Thread for all 2016 albums of the year lists

would like to import my opinion from the metal thread here and say that michael nelson is a horrible writer

"So, I mean, I dunno."

do you think that sentence is colloquial by mistake or design

do u think the giant paragraphs manage to say absolutely nothing about their subject by mistake or design

thanks for explaining blogging though niels

lol np

anyway I'm more interested in the thoughts expressed than his style, and I find his thoughts on metal inspiring - this is a genre I'm not too familiar with though, so perhaps if I was more knowledgeable I'd be more annoyed

find his writing on pop and the music industry pretty darn good too

generally speaking trying to come up with a Grand Statement about a global umbrella "genre" is not a good starting point for anything that might come into striking distance of a point

"I think music benefits from having ubiquitous figures inspiring universal debate" is an interesting idea, I dunno if he uses too many paragraphs to explore it, but I'd like to hear your thoughts

It is true that icons like Beyoncé, Drake and Rihanna "help" frame the discourse on R&B/pop?

then again, it's also good to disrupt stylistic hegemony and though fx some jazz musicians may be nostalgic for a time when jazz superstars were a central part of musical discourse I imagine few want to roll back the developments that made contemporary jazz possible

I know next to nothing about metal but that Stereogum article is great. I rarely visit Stereogum do they have a metal section and is Michael Nelson the main writer?

"I think music benefits from having ubiquitous figures inspiring universal debate" is an interesting idea,

well most people in this thread really dislike that as they all appear in the lists yet many of them will talk about 'event albums' and 'iconic stars' so the truth may just simply be they agree with you niels as long as it's music they like?

I do not like the idea of a definite consensus but a little bit is helpful specially for outsiders. There's two reasons I can't get into metal: 1) It doesn't quite match the aesthetics I want in music but I'm sure there is at least a dozen metal albums I'd love but 2) there's seriously no consensus, the few metal fans I know all recommend me very different subgenres and when they do agree on a subgenre none of the albums match. This is somewhat exciting for me but at the same time I don't want to spend my time listening to 20,000 records of a genre which is difficult for me to see which one sticks and expand from there... consensus records help in this regard.

tbh when quoting what i did i wasnt doing it to talk metal because the quote could be applied to all music

Moka are you saying you prefer consensus on niche/specialist lists but not on all-encompassing general end of year lists?

Yes that's it!

Per example I complained about how dissapointing the ResidentAdvisor one was this year for having artists like Radiohead in there. I know it's a great album but I don't care about having it on RA. I want residentadvisor to show me the consensus albums on the house/techno scene that they usually review since I don't have time to listen to every album on every genre and that's what I want in every EOY list. Niche consensus not every list with Frank Ocean and Beyonce unless that's the sort of music you usually write about.

And obviously not a strict consensus but if I see 3 or 4 house/techno lists and one or two records are praised the same in every one then I know that's probably the best starting points and the albums I missed this year.

but then the same albums all the time in a general list is surely doing the same?

Tho really it just boils down to writers pick their fave albums and the resulting consensus is just what happens.

but can you like lists and still complain about them when you know there will be a consensus as thats what lists do.

Otherwise you have to game lists rather than allow voters to choose their tracks/albums and that is the kind of list I hate!

for instance say in any ilm eoy poll general or niche like metal poll, if we went out of our way not to vote for albums/tracks in other lists just to be different, or dont vote for bands like say animal collective* or whoever because of the abuse you then get in a thread would lead to a bad poll list I think because you werent listing the albums you really liked.

in eoy polls noone should vote tactically because that really does lead to the big known albums you know others will vote for will dominate and the just as awesome but less known albums get locked out.

Really everyone should just vote for the things they genuinely liked best.

* a couple of years ago a few people (one I think was blueski) said they left off anco from their list because of the abuse they would get as the album was on every list.

A question to the writers on this thread who do vote in these lists or in P&J or even ilm eoy poll do you just list your faves in order or do you try to vote for things you know others will or do you deliberately avoid voting for albums you think everyone else will?

Trying to game the system in year end polls is clown shit

Except when we all voted "Lemme Smang It" at number one obviously

I don't mind "tactical" voting aimed at avoiding vote-splitting or wasting votes: if lots of people want to vote for X artist's songs or a track from Y genre, but can't quite agree on what is best, they may be happier to support their second or third or fourth choice than see none of them place at all.

aka politics

Tactics have always been a part of these things - if you count not loading your tracks ballot with multiple entries from your favourite album.

yeah, I mean a truly "pure" tracks ballot for me would have 17 slots taken up by Jeff Rosenstock

Also not everyone has the same approach to deciding what their "genuine" favourites are and it can change constantly. Stop being ridiculous.

But general lists and niche lists are different?

if we're talking about a site in which each writer is in charge of a different section (hip hop, rock & metal, pop & rb, jazz & soul, etc...) there's an obvious problem about consensus but I honestly have no idea how that works. I like better when big magazines either do a best of for each author or a best of by genre.

I can't remember which list was it last year that did this and also had a top 10 classical music which was amazing and I found a couple of keepers in there. The overall list was very agreeable too.

Also not everyone has the same approach to deciding what their "genuine" favourites are and it can change constantly. Stop being ridiculous.

― nashwan,

not sure if you're responding to me or whiney but I was only asking what everyone did.

Response to both. You're only asking and I'm only answering.

lots of xposts to katherine and D-40:

Yeah sorry that was very muddled. katherine is right that “office politics” was the exact wrong phrase. I was trying to capture the idea that there’s a cynical branding/ market-positioning strategy behind every list. The fact that critics hang out, work with, and influence each other’s tastes and ways of gauging what is significant is precisely the social process I had in mind (one that is unsurprisingly similar to how many other humans experience music: socially), not trying to respond to the audience. Like it’s a qualitative process rather than the quantitative one at work in the "Panda" example.

I know you said 'many other' not 'all' and this is off topic but there's friends of mine who would seriously argue that music should be experienced socially. One of them is a huge 'glitch' nerd (alva noto and that sort of music-not-music kind of artists/programmers)... she never shares her music and even gets annoyed when you ask her what is she listening to (unfortunately for her, Shazam is now a thing, unfortunately for me she pauses the music when she sees me open the app).

No point in sharing that but there it is.

yeah "many other" was intentional and obvs there are critics who would also disagree

wherever it is on the scale you may think eoy reviews should lie between top 40 data dump or lone gunmen following their muse, any singles list with 27 songs by 5 artists is negligent journalistically and flaccid polemically

it's kind of dispiriting knowing that is the deliberate point and that there's absolutely no impetus to change it

they have all somehow managed to develop this kind of idk, trite bloviating cultural narrativization that actually has very little interest in zeitgeist. whatever it is it is not music criticism

It's either that the voter base is listening to the same albums and virtually no non-album material, or that the singles vote is all long-tail there are just no other singles to serve as rallying points. Both options suggest there's been a failure of journalism somewhere along the line. It all suggests that the national office crew isn't going out and partying together that much at all.

the "single" itself is a total different animal even from 5 years ago

Yeah but there are still bangers and scene anthems and so forth. If your tracks list is entirely based of your favourite tracks from your favourite albums it suggests a complete lack of engagement with individual scenes.

it's like any EOY list, and it's even worse w/film probably where an even more limited set of films takes up a greater percentage of the conversation, and it's really a discussion of which 10 films out of 25 will make your list. maybe it's not worse than films, though, because there are so many more films to choose from. idk.

is there even a "single" from the solange or chance albums? I have no idea!

but we've developed a nu-rockism around pop artists [prockimism?] that the "good" pop artists are album artists and the "bad" pop artists are singles artists

N O N E of these critics lists are going to ride for the actual hit pop singles of the year that didn't come from album artists — Lukas Graham, Sia, Gnash, Meghan Trainor, DJ Snake, Kent Jones, DNCE, etc

Like the whole "Meghan Trainor is bad, I listen to REAL pop music like Carly Rae Jepson" is such a dogshit conceit that just completely flies in the face of what makes a good pop single

Like there's a reason "No" charted higher than any Beyonce song, and it's not because INDUSTRY PLANT SHE IS THE BAD POP

I can think of one reason

I didn't really get the visceral hatred of "No" tbh

idk how "critics don't engage with scenes and the tracks that resonate in those scenes" turned into "critics don't ride for chart pop" but

(I mean, I do get hating Megan Trainor's quack-voice, but that didn't seem to be what anyone was objecting to)

Consensus is a sampling artifact.

whiney's talking taste turkey as if it were even still applicable to the big lists, where there is evidently no longer any sensibility at play other than prestige tv recaps for the clickiest event albums

perhaps a good time to note that a full quarter of last year's ilm 77 (freed from rolling wizard despotism by the great liberator no less) was just grimes miguel kendrick crj sundfor

I think most people , even fans of those acts, complained about nominating/voting for album tracks into the 77.