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

[koganbot]

"Pastiche" seems to be too strong a word for what you guys are getting at. I tend to reserve it for stuff like Transglobal Underground or M/A/R/R/S or Lennon when he did "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" where it's stitched together consecutively and they quite deliberately want you to feel the disjunctions. Whereas Solange and Xtina (at least in what I've heard of Xtina) are melding styles together, and whether the melding works or not, the songs are trying to come across as a unity. So they're giving rhythms to material that had never had those rhythms before, but where this doesn't work (if it doesn't work), the problem is more like "This spice doesn't belong in this soup" rather than "This part doesn't go with what just preceded it." My problem with Solange's voice is that it just doesn't feel flexible or expressive enough, even though she certainly puts as much into her singing as she can. I still like the album overall, but it kept falling lower and lower on my list.

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

I guess they mean pastiche[1], not pastiche[2] (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pastiche)?