B&C's 2016 Albums of the Year AKA End of Times Soundtrack

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gump

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Alright, folks. Peefer hasn't made his appearance yet, so let's get this started in the meantime. You know the drill:

Mofo rules
- You list your top 15 albums.
- You distribute 100 points up among those 15 albums however you see fit. You cannot exceed 15 points for a single album, however.
- A top thirty will be formed, and if necessary, a minimum number of votes will be required for an album to make the top thirty.
- In case of a tie, the album with the larger number of votes gets precedence. If they are tied in both points and votes, we move to a shootout.

Also looking forward to seeing your honorable mentions, songs of the year, disappointments, best songs featuring a harmonica, or other weird lists you can come up with.

Unfortunately, Carrie & Lowell is a 2015 release, otherwise this would be the leading candidate for most topical song of the year.

 
:applaud: I had my list ready to go, but decided to revise it. Hope to have it ready before Christmas.
 
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I still need to hear a bunch of stuff before finalizing my list. But just thinking about it, I feel 2016 has been quite remarkable for music.

Just off the top of my head, at least 10 albums are worthy of a #1 spot: Black Star, Blonde, Untitled Unmastered, Lemonade, The Life of Pablo, A Seat at the Table, My Woman, Malibu, Coloring Book, A Moon Shaped Pool. And there is a ton of great albums in the layer just below those.
 
Do you have to list 15 albums? I don't think I listened to 15 new albums this year.
 
I think we had that discussion in the past and the rule was that you get fewer points if you have fewer albums (otherwise they all get high scores relative to other people). So in practice:

5 albums: 33 points
10 albums: 66 points
15 albums: 100 points

The other rules are the same.

I hope I'm not making up a new rule, but this looks reasonable to me.
 
I think we had that discussion in the past and the rule was that you get fewer points if you have fewer albums (otherwise they all get high scores relative to other people). So in practice:

5 albums: 33 points
10 albums: 66 points
15 albums: 100 points

The other rules are the same.

I hope I'm not making up a new rule, but this looks reasonable to me.


Thank you for this!


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B&C's 2016 Albums of the Year AKA End of Times Soundtrack

#12-15 are up in the air for me right now. The rest is solid.

I'll do another 15 as honorable mentions and post tracks/descriptions for them.
 
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This is actually going to be really hard. 2016 did not produce as many exceptional albums as 2015, but it has produced a crop of very good albums that are of very similar quality to each other.

U2 didn't put out an album this year so why are we doing this?

Surely one of them had a guest spot somewhere that can be #1. :happy:
 
Wow, this new Tribe Called Quest album is really amazing. I will have to find a spot for it.


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:up: It'll be in the upper-middle portion of my list, I think. It's incredible but there's so much music from this year that I'm already attached to.
 
B&C's 2016 Albums of the Year AKA End of Times Soundtrack

U2 is a great band and I love their music dearly, but being a U2 fan fucking sucks.
 
I've got a list of 20 albums that would have made my top 15 in most other years.
At least 15 of them would have easily made it into my top 10 most other years too.
 
I'm happy that Solange was Pitchfork's AOTY, but it also underscores how their grading system is broken. 7 albums in the top 2-10 received higher grades than A Seat at the Table (also, 6 had higher grades than Lemonade, at #3).
 
I'm happy that Solange was Pitchfork's AOTY, but it also underscores how their grading system is broken. 7 albums in the top 2-10 received higher grades than A Seat at the Table (also, 6 had higher grades than Lemonade, at #3).

It's because they are grading the artist's life story over the album itself. The Kanye entry is especially telling: they justify the placement of the album by his hospitalization six or eight months later.
 
It's because they are grading the artist's life story over the album itself. The Kanye entry is especially telling: they justify the placement of the album by his hospitalization six or eight months later.

See, I can get behind using some context to choose an AOTY. Solange's (and A Trible Called Quest's) music really ressonates post-election, and it makes me value those albums a bit more than I would otherwise. But I think where they get in trouble is that they use way too much context to evaluate an album on its own, while pretending to be precise literally to the decimal level.
 
Pitchfork should just ditch number ratings all together. Fucking stupid.

Ha, indeed. It seems like the top five has been dominated by hip-hop and R&B these past few years.

That's where the quality is these days. It'll shift around again at some point.
 
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