Best Ever Albums

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

AAL2014 — Sun, 28 Jan 2018 18:02:06 GMT

Author: AAL2014

Posted: 01/28/2018 23:02

StreetSpirit wrote:

@AAL

I think it's a big jump to go from picking best years from each decade to picking best years of all time. Maybe for Round 2, we should put the the 60s, 70s, and 80s in one match-up, and the 90s, 00s, and 10s in the other?

So we'd have '66, '67, '69, '70, '71, '77, '80, '84, '89 in one. And '91, '94, '97, '01, '06, '07, ?, ? in the other. This would keep the next round's polls from getting crowded. It's up to you though.

I have been brainstorming the past couple days on it. I had an idea akin to how @Antonio-Pedro just executed his Kendrick rank for the final. I certainly hope he won't mind if I take some influence and inspiration from it.

I definitely wasn't going to put all of them in a poll like the first round has been. I think you're idea for the next round is pretty great and it's probably the most efficient ways to go about it. StreetSpirit I think it's cool to see you showing that kind of interest in these threads. I'll have the next round up in a day or so. Cheers!

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

CA Dreamin — Sun, 28 Jan 2018 15:34:09 GMT

Author: CA Dreamin

Posted: 01/28/2018 20:34

@AAL

I think it's a big jump to go from picking best years from each decade to picking best years of all time. Maybe for Round 2, we should put the the 60s, 70s, and 80s in one match-up, and the 90s, 00s, and 10s in the other?

So we'd have '66, '67, '69, '70, '71, '77, '80, '84, '89 in one. And '91, '94, '97, '01, '06, '07, ?, ? in the other. This would keep the next round's polls from getting crowded. It's up to you though.

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

AwaitingAndrew — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 10:27:16 GMT

Author: AwaitingAndrew

Posted: 01/27/2018 15:27

Despite strong competition from 2011 and 2016, I ultimately went with 2012 - plus now I see 2016 is going to win this poll even without my vote. '12 has two of my top 20 albums including one in my top five, which are perhaps my favorite albums by two of my all-time favorite artists.

Able Bodies by From Indian Lakes

Vital by Anberlin

Add in a phenomenal EP debut by Night Beds, some other quite underrated albums, Kendrick's GKMC, and Paul McCartney and The Beach Boys still putting out great work in the year 2012, and that's the year I had to go with.

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

manurock — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 08:10:12 GMT

Author: manurock

Posted: 01/27/2018 13:10

For me it's close between 2013 and 2016, which I am glad are leading so far. I will choose 2016 because of the unexpected (because of their album quality) comeback of legends like Bowie, Cohen and Radiohead, with the passing away of the first two, which bought classic pop and rock back to the spotlight.

And I agree on what StreetSpirit wrote before about internet streaming.

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

revolver94 — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 21:48:47 GMT

Author: revolver94

Posted: 01/27/2018 02:48

2015 is definitely #1, followed by 2012. i'll copy saiorse's format but w/ a top 3 --

2015: Carrie & Lowell - Sufjan Stevens, Ten Love Songs - Susanne Sundfør, Apocalypse, girl - Jenny Hval
2012: Born to Die - Lana Del Rey, Bloom - Beach House, The Idler Wheel... - Fiona Apple
2016: 22, a Million - Bon Iver, Blood Bitch - Jenny Hval, Leave Me Alone - Hinds
2017: Melodrama - Lorde, Kelly Lee Owens - Kelly Lee Owens, Masseduction - St. Vincent
2014: Are We There - Sharon Van Etten, Right from Real - Lydia Ainsworth, Ultraviolence - Lana Del Rey
2013: Same Trailer, Different Park - Kacey Musgraves, Loud City Song - Julia Holter, Modern Vampires of the City - Vampire Weekend
2010: Teen Dream - Beach House, Have One On Me - Joanna Newsom, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West
2011: Tragedy - Julia Holter, Feel It Break - Austra, The Rip Tide - Beirut

bolded albums are in my top 25 albums of all time, for a little more context

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

cestuneblague — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 20:07:34 GMT

Author: cestuneblague

Posted: 01/27/2018 01:07

I have no idea how to rank years but Ill do it anyway, here you go with my personal AOTY

2013: Kacey Musgraves- Same Trailer Different Park
> 2015: Sufjan Stevens- Carrie & Lowell
> 2012: Carina Round- Tigermending
> 2011: EMA- Past Life Martyred Saints = 2010: Arcade Fire- The Suburbs
> 2016: Mitski- Puberty 2
> 2014: Perfume Genius- Too Bright
> 2018: Jeff Rosenstock- POST
>>> 2017: Brand New- Science Fiction 😐 😐 😐 (yeah 2017 was not a year of the feel-good, and easily the weakest of the 2010s)

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

Tap — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 18:01:12 GMT

Author: Tap

Posted: 01/26/2018 23:01

it's easy if you value having experiences more than appearing to be a person who has already had all of the important experiences.

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

CA Dreamin — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 17:48:17 GMT

Author: CA Dreamin

Posted: 01/26/2018 22:48

rkm wrote:

Tap wrote:

StreetSpirit wrote:

There was talk about lack of attention span for modern music in the 2000s thread. It made me think of an old thread where BEA discussed this article:

https://mic.com/articles/104250/what-the-internet-has-done-to-your-love-of-music#.uwZVHs82P

Maybe a couple other BEA veterans remember this.

lol couldn't someone have written this 20 years ago about cds. you can skip, they're not vinyl, wah wah wah. it's not hard to relisten to things, this shit is dumb.

It's not so much the medium, it's FOMO. Too much choice.

Exactly. Tap, I'm sure you're correct that articles were written about this subject when CDs starting replacing vinyl. CDs allowed listeners to skip, and have inferior sound quality. However, internet streaming services have stripped down music quality even more. The internet has also made skipping and moving onto the next song/artist even faster. This ties into what rkm said about too much choice. I think it is hard for an average listener to re-listen to things when there thousands of other options at one's fingertips.

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

Tap — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 17:47:21 GMT

Author: Tap

Posted: 01/26/2018 22:47

re:rkm, I have a theory that FOMOphobia (the fear of experiencing the fear of missing out) can drive ppl to experiences that they themselves profess to be unsatisfying but I think that's a whole other thing. I'm not sure if too much choice is really a problem. like yeah sure sometimes it can be like oh I want to listen to this krautrock thing but wait there's this highlife thing or some new insanity doing unheard things with sonorizations of data from NASA about times when Earth was almost struck by a meteor, and a million other things that seem like they'd be great. times like that can be overwhelming. but I'll still pick one, because none of those qualities have any value if I'm never experiencing them. so I think anyone who has a problem there and aren't building up significance with music because there's too much of it, those people are being silly and they'd find a way to be silly in the past as well.

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

Tha1ChiefRocka — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 17:46:52 GMT

Author: Tha1ChiefRocka

Posted: 01/26/2018 22:46

BTW, here are some of my lesser known picks for 2013.

Link

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Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

rkm — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 17:05:05 GMT

Author: rkm

Posted: 01/26/2018 22:05

Tap wrote:

StreetSpirit wrote:

lol couldn't someone have written this 20 years ago about cds. you can skip, they're not vinyl, wah wah wah. it's not hard to relisten to things, this shit is dumb.

It's not so much the medium, it's FOMO. Too much choice.

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

Tap — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 15:28:00 GMT

Author: Tap

Posted: 01/26/2018 20:28

StreetSpirit wrote:

lol couldn't someone have written this 20 years ago about cds. you can skip, they're not vinyl, wah wah wah. it's not hard to relisten to things, this shit is dumb.

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

Onater — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 15:22:43 GMT

Author: Onater

Posted: 01/26/2018 20:22

I voted 2012, but I've got to say: 2011 was an excellent year, but this site's chart for it is garbage. The Black Keys? Adele? Foo Fighters? What about Exmilitary? XXX? Twin Fantasy? Section.80? All of which are miles better than anything in the top 10 for the year, except maybe Let England Shake. (Also Smile Sessions doesn't count as a 2011 album for obvious reasons)

Actually, this holds true for most of the 2010s. It seems like the closer you get to the current day, the worse the charts get. Which is kinda the opposite of RYM: I find that the older charts on that site are too full of generic hard rock albums, while the newer charts are full of more interesting and diverse albums. On the other hand, BEA has alt-j, Reflektor, The Black Keys, and Random Access Memories in the top 20 of the decade, which pretty much discredits the entire chart. And no way is The Suburbs the best album of the decade, no matter how much I like it.

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

rkm — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 14:57:28 GMT

Author: rkm

Posted: 01/26/2018 19:57

AAL2014 wrote:

rkm wrote:

It's in this decade that I've listened to more music from the last 50 years than ever ("people look to the past when the future dries up"). I haven't listened to the radio even casually in the car for at least 5 years. I teach guitar for a living, and most of my exposure to new pop music is via kids wanting to learn particular tunes that they bring to me. It would seem to me that the current pop music that's spoon fed to everyone is the most unimaginative, formulaic, soul-less shite I've encountered in my lifetime. Maybe that's just me becoming an old man?

However, in recent years I've more avidly sort out my own new music, and found plenty to love. I said this basic same thing in the last thread.

I voted 2017, and I dont think it's necessarily the best year, just the year I engaged with new music the most. In this climate, you've got to go looking for it, and the stuff you find most likely won't be the stuff that's on the radio, and most likely will be different from the stuff the people you know like. There's less and less common cultural ground.

I don't think I knew you taught guitar, rkm, that's cool. I teach drums so I can relate to being exposed to a lot of music (newer pop music or otherwise) through students. It's not always music I follow through on, but I've been given some very interesting recs from students lately.

That's cool. I imagine a fair proportion of us on this site must be musicians of some sort?

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

rkm — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 14:54:29 GMT

Author: rkm

Posted: 01/26/2018 19:54

StreetSpirit wrote:

Interesting article. Aside from loudness wars, and the sacrifice of quality for convenience, it feels like a lot of pop music simply tries too hard to grab your attention at the expense of anything that might have any longevity just on a compositional level.

Regarding sacrificing quality for convenience, I've often wondered why we can stream Netflix but not higher quality audio? I researched and answered my own question. Netflix at SD uses about 1GB of data per hour, and at HD uses 3GB of data per hour. That's a lot of data, but if I'm at home I have unlimited data. No problem. High quality audio is totally possible. An hour long album on CD, even as an uncompressed WAV file is much less than 1GB.

I've been using Apple Music and Spotify before that, and have been too cheap to try Tidal. Tidal offer 16bit/44.1kHz (same quality as CD) as lossless FLAC streams, but are also going beyond CD quality with 24bit/96kHz FLAC streams (they're calling it Master quality recordings).

If Tidal can do it, then surely Apple Music and Spotify will follow?

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

CA Dreamin — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 12:32:11 GMT

Author: CA Dreamin

Posted: 01/26/2018 17:32

There was talk about lack of attention span for modern music in the 2000s thread. It made me think of an old thread where BEA discussed this article:

https://mic.com/articles/104250/what-the-internet-has-done-to-your-love-of-music#.uwZVHs82P

Maybe a couple other BEA veterans remember this.

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

AAL2014 — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 10:56:45 GMT

Author: AAL2014

Posted: 01/26/2018 15:56

rkm wrote:

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

travelful — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 18:48:26 GMT

Author: travelful

Posted: 01/25/2018 23:48

I voted 2016, even though 2015 and 2012 were both well above average in my opinion as well.

A Moon Shaped Pool is by far my favorite Radiohead experience and has moved its way all the way up to 3rd on my overall chart. Accompanying AMSP I loved...

RTJ3 - RTJ
Atrocity Exhibition - Danny Brown
22, A Million - Bon Iver
Blonde - Frank Ocean
The Lion Across The Field - KSHMR
Imperial - Denzel Curry
TLOP - Kanye
How to Be A Human Being - Glass Animals
Untitled Unmastered. - GOAT

I also thought there were plenty of other wonderful releases not quite on par with the ones above including:

Awaken My Love - Childish Gambino
All three Gucci Mane records released that year
Southern Family by Brent Cobb & Various Artists
Blank Face - ScHoolboy Q
Do What Thou Wilt. - Ab-Soul
We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service - ATCQ
Malibu - Anderson .Paak
99.9% - KAYTRANADA

There was plenty other records I thought were notable that year too, but just didn't stick with me like Black Star, Coloring Book, Nonagon Infinity, Light Upon The Lake, Cardinal, A Sailor's Guide To Earth, Jeffery, IV, Sleep Cycle, Is The Is Are, etc..

So yeah. I thought it was a fantastic year for music.

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

rkm — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 18:09:37 GMT

Author: rkm

Posted: 01/25/2018 23:09

It's in this decade that I've listened to more music from the last 50 years than ever ("people look to the past when the future dries up"). I haven't listened to the radio even casually in the car for at least 5 years. I teach guitar for a living, and most of my exposure to new pop music is via kids wanting to learn particular tunes that they bring to me. It would seem to me that the current pop music that's spoon fed to everyone is the most unimaginative, formulaic, soul-less shite I've encountered in my lifetime. Maybe that's just me becoming an old man?

However, in recent years I've more avidly sort out my own new music, and found plenty to love. I said this basic same thing in the last thread.

I voted 2017, and I dont think it's necessarily the best year, just the year I engaged with new music the most. In this climate, you've got to go looking for it, and the stuff you find most likely won't be the stuff that's on the radio, and most likely will be different from the stuff the people you know like. There's less and less common cultural ground.

Re: Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 6: The 2010's

Tap — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 06:47:23 GMT

Author: Tap

Posted: 01/25/2018 11:47

also I decided to vote for 2016 because I could talk your ear off on the top 40 here https://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?c=28964 and that's a lot of albums. but they are all fantastic. seriously call me on my bluff ask me about any one of these, I'll do it. but I can't do it on all of them, it would take too long.