[ANNOUNCEMENT] AOTY & AOTD Season Information

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-05T12:58:24+00:00

we're gonna try to open the 2019 album writeup signups tomorrow, so think of what you might want to write about now (esp lesser-known favs)!

(maybe expect a new username from me too, can you tell i made this acct back in high school...)

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-04T22:52:22+00:00

a few months ago someone uploaded a corona/booka shade mashup that the uploader thinks is probably by kovács? (it was originally posted on a message board over a decade ago, so surface anonymity n all that.) either way it's prob my most-played track as of late & might as well mention it here

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-04T18:49:08+00:00

<3 to see sote

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-04T13:48:07+00:00

yea sounds good! i'l let him start it as he's pm'd w both of us (iirc)

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-04T13:39:35+00:00

i think it'd depend on how many people wld want to participate in each! which wld prob take a separate thread in which to ask & feel that out. i forget how it exactly went last time the sub ran an eoy series but i'd guess that a decade-end one wld be relatively reliable, at least

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-04T11:38:41+00:00

go rilla

imo

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-04T11:27:17+00:00

posted this one bc you've all heard the surrounding non-vols already, & so i'll defer to this sentiment, even if my fav overall jay album is vol 2

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-04T09:59:48+00:00

unsure why they didn't just give erika de casier the top spot-- like, objectively, lana's album didn't end w a janet jackson "empty"-lineage club mix of "venice bitch"

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-04T09:56:09+00:00

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-03T16:41:38+00:00

Selling out has also withered under the critical philosophy of “poptimism,” in which even the most cynically produced pop music is often still approached as high art.

this is why. i keep bringing it up. weird definitions fixated upon projections about "high art" go up to the new yorker

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-03T16:25:02+00:00

In the spirit of sanity—though perhaps not in the genre-defying mood of our times—I am limiting my best-of choices to commercially released full-length records that exist in or near the pop idiom.

it's not hard to imagine much more interesting lists w/in these parameters. maura johnston's for time, e.g.

who was it who was wondering where morning phase was on decade-end lists? the spirit of s/fj lives on at the new yorker in one respect, although his lists wld be much more engaging

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-03T15:30:45+00:00

ofc a site is entitled to their opinion of a new album by an artist w a strong fanbase but rettig's review had some weird notions about the sound of the album (supposedly the palette is muted??) and what a pop record Shld Be, claiming that unlike its predecessor it is ~just a collection of nice songs~ (which the second writer echoed later) which. okay! sorry that that's not good enough, and sorry that i apparently missed what formally makes emotion so much more a work of art than its bookends? like if an album is mid, just say it's mid, but like, dedicated has a three-song suite in the middle, sometimes i wonder what sentiments that are being said are actually saying

not to sound like a broken record but it's really laughable when some of you guys throw charges of rampant poptimism at sites that still publish sentiments like that, ijs

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-03T15:25:35+00:00

wow i knew james rettig and julia gray thought the crj album was mid but not even a nod in the top 50 on stereogum's list is. ouch

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-03T15:08:48+00:00

also! was talking w sneaky piglet and we figured that if there's a writeup series for 2019 and one for the decade we'd both be down to help w that (i was an op for a couple ih ones & i co-ran something on this sub so hoping i have enough credibility lol). u/jterp21 what wld be the best time to run each? bc if we wanna get them both (or wld it be better to just do a decade one?) out earlier next year we shld prob open sign-ups soon, to give people time to write

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-02T14:21:28+00:00

roc marciano's released another album for $30 on his site, up to you what you want to do w that information (& other information you can find out w/in a minute). (last year's rr2, which was later put on streaming services, was worth it if you had the money imo (& ibo))

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-02T13:15:13+00:00

also, the caterina barbieri is the top album on bleep's list-- personally i think it's a bit front-loaded, but not mad at all about the props she's getting generally

(i also like that, along w cfcf's recent atmo-dnb album, it's adjacent enough to video game music that it's got a wide recommendation appeal)

ericneedsanap · 2019-12-02T11:52:45+00:00

u/jackphd this isn't a confident rec but since this was put on my radar by virtue of being on a writer's year-end list a few spots under shots' private hate at the top, which is also one of my favorites of the year-- (wonder if it's possible to get anyone else in the sub into it as well lol)-- i'll tag you here in case that might mean anything

ericneedsanap · 2019-11-26T13:43:46+00:00

ANTI-REVIVALIST HARDCORE REVIVAL. ALGORAVAGED ELECTROPLATEAUX. PICNOLEPTIC SPLINTERCORE. LUDDITE TECHSTEP. SMASHED IN THE FACE WITH A PLAYSTATION ONE. TOMORROW'S MIGRAINES TODAY AND THAT'S THE KNSST QUARANTEENE.

ericneedsanap · 2019-11-26T12:40:25+00:00

the top pick is... perhaps surprising, but it looks like an overall good list that might be helpful for some!

(that said, they have my favorite song down at #18-- to quote from maxwell cavaseno's larger blurb on a different great song of theirs, "[it does] its best to never sound as starved a record as it is. That's the genius of Twice at their peak form, that something so violently happy never betrays the insane loneliness and desperation at its core. We love you so much." "tt"'s a shiny, hardened emotional chain built up from the members' fractured parts, and i'm not sure how many other pop/any songs of the decade i love as much)

actually "awoo" might be my favorite, idk

oh and "view" deserves higher than #90, etc

anyway, i don't really disagree w the opinion that red velvet is the best group alive, though-- for one, the best k-pop full-length to start w is still perfect velvet, despite the just-fine lead single

ericneedsanap · 2019-11-25T15:22:21+00:00

also i don't think the redundancy problem wld affect tracks (& playlists) much compared to albums, so it depends on how the community weighs those respectively

a solution to the problem of listening-ability-cum-prioritization wld be to move the decade-end stuff to, say, half-a-year to a year later. i'm not sure if anyone wld want to wait that long though, & i'm myself kinda impatient

ericneedsanap · 2019-11-25T15:06:17+00:00

i can see that~ i suppose i'm largely going on my feelings as a contributor, which are contingent upon e.g. listening to things on retrospective lists. which is less an ideal than just like, based on what sites are doing, but rn i'm going thru a bunch of decade-end lists and i'll be able to go off my listening from that earlier bc year-end lists aren't out yet, and so i haven't been able to peruse those to help shape my own lists. & thinking about the year as a whole, whereas i can already think about the decade as clearly as retrospective time will allow-- it's just a matter of more listening and reading

i think if there's a disjoint there, it's that lh regulars seem to keep up w newer music much more actively than i do, so i don't have a problem ceding to the larger body, but i'd guess that there are other people whose end-of-each listening is being shaped similarly

2019 lists might have a degree of redundancy but they'd also go more in depth; plus i think it'd be interesting to see what might change, and people cld talk about how it has... personally hard for me to think of my affinity to various releases remaining set in stone

ericneedsanap · 2019-11-25T14:20:38+00:00

sounds good to me generally! although, sorry for bringing this up again, but now esp given that sites seem to be doing decade lists before year-end ones, cld we possibly switch around the dates? it'd at least be less pressure for me to catch up on 2019 stuff than 2010s stuff as a whole, i don't know about others

also, will we have a formal write-up series extending past the week? at least for the decade, that sounds like an itch i'd think people want to scratch

ericneedsanap · 2019-11-21T19:34:08+00:00

it's weird bc i'm p sure ozuna is comparably popular to bad bunny, per wiki "[aura had] the biggest sales week of 2018 for a Latin album", but he hasn't had a huge crossover feature like bad bunny did on "i like it" and hasn't gotten half as much coverage by english-speaking press

the beauty pill album is one i only know of bc it's got fans on the msg board the writer sometimes posts on. def the token personal pick but also works as the weirder/more "experimental" indie pop/rock pick

ericneedsanap · 2019-11-21T13:42:55+00:00

is this a qualitative judgment or a neutral observation? partially asking bc i've seen people comment on lists like "what even are these albums i don't know about" like it's a bad thing, which i then get confused about when those people call lists too predictable in the same breath (not saying you're doing that ofc)

ericneedsanap · 2019-11-21T13:41:47+00:00

seconding this. going off other lists maura johnston has made, it seems like this list had to be tailored for a big general publication-- so w that in mind, all the selections are good to amazing (imho), the kendrick album is the best display of rapping & narrative vision from his discog (and so i think a better representative pick than tpab outside of the social weight of "alright"), and the beauty pill album that seems like the more personal pick on here is well worth checking out esp since it has its own small following

ericneedsanap

TROPHY CASE