Monday, August 2, 2010

Best albums of the year....what??

I started this blog years ago as a reaction to everyone's "Best of the year" lists. I couldn't understand how the major music sites and publications, like Pitchfork and Filter, were way off on their choices for the year. I understand that music is not a perfect science, everyone has different tastes that are dictated by the total exposure of music and possibly the influence of people around them. I respect other peoples tastes and I try very hard to listen to mostly everything I can get my hands on. There are definitely certain types of music that I avoid because I just don't like them, hey you can't like them all. 

We live in a time that I think albums are irrelevant. With many services like iTunes and Amazon, buying full albums doesn't make sense when you can buy the best songs. I remember in my youth carrying a boatload (seriously a small luggage or lunchbox) of cassettes to listen to and wasting my batteries fast forwarding past those duds on the album. I can't remember when I didn't have some sort of music player in my pocket from a Sony Walkman wm-102, Minidisc, pre-ipod mp3 players to my current 160gig ipod. The idea of buying the best songs off a record was not possible with records and cassettes unless the song was a released single, but if you wanted other songs, you had to buy the entire album. Bands fill up these albums with filler with song titles like "Intro, reprise, or instrumental tracks." Anyway, we don't have to waste our money with this rubbish if we get what we want, the best tracks off the album.

I listened to the albums on the Amazon and NPR "Lists so far of 2010" and the 98% of those albums don't have more than 2 or 3 good songs on them, if any. How can you recommend an album that doesn't have more than 50% of good songs on them? Instead of telling you about good songs, I try and create a podcast so you can listen to them. I do apologize for not releasing a new music podcast in the last 7 months. I plan to be more vigilant in my endeavor and share my favorite songs and albums of the year.