It is that time of year (ok, well, really this started in November, and I've been tortured by it for nearly two months now) in which magazines and websites love to publish their top 10 lists for no apparent reason other than (possibly) ass kissery, impressing us with their obscure music knowledge, and slutty editorial practices.
And, like a sucker, I read them. And then get pissed off. And then rail against them. And then spend hours talking about how much I absolutely can't stand Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire and Yeezus. (well, that's this year anyway).
All these music critics must have much better taste than me. And all the other people I know. Because I really can't find anyone who actually likes any of the aforementioned artists/albums.
It just seems like popular opinion and those of music critics are wildly divergent, and honestly, despite the fact that "the masses" made songs like Macarena popular, I tend to land much more on the side of mainstream music.
Yes, I listen to plenty of non-mainstream stuff, and no, I'm not automatically opposed to anything that hipsters are into. I frequently get accused of being a hipster (probably am, but shh...)
However, for the most part, the songs that are going to be remembered, that make the biggest impact on us as a culture, and that fundamentally add to our day-to-day existences collectively, are the ones that get the biggest airplay. And if songs don't fit in with the zeitgeist of the moment, they're not going anywhere, no matter how much a record label pushes. And some, like Macklemore's Thrift Shop or Same Love, explode despite the lack of big budget music label support.
So, a quick comparison:
Top selling albums of 2013 (that came out in 2013, according to VH1):
- Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience, Part I
- Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP 2
- Luke Bryan - Crash My Party
Top Rated Albums of 2013 (my completely unscientific compilation from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Entertainment Weekly, the New York Times, Spin, Billboard, and other publications):
- Kanye West - Yeezus
- Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City
- Arcade Fire - Reflektor
Hmm. Not much overlap. One of the few albums that actually on both top critics lists and top sales was Drake's Nothing Was the Same. (Which, of course I haven't listened to yet. I'll get around to it eventually, when I'm in the mood.)
I feel like arts criticism and popular opinion are on fairly parallel tracks (or at least have gotten closer) for movies and television. (My husband completely disagrees. I'm sure this will show up in his comment. And yeah, I may be talking out of my ass here, as I pretty much only read movie reviews in the NYT or Entertainment Weekly).
With books, readers generally know where to go to read reviews of books that they'd be interested in. I mean, your average romance/horror/sci-fi reader is not going to be perusing the NYT Review of Books or the New Yorker, and readers of "serious literature" are not going to be poking around in The Romantic Times, Oprah's book club or Entertainment Weekly.
So, as usual, I conducted an orgy of music listening after reading the lists, catching up with things that I may have missed or overlooked over the course of the past few months. Many of the albums on the lists were boring, unlistenable, or one-note.
On the positive side of the best-of lists, I discovered that I actually LIKE Haim's album Days are Gone, which was surprising. Everything that I've read about it made it seem like exactly the type of music that I'd hate. Here's a recent big hit of theirs:
I re-listened to Yeezus, thinking I'd missed something the first time around. It still sucked. And I have been a huge champion and defender of Kanye for quite a while. While I firmly believe that every album of his up until now has advanced the art form (of music/hip-hop/whatever, take your pick), this one is just... bad. Not good bad. Bad bad. Case in point, the most unintentionally hilarious video of the year:
Hell, I even listened to Miley Cyrus' Bangerz, and discovered that it's not bad (more on that in another post).
Here's the list of the top ten movies of 2013 from Owen Glieberman, Entertainment Weekly's senior movie reviewer:
ReplyDelete12 Years a Slave
American Hustle
Before Midnight
Fruitvale Station
Gravity
Blue Jasmine
The Past
World War Z
Prisoners
Inside Llewyn Davis
Here's the list of the top ten grossing movies of 2013:
Iron Man 3
Hunger Games 2
Despicable Me 2
Monsters' University
Gravity
Fast and Furious 6
Oz the Great and Powerful
Star Trek Into Darkness
Frozen
I went with Owen Glieberman because his tastes tend to be a bit more commercial than most reviewers -- and, frankly, I didn't want to look at the list of foreign language pretentiousness that was likely to come out of the New Yorker. That having been said, Gleiberman's top ten has very little overlap with the mainstream list, Gravity being the notable exception. For that matter, it's worth noting that all but two of the top ten movies were franchise films.
SCHOOLED!
ReplyDeleteBut what's the point of year-end lists again?