2010 Magazine's Albums Of The Year Thread For Posting Lists and Discussion

deej, i'm saying yes it's ok to ignore "oh hai we like James Blake now" flubstep shit, but to purposefully ignore a pop movement like kanye is intentional contrarianianism

i agree that "well-rounded" is increasingly anachronistic businesswise, but I still think it's more honorable to be a well-rounded culture critic like Ann Powers or Caramanica than some uk funky otaku.

i guess tim will have to answer that accusation himself, but it seems to me that the kanye record is pretty irrelevant to his worldview / style of criticism

isn't tim a pop critic?

i dunno i thought u just said he was a uk funky otaku

i wasn't talking about Tim, I was just making some critic up

hes the one who said he wasnt gonna listen to kanye tho

well it was a coincidence

ilxor just emailed me his breakdown of my top 100 <3

it isn't, but it's not unconnected - how do you feel about all those indie rock critics who vote for kanye or big boi or whoever as their token hip-hop lp, and blithely proclaim it the best hip-hop release of the year, when they obviously haven't bothered to listen to any other rap albums?

― lex diamonds (lex pretend), Monday, January 3, 2011 1:02 PM (8 minutes ago)

this is true & accurate etc. but it's wrong to assume these ppl haven't listened to more than big boi/kanye just because they end up putting one of these on top. i mean, i'm not a critic/writer of any type, just an enthusiastic listener who posts on ilx. i heard at least 25-30 hip-hop albums in 2010. and big boi tops my list. it doesn't mean i didnt bother to listen to any other hip-hop, it means that big boi put out the best album i heard, of 2-3 dozen.

hahah xp <3 back at ya

some uk funky otaku

Tim F. can this plz be yr display name?

this is true & accurate etc. but it's wrong to assume these ppl haven't listened to more than big boi/kanye just because they end up putting one of these on top. i mean, i'm not a critic/writer of any type, just an enthusiastic listener who posts on ilx. i heard at least 25-30 hip-hop albums in 2010. and big boi tops my list. it doesn't mean i didnt bother to listen to any other hip-hop, it means that big boi put out the best album i heard, of 2-3 dozen.

― slouching, unshaven, thick-necked, unstylish, pig-eyed (ilxor), Monday, 3 January 2011 20:02 (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah I was gonna say, not sure I've actually seen much or any of the blithe proclaiming being decried here

I don't doubt that there are plenty of indie-rock specialists or other types of critics who don't listen to much hip-hop who will vote for the Kanye record, but I think it's pretty shaky to assume that one album from a particular genre on a Top Ten list (i.e., PnJ ballot) is a "token" pick. Ten is a small number of records and if you're even a quasi-generalist critic you're gonna have some genres land only one album on a Top Ten and sometimes (maybe often) have genres you care about not land any.

For me, I'd say my core listening (maybe 80%) is rock/hip-hop/country, with heavier pop and R&B listening for singles and somewhat lighter pop/R&B for albums. And then some decent dabbling in Afropop, folk/blues, and more song-oriented dance/techno/whatever stuff. Sometimes a modern jazz or reggae or Latin record or whatever will enter my life in some meaningful way, but not often. And I pretty much never listen to hard metal.

Make of that what you will, but I've had years when I've had one hip-hop album on my PnJ ballot. Two this year, three last year, sometimes one. Hip-hop has been a core part of my listening as long as I've listened to music, since buying the first Run-D.M.C. on cassette and Whodini and U.T.F.O. on 45. But guess what, you can listen to a lot of hip-hop (or any other genre) and still only find one (or zero) albums that would crack your 10 faves. So what. I've got three country records this year. Some years one. Some years none. So what.

And there seems to be an implication that being more generalist is a career strategy or about trying to duplicate the critical consensus (the consensus is often right, and also often wrong) or whatever. Which is silly. For most people I know who listen to and are interested in different types of music, it's natural. It's an outgrowth of being interested in culture broadly. The combination of pluralism and intimacy is the best thing about pop music. Being interested in different kinds of music is an outgrowth of being interested in different types of people.

Write about what you want, but only caring about one specialized genre or musical subculture is some Trekkie stuff to me.

are we predicting BLANK for the P&J this year (Beach House/LCD/Arcade Fire/National/Kanye)?

1. Kanye
2. Arcade
3. Monae

is my guess, but I'm probably over-estimating the Monae.

xpost, where have you been?

i don't know. Chile ca. 1967.

the joke is from 2000+ posts upthread, I'm pretty sure but nobody specifically laid it out like that...

when is the P&J poll come out anyway

(lol awesome grammar)

Obv the 200 listens to 4 albums thing was a gross exaggeration to make a point. And on the scale of that to 4 listens to 200 albums I'm about halfway if not further down the line to the latter approach. And normally I'm in the position of defending breadth vis a vis depth. But this thread is bothering me.

I've heard "Runaway" and "Monster" and "Power". I'm not even totally adverse to listening to the rest of the Kanye album but it's hard enough keeping up with the music I like. As long as I don't make pronouncements on the album or make statements regarding what is the "best" (as opposed to my favourite) album of the year I don't see how I am a worse critic for not listening to it.

Conversely the Diddy is probably my 2nd favourite album of the year (and may ultimately overtake Yelawolf), but then I had a strong feeling going into it that I was gonna like it. If i was checking out albums out of a sense of obligation based on what critics have said I'd be more likely to have listened to Kanye and less likely to have listened to Diddy.

I really feel like this whole conversation presupposes that the critic's highest duty is to put together a "correct" top 200 albums list, rather than talk interestingly about the music they're listening to.

it isn't, but it's not unconnected - how do you feel about all those indie rock critics who vote for kanye or big boi or whoever as their token hip-hop lp, and blithely proclaim it the best hip-hop release of the year, when they obviously haven't bothered to listen to any other rap albums?

These people often have listened to 300 albums - just not the ones we want them to vote for.

This is always going to be a problem I think. My choices of indie rock albums I like is almost always gonna be embarrassingly consensus-courting because (unlike with dance music or even to some extent hip hop) I don't follow it closely enough even to be aware of under-the-radar stuff.

If I did listen to 200 albums in a year it'd probably follow the same proportionate breakdown of genres that my current listening does, so that becomes, say, 10 indie-rock albums. Is that enough to justify having Vampire Weekend on my list?

In the case of Big Boi/Kanye it's the fact of the sheer preponderance of writers with only token rap selections. Obv indie rock doesn't have that problem.

So it's more the overlapping limitations of the body of writers rather than of any individual I think, and the fact that most publications don't see this as a problem, in fact assume that Kanye and Big Boi turning up again and again reflects something true and real (whereas we'd never take particularly seriously what a rap mag thought was the best rock album of the year).

can anyone tell me about these records i haven't heard (& in many cases, even heard OF) from the Brainwashed top 100 ??

Jana Winderen, "Energy Field"
BJ Nilsen, "The Invisible City"
Nicholas Szczepanik, "Dear Dad"

all of these were on my top 20 list - the winderen is my favorite record of the year & ive written abt it a fair bit here on ilx already so. 'dear dad' is a fairly immense ambient/drone record v. structural i guess? the nilsen is harder to describe - i have @ #3 on my list but with his live tape he did for ash - its field recordings reinterpreted as minimal soundscapes probably affix all the lazy labels: 'haunting' 'cerebral' 'spare' but its a p challenging, immersive record.

also lol @ ilm all music writers are illiterates anyway

I really feel like this whole conversation presupposes that the critic's highest duty is to put together a "correct" top 200 albums list, rather than talk interestingly about the music they're listening to.

I feel like this is the crux of the argument right now.

^^

can some of the people who made like ~100-album lists break down the sort of thinking they did about how to list them past #20 or so? the kind of 'yearbook' think that was mentioned above seems reasonable and wise to me just because it seems like an admission that past the core of albums you might have genuinely gotten deeper into, there will be a point at which your list can't be a representation of much besides 'i listened to this and didn't hate it'.

for instance, here's the end of fastnbulbous' list, from 89 on down:

Electric Wizard - Black Masses (Rise Above)
Crocodiles - Sleep Forever (Fat Possum)
Ghost - Opus Eponymous (Rise Above)
Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier (EMI)
Nails - Unsilent Death EP (Southern Lord)
Die Antwoord - $O$ (Interscope)
Salem - King Night (Iamsound)
Three Mile Pilot - Inevitable Past Is The Future Forgotten (Temporary Residence)
Christian Mistress - Agony & Opium (20 Buck Spin)
Grand Magus - Hammer Of The North (Roadrunner)
Wino - Adrift (Exile On Mainstream)
Actress - Splazsh (Honest Jon's)

at that point, what makes you say, 'this one should be here, this one four slots down'?

i think part of the incredulity over the value of listening massively is that it seems like any kind of making of distinctions or giving of reasons at that point is probably going to go by the wayside.

also:

i would think that part of the reason listening isn't arbitrarily scalable is that you're not just learning more about how to listen efficiently and gaining more knowledge about music. listening well in the ways that critics can try to do can take emotional readiness and receptivity that you just can't make happen on demand.

i'm sure with the magazine lists assembled by a staff or team of people, they just worked out the order by way of voting or just haggled over the order with people arguing for favorites, etc. with an individual's list, yeah, at a certain point it's a little bit arbitrary, but i just feel it out to the point that it feels 'right' -- like i could move almost any of those albums around a few spots, but probably nothing would ever really go more than 5-10 spots up or down from where it is.

Last two post spot on I think. I can understand listening to 200 or even 400 albums in a year but I can't understand ever actually caring about more than 40 or so.

40 seems excessive tbh but then i listen to non-album oriented stuff a lot

My choices of indie rock albums I like is almost always gonna be embarrassingly consensus-courting because (unlike with dance music or even to some extent hip hop) I don't follow it closely enough even to be aware of under-the-radar stuff.

haha this year even my token indie choices are getting overlooked, no sight of school of seven bells anywhere (or laura marling outside the uk). this is like payback for enjoying both fever ray and the xx last year, i think.

i think what it comes down to is, i sympathise with the "listen to more stuff" brigade insofar as i kind of associate being a pop critic with that curiosity to hear what people like kanye (and gaga, taylor, mariah etc) are making - but i'm v hesitant to specifically proscribe what those MUST-HEAR albums actually are, because as tim says that does seem to be laying the foundations for consensus too readily.

Two caveats I wrote on the thread that Scott created for my album list:

(2) The further you get down the list, the less reliable the order probably is...#4: Once you get past #105 or so, I make no guarantees that copies of these albums will still be in my house five years from now. (But they're all still here now, which counts for something.)*

* Assuming they were ever "here" in the first place. Most of my listening still involves a physical format, but not all of it.

But like some dude said, a lot of the ordering (and I have no idea why this is so hard to understand, to be honest) is just a gut feeling thing, and would surely switch up here and there if I printed the list a few days later: I got more enjoyment out of this one than that one; I'm likely to play this one more than that one more often in the future. I keep the list going through the year, adding new albums as they become known to me, and what you see is what's there as the year ends. But obviously there's nothing mathematical about it; why should there be? And sure, the ones I really "care" about most are near the top, by definition. But that doesn't mean those are the only ones I'm going to want to pull out again, as time goes on. Albums don't have to be great to be good.

So there is obviously no "correct" order (not sure where anybody here suggested there was, to be honest), except that I might kick myself somewhere down the line if my #83 album winds up being the one I'm still pulling out most five years from now, of if I never play my #5 again. But there's no way to know that for sure now; it's all guesswork.

I also like the (possibly deluded, so what) idea that some No Wave fan sometime and somewhere might accidentally stumble across my list and check out the Sediment Club EP at #150, or some teen-pop fan might buy the Selena Gomez album at #102, and like them way more than I do. Sediment Club and Selena Gomez deserve that -- those are good records, that haven't got anywhere near as much attention as they deserve, and just because I don't "care" about them as much as the albums in my top ten doesn't mean somebody else whose tastes aren't exactly the same as mine won't. I've done that with old best-of-the-year lists, for decades; used them as a buying guide years after the critics who actually created them probably forgot what's even on them. Maybe it's wishful thinking to assume somebody would use my list the same way. But maybe not.

i put the two selena gomez singles on my traxxx round-up ;_;

I've done that with old best-of-the-year lists, for decades; used them as a buying guide years after the critics who actually created them probably forgot what's even on them. Maybe it's wishful thinking to assume somebody would use my list the same way. But maybe not.

I still get people saying they used my 90s 136 list as a buying guide. Which kinda terrifies me.

the woebot top 100 was quite influential for me a few years ago -- acen, tob jobim, ar kane, thomas leer, yusuf lateef, vivien goldman, monoton, implog

I guess, for me, if you are going the "yearbook" route, it makes more sense to do something like:

rank your top 10/15/25/whatever your cutoff point is (depending on how strongly you feel about the albums you liked)
list your "honorable mentions" (ie, the albums you liked enough to be worth mentioning but are not among your favorites)
list your "rogue's gallery (ie, the albums that you disliked or found extremely disappointing)
possibly some sort of "important albums" list (where you give your opinion on the critical darlings; this could just be the albums you were ambivalent about that everyone else went apeshit for, or you could take the albums that appear all over the place off of HM and RG and talk about them here if they aren't in your ranked list)

You can still end up talking about your 100 albums, but it's narrowed down in presentation so the reader gets more focus on the ones you liked most. I can't speak for others, but my perception of reading a ranked album list is, absent of verbiage to the contrary, you are putting things on it that you liked enough to rank; this is one of the reasons I think Ned's 90s list is one of the most successful* album lists I've ever read. There isn't ranking albums that he is lukewarm about just for the sake of reaching a milestone number; it's 136 albums which, at the time of writing, he thought represented the best of what the 90s had to offer. That's the context in which these lists make the most sense to me as a reader; obviously it is fine if you are approaching it as a historical roundup of The Year In Music as a writer, but bear in mind that you may be giving more weight to some of these albums than you mean to just by putting them in a ranked list, regardless of how you blurb them.

* Possibly not the best word but I can't think of a better one; basically, the methodology behind how he put together that list matches most closely with how I read ranked lists. My assumption is that you are not going to bother ranking an album you are ambivalent about or just think is okay, because quite frankly I don't want to read about what albums you thought were just okay. In my world, if it's "okay", it isn't a top album.

my perception of reading a ranked album list is, absent of verbiage to the contrary, you are putting things on it that you liked enough to rank

Well, in the case of my lists at least, then, your perception is right. I don't set out at any point to come up with a list of 150 albums; if I wound up with only 20 I liked enough to rank, that'd be fine with me (although I might wonder whether I should still be doing this for a living.) As I said, records I like (to some degree or other -- chances are, I'll be at least somewhat ambivalent about all of them, because perfect albums don't exist in this world and never have) accumulate through the year; I evaluate, re-evaluate, live with them, etc., and the list is what I wind up with, and people can ponder or ignore however much of it they want to. It's really not rocket science. (This year, I wouldn't have known I had 150 albums -- or 180 or so, counting also-rans -- until the moment I finally posted the list and numbered them.)

Hubie Brown is totally OTM here, btw:

And there seems to be an implication that being more generalist is a career strategy or about trying to duplicate the critical consensus or whatever. Which is silly. For most people I know who listen to and are interested in different types of music, it's natural. It's an outgrowth of being interested in culture broadly...Being interested in different kinds of music is an outgrowth of being interested in different types of people.
Write about what you want, but only caring about one specialized genre or musical subculture is some Trekkie stuff to me.

no one you're talking to in this thread is lke that about one genre, though. but there's a pointlessness to total 'i listen to EVERYTHING' too. it makes taste hopelessly arcane

not saying thats your taste either, rather i construct my taste against the idea that my thoughts on a variety of genres are equally valid

Well the
WORLD
DON'T
MOVE
to the beat of just one drum...

I still get people saying they used my 90s 136 list as a buying guide. Which kinda terrifies me.

i totally did this during my 2003-05 early college yrs era

R.I.P.

r.i.p?

R.I.P. ilxor's college years/ned's 136 albums list (whichever u find most applicable)

RIP

ned's list is still up innit?

IT'S ALIVE!

Then I guess ilxor must have committed seppuku. Zombie ilxor sure posts a lot.