Note: this is partly a discussion on the site (which would be under suggestions on its own), but also a discussion on album 'greatness' in general, so I think this forum section is relatively appropriate.
The site is called besteveralbums, but our charts are called "Top xx Greatest Music Albums".
Which one is it? The two words are very different - "best" is more subjective, whilst "greatest" takes more factors into account and would be more objective imo.
More conflict of words "best" and "greatest": What is BestEverAlbums.com?
BestEverAlbums.com is a website that aggregates over 2,700 different greatest album charts to provide an easy way for visitors to look up and find out the greatest albums in history.
Also, how do you measure greatness?
If you measured greatness in terms of popularity, influence and excellence, I think you'd be pretty close.
e.g. The Beatles would be 10,10,10, making them fully "great", whilst some unknown artist you consider to be the best would be 3 for popularity (objective; can't control), 1 for influence (objective; can't control), and 10 for excellence (subjective; can control). In this way, the greatest album/artist isn't always the "best", but rather the one that has a high balance between popularity, influence and excellence.
Discuss. How do you measure an album/artist's greatness? What difference do you see between "best" and "greatest" and should they be used interchangeably? Is this site finding the "best" albums, or the "greatest" albums?
Thinking about it this is a more difficult question than at first glance. I was originally happy to say they are interchangeable, but "greatest" does, to me at least, have more of a ring of trying to reach some sort of objectivity (whatever that is). Best could very well simply mean the ones I personally enjoy the most, and that is indeed how I have ranked my own chart. Greatest comes with an implication of being somewhat more than just enjoyable as the term seems to aspire for something more.
Hmm...in the end though, Best Ever Albums is a damned finer name for a website than Greatest Ever Albums.
Generally, I think of the term "Best" as being applied to an artist's body of work... as in "Their best songs or albums". "Greatest" applies to the body of works by all artists... as in "Greatest artists of all time".
Then there's "Top", which applies to chart position and units sold, almost exclusively... and "Most Influential", which would be based solely on the opinions of recognized professionals. "Favorite" would be purely subjective. We all have favorite artists.
I'm new to this site, and so I do not claim to know the depth of its' intent... although I suspect it is to provide an index of excellence in recorded works. I really like the approach that it uses for determining this, as it's far more comprehensive than an index of what has sold the most. It surpasses that, and gets to what's actually good, not popular... and lands about as close to it as anything I've seen. IMO, that's a great intent, if I understand it correctly. And having said all that, I guess I'd go with "Most excellent albums of all time".
Greatness also has factors of timelessness & influence in it.
'Great' albums can be horrible. I'm sure a lot of people on this site has noticed that....
As for 'best' albums, some of the best albums ever AREN'T worthy or 'greatness'. Funeral is one of the best albums ever (well..imo anyway ๐จ ), but by no means is it 'great'. Same goes for Ok Computer for that matter, but that's a bit of a different story.
Top, Best, Greatest, & Favourite are all different words, and in album terms, all have different results.
[quote="19loveless91]We should rename it to "favourite albums" just to screw with Naples.[/quote]
^ ๐คฃ . Now, that, my friends, is greatness. _________________ Doubles & Conch
Those are connotations you're reading into the word. Which is fair enough - that's what greatness means to a lot of people. But there's no reason timelessness and influence must be determining factors in judging 'greatness'. One could equally say the same thing about best-ness.
Example: "That was a great twinkie-wiener sandwich. I think I'll have another."
To my mind, the terms are pretty synonymous and inter-changeable, and the real reason for the use of both terms here is that people search on both topics, so using them both across the site helps a lot with SEO.
To my mind, the terms are pretty synonymous and inter-changeable, and the real reason for the use of both terms here is that people search on both topics, so using them both across the site helps a lot with SEO.
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