Poptimists Tracks Of 2008 PART FIVE

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Here it is! The ten best tracks of 2008 according to YOUR votes.

10. MJ HIBBETT AND THE VALIDATORS - "It Only Works Because You're Here" (28 points)

I'll let the voters go into more detail on this one, I think.

9. ADDICTIVE ft T2 - "Gonna Be Mine" (29 points)

Mariachi bassline explosion! 2008's most unjust non-hit gets its due.

8. LIL WAYNE - "A Milli" (30 points)

Hip-hop's biggest crossover ripples through to Poptimists.

7. CASSIE ft LIL WAYNE - "Official Girl" (33 points)

That rarest of things, an actual Cassie release!

6. MGMT - "Time To Pretend" (40 points)

MGMT are too hip for embeds. Their other hits picked up a vote each too.

5. SANTOGOLD - "L.E.S. Artistes" (45 points)

A handful of these points were for the XXXChange remix (which is also very good). Santogold. A horse. Rum goings-on.

4. GOLDFRAPP - "A&E" (47 points)

Alison G. cavorts with some leafy otherkin. Benefitted from a late flurry of votes.

3. WILEY - "Wearing My Rolex" (78 points)

featuring N London dance troupe the River Fleet Foxes.

2. JORDIN SPARKS AND CHRIS BROWN - "No Air" (94 points)

The runaway early leader, then flagged a bit in late voting.

1. ESTELLE ft KANYE WEST - "American Boy" (113 points)

"Who killin them in the UK? Everybody gonna say you, K" - it is impossible to find an actual video for this song on YouTube!

Thanks to all who voted - tomorrow I'll put up the full list and appendix (every song mentioned). Now let the debate begin!

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i was watching estelle and kanye performing AB on TV (on some TFM award show) -- not very persuasively actually -- and estelle was wearing the OOGLIEST dress in couture history wtf

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Estelle's dresses are often fugly I'm afraid - she seems to have a penchant for shapeless strapless pieces of material which make it look as if she has no waist and fit really uncomfortably on her tits :(

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Hahaha go on the Hibbett (how many voters are we talking about here?)! My vote for the L.E.S. Artistes was basically for the version on the Santogold vs Diplo mixtape, which features crucial Air Horn! Also blimey, you're not kidding about the jump from three to four.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

no air would have been a good #1. all these are OK+, about half are great for me.

hibbett shouldn't be here though. naughty poptimists

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I think 7 of these are great, one is pretty good, one is boring (but actually quite good by the low, low standards of indie) and one is bafflingly terrible.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Having heard it, 2002 (and by Timbaland) sounds about right :)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

WTF is MJ Hibbett? Is this a joke? Ughhh "comedy".

Apart from that and boring MGMT it's a great top 10 and a very appropriate No 1, though I think 'A&E' is being overrated somewhat - I don't dislike Goldfrapp-gone-pastorale but it does make me want to listen to the Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man album instead.

No 'Blind'!!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

"Blind" got one top vote but nothing else! I was a bit surprised. "Closer" got one #7 vote.

The MJH isn't comedy, it's whimsical romantic indie, and all three of its voters sincerely like the song I believe. Even so I think a degree of collusion was involved.

[ijgrieve.livejournal.com]

None of mine are in the Top 10 (though failing to vote for 'Time To Pretend' was a bizarre omission). Happy that 'No Air', most irritating song of 2008 in my (likely singular) opinion, isn't #1.

MJ Hibbett

[ijgrieve.livejournal.com]

Wow, first time I've heard this. It's perfect for my 'geek compilation' I just happen to be putting together this week (coming soon to Poptimists :D).

[koganbot]

My predictions for top five were all correct (though the order wasn't). Big surprise was no Chris Brown "Forever" (not that I'm particularly strong about that song, but I thought a lot of you were). Happy surprise was "Gonna Be Mine." Another happy surprise was no "Blind."

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Were people really that high on 'Forever'? The standout Chris Brown solo single was 'With You', for me.

[koganbot]

A handful of these points were for the XXXChange remix (which is also very good). Santogold. A horse. Rum goings-on.

As Godard said, all you need for a video is a girl, a gun, and a horse.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

According to Wikipedia not only the Santogold video but also the MGMT one references "The Holy Mountain" by Jodorowski (which I've never seen).

[koganbot]

(I actually had seen the Hibbett.)

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

(haha! jolly good :) i seem to recall going a bit link crazy with it around august)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I voted for Wiley and Estelle (worthy winner IMHO) - totes unsurprised that four of my top ten didn't get a look in (Booka Shade, Jay-Z, Seal, Kanye's Flashing Lights).

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think Flashing Lights would have picked up a cpl of votes if the newer material hadn't monopolised people's Kanye picks.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Santogold was the only one of these in my Top 10, although 'Wearing My Rolex' and "the other" MGMT song, 'Kids' were both pretty close to the Top 10.

Further to my comment yesterday and subsequent discussion, I am slightly surprised that out of all the Poptimist voters, I was the only one to put 'Sex on Fire' in my Top 10. It was #1 in the chart for 3 weeks (and got a fair few votes in the AYIP poll on its release) so it's not as if I was the only fan of the song!

The J.R. Ewing of Seattle

[koganbot]

I like most of these, voted for none. "L.E.S. Artistes" was my number 25 (and the Santogold/Diplo remix of Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Posse On Broadway" was a near miss at number 11, and their mashup of Amanda Blank's version of LL's "I Need Love" and Santogold's "I'm A Lady" was number 13), "No Air" would have been top eighty (I'm not saying that sarcastically; top eighty is a good score). I was considering "Gonna Be Mine" as 2007 (and anyway, I forgot about it). "A Milli" was only my third favorite on Tha Carter III, after "3 Peat" and "Shoot Me Down." Estelle is someone I haven't given much attention to, but from what I've heard I think I way prefer some of her other stuff to "American Boy," which has too much of modern blah classiness for me.

Seven of my choices got into the top fifty, which astonishes me and is only owing to Xhuxk's loving Daveigh Chase's "Happiest Girl In The Whole USA" and María Daniela Y Sonido Lasser's "Duri Duri."

Re: The J.R. Ewing of Seattle

[gingermint.livejournal.com]

i'm impressed that the Santo/Diplo mixtape got three tracks in your top 25, frank. i was pretty underwhelmed by it myself, though you're making we want to go relisten... the "posse" mix is only a minute long!

a year of hearing it everywhere and i still can't get over "american boy" being a blatant recycling of will.i.am's "impatient" from his (totally unfairly overlooked) songs about girls from '07. not sure why that should matter so much but it's really prevented me from getting into the song. though i guess kanye's presence doesn't help too much, despite his cleverness. oh well.

yay for "no air" though.

"it only works because you're here": metatextual justification

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

while i'm enormously fond of mr hibbert (and indeed of this song), i don't think i'd have voted for it in this kind of poll -- that said, i'm kind of glad it's here, because it actually hews to its own aesthetic very clearly and directly, and this aesthetic does somewhat challenge the assumed shared aesthetic of the great plurality of the winners i think, and i think this kind of dissonance (a sort of aesthetic non-commensurability?)* is a Good Thing**

*by which i mean that there's no way the Rules By Which X is Judged Good and the Rules By Which Y is Judged Good can be squared with one another
**It's not after all an accident that I ran the wire so that the various claims for value of the various schools of music were channeled so as to collide, to mix it up in the street-fight sense; my natural feeling when one school is largely making the running (even when this triumph is justified by the material) is that there's an airlessness to the overall conversation -- i think within R&Bworld there IS an airlessness; the palette of potential content, soundwise and topicwise and conceptwise, while far bigger than its dectractors think, and i believe bigger than any of its rivals, is not as big as it thinks it is....

less abstract way of putting this

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"All Gaul is divided into three part. No! Not all..."

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

no waist but weirdly artificially oversized* hips!

*compared to her own i mean -- the dress i'm thinking of takes this to an avant-garde level

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

oops this should be right up top near the picture of estelle and her horrible dress!

got me out here in the water so deeep

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

'No Air' scraped into my own top 100 with only a few weeks to go. I'd slept on it since it's release but was ambushed by unexpected emotion one night while trying to decide whether or not to include it in my 08 mix (where I have naughtily applied a FAKE KEY CHANGE at the end). Unfortunately for Chris Brown it kinda booted out 'Forever' in the process (from the list, not the mix).

Surely Harry Hill has done a 'No Hair' parody on his show?

Re: got me out here in the water so deeep

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

not that i recall, but jupitus and the lad amstell did a mime to it on NMTB in tribute to Bill Bailey

usually bubble

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

i love saying this. no idea why.

Re: usually bubble

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

i love Little Boots saying it too, altho maybe that's just because i then think of Jane Horrocks in AbFab

Hmm

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

"No Air" was my #1 pick. I was hoping it would win obv, but finishing second is a good result I suppose. I like "American Boy" well enough anyway (though didn't vote for it).

My hit rate: 5 out of 10. I don't know if that means I'm further from the hivemind this year or not. Last year 9 of my ten votes made the chart. Tom has previously suggested that there were fewer consensus picks in general this year, so that may explain things. I would be interested in seeing comparative stats between 2007 and 2008 re: (a) total numbers of voters; and (b) total numbers of songs voted for.

The real shocker is that my #2 pick, Flo Rida's "Low" came nowhere. I am sending accusatory looks in the direction of The Lex on this point - especially given all the times in 2008 he (rightly) berated us on poptimists for not giving enough love to this song.

Also surprised that no-one else voted for Ne-Yo's "Closer".

Less surprised (but still disappointed) that no one else voted for "If A Song Could Get Me You" and - as noted above - "Clowns".

No surprise at all that nobody else voted for Stereolab.

Re: Hmm

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Haha if I'd voted Flo Rida, it'd have been 'In The Ayer'.

I think Ne-Yo might have suffered from vote-splitting - my vote would've gone to 'Single' had it existed (I am so going to lobby for us being allowed to send in a top 20 next year) but yeah, I'm shocked 'Miss Independent' came out on top.

Yay

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

^Lest my last post above appear too grumpy, I should say I'm happy with the Top 20 for the most part.

MGMT at #6 is unforgiveable though ;)

Number One

[misspelledwerd.livejournal.com]

zzzzzz.

Glad to see that my number one (Official Girl), two (No Air), six (LES Artistes) and eight (A Milli) made it. My non-charted votes: Colby O'Donis' "What You Got," Rihanna's "Rehab" and Ron Browz' "Pop Champagne."

Re: Number One

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

'Pop Champagne' is excellent. Or at least completely addictive - whenever I put it on, it's generally for 3-4 plays in a row at least.

FYI Wiley voters

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

These are Wiley's finest two non-Rolex '08 works - these really should have been the follow-ups but everyone involved in that situation is insane.

'If You're Going Out, I'm Going Out Too' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTBB70BhBNA)
'Where's My Brother?' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_PfzNdN_Kg)

"he's no soldierrrrrr"!

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I am sorry No Air didn't win, as it is my favourite single of 2008, but I didn't vote, as I heard so little new music last year. I am glad we got at least a bit more hip hop in the last reveal.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Lex knows that I am almost as anti-indie as he is, but I really like MJ and this track too. It would have made my list, but I heard very little last year, so I don't know how much that means.