"Best of" Lists - How definitive are they?
I think all of us internet music geeks like a good old "best of" list and I myself have literally hundreds, from artists' songs lists to best of genre and best of year lists. How definitive are they though? I usually know my top two or three for definite, but after that it becomes a little bit random. Even the top ones can move up or down over time as my preferences change slightly. Are we ever really certain that #27 and #28 are in the correct order or may change from day to day?
I have no intention of stopping with these probably fruitless endeavours, but I just wonder if anybody else ponders the futility of trying to rank how much they enjoy a certain piece of art compared to others. Let me know what you think.
I would suggest that my release scoring system is as comprehensive as it's possible to be. Many years ago, I created a spreadsheet that takes the duration of each track & my scores for each song & comes up with an average enjoyment score across the total duration of the release. It obviously doesn't allow for factors like programming or overly indulgent length but I try to use the individual track scores to reflect my feelings on those sort of things in order to try to cover all aspects of the release in question. This makes benchmarking one release against another quite simple as I have each one recorded to two decimal places & can use my discretion when there are any ties. This exercise is just something I do for myself as I enjoy the process. I don't honestly think anyone else would care what my 26th favourite funeral doom release is. In my experience, I've found that anything over a top ten will hold no interest to other people. I believe Ben still uses the same spreadsheet too.
I have a ranked list of nearly 15000 albums. I've been working on it ever since it was at a measly 35 that were off the top of my head, and I decided to exclude comps. That was 12 years ago, and I'm extremely happy with the top 100 I have. It really helped me shape my ideals as to what I consider great music, and it's interesting to go back and see both the typical and the unconventional choices. Example: I have a new #2 punk album that I put in my top 100 just yesterday (not counting post-punk), and I didn't really expect it: Sex Made by NoMeansNo. And keeping this list has also helped me balance out which genres I need to explore more. One great example is how there's plenty of spiritual jazz in my top 100 jazz albums and very few "bop" albums.
But it's cool to look through other lists just to get an idea of what they like. The idea of a list also helps the creator keep their opinions consistent when they aren't entirely sure of an opinion. The more you work on them, the more sure you are. But even then, you can still become certain of something new with the addition of one more album, because your standards can always change, even slightly.
I understand exactly what both of you are saying, but do you not find that your opinions and "enjoyment factor" changes over time? Just for example, I have been re-evaluating my 2016 list (from RYM) which was made at the time and found that several albums have moved significantly, both up and down. I was convinced of their positionings at the time, but time has woven it's spell and now I am equally convinced otherwise. I guess I am asking can a list ever be anything more than a snapshot in time?
I have got to ask, Daniel, are you being serious about the spreadsheet or is that a bit of sarcasm aimed at ardent listmakers like myself, because I can assure you I do nothing of the sort?
I quite enjoy looking through extensive lists, if only to get to more obscure stuff and I enjoy finding out what others may like, but very long lists (over 100 or so) can get a bit samey.
I have got to ask, Daniel, are you being serious about the spreadsheet or is that a bit of sarcasm aimed at ardent listmakers like myself, because I can assure you I do nothing of the sort?
No, I'm completely serious Sonny. Been doing it for many years now.
I am starting to think that maybe I'm not taking this whole music rating thing seriously enough.
I've been keeping track of all of my albums that I review for a number of years now as well. Annually I will make a new file to compile all the albums I review during a year and place them in order based on my personal enjoyment. It has always been for ease of access sake; I do not have the time to relentlessly revisit older records throughout the year when I'm always being bombarded with new material. That way, when the end of the year comes, I simply place those records in the top positions on my year end list. It also leaves time for slight adjustments based on the albums I did return to the most.
If you plan on doing anything greater than a specific qualification (i.e. best of decade, greatest *insert genre here* albums), I suggest keeping multiple in documents in case one gets corrupted.
I understand exactly what both of you are saying, but do you not find that your opinions and "enjoyment factor" changes over time? Just for example, I have been re-evaluating my 2016 list (from RYM) which was made at the time and found that several albums have moved significantly, both up and down. I was convinced of their positionings at the time, but time has woven it's spell and now I am equally convinced otherwise. I guess I am asking can a list ever be anything more than a snapshot in time?
There will always be occasions when our opinions change over time. I think that can be minimized a bit by giving each release the time to fully sink in & be experienced in different environments when you initially encounter it but, even then, there are times when I've found that I simply didn't fully understand a new sound or even an entire subgenre & it took me a several revisits to come around to it (see post-metal, dissonant death metal, blackgaze, etc.). I find that my opinions don't seem to change all that much on the stock genres over time though & I put that down to experience & the standard way I score each release. Ultimately, I don't think it matters all that much if your scores are just a reflection of how you felt in a certain year though. You can always change it retrospectively as I've had to do a number of times over the course of my recent reassessment of a lot of the releases I listened to back in the 1980's & 1990's.
Thanks for the replies. It looks like I'm a real amateur when it comes to rating and ranking metal releases compared to you guys!!
I've just published my best of 2024 list, with the link below for anyone interested:
Daniel's correct. I use the exact same technique. It has been extremely helpful in my latest attempt to finally put together a list of my top 50 metal albums of all time, as it allows me to rank them quite precisely. As Daniel mentioned, things can be massaged when I'm not entirely comfortable where a release sits, but for the most part it works pretty well. I still have another 250 releases to thoroughly listen to and rank before I'll have covered all the releases I know will be around the 4.5 to 5.0 rating, along with a stack of releases I've never heard before but that I feel have a possibility to achieving such a rating.
I plan to unveil my top 50 at some point, so won't display any of that just yet (no spoilers!), but to give you an idea, here are the releases currently ranking 100 to 120 on my list. It's all completely subjective of course.
i didn't realise that so many people did things this way and I am not knocking it at all - whatever works for the individual is cool with me, but I am a bit old-fashioned I suppose and a definitive methodology is a bit too "scientific" for me. I am much more of a "feelings" person when it comes to music and it is often the intangibles that make or break an album or piece of music for me. This is very much tied into my own mental or emotional state at the time, which is obviously subject to fluctuation (wildly varying fluctuations if I am being honest). As a result, I find it much harder to definitively state that a certain album is objectively "X" and set my opinion in stone, other than for a few exceptionally meaningful (for me) albums such as Watching from A Distance, Killers, Stained Class, A Pyrrhic Existence, Mental Funeral, Bomber or Transilvanian Hunger.
In fact, now that I am thinking a bit more deeply, I wonder if my list-making obsession is due to a deep-seated need to try to order my often exceedingly disordered mind (psychology graduates only need reply!)
This is a fascinating conversation though.
I have a spreadsheet that is far less detailed than Ben/Daniel's version - mine is more of a catalogue as opposed to a ratings calculator though. Whilst the above method looks great, I don't have the time nor the patience to undertake such tasks so all credit to the boys for following this.
My lists would change so often that I would never keep up with them if I am honest. Just like those above, I have mainstays (first two Morbid Angel and Obituary records will always be top four I suspect) and that is largely down to me experiencing them under circumstances I can never recreate - in the main being young and capturing music that spoke to me so well in that youthful state of mind. As a result, most of what has come after the age of 21 that has made any list is virtually guaranteed to be interchangeable unless I heard it at a particularly difficult point in my life which added meaningfulness.
In short, lists are for nerds and catalogues rule.
Don't fuck with the nerds. They rule the world now!!
One characteristic of the Excel sheet Ben & I use is the difficulty in achieving a genuine five-star release & you can see that reflected in my Metal Academy scoring. You see, for a release to meet the criteria for the full five stars it has to average at least 4.75/5 across its entire run time. When you're looking at each track in such detail you'll soon find that even some of your all-time favourites don't meet that criteria. I like that attribute personally as I like to keep my five-star ratings for a select few. Others may not though so there's no right or wrong way to score your art. Sonny's & Vinny's way is no better or worse than my own as far as I'm concerned & I can completely understand if people think that my methodology is overly analytic. It does, however, ensure that I'm actively listening at all times as you need to be when you're scoring each individual track against a scoring matrix. It also makes the creation of lists very simple as it just requires a bit of intelligent filtering.
Daniel's correct. I use the exact same technique. It has been extremely helpful in my latest attempt to finally put together a list of my top 50 metal albums of all time, as it allows me to rank them quite precisely. As Daniel mentioned, things can be massaged when I'm not entirely comfortable where a release sits, but for the most part it works pretty well. I still have another 250 releases to thoroughly listen to and rank before I'll have covered all the releases I know will be around the 4.5 to 5.0 rating, along with a stack of releases I've never heard before but that I feel have a possibility to achieving such a rating.
I plan to unveil my top 50 at some point, so won't display any of that just yet (no spoilers!), but to give you an idea, here are the releases currently ranking 100 to 120 on my list. It's all completely subjective of course.
And to think I was afraid of rating something 99.4. I might actually start using more in-depth decimals. Or is that an average track rating?
It's an average track rating Rexorcist (that also takes into account the length of each track).
As for Daniel's comment that it's extremely difficult for a release to achieve a 5 star rating using our technique, that's very true. It's for this reason that I tinkered with mine a bit. For me, any release that scores a 4.60 or higher gets 5 stars (I've also made it easier to get 3 stars and less). When I wasn't doing that, I found that about 90% of releases I was checking out were getting between 3.5 and 4.5, which wasn't a particularly good use of the 5 star rating spectrum. I now have a wider spectrum of ratings, but it results in Daniel and I not agreeing on what albums are rated, despite us pretty much giving them the same decimal score (I think I rated one of Sepultura's releases 5 stars and he gave it 4.5, but when we were comparing notes we found we had exactly the same track ratings).
It's an average track rating Rexorcist (that also takes into account the length of each track).
As for Daniel's comment that it's extremely difficult for a release to achieve a 5 star rating using our technique, that's very true. It's for this reason that I tinkered with mine a bit. For me, any release that scores a 4.60 or higher gets 5 stars (I've also made it easier to get 3 stars and less). When I wasn't doing that, I found that about 90% of releases I was checking out were getting between 3.5 and 4.5, which wasn't a particularly good use of the 5 star rating spectrum. I now have a wider spectrum of ratings, but it results in Daniel and I not agreeing on what albums are rated, despite us pretty much giving them the same decimal score (I think I rated one of Sepultura's releases 5 stars and he gave it 4.5, but when we were comparing notes we found we had exactly the same track ratings).
I likely don't have to tell anyone who's been in this field longer than I have this, but looking at the album as a whole is just as important as the track-by-track basis, and in my opinion can make up for less-than-ideal averages. For example, I'm willing to forgive a 7/10 track on a collective of nine songs, ex. The Lady in My Life. The album is only 40 minutes, anyway. A different example would be an hour-long album like Hysteria, where Love and Affection is just a nerfed version of previous tracks, while The Lady in My Life has its own identity which is similar to Human Nature at the very most. So that's one song I won't forgive. It could've been left off easily, thus Thriller gets a 100 and Hysteria gets a 98.
Now I won't forgive a song I don't like. No 100's there. The first example that comes to my mind is Rape Me on in utero. It's just a recycled and more noisy Smells Like Teen Spirit with overly repetitive lyrics that are somehow praised by "What If" haters. If not for that one song, in utero would be my IDEAL grunge album. It's actually extraordinarily rare that I get an album with more than six tracks and all of them are five-stars. The idea of raw perfection throughout is nearly impossible in that vein. Closest I can think of is Paranoid, which has a 95/100 minimum for all eight in my opinion.
This is where I take into account other things. The flow of the album is extremely important in that vein and can potentially forgive any imprefect yet enjoyable song, and I'll allow for some experimentation as long as the emotional boundaries feel consistent, such as the occasional dark humor on Bloody Kisses or the point of variety made early on in Planet Hemp's A invasão do sagaz homem fumaça. Sticking within the same genre is a good idea on paper, but unless you can work within all the constraints of that one genre like Slayer showed in South of Heaven, chances are you could end up overlong or monotonous very quickly, like any Trapt album.
One example of flow being totally fucked with is an album everyone loves: In the Court of the Crimson King. 21st Century Schizoid Man is a flawless, hyperactive, jazz-rock gemstone, and I'll forgive the immediately shift into folksy rock on the second song. I encourage that. But the other three songs follow in the vein of the second and not in the first, making the best song feel out of place. This is why I favor Red: none of it feels out of place.
Of course, taking into account the length isn't something I ever thought of. I typically only do that when it comes to determining genres in the event that many songs of a genre are too short or long.
I take all of those things into account in my individual track ratings Rex. That's one of the reasons that I'm so meticulous about listening to releases from start to finish & in their entirety as a complete piece of art.
Another place where I find that the methodology Ben & I use isn't perfect is when you've got a lengthy single-track release like Meshuggah's "I" E.P. for example. You end up with a flat score for the release that doesn't differentiate it with smaller percentages. It's not a major problem but it's worth noting nonetheless. It's better when those lengthy tracks are broken up so that you can score the individual parts (see the Spotify version of Edge of Sanity's "Crimson" for example).
I take all of those things into account in my individual track ratings Rex. That's one of the reasons that I'm so meticulous about listening to releases from start to finish & in their entirety as a complete piece of art.
Another place where I find that the methodology Ben & I use isn't perfect is when you've got a lengthy single-track release like Meshuggah's "I" E.P. for example. You end up with a flat score for the release that doesn't differentiate it with smaller percentages. It's not a major problem but it's worth noting nonetheless. It's better when those lengthy tracks are broken up so that you can score the individual parts (see the Spotify version of Edge of Sanity's "Crimson" for example).
Something that long is typically a chance to see how long the thrill of the ride lasts, to put it basically. It's kind of like the one-hour piece I just heard by Pat Metheny, for whatever reason separated into four tracks: The Way Up. It's really one long piece dividing the audio clip, but for a hour of Metheny-style jazz fusion it was absolutely wonderful. The thing is, if it's one piece, I'd rather treat it as one piece instead of judging individual parts, so if the ride keep all its thrills throughout, even if a couple parts are a little weaker, it's still an incredible achievement because it's so rare to get something like that right. In the end, it still gets a numerical score to compare with all the others, so even though we must remain analytical, the end result will be the same.
Now that I have a spreadsheet with many hundreds of releases ranked by rating, when I'm attempting to rate a one track release (such as Meshuggah's I which I just did recently), I simply look at the list and assess where I feel it should sit. Would I be comfortable with it sitting higher than Bolt Thrower's For Victory, Slayer's Hell Awaits and Lykathea Aflame's Elvenefris, but lower than My Dying Bride's The Angel and the Dark River, Megadeth's Peace Sells and Kreator's Pleasure to Kill? Yes, I do feel comfortable with that, so I give it a rating that falls between.
It's not a perfect process, but then there really isn't one. It's the one that I enjoy using and feel happiest with the results.
It's not a perfect process, but then there really isn't one. It's the one that I enjoy using and feel happiest with the results.
That's the only thing that matters.