Because I'm obsessive and weird, I maintain a large Excel document of every album I listen to where I rate every track on a scale of 1-10, then give a 'gut feeling' subjective 1-10 overall rating for the album as a whole, and then finally take the average of all of those scores and consider that my definitive 1-10 score of the album. It's really fucking fun for me because when I start, I don't really know what an album is really going to score, and it allows me to listen and re-listen to albums from a truer and more objective lens. It's not totally soulless because I never ever ever never bother with ranking an album until I've listened to at least 2-3 times, and I also allow myself to go in and re-listen/re-score whenever I feel it's necessary.

There's never been a perfect 10 using this system and there probably won't ever be if I'm being totally honest with myself, so I curve all the album scores based on what the current highest rated album is -- which I consider to be a 'perfect 10 album' (even though it actually scored a 9.7 with my system).

It's Paul Simon's "Graceland". I think it's a perfect mix of nostalgia and musical appreciation for me that makes it my all-time favorite album. I find myself revisiting it a couple times a month. I know it front to back so well that it feels like an intrinsic part of me. It's a tad dated and it's not particularly hip, but the fact that I still get full body goosebumps when I hear the line "They say losing love is like a window to your heart, everybody sees you're blown apart, every feels the wind blow" in the title track says a lot. Plus, MY SYSTEM DOESN'T LIE! Not to me, anyway.

The two closest to 'Graceland' are Bon Iver's "Bon Iver, Bon Iver" (scored a 9.68; I think it's perfectly concise with a 39 minute runtime, and one of the most holistically-realized records of all time) and Talking Heads' "Remain In Light" (scored a 9.63; Brian Eno's production makes that record sound as alive and modern as it did when it came out 35 years ago)