The 2022 End of Year music lists thread

To what extent do individual pubs and journalists react to that and attempt to hype others, consciously or not?

― Indexed, Tuesday, December 6, 2022 5:02 PM (fifty-one seconds ago)

not at all. those mid year lists are just things everyone does to feed the content mill... prob not very much thought put into them and i highly doubt any writer or editor thinks about those lists for even a second after the publish button is hit or is referring back to those lists when it comes to year end

Question for any journalists who submit lists to different publications. In an end of year best of, do you submit the same ballot or tweak it depending on the genres they cover? I.e. does The Wire get the same list as Pitchfork or RA etc?

Same ballot.

I'm doing 3 lists: a top 10 for The Wire, a 20-album jazz list for Stereogum, and a 50-album list for my own newsletter/site (which picks up where the 50-album list I published at the end of June leaves off). There were 2 or 3 things on my Wire ballot that will be on the Stereogum list, and some crossover with the Burning Ambulance list(s) as well.

apart from beyonce the critical consensus feels more fragmented than ever this year

idk, top 11 or so seem pretty omnipresent

https://www.albumoftheyear.org/list/summary/2022/

Yeah this Steve Lacy song is repulsively bland. Yeah cool vibes yeah. Vibes! Cool vibes. Fuck off

Oh god the HUMMING

I resisted that song the first few times I heard it but gave in.

I just listened to it for the first time, haha, umm

¬_¬

this year i thought steve lacy had passed away for a few months and realised i had dreamt it

sorry steve lacy

Bad Habit: Of all the lo-fi, vibe-y indie r&b that could have bubbled to the top of the charts in the past decade this is the song that made it huh? At least is more of a song than that Glass Animals one that was pretty much just *vibe*…

It makes me a bit sad to see that video of Steve Lacy himself frustrated at the success of the song, or rather the success of the snippet on tik-tok. The idea of people paying to see an artist only for a 10 second hook so they can record it for an instastory or tiktok or whatever and not even knowing the rest of that damn song makes me feel “get off my lawn” old.

possible reasons why music you liked or expected to get high rankings on these lists didn’t do as well as you thought OR music you dislike did better than you expected

1. other people genuinely have different musical tastes than you
2. these lists are often decided by committee, inevitably sanding down any eccentric personal favorites in favor of boring consensus choices (see also the annual ILM polls)
3. an enemy of yours paid every music publication to knock your favorite album down 20 places
4. you have terrible taste in music
5. the universe is a random and cold place

feel free to refer back to these as needed

Loophole: I don’t have any favorite albums anymore!

you forgot a crucial one:

6. inherent biases during the selection process

Does The Wire still do individual genre lists? I’m always curious to see those. I hadn’t gotten around to the Lucrecia Dalt album yet (their overall number one), so I’ll be checking that one out first. Ephemeron Loop and Dewa Alit look intriguing too.

I listened to the Lucrecia Dalt album twice last night and really liked it. Highly cinematic.

here's my annual spaghetti against the wall:

https://www.saidthegramophone.com/archives/best_songs_of_2022.php

honestly bewildered that anyone with an ear for pop has placed anything else at #1, seems obvious

weird to feel like the only person who liked/remembered the new paramore song lol

it's got a good chorus but has to slog through some pretty janky bars to get there

@_@

Brilliant list as usual sean!

Finally someone acknowledges the greatness of Provenza!

That Passionfruit yt views number feels off though, could’ve sworn it was a massive hit.

Does The Wire still do individual genre lists? I’m always curious to see those. I hadn’t gotten around to the Lucrecia Dalt album yet (their overall number one), so I’ll be checking that one out first. Ephemeron Loop and Dewa Alit look intriguing too.

― Skrot Montague, Wednesday, December 7, 2022 6:16 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

It does!

Sean: first time hearing that Shabason + Krgovich song and it’s a perfect fit for my mood this morning. Thank you so much for that one.

I listened to the Lucrecia Dalt album twice last night and really liked it. Highly cinematic.

― Chris L, Wednesday, December 7, 2022 6:40 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes! Reminded me of the last Weyes Blood album, in a weird way.

I think the issue with Dragon New Warm Mountain is that glorious as it is, after a break people went back to it and remembered how fundamentally annoying 'Sparrow' was.

incorrect

Sean: first time hearing that Shabason + Krgovich song and it’s a perfect fit for my mood this morning. Thank you so much for that one.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, December 7, 2022 10:03 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

was the shabason + krgovich album not on the gorilla vs bear list? feels like catnip for that site

NPR is rolling out genre-specific lists: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1138407917/best-music-of-2022

wonderful list, sean, as is your wont. it gives me plenty to explore.
love that we have the same Rema favourite and wow at the swift Kwesta x Kabza pick. the Dunnie is a very pleasant afropop surprise.

honestly bewildered that anyone with an ear for pop has placed anything else at #1, seems obvious

― sean gramophone, Wednesday, December 7, 2022 8:09 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Good choice and a fantastic blurb

weird to feel like the only person who liked/remembered the new paramore song lol

https://consequence.net/2022/12/top-50-songs-2022-list/

I keep finding gems on the STG list.

Nunnery, more* are new for me and I love those songs on first listen. I never know where to look for this kind of music. Please never stop posting.

aw, thank you moka!
one day i want to come to your club (?)

Yes, two bars and two clubs! - although in one of the clubs I’m not the main partner so I don’t get too much creative control, it does pretty well but it’s probably too posh lol. If you ever come to Mexico I would only recommend visiting me around April/May… when the massive state fair takes place (feria de san marcos) the rest of the year it’s very calm and somewhat boring and not a very touristic destination lol. Would be happy to have you anytime tho!

I’m good at working nightlife but I’ve always had the dream of doing a coffee and breakfast place so I can finally play all the softer music and older music I can’t quite play on the bars lol.

Here’s one of the bars, several partners on this one, downtown. Very laidback and trendy.
https://instagram.com/casa_segunda

Here’s another (it’s actually split into two places but I don’t have photos of the other side lol) Very local, has been around for 9 years now. Thursdays we have live jazz or blues. I get to play whatever I want in this one since it’s usually not very loud since it’s more designed to be seated and talking with friends over beers instead of standing up.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CYCVsjdrDlx/

Here’s my first bar that I used to own with another friend, also located downtown but we sold it to someone else before the pandemic… lasted almost 10 years… I was 25 iirc… a bit small but I loved it:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVXSEECh1hw/

One of the clubs but it has been redesigned recently… so these are photos 2019 I think… this is more “posh” and more typical with the pop clubs in the US… I have never been to clubs in Canada but I suppose there’s several like these ones:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B73vvP8H8bo/

The other club opens only on April / May… i’ll have to upload photos of that one too… we erase all social media posts each year…

Anyways I’m derailing the main thread lol, so if anyone ever comes to mx send me an email in case I’m not active around here.

looking at these photos feels like staring at a portal into another world. <3

<3

Show me your list and I'll show you my club must be the platonic ideal of ILM flirting. Get a room you two. :D

Lol and I haven’t shown him the bar at my house yet!

One my first listens I really liked the Villareal album that you named, Sean, but somehow I have cooled significantly to it.

I know this seems like a weird thing to note, but I do think that sometimes these EOY lists are influenced by elements as mundane as the weather and the seasons. If you had asked me in June whether the Villareal album would be on my year-end list, I would have absolutely said yes, because playing it loud in the heat and humidity of mid-summer on the US east coast was a deep pleasure. Now, when I give it a listen, it seems sort of hokey. This happens a lot to me with certain records, and I presume it does with most people, too.

100%

Looking forward to listening through this list:

https://www.ravensingstheblues.com/favorite-albums-of-2022/

https://bittersoutherner.com/feature/2022/best-southern-albums-of-2022

This list has Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn, indie rock/indie/ punk- Angel Olsen, Hammered Hulls (DC punk vets newish group), & more; Beyonce, Earthgang, JID, but no one in Mississippi, no southern soul and little jazz

Wow! From that list the only two albums I’ve heard are Sessa and Drugdealer and I like them a lot. RSTB always delivers the goods! Glad to see his list this early and love his rationale behind it.

If you want some collective-listening-based lists to go with the editorial/authorial ones, my algorithmic country/genre explorer for the year is up (to be updated again after the year actually ends):

https://everynoise.com/2022_around_the_world.cgi

― glenn mcdonald, maandag 5 december 2022 1:33

glenn, thank you for your work on this. so much to explore, and a great resource for exploring the scene of a given country or genre. it’s also fun trying to parse the listings of the categories I have some affinity with.

some impressions – I’m very open to standing corrected if I’m getting anything wrong here!

country-wise, Nigeria looks pretty straightforward: tracks by popular artists, but its very biggest artists are missing (no Wizkid, Burna, Rema, Davido, CKay, Oxlade, Ayra Starr, etc), because the Nigerian share within their global audience is quite small (and apparently that goes even for their minor tracks/album deep cuts – is that right?) (and I assume Ruger, who’s a pan-African star as well, *is* in there with his brand new smash because it hadn’t yet crossed over to other (African) countries at the cut-off point.)

as for South Africa, it looks like most of the biggest amapiano hits are filtered out for similar reasons: they were big hits in other (mainly South and East) African countries as well, diminishing their South African share of listeners. local genres with less international appeal (very much including songs in Afrikaans) are therefore over-represented. many of the amapiano hits that are there are relatively new, so haven’t had the time to cross over abroad yet.

Senegal was a funny one: thanks to my Sunday deep dive, I knew all of the artists and half of the songs in the top 10, whereas the day before they were all unknown to me. it will be so much fun to check out the rest of that list!

Sierra Leone (which I picked as a random small African country) was a bit of a head scratcher. no local acts whatsoever in the main list, strictly mainstream afropop hits (75% Nigerian). however, there’s also a genre list for ‘Sierra Leonean pop’ – how come none of these made it to the main SL list? are they being streamed so much less than these foreign hits (at least by people with Spotify access, which may be a privileged minority in a poor country like SL)?

something I don’t really get: a song like Kizz Daniel’s “Buga (Lo Lo Lo)”, a Nigerian song that was one of the biggest pan-African hits of the year is absent from the Nigerian list for, I assume, precisely that reason (see above) – but why does it then appear on several other (African) countries’ top listings? wouldn’t their share be even smaller? or was its popularity there significantly bigger in comparison? his most recent hit “Cough (Odo)” as well is absent from the Nigerian list (which makes sense), but it appears on even more listings for other African countries (+ Haiti!) than “Buga”. how does this work?

tl;dr this country/genre explorer is a many-splendored thing of wonder (and much more interesting to me than the narrow selections the Pitchforks of this world have to offer). I might deep-dive into Surinamese pop next!

Seeing these lists roll out makes me long for the what.cd era where someone would inevitably make a collage of each list and you could download everything with just one click.