Poptimists Tracks Of 08 PART THREE

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Nos. 30-21 of your tracks of the year.

And a special bonus round of applause to two tracks from last year's Top 10 which qualified again this year: Miley Cyrus' "See You Again" would have come between #25 and #26, and M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" between #24 and #25.

30. ELBOW - "One Day Like This"

This got a grand total of two votes when it came up in the weekly polls. Obviously they both liked it a great deal. Or its Mercury nomination (and omnipresence on sports and TV highlights reels) has swung others behind it!

29. ASHLEE SIMPSON - "Little Miss Obsessive"

No official video of this seems to exist! Here are some pictures of Ashlee.

28. LEONA LEWIS - "Bleeding Love"/"Bleeding Love (Moto Blanco Remix)"

The two mixes got equal votes from you, so I went with the MB one here because it's a bit less familiar.

27. CASSIE - "Thirsty"

Another unreleased R&B gem - big up the Cassie Hype Kru.

26. LIL MAMA - "Shawty Get Loose"

This is the lowest-placed track to be named by four different people! It's also not embeddable, which is a shame as the video is very entertaining.

25. NE-YO - "Miss Independent"

Halfway through! The Prince of Polite outlines what he looks for in a wumman.

24. ASHLEE SIMPSON - "Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)"

Second appearance for Ashlee. Audio in this vid might be a bit crummy.

23. THE TING TINGS - "That's Not My Name"

This year's big indie crossover (and divider of poptimist opinion) - don't call them embeddable.

22. H2O ft PLATNUM - "What's It Gonna Be"

Bassline's biggest hit of 2008 gets its reward.

21. KANYE WEST - "Say You Will"

Six-minute cyber-weepie album track storms Poptimist poll shocker! This is not actually a video, obviously.

Tomorrow, things get see-ree-us as we enter the Top 20.

Comments

[hoshuteki.livejournal.com]

Oh so I'm not the only one who picked that Kanye track? I thought I'd be dividing votes, too. I am of course, as ever, thankful for these polls so I can find out all the great tracks I completely missed out on through never bothering to click Youtube videos over the past year; I am teh lazy.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Ha, didn't even think about picking this, though it's probably my favorite from his new album for some weird reason. (I say weird only because there are at LEAST two lines in it that make me cringe without fail, which is usually a dealbreaker for "favorite song").

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I have now compiled the top 50 for the chart polls! However I will wait until next week to publish the results :)

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

3 of my selections showed up this time, "Thirsty" and both Ashlee Tracks. Very exciting.

[ijgrieve.livejournal.com]

Evidently my 5pt song ('Paper Planes') wasn't eligible, so a bit of a waste of points that was.

I'd be quite surprised to see my number 2 or 4, and pleasantly surprised if my #1 shows up in the Top 20. OTOH, I expect number 5 has a good chance of being in the top 20, and my number 3 has already appeared.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

srsly though tom, you should get a perm and some dark glasses so you could look exactly like DLT in the icon...

did ting tings not chart for us last year as well?

think these are all fairly expected choices, thought lil mama and HtwoO might have been top 20 though...

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Maybe for Friday beers I will! (or maybe not.)

I am pretty sure Ting Tings didn't chart last year: Leona may have done but outside the Top 40.

Incidentally, my ever-revised rules on duplications are firming up - apologies to people who wasted votes on MIA and Miley. For the 2009 poll (assuming we're all still around!) a duplicate will count if it exceeds its previous position on the list.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Woo, 2 more of mine appear (making 3 so far in total; there was one in the #51-#67 batch).

I was one of the two people who ticked Elbow in the Chart Poll (I blame Radcliffe & Maconie, but I still quite like the clunky bit where the orchestra goes dun-dun dun-dun dun-dun duuuuuuuuuuunk). It's a gazillion miles away from my Top 10 songs of the year though.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I didn't even think of voting for any Cassie tracks that didn't have a proper release (and therefore didn't pick any at all in the end), but if I had I'd have gone with "Thirsty".

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

I've got a really similar view of 'One Day Like This' - I really like the song a lot, and yet it didn't come close to cracking my Top 25 of the year.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Wow, surprised that 'Say You Will' - of all 808s album tracks - got in. Would've thought that 'Love Lockdown' had the Kanye votes, er, locked down. And that the most popular album tracks would be 'Welcome To Heartbreak' or 'See You In My Nightmares'.

I think of Leona and H2O as very much 2007 but they're still great.

Happy to see both Ashlees even though they didn't quite make my own top 10.

'Miss Independent' makes so much more sense as a gay man's paean to a fierce powerful woman. Of the many many gay lines on Year Of The Gentleman, "manicured nails to set the pedicure off" may well be the gayest (beating the one about sipping rosé and the one where minces off to eat calamari). Don't look for those rumours to go away any time soon!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

As for 'Thirsty', it definitely deserves its place (and HIGHER) for the middle eight alone:

ooh I got you dreamin', wishin' you was in the deep end
here we could be fully submersed
mmm, I think about it, I doubt it
should make you live without it
and keep you dying of thirst -
I'm just playing with you!

Brilliant use of obscure word + teasing, tantalising performance + fact that both penultimate and last lines are pay-offs = <3

Sadly I have even less faith that Cassie's music will ever see the light of day than I do in Ciara - the Classy Undercover Hoe (copyright random Youtuber) is destined to be rediscovered as an 00s retro-fetish act 20 years hence though.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think as the lead off track a vote for "Say You Will" is maybe a vote for the whole 808s aesthetic as well as for this particular iteration of it.

Kanye picked up votes across several tracks though, as we'll see when the full lists are made known.

808s = Surprise Mumpop

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

Out of all the 2008 music my sister & I played over Christmas while we were at home, 808s was easily the one our mum loved most. She couldn;t get enough of it.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think it's quite fitting how this section is bookended by these two Big Artistic Statement type tracks! I much prefer Kanye (and almost voted for this very track!) but I think Elbow is doing what it's doing pretty well - it has some of the clumsy honesty Embrace used to traffic in. The Ting Tings are the fly in today's ointment for me, but I was half expecting them to do a lot better.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I nearly gave the Ting Tings 12 points rather than 1. Just to make a statement. Common sense prevailed, however ;)

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I voted for Kanye because it was the first track on the album and thus the first when I listened to it and went WTF. This impression has not faded, although I also worried about vote-splitting re: Love Lockdown. I also voted for (in this batch) Ne-Yo, What's It Gonna Be, and Miley, so I am obviously some kind of middle-of-the-poptimist-pack marker. I first heard that Miley Cyrus track a few days after Christmas when on holiday last year - it came on my ipod on shuffle while I was going back from the sun lounger to my room to get something and I thought WOW - and it is very much an 08 track so YAH BOO SUCKS to the chart eligibility criteria. It's a FIX.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Grumpy update: I hate the idea of Elbow so much I don't think I have consciously heard a note by them.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

haha the shawty vid is GREBT -- even if the little swimming robot mike reminded me of a CYBERSPERM in a futuristic fallopian tube

lex's ghey read of ne-yo warms me to its vid -- i've watched too many black bourgie romcoms with my friend P not to be a bit bored with the mise-en-scene (also his hat annoyed me)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Ne-Yo's hat is an omnipresent nuisance in the world of pop :(

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the cassie is lovely -- what's the story on this not being released?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The music biz refuses to release any more Cassie because it wants to annoy the Lex. :(

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

re H20's if... remake: he knocks the speccy nerd's books out of his hand bcz he is LOVESHY to declare his feelings for him (bcz speccy nerd is the best dancer)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Does anyone want to try and predict the top 5 or 10? (before things narrow down sharply tomorrow)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Hmm 'American Boy', 'No Air', 'A Milli'...one of the Solanges maybe, hopefully 'Sandcastle Disco'?

[koganbot]

Do you have any idea what the combined total for "Paper Planes" and "See You Again" would be (combining this year and last as Pazz & Jop does it so such songs are not punished for crossing the boundary between years)? Or did that info get lost along with last year's spreadsheet? ("What's It Gonna Be" would also pick up a few points that way.)

(For those of you who missed the convo about this a few days ago, Pazz & Jop will add together totals from more than one year if the votes from the second year are at least half of what a track or album got the previous year, except if someone votes the song for both years his second year's points don't get counted.)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

For MIA I think the votes aren't quite half. I don't have the exact totals but I think if I did this the songs would be 4 and 5 this year.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

o come on mcfly fans have we all placed votes on different songs? i strongly suspect so. i suppose plumping for a non-single lacked forethought on my part.

i am not totally sold on cassie but 'thirsty' has been skirting around my top [whatever] all year. it didn't quite get there on the probably slightly unfair basis that it still isn't as good as the bit where the cello kicks in on 'me & u.'

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

"Little Miss Obsessive" and "Outta My Head"? "Follow You Wherever You Go" better make an appearance in the top twenty, or I am going to be very disappointed in you all.