A few of these albums were good but not great for me or had a few great songs but didn’t command my attention for the whole album. One of the criteria I have for my AOTY list is that I need to be able to (and want to) listen to the album in its entirety. It’s very difficult for an album that has tracks that I want to skip to ever make my list. And the half dozen or so albums in this list that got filtered out as I pared my list down from 80 to 50 fell into that camp for me this year. Really looking forward to exploring some of the new (to me) artists on this list (Corey Hanson, The Arcs, The Clockworks).
This is partly why picking favorite albums is tricky. I can't give all of them the multiple attentive listens they deserve for true consideration, and so I often will pick ones that are immediately appealing -- catchy melodies, familiar sounding, strong production -- over ones that are more challenging and less hummable. A couple of my picks would not have made it in had I not given them time to reveal all their colors. I think this is why albums released in January-March have a distinct advantage, as they get that extra time with me.
Dec 14, 2023Liked by Kevin Alexander, Steve Goldberg
That first quarter advantage is real and I try to factor that in when compiling my list, recognizing that those early albums may have received disproportionate listens. But there’s also a recency bias that can sometimes overwhelm the familiarity bias and I try to account for that by regularly going back to albums from earlier in the year that didn’t resonate at the time to ensure I’ve given them a fair shot to work their magic.
It’s amazing how much my state of mind plays into what appeals to me in a given year. When I look back to my top 50 of 2020, in a year when the world was exploding with Covid and we had multiple lockdowns and I had a sense of lacking agency in my own life, my top albums were so much more out of sync with mainstream publications. There was a lot of “comfort music” that harkened back to earlier times in my life in terms of the sound and styles of the music.
When I look back at my top 50 from that year, I wouldn’t change anything and I really still enjoy those albums, but when the end of that year came I couldn’t deny that for that year there had been some shift in my internal musical criteria driven by my mental and emotional state and the sort of escape I was seeking in the music.
While a few of these albums (Sampha, Lonnie Holley, YLT) will definitely be on one genre-specific list or another (what I used to call "the best of the rest of..."), none will be in my (as yet unpublished) Top 25. But that doesn't disappoint me at all as I think these heartfelt choices are just as fair a representation of an absolutely fabulous year in music as anything I could put together. Kudos to you all!
Don’t feel bad. I couldn’t get into the boygenius album either. I was chalking it up to being too old. But lots of albums by 20 somethings resonate with me so I think it’s just a matter of taste.
Relatedly, I was voice to type commenting on someone else’s post about my feelings for boygenius and it typed out as boring genius. I did not correct the typo.
My issue was that half the songs are excellent and sound like them gelling into their own sound, while the other half sounded like scraps from their solo projects but with added harmonies. Their EP sounded much more cohesive.
No amount of hype can change the fact that something either hits or doesn't! As for myself, I loved The Record - it will be in my Top 25 but below the first 10...
For me, it was an objectively good record (and I like each of the three's solo stuff), but it just didn't hit with me the way it has with so many other people.
If my list was a top 25, it would be somewhere between 25-21. There are six genuinely fantastic songs on there, but they felt more cohesive as a band on their EP. I liked it, but it's a 7/10 album for me.
A few of these albums were good but not great for me or had a few great songs but didn’t command my attention for the whole album. One of the criteria I have for my AOTY list is that I need to be able to (and want to) listen to the album in its entirety. It’s very difficult for an album that has tracks that I want to skip to ever make my list. And the half dozen or so albums in this list that got filtered out as I pared my list down from 80 to 50 fell into that camp for me this year. Really looking forward to exploring some of the new (to me) artists on this list (Corey Hanson, The Arcs, The Clockworks).
This is partly why picking favorite albums is tricky. I can't give all of them the multiple attentive listens they deserve for true consideration, and so I often will pick ones that are immediately appealing -- catchy melodies, familiar sounding, strong production -- over ones that are more challenging and less hummable. A couple of my picks would not have made it in had I not given them time to reveal all their colors. I think this is why albums released in January-March have a distinct advantage, as they get that extra time with me.
That first quarter advantage is real and I try to factor that in when compiling my list, recognizing that those early albums may have received disproportionate listens. But there’s also a recency bias that can sometimes overwhelm the familiarity bias and I try to account for that by regularly going back to albums from earlier in the year that didn’t resonate at the time to ensure I’ve given them a fair shot to work their magic.
It’s amazing how much my state of mind plays into what appeals to me in a given year. When I look back to my top 50 of 2020, in a year when the world was exploding with Covid and we had multiple lockdowns and I had a sense of lacking agency in my own life, my top albums were so much more out of sync with mainstream publications. There was a lot of “comfort music” that harkened back to earlier times in my life in terms of the sound and styles of the music.
When I look back at my top 50 from that year, I wouldn’t change anything and I really still enjoy those albums, but when the end of that year came I couldn’t deny that for that year there had been some shift in my internal musical criteria driven by my mental and emotional state and the sort of escape I was seeking in the music.
I can also relate! A few of my picks from this year are nostalgic so maybe I never truly recovered from 2020! 🤣
I can relate to that! My 2020 listening followed a similar pattern.
While a few of these albums (Sampha, Lonnie Holley, YLT) will definitely be on one genre-specific list or another (what I used to call "the best of the rest of..."), none will be in my (as yet unpublished) Top 25. But that doesn't disappoint me at all as I think these heartfelt choices are just as fair a representation of an absolutely fabulous year in music as anything I could put together. Kudos to you all!
I'm excited to see your list Jeremy!
You say that and I feel like a boygenius hater for thinking it was a good but overhyped album lol
Don’t feel bad. I couldn’t get into the boygenius album either. I was chalking it up to being too old. But lots of albums by 20 somethings resonate with me so I think it’s just a matter of taste.
Relatedly, I was voice to type commenting on someone else’s post about my feelings for boygenius and it typed out as boring genius. I did not correct the typo.
My issue was that half the songs are excellent and sound like them gelling into their own sound, while the other half sounded like scraps from their solo projects but with added harmonies. Their EP sounded much more cohesive.
No amount of hype can change the fact that something either hits or doesn't! As for myself, I loved The Record - it will be in my Top 25 but below the first 10...
For me, it was an objectively good record (and I like each of the three's solo stuff), but it just didn't hit with me the way it has with so many other people.
If my list was a top 25, it would be somewhere between 25-21. There are six genuinely fantastic songs on there, but they felt more cohesive as a band on their EP. I liked it, but it's a 7/10 album for me.