what is leading here.

I was torn between Lindstrom and Young Jeezy for ages, definitely by #1 and #2 but I haven't worked out which way round yet. Plumped for Lindstrom in the end.

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Oh hang on, you get to vote for three. Linstrom, Lil Wayne, Jeezy it is.

Pay for Play

[koganbot]

I will not change my votes for anything less than an ambassadorship.

Re: Pay for Play

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I'm not willing to give you anything but appreciation. Fuck you. Why don't you just vote yourself in?

My recommendation is to fire all these fucking people. Get 'em the fuck out of here and parachute Ashlee into this motherfucker. Anyway, I didn't do it myself because I wanted to see how she performs at the end of the year. If she doesn't perform, fuck it.

[koganbot]

Albums I haven't heard yet.

The Indelicates American Demo*
Alphabeat This Is Alphabeat
Scooter Jumping All Over The World
Portishead Third
Booka Shade The Sun And The Neon Light
The Sound Of Bassline
Lindstrom Where You Go I Go Too
Young Jeezy The Recession
Jean-Jacques Perrey & Dana Countryman*
Vampire Weekend Vampire Weekend
Goldfrapp Seventh Tree
Elbow The Seldom Seen Kid
Pariisin Kevat Meteoriitti*
Nas Untitled
The Bug London Zoo

*Haven't even heard of these.

[credoimprobus]

"Haven't even heard of these" -- *cough* :) Should really have been posted a month earlier for any effect, but an attack of the plague left me out of commission for several weeks at the critical time.

(Had to switch my Nas vote to Meteoriitti in the end, because it looked so sad and lonely as the only one without a single vote, heh.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Ashlee and Ne-Yo were easy (though neither will make my actual top 10); picked Lil Mama over Santogold for third place, though it would have have been close. If I was able to pick three more (actually, am I? Do I vote for three total, or three in each batch?) I'm sort of confused by that), I'd probably go with Santogold, Lil Wayne, and, uh, Vampire Weekend. Things might change if I actually heard the Scooter, Alphabeat, or Annie albums, or maybe a couple of the others. Probably not Kanye though. And probably not The Bug, whose album five years ago I put in storage after listening to it (and basically liking it) a couple times, and can remember nothing about it now, except that it basically sounded exactly the same as everything else I've ever heard by Kevin Martin or whatever the guy's name is.

[koganbot]

You only get to vote three total.

I'm looking forward to hearing the Jeezy, though generally he's always been a bit too slow to make my top tens.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

I've only heard two of them.