The Rock Critic Hive Mind

Deadspin's Concourse (or The Concourse, or some other website that is owned by the same people as Deadspin, I swear telling the difference is flipping impossible on that family of sites) put out a cool meta analysis of the End of Year Music Best-Of Lists.  Check it out.  



While you are reading that and what I have below, enjoy this gem from the Alvvays album, Party Police.

The author notes that the annoying explosion of the "crowded internet-rock-critic ecosystem" has made the world so flooded with Top Album lists that it is nigh impossible to cut through the clutter and figure out what you should go listen to.  This is likely true, which is why I just look to the normal websites I read.  And which is why you should just come to me - I know everything.

But Mitchum goes to the exceedingly difficult-sounding trouble to compile all major staff pick lists into one spreadsheet, do some magical algorithm-ing, and have it spit out the consensus best music of the year (according to his weighted methodology and the collective group mind).  Strangely enough, he did not ask for or use my Top Ten List.

While he notes that many of the rock-leaning reviewers granted a large early lead to The War on Drugs, the weight of non-rock electro/rap reviews pushed the FKA Twigs album into first place, with St. Vincent right behind.  However, outside of that methodology that he created, the War on Drugs album would have taken first prize on average rating.

An unfortunate trend that Mitchum notes is that the lists appear to show increased homogeneity in the albums that are reviewed, so that the reviewers may not be casting as wide a net as they once did to find the true best albums.  Obviously, there is no way a single reviewer could hear and digest everything out there.  I am living proof.  The reviewers obviously didn't hear everything, or else Spanish Gold would have been in everyone's top ten.  Jokes aside, I want to see as much listening as possible, just so that the true cream of the year can rise to the top and be noticed.

Of interest, I am going to check out the "pretty-good Top 5" that he found - albums that place highly overall without making any top ten lists.  
"Ty Segall's Manipulator (no. 25) [nope, not on Spotify.  Lame.], 
Azealia Banks' Broke With Expensive Taste (no. 37), 
Pharmakon's Bestial Burden (no. 51), 
How to Dress Well's What Is This Heart? (no. 60), and 
Ben Frost's A U R O R A (no. 64)."  
I'll let you know what I think.  I also need to listen to FKA Twigs.  Although first, I should probably go listen to some teenagers say the name so that I know how it is pronounced.  In my mind, it sounds like Brad Pitt in Snatch, trying to say he doesn't like Iggy Azalea.

Finally, Mitchum's review of the Rolling Stone list is hilarious, mainly because I went through some of the same thoughts when reading and reviewing it.  Only two other lists even included U2's Songs of Innocence, and they had it as 33 and 44, not number 1.  And no other list included the dumb High Hopes album (the RS #2), Coldplay's new disc, or the underrated Lenny Kravitz disc.  Somehow, by being traditionalist and fuddy-duddy, Rolling Stone is the one reviewing outlet that is breaking ground.  Take that, Pitchforks of the world.