I wish, if only for my own personal enjoyment, that publications would just publish individual writer/editor lists, or stop pretending that 50-album lists voted on by more than 3-4 people embody “the tastes of the staff” instead of the triumph of competent mass appeal that larger voting pools generally reflect. Staff taste is certainly a very real thing — it’s why Cokemachineglow’s list is so idiosyncratic every year, or why Fact Magazine or Paste appear to have actual aesthetic preferences (the only worthwhile reason to read lists in 2011 if you’re even moderately up to speed on new music) — but unless you have a very tight-knit crew, you’ve set yourself up for a list of compromise and arbitrary rankings.
It would be more honest, and much more fun, if publications let all their writers name their No. 1 (or their top five, even) and write about them. Anyone who voted for Kaputt this year likely placed it very highly, but I’m sure it got fewer votes at many publications than, say, Washed Out or Bon Iver — so the album everyone kinda liked ends up winning the day over the one a few people loved. Is this how we want to remember the year?
This, of course, involves demolishing the classic ranking system and tossing out a lot of traffic along with it. Blogger lists were supposed to solve this problem but surprise, most of us, being pageview-hungry sheep, like all the same stuff anyway.
