Best Ever Albums

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:46:13 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 02/15/2016 18:46

bcmandude wrote:

Point me towards some 80s/90s songs that have the all of the same sound, feel, song structure and instrumentation of "Digital Witness", "Nothing Better", "Boyz", "White Flag", "Feel Good Inc." k thanks.

On my phone and don't care to look up the ones I can't recreate in my mind to think about, but a general note I'll make is that the slightest variations in pop music timbre do not innovations make to me. Unique atmospheres and textures or bold concepts interest me. Having some sort of amalgam for the sake of amalgam where we do s verse-chorus-verse pop song but with instrumentation stolen from this or that scene is not really interesting to me. None of those artists, to my recollection, really carve out a unique sound so much as apply new polish to some very well-worn influences. Their commercial reach and production values also tended to be higher than their forebears.

I think MIA was one of the exceptions to my statement, to be fair, though her production does derive a fair clip from a lot of dub and dancehall music which would have been a huge influence on any London-based producer in her epoch. I concede that they weren't trying to bring in more eastern instrumentation as the source material for their instrumentals or anything, but MIA's sound world is not completely alien to those movements.

I really don't know what you find new about "Feel Good Inc." Is it the fact that there's a bridge that kind of deviates from the rest of the song's sound? Is it the, again, dub-indebted production? The only truly novel thing about the song that I hear is Damon Albarn's insipid breathy sort-of rapping.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

bcmandude — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:33:18 GMT

Author: bcmandude

Posted: 02/15/2016 18:33

Satie wrote:

I share your definition and completely disagree. Outside the annals of indie rock cultural hegemony, none of those albums are very interesting. Spending even a cursory amount of time with '80s and '90s music (a lot of it even from the rock canon) renders most of those completely redundant. You're free to enjoy whatever you please, but excuse me if I don't really hear sonic innovation in synth pop retreads or soft indie rock with excessive preciousness and ornamentation.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:23:12 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 02/15/2016 18:23

bcmandude wrote:

You must be very closed minded then. By "innovative" I don't mean "was influenced by nothing; exists in a vacuum". I simply mean that they've carved out a new sound that hasn't really been touched before. "Give Up" is basically the reason Owl City exists.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

bcmandude — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:22:23 GMT

Author: bcmandude

Posted: 02/15/2016 18:22

Gowi wrote:

Well by Satie's standards, "innovative" is a term that cannot apply to 100% of albums. Metal came from rock, rock came from blues, blues came from jazz, jazz came from African music and European classical music, those musics came from somewhere etc. Everything builds upon something at least a little bit. But there is a large difference between 'influenced' and 'throwback'.

I never said "cutting-edge" so you can't put that in quotation marks like it was something that I said.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

mickilennial — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:18:23 GMT

Author: mickilennial

Posted: 02/15/2016 18:18

bcmandude wrote:

That’s Satie’s point. Those albums were crafted out of things that existed as a precursing influence, and none of them have a sonically unique identity. Back to Black was just the most commercially successful out of a soul revival scene that already existed in the UK at the time, The XX were just expanding on post-punk revival sounds with a more minimized scale, Give Up was again an expansion of the sounds that came from the indietronica scene of the time with Gibbard's flare for the dramatic on play, and those are just three examples from your “cutting edge” albums. This implication completely ignores that being INSPIRED does not equal INNOVATION.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

SuedeSwede — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:16:16 GMT

Author: SuedeSwede

Posted: 02/15/2016 18:16

bcmandude wrote:

I'm aware. I just think it's silent majority is 'overall more sexist than BEA'.

I'm not sure you can quite possibly pin down that the users contributing to the "silent majority" are truly sexist, but a nice quick look at how females are represented in charts and then trying to extrapolate that onto presumptuous claims about communities rather than structural issues founded deeper within society that reflect on smaller things such as what sort of albums become acclaimed and the balance of men to women pursuing musical careers.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

bcmandude — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:14:42 GMT

Author: bcmandude

Posted: 02/15/2016 18:14

Satie wrote:

Literally none of those albums are innovative in the least. I can't name a single unique contribution to the musical landscape offered by any of it.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

benpaco — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:14:37 GMT

Author: benpaco

Posted: 02/15/2016 18:14

All this thread is doing at this point is making me even less a fan of words like "rockism" and "poptimism".

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

bcmandude — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:13:01 GMT

Author: bcmandude

Posted: 02/15/2016 18:13

Satie wrote:

I mean, comparing that to BEA, though, are these in the Top 1000 here? I could see Back to Black, but the rest seem like they'd be just as out of place here. I agree with your larger point, though, that for some reason music communities online tend to skew towards male artists. I still feel like a lot of this has to do with exposure and supply, though. Female artists on major labels are very routinely pushed towards or pulled from hordes of women artists who are trying to make it in pop music. Poptimism has been a very shoddy fix for the problem of low female representation in music, because it's shifted aesthetic standards to meet political goals instead of pushing for discovery and rediscovery of talented female artists in more diverse genres. Those albums you listed tend to be exceptions to this rule - strong, singular visions from female artists who specifically reject that sound. I dunno, I'm not the best judge of all this. I have a small female representation in my own charts, but I feel like this has a lot more to do with wider societal problems of encouraging women to pursue the arts in a more serious way in general, and the scenes I fuck with most tend to under-represent women by the numbers but include them within a small pantheon of major titans in the scenes' developments - Elysia Crampton, women in EAI like Olivia Block and Annette Krebs, etc.

I agree with some of what you're saying here - record labels are a big issue for women in music. A lot of them want a women that they can flaunt visually as opposed to talented female musicians.

However:

1) RYM seems to be pretty hip when it comes to music, and it is the internet era afterall, so I thought RYM was generally good at overcoming the "exposure" gap with record labels. Plenty of commercial failures are in the RYM top 1000.

2) Actually I made a chart of all the female albums in the BEA top 1000 (yes I have no life). Ya it is a bit outdated though, I made it in September. Nonetheless, all of the female albums i mentioned in that post have been consistently in the BEA top 1000.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

mickilennial — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:05:23 GMT

Author: mickilennial

Posted: 02/15/2016 18:05

Gowi wrote:

No hate, BEA has strengths and RYM has strengths. Both have disadvantages.

Nobody who is saying RYM is a strong and perhaps preferable site is doing so with a flag of elitism. For me, this blind loyalty BEA users have is far more frustrating than any opposing view. It feels like inane ignorant brand loyalty most of the time; I’ve used tons of music community sites for over seventeen years and it is always dumb. Your assertion that you are just saying RYM has flaws too doesn’t seem so but rather feels like backpedaling when your initial points were proven wrong.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:04:54 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 02/15/2016 18:04

bcmandude wrote:

I wouldn't say the "vast majority". None of the albums i listed in the previous post ("Kala", "The ArchAndroid", "St. Vincent" and "Strange Mercy", "Back To Black", and "Fever To Tell") were classic rock throwbacks (ok, well maybe "Fever To Tell" is a bit of a punk throwback but it has music-forward stuff too). BEA also has unique and/or innovative albums of the 21st century like "Demon Days" and "Plastic Beach", "Modern Vampires of the City", "XX", "Sea Change", "Give Up" etc. that RYM is lacking in it's top 1000.

Literally none of those albums are innovative in the least. I can't name a single unique contribution to the musical landscape offered by any of it.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:02:57 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 02/15/2016 18:02

bcmandude wrote:

You do have a very good point that metal existed as a genre much longer than hip hop, though hip hop is much older than 25 years.

"Album-oriented format." Yes, there is a smattering of LP-length material from the '80s, and I understand that hip hop has its primordial creations in the late '70s coming out of disco and some other burgeoning dance music scenes peeling off from that, but it's completely disingenuous to think of these as serious contenders for lists of albums. From the get-go because of the context from which metal sprang (big sellers on major labels), the LP format was more stringently followed immediately. That's all I meant.

bcmandude wrote:

I do agree that BEA has its own rockist issues. The fact that 3 Black Keys albums and all 5 Arctic Monkeys albums make the top 1000 is a bit odd. However, I think sexism is a bigger issue than rockism in the music critic sphere.

Sure, but it's also a bigger issue in the sphere of music distribution, music-oriented communities, and society as a whole. Undoing sexism is a much bigger project than undoing rockism, and rockism in the present day, where even industry metrics have moved away from it, comes off as much more the specific domain of music critics and their audiences. That's not to undermine the seriousness of sexism, but just to shed light on why people might focus more on it. Plus, there's very little room to retroactively sign female artists who should have made it big in previous decades when the musical machinery was much more of a pipeline and male artists were clearly preferred for most genres of music.

bcmandude wrote:

RYM is lacking a lot of the most praised female albums of the 21st century in its top 1000. "Kala", "The ArchAndroid", "St. Vincent" and "Strange Mercy", "Back To Black", and "Fever To Tell" are all missing. Heck, there's only 6 Female albums in the RYM top 1000 since the year 2000, and they're all by the same 3 artists; "Vespertine" by Bjork, "Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea" and "Let England Shake" by P.J. Harvey, and "Ys", "Have One On Me", and "Divers" by Joanna Newsom. Joanna Newsom is basically the token female for the 21st century in the RYM top 1000; Bjork and P.J. are veterans from the 90s, making Joanna the only new female artist of the 21st century.

I mean, comparing that to BEA, though, are these in the Top 1000 here? EDIT: I see that that was your point now. I could see Back to Black, but the rest seem like they'd be just as out of place here. I agree with your larger point, though, that for some reason music communities online tend to skew towards male artists. I still feel like a lot of this has to do with exposure and supply, though. Female artists on major labels are very routinely pushed towards or pulled from hordes of women artists who are trying to make it in pop music. Poptimism has been a very shoddy fix for the problem of low female representation in music, because it's shifted aesthetic standards to meet political goals instead of pushing for discovery and rediscovery of talented female artists in more diverse genres. Those albums you listed tend to be exceptions to this rule - strong, singular visions from female artists who specifically reject that sound. I dunno, I'm not the best judge of all this. I have a small female representation in my own charts, but I feel like this has a lot more to do with wider societal problems of encouraging women to pursue the arts in a more serious way in general, and the scenes I fuck with most tend to under-represent women by the numbers but include them within a small pantheon of major titans in the scenes' developments - Elysia Crampton, women in EAI like Olivia Block and Annette Krebs, etc.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

bcmandude — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:01:25 GMT

Author: bcmandude

Posted: 02/15/2016 18:01

SuedeSwede wrote:

Though I agree that this isn't a fantastic statistic, you only have to delve a little deeper to understand that the community is far from sexist. It's the same as presuming that BEA's regulars only like rock music with some small additions from hip-hop and electronic just because that's what the charts insinuate.

I'm aware. I just think it's silent majority is 'overall more sexist than BEA'.

I suppose I just don't like it when people who also use RYM who are on here act like RYM is infinitely better and that BEA is for "plebs" or something along those lines but less extreme. "RYM has its own issues too" is the point I'm trying to make, but I didn't state that at the beginnning so, my bad 🙁 .

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

bcmandude — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 12:55:49 GMT

Author: bcmandude

Posted: 02/15/2016 17:55

Satie wrote:

The vast majority of 21st century albums charting high for BEA are bland throwback rock records. They count as new releases only because of chronological proximity to the present day, not because their sound has kept up in the slightest. I maintain that the illusion of open-mindedness has been conjured more by the very rockist audience on BEA listening to a handful of new records each year from throwback acts like the Black Keys that get marketed to them or else legacy acts like Foo Fighters, Radiohead, etc. I mean, Adele is in our top 1000. It's not like we're really rewarding groundbreaking records left and right. That's not to say that RYM's Overall charts are really showing a lot of variety or insight, but at least adult alternative radio hasn't come to dominate their portrait of the current era.

And thanks LAD. I went back to look into it and was too busy REEEEing at the presence of Arctic Monkeys above Talking Heads to keep going.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

mickilennial — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 12:52:21 GMT

Author: mickilennial

Posted: 02/15/2016 17:52

SuedeSwede wrote:

We can also sort of infer that RYM having more representation of genres means certain styles will get pushed into the expanded charts.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

SuedeSwede — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 12:49:15 GMT

Author: SuedeSwede

Posted: 02/15/2016 17:49

bcmandude wrote:

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

mickilennial — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 12:48:42 GMT

Author: mickilennial

Posted: 02/15/2016 17:48

TheArchAndroid is also the eighth highest ranked album of 2010 on RYM and goes well into RYM's expanded overall (at #1,825). She is hardly ignored or unappreciated. Similar things can be said about St. Vincent's work and so on.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

bcmandude — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 12:44:48 GMT

Author: bcmandude

Posted: 02/15/2016 17:44

Satie wrote:

I've been using RYM for seven years (every single day for six of those) and haven't really encountered a lot of decade-specific snobbery that doesn't get called out by a dissenting opinion. Maybe if you're sticking to people who have very by-the-numbers taste, there's some of that sentiment, but that's mainly just the nature of an overall chart on any website kind of replicating itself to an extent. I find that because of the open-ended format of RYM and its expectation that you just catalog all the music you listen to, good or bad, that there's less confirmation bias. I've said it many times, maybe in this thread, but I really think that calling BEA Best Ever Albums really makes it attract a more rockist audience. I agree that the tastes on the BEA forums is different than the site as a whole by varying shades depending on users, and the most vocal people here are more varied in some ways than the most vocal RYMers, but the silent majority here have made it where we have very middling rock albums dominating the 2010s charts because of being some of the few relics of rock music left being made at the moment. That's interesting on the female-led bit, and RYM recently had a big discussion about that. We here on BEA haven't had a discussion about that, and even if the actual raw number is almost double that of RYM's, we're still under 10% representation for roughly 50% of the population. It's not exactly something to brag about for either site.

Metal is one of the more popular genres of music. I think it's perfectly reasonable despite the constant moaning on RYM for 10% of a chart made mostly of rock music to incorporate one of its largest subgenres. Metal has a fifty year history. Of course it will have more albums on the average than hip hop, which has had really about 25 years of consistent album-oriented output. Also, last I checked, BEA doesn't exactly excel at incorporating hip hop into our charts. Isn't our highest rated hip hop album outside of the Top 100?

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is #68th and Illmatic is #88 actually. (I admit it's sad that MBDTF of all things is the highest hip hop album on BEA though.) You do have a very good point that metal existed as a genre much longer than hip hop, though hip hop is much older than 25 years.

I do agree that BEA has its own rockist issues. The fact that 3 Black Keys albums and all 5 Arctic Monkeys albums make the top 1000 is a bit odd. However, I think sexism is a bigger issue than rockism in the music critic sphere.

RYM is lacking a lot of the most praised female albums of the 21st century in its top 1000. "Kala", "The ArchAndroid", "St. Vincent" and "Strange Mercy", "Back To Black", and "Fever To Tell" are all missing. Heck, there's only 6 Female albums in the RYM top 1000 since the year 2000, and they're all by the same 3 artists; "Vespertine" by Bjork, "Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea" and "Let England Shake" by P.J. Harvey, and "Ys", "Have One On Me", and "Divers" by Joanna Newsom. Joanna Newsom is basically the token female for the 21st century in the RYM top 1000; Bjork and P.J. are veterans from the 90s, making Joanna the only new female artist of the 21st century.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

meccalecca — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 12:42:58 GMT

Author: meccalecca

Posted: 02/15/2016 17:42

Aggregation rewards consensus. Contemporary culture in the internet age has become more esoteric. We have access to a much wider array of albums. Our tastes are far less homogenized or universal, so it's hard to imagine new records that can receive the same level of critical consensus are stuff from earlier on. In addition, our charts for modern years tend to be far more sprawling, as it's more likely to see modern charts filled up to 100 releases than earlier decades where we're usually less expansive.

Re: Will there ever be a new best ever album?

mickilennial — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 12:42:19 GMT

Author: mickilennial

Posted: 02/15/2016 17:42

The opposite case is metal not being well-represented as a whole on this website, which sort of kind of goes against the whole “BEA’s faceless majority is more open-minded” perspective. That aside, I feel like this perspective isn’t correct Sharifi’s database and its overall charts represent far more than rock/metal/rap as we see flavorings of modern classical, avant-garde, jazz, electronic music, drone/ambient, folk with far more depth than “indie folk” or “singer/songwriter”, and the list goes on. This is not me saying or initiating a “BEA vs RYM” contest, but the fact of looking at both database sites for what they are at their heart without any blind loyalty that only facilitates ignorance and incorrect assertions. The fact is the matter that the people drawn to Sharifi’s site are really varied people of multiple canon and non-canon perspectives; I agree with Satie that BEA seems to attract less so.