Jark's Top 100 Songs of the 2010s (so far!)

because I'm IN THE ZONE, I'm going to begin my top 10 albums of the decade :disco: you're welcome!

10. Marina & The Diamonds 'Froot'

Sometimes the album that gets you into an artist will forever be the one you treasure. Sometimes a record starts so strongly that it can't maintain a rock solid hard-on until the end, but the highs are so towering that you can't help but view it as an essential piece of work and end up impregnated by it anyway. Both are true to Froot, Marina's third record and the moment at which she streamlined her music (and vocals) into something more radio-friendly and readily digestible for the mainstream - a paradox, then, that she promoted it with a weird for-the-fans strategy aimed at frontloading pre-orders without bothering to promote a single at all (but then so much of Marina's career has been a series of unfortunate mistakes - some popstars really aren't meant for the masses).



The first half of Froot is nothing less than a spectacular thrill, one career high after another, after another. The run of songs from Froot to Forget is more or less as good as this brand of pop gets. The title song (originally seven+ minutes long, an edit I demand to hear before I die) is a dark disco epic, so rich in imagery and downright bizarre that you could be forgiven for being surprised by how straightforwardly pop the songs that follow are - but she makes the switch sound effortless, those mournfully angelic vocals always the connecting tissue that imprints her DNA across the record. Finally seeing her perform Froot and I'm a Ruin on the Love + Fear tour this year felt like an actual dream coming true and I'm not over it. (She's still in the doghouse for snubbing Blue.)

Things tail off in the second half - not that the songs don't all have something to offer, just that fighting for attention among the heavyweights, the likes of Better Than That and Immortal just feel slightly inessential. Like I said, though, throw enough 10s (or 11s) onto a record and you've won. Froot has far more than its fair share hanging from the vine.

Best of the best: Froot, I'm a Ruin, Blue, Forget, Gold
Lyric of choice: "All the time that I have wasted chasing rabbits down a hole / when I was meant to be the tortoise, I was meant to walk alone" (Forget)


09. MØ 'No Mythologies to Follow'

Not just a spectacular record but a fairly unbelievable debut, No Mythologies is the sound of an artist announcing her arrival in a very big way. Not that it spawned a hit single (outside of her native Denmark) or really earned the critical acclaim it so evidently deserves - but this is an album which frequently goes to some really stunning places. Sonically, I still haven't heard anything like it before or in the half-decade since - the beats and synths deployed throughout are fucking wild, bombastic and seductive in equal measure.



In fact, so good is the album that it almost feels like a double-edged sword - her career since has been all over the place, and the long-delayed follow-up felt tame and lifeless by comparison, and indeed in isolation (ironically had it come out after Final Song as originally intended, and contained the more radio-friendly songs from those sessions, it probably would've been a lot stronger). Truth is, MØ has set an almost impossibly high bar for herself. But the fact that she wrote almost every song on No Myths alone speaks to such a major talent that she surely has much more to give.

Never Wanna Know sounds like the soundtrack to a bride realising her groom is in love with someone else just as she's walking up the aisle - that ability to conjure vivid desolation repeats throughout the record, it's almost omnipresent. Red In the Grey has the feel of a long-lost soundtrack single to an iconic SEGA game, and the horns in Pilgrim never fail to thrill for their dark majesty. Her ability to let melodies breathe and unfurl in their own time is rare. Slow Love sounds like it was beamed down from a deserted city on a distant arctic planet on which only two people exist. But for a singular moment which sums up this album's greatness, witness the sheer longing in the velvety drip of her vocal delivery in Maiden's closing bars: I am a maiden... for you...

(Incidentally her show in Berlin in 2016 was one of the best I've ever seen. This woman is a fucking force.)

Best of the best: Fire Rides, Maiden, Red in the Grey, Pilgrim, Slow Love
Lyric of choice: "Why do you and I live on and on? I believe it's not a question anymore..." (Pilgrim)
 
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I'm afraid I've been quite unable to continue due to the fraught political tensions in Hong Kong and the inescapable fact that Carrie Lam is both a puppet and a cunt - but don't you worry, normal service will be resumed soon* :disco:

*contingent only on China leaving HK alone
 
Jark said:
I'm afraid I've been quite unable to continue due to the fraught political tensions in Hong Kong and the inescapable fact that Carrie Lam is both a puppet and a cunt - but don't you worry, normal service will be resumed soon* :disco:

*contingent only on China leaving HK alone
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Bitch the real reason is that you’ve already ditched this and moved on to your next doa list.
 
:D I absolutely have not! I just happen to lead a busy life. I'm quite certain it will happen this time, my commitment is total.
 
perhaps, of course, if people bothered to engage with a lengthy album review after demanding and in fact begging for the continued counting down of the countdown, my motivation to speed things up might be a little higher! who can say, really?
 
It does sound a lot like something the old Jark would have done!
 
I will NEVER let it go.
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Resuming this week :disco:

I've been tinkering with my order to add some songs in which recently have become absolutely essential - ready to get back on track!
 
I love Jark's Lindsay-Lohan-esque approach when it comes to leaving things UNFINISHED, what a pair of QUEENS.
 
Pipo said:
I love Jark's Lindsay-Lohan-esque approach when it comes to leaving things UNFINISHED, what a pair of QUEENS.
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Lindsay has 2 finished studio albums and Mean Girls to her name.:kim:How many finished lists does Miss Jark have?:ken:
 
Jark said:
In about one day I will have ONE completed list! And who'll be laughing THEN? Rude bitches!
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:D if :side-eye: Some shocking manners here tbh. That awful Esthonian has already been soiling the Enya thread with his fanny chat :(
 
Jark doesn't need to post anymore. He included London Grammar's "Strong" and Solange's "Losing You" in the same post. That's fucking bold. I'm surprised the planet didn't spontaneously combust at the mere thought of so much magnificence in one comment. How moopy is still operational is beyond me.
 
I think l'll take this countdown off pause very soon :disco: i thought that, in the most cultural sense, i had become post-countdown but maybe I should just fucking finish one

and thanks for the beautiful words funks.
 
the problem is it's been so long and I've discovered so much incredible music since then that the list is now out of date and needs a total rejig and for me to start again. @Pingu did warn me. :kim:

so what's a boy to DO? If I START AGAIN... well, there's no point even speculating is there :D I'm trying to write a BOOK as well beb, I don't gots time!
 
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