Best Ever Albums

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

9999 — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 10:33:36 GMT

Author: 9999

Posted: 10/14/2015 14:33

Well, it depends. I've been loving Joni Mitchell's Blue for years, and I'm aware that a huge part of my current love for it is due to nostalgia, but for whatever reason I can't get enough of it and it's still my number one pick. Other albums like Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. have held up pretty well for me, but I've inevitably lower them over time because I haven't stopped loving them, but I do have encountered other albums that have challenged their positions. And other albums like Eminem's Encore have completely disappeared from my chart because I don't find them interesting anymore. So nostalgia can play an important role in my choices, but eventually it all comes down to how I feel about the album right now. Sometimes nostalgia is not enough to get me excited anymore.

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

meccalecca — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 12:55:08 GMT

Author: meccalecca

Posted: 10/13/2015 16:55

Skinny wrote:

I guess there are a few albums that generally have less of an effect on me these days - either due to evolution in my taste or overkill

I think this is common for any of who've been listening to music for a long time. It's also hard to fairly separate nostalgia from a current listen of the record. Would I love stuff like Abbey Road, Mr Bungle, and Piper at the Gates if they had not been so impactful on me at a young age? I'm not sure. I do know that I still love every minute of those records, and there's stuff like Green Day's Dookie that I don't hold in such high regard anymore despite being an album I obsessively loved when I was younger. I think nostalgic attachment can take an album you really like over the top, but if you no longer enjoy the record that much, the effect of the nostalgia no longer provides the same impact.

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

Skinny — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 16:49:36 GMT

Author: Skinny

Posted: 10/12/2015 20:49

I guess there are a few albums that generally have less of an effect on me these days - either due to evolution in my taste or overkill - which I just can't bring myself to remove from my chart (Searching for the Young Soul Rebels; Clouds Taste Metallic; Below the Heavens; Internal Affairs; Two Sevens Clash; Black Woman & Child). It's not as though I don't thoroughly enjoy these albums every time I hear them - I do, and they wouldn't be anywhere near my chart if I didn't - but it's fair to say that they've lost a certain amount of their lustre for me. But I don't think my chart is massively indebted to "nostalgia", though in fairness it's not really an accurate representation of my favourite albums either (in terms of the present or of all-time).

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

junodog4 — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 16:31:28 GMT

Author: junodog4

Posted: 10/12/2015 20:31

Sometimes it's a risky proposition to spend too much time revisiting old favourites. I've had quite a few change in my perception listening to them with the different contexts of an adult man as opposed to a teenager. Sometimes I wonder if they're better served in the warm and fuzzy lens of nostalgia.

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

CA Dreamin — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 15:03:04 GMT

Author: CA Dreamin

Posted: 10/12/2015 19:03

zdwyatt wrote:

I think nostalgia factors in a different way. Take these two albums:

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Nevermind by Nirvana

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Ten by Pearl Jam

I was 13 when those albums came out. And, as I wrote in my review of Nevermind:

Quote:

It's so hard to evaluate this album fairly. I was at exactly the right age for this release to blow my mind. And when I put it on today, I still love it, from start to finish. Is it overrated in some objective sense? It might be. But I can't say for sure because I never get tired of it.

The same goes for Ten. Those are both 5-star albums for me. They sit at #1 and #2 on my 1991 chart. If I were 13 now and I heard those albums for the first time, I don't know what I'd think. I doubt I'd like them as much as I do. I am sure some part of my love of those albums is their total familiarity. I listened to them over and over and over and when I hear them now, I am taken right back to that time.

jhuik wrote:

As one of the oldest people on this site I'm an expert on nostalgia. To a strong degree, my decade charts attempt to reflect what I liked during those decades...My overall chart is a best attempt to reflect what I personally think are the best (you know... my favourite, a lot of the time) albums.

I often defend some choices (e.g. U2) by saying if you weren't there when it came out you can't understand why it is still great imho... I don't know if that's nostalgia so much as just respect for the past.

Thank you gentlemen for sharing. I think being there and listening to the albums when they were first released definitely plays a part. Because the music not only takes you back to when you first heard it, but also the entire cultural environment that produced it. A lot of us younger users don't have many of those experiences, because we couldn't possibly have listened to many albums on our charts when they were first released. When I hear Nevermind and Ten, I'm not taken back to 1991 when I was a baby; That's not even possible because I don't have memories of that age. Instead, I'm taken back to 2006 when I was in high school and heard these albums for the first time when me and some friends would get together and play poker, and this music would be jamming in the background on my buddy's stereo. Good times and certainly good music, but I missed out on the bigger cultural movement. Not my fault; I was born too late.

But anyway, I think being there and listening to albums when they were first released probably generates a stronger nostalgic memory, stronger than the one I just described (and of course, LAD's memories of sitting at the computer spotifying and torrenting). And the stronger the nostalgic memory, I guess the tougher it is to lower or remove the albums from your charts if they get old/overplayed.

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

CA Dreamin — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 14:26:02 GMT

Author: CA Dreamin

Posted: 10/12/2015 18:26

Applerill wrote:

I dunno, I think nostalgia is fine in small doses, but you need to make sure that you hearing a song when you were five isn't the only reason you like it. Going back to Souljaboytellem.com, I obviously have a lot of good memories with it, but I can name a half-dozen "objective" reasons why it's one of the greatest albums ever made. I don't think you need to be "brutal" with our former favorites as much as we need to find out why else we're drawn to them.

I wasn't talking about music we liked at the age of 5. I was talking about after the age of reason, when we can "objectively" tell the difference between good music and shitty music. And what happens if good music gets old...to the point where it no longer does anything for you.

I totally agree it's essential to stay objective when making a list. But should your objective opinion of music decrease if you loved it for many years, but then it stopped making you feel anything? If an album cannot stand the test of, let's say ten years and hundreds of listens, should that be considered a flaw in the album, and warrant lowering or removal from your chart?

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

alelsupreme — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 11:54:06 GMT

Author: alelsupreme

Posted: 10/11/2015 15:54

Satie wrote:

*"Good Riddance/Time of Your Life" plays during a tasteful montage of several years of LAD's life spent staring at a computer screen with headphones on*

I'd say "Don't soil my memories with Green Day" but then there's nothing there worth preserving (apart from, of course, the Golden Age of BEA).

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

jhuik — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 11:51:18 GMT

Author: jhuik

Posted: 10/11/2015 15:51

As one of the oldest people on this site I'm an expert on nostalgia. To a strong degree, my decade charts attempt to reflect what I liked during those decades, although I look back and edit my nostalgia out, too; I am also influenced by what I've come to like in the meantime and I think those picks should also be in there. My overall chart is a best attempt to reflect what I personally think are the best (you know... my favourite, a lot of the time) albums.

On my overall chart I just popped in... then popped out, an album I loved when I was 15ish because I thought it still held up to a degree and I thought it coud stand in for a lot of other similar albums.... but then I thought, no this just does not fit into a 'best ever' chart.

I often defend some choices (e.g. U2) by saying if you weren't there when it came out you can't understand why it is still great imho... I don't know if that's nostalgia so much as just respect for the past.

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

Anonymous — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 11:00:35 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/11/2015 15:00

blacksaintsinnerLAD wrote:

Yeah I don't really put any emphasis on nostalgia. Probably helps that I've very few memories attached to many albums - why reminisce over being sat at a computer and looking something up on spotify/downloading a torrent somewhere?

*"Good Riddance/Time of Your Life" plays during a tasteful montage of several years of LAD's life spent staring at a computer screen with headphones on*

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

alelsupreme — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 10:43:14 GMT

Author: alelsupreme

Posted: 10/11/2015 14:43

Yeah I don't really put any emphasis on nostalgia. Probably helps that I've very few memories attached to many albums - why reminisce over being sat at a computer and looking something up on spotify/downloading a torrent somewhere?

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

Applerill — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 09:23:42 GMT

Author: Applerill

Posted: 10/11/2015 13:23

I dunno, I think nostalgia is fine in small doses, but you need to make sure that you hearing a song when you were five isn't the only reason you like it. Going back to Souljaboytellem.com, I obviously have a lot of good memories with it, but I can name a half-dozen "objective" reasons why it's one of the greatest albums ever made. I don't think you need to be "brutal" with our former favorites as much as we need to find out why else we're drawn to them.

Devin Faraci has a really good piece on this topic that even quotes Proust in the beginning.

Quote:

Nostalgia is a conversation killer. When you like a work of art for nostalgic reasons - you saw it as a kid, your sick dad showed it to you before he died, it evokes memories of a magical time in your life - you’re not actually talking about that art anymore. You’ve left the art behind, just as Proust has left the madeleine behind. That quote makes for a shitty review of a cake, but it makes for a good discussion of the writer's childhood, and that’s what you’re doing. You’ve taken the conversation away from the art and made it squarely about you.

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2014/06/24/the-nostalgia-will-eat-itself

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

Infinity183 — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 08:33:37 GMT

Author: Infinity183

Posted: 10/11/2015 12:33

For the most part, my charts are not nostalgia-influenced because I didn't listen to very many classic or quality albums growing up. For a while, before joining this site, I gave high marks to The Offspring's catalogue (even considering Smash one of my five favorite albums at one point), but they've since fallen into the "good but not the best" category since I've discovered hundreds of other musical acts and their albums.

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

Tap — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 01:56:05 GMT

Author: Tap

Posted: 10/11/2015 05:56

Yeah I'm of the opinion that nostalgia is a gateway to an excess amount of calcification of taste that prevents it from continuing to grow (because you need at least some, for the bones), and I'm working on my year charts right now so that I can sync up the overall and decade charts at the end of the year and diminish the influence of nostalgia. It's a bit more complicated for me than albums I don't enjoy anymore. Those are easy to knock down. It's the ones I do have an affinity for that are giving me the most trouble, figuring out the value of those albums in relation to ones that do not have the benefit of sepia-tinged memories, that's been tough. But I'm thinking it's time to be brutal.

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

Anonymous — Sat, 10 Oct 2015 22:55:09 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/11/2015 02:55

my chart is my favorite albums, not a bunch of albums that i listened to once upon a time and don't give a shit about anymore. there's enough albums that i love from when i first started getting into music 7 or 8 years ago that still hold up now that i see no reason to just slide in a bunch of stuff i liked back then and liked for multiple years even though it doesn't hold up for me now.

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

Applerill — Fri, 9 Oct 2015 16:57:59 GMT

Author: Applerill

Posted: 10/09/2015 20:57

I think there are two extremes you can take as a chartmaker on BEA. You could have your overall be an all-time hall-of-fame, noting the albums that have made the most personal impact over the longest period of time. Users ranging from Romanelli to Hayden seem to be good examples. On the other extreme are those who use their overall chart as their "current playlist" of what they're currently obsessed with. Precedent's a great example of this latter extreme. Either extreme taken too far can almost make the point of your chart redundant, but we all are somewhere on the spectrum.

The reason I bring up this dichotomy is because nostalgia is both something we all face and something we all have the choice to not feed into. A lot of my favorite albums are based on nostalgia (Souljaboytellem.com, for instance, was the very first hip-hop album I bought with my own money), but I try to add new albums to the bottom of the chart whenever I can.

Also, if your problem with nostalgia is just that it overshadows "objective quality" or something, then you suck.

Re: The effect of nostalgia on your chart

zdwyatt — Fri, 9 Oct 2015 16:45:00 GMT

Author: zdwyatt

Posted: 10/09/2015 20:45

My charts reflect my current opinion, give or take a few months. I couldn't stop listening to Debbie Gibson's Out of the Blue when it came out, but I don't have it on a chart at the moment. (Although, I might should, because "Foolish Beat" is a damn good pop song.) I certainly don't keep an album high up on a chart for nostalgia's sake. That being said, I think nostalgia factors in in a different way. Take these two albums:

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Nevermind by Nirvana

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Ten by Pearl Jam

I was 13 when those albums came out. And, as I wrote in my review of Nevermind:

Quote:

The effect of nostalgia on your chart

CA Dreamin — Fri, 9 Oct 2015 15:04:25 GMT

Author: CA Dreamin

Posted: 10/09/2015 19:04

Recently there was a thread that touched upon the subject of nostalgia. Here are a couple quotes from the user who started that thread:

louisjwyatt wrote:

As a longtime music lover, I've gone through a lot of phases and there are a lot of albums I loved when I was younger, though I can't even bare to listen to them anymore because of how much I've worn them out. I'm sure lots of you have had similar experiences.

louisjwyatt wrote:

I've heard it so many times now, though, that there's just nothing there anymore. Of course I have a soft spot in my heart for those albums

When I started collecting albums, my mother warned me this would happen, that I would eventually become indifferent towards music I once loved. I didn't want to believe it, but now I see it happening. Ten months ago, I was sick as a dog and couldn't get out of bed for a day. So I had nothing better to do than lie there and listen to music. I played several albums from a certain artist, an artist whose albums I first got into a decade ago when I was in high school. (I won't mention which artist because it doesn't matter.) I hadn't listened to them for a couple years so I was overdue to revisit them. And it was a depressing experience. None of the albums did anything for me. The magic and euphoria I used to feel when I listened to them were gone. Tried listening to them a couple times since, same thing. I hope to be engaged by these albums again some day, but I'm not sure if it'll happen.

So now I want to ask you longtime listeners who've had this experience: What you do with these albums in regards to your chart? Do you keep them where they are for nostalgia's sake? Do you keep them where they are because you still think they're great albums, even if they don't do anything for you anymore? Or do you gradually lower them over time? Or do you remove them completely?