"THE BEST" OF 2011

It’s that time of year again, when music nerds huddle in their bunkers to determine what records they deem worthy of being named “The Best Of” the year. This is done in earnest as if such designations matter and as if these lists were holy writ carved in stone, simply because they were handed down by vastly superior beings; i.e. music critics. I used to live for this time of the year, because a) I’m a music nerd, and b) I’m a male, which means I am predisposed to categorize and rank everything in my world.

As I age, though, I see the absolute arbitrariness and meaninglessness of these lists. To begin with, everyone has different tastes in music, and even if we can agree on a few particular records, it isn’t often that we will agree on all, or even the majority of albums that deserve to be recognized as superior in a given twelve month period. So my list is going to be different from yours, and hence what follows is completely arbitrarily based on my tastes and opinions. Of course, this means your list is just as arbitrary as mine, so at least we share that in common.

Then there is the issue of the sheer number of releases in a given year. It is almost impossible to estimate how many releases there are due to the advent of the self-released record, made easier to accomplish thanks to the internet, but most figures fall somewhere between 75,000 to 100,000. That’s a hell of a lot of records to listen to. I averaged listening to approximately five to six new albums each week throughout 2011. That means at most I listened to 312 new records this year, which is daunting enough. It also means that I have not listened to at least 74,688 records that were released this year, and who is to say that one of those records isn’t actually the best album of 2011?

Finally, with the exception of a small handful of records (very small, in fact, as it accounts for only .006% of that 75,000), there were a lot of records that I loved this year, but can’t really say are better in any way than a lot of the other records I loved this year. On any given day I could love, say, Yob better than Tyler, The Creator, but on the next day the opposite may be true. So, depending on my mood, Yob could be the sixth best record of 2011, or Tyler, The Creator could. In the end it becomes abundantly clear that ranking records, say from 1 to 50, is completely meaningless because over time one’s appreciation for a particular record will change and what was once number 49 is now number 9.

Having said that, I do think there were a few albums that were undeniably the best of the best, and I have decided to rank the five albums that I found to be deserving of extra special recognition (although, in truth, isn’t any record that makes the cut on a “best of” list deserving of extra special recognition?). So this year I have picked my Top 30 records, listing the top five numerically and listing the rest without numbers, because, as already discussed, each of these next 25 could be my number 6 on any given day. Over the next few days I’ll roll out that list, as well as my honorable mentions for 2011 (I initially had a list of my 55 top records, but realized it would take forever for me to do that many records), and the top 5 eps of the year, as well as my dubious award for the worst of 2011. My hope is that at least this might turn you onto something you haven’t listened to before, as that is all these lists are really good for in the end.