I find it impossible, so many years on, to not keep giving my attention on a regular basis to a writer who throws off - probably the way he throws off his used cigarettes - lines like this:
he’s mistra know it all - stevie wonder
do it again - steely dan
pauline hawkins - drive-by truckers
i know it’s wrong - hurray for the riff raff
brass buttons - gran parsons
little mascara - the replacements
history eraser - courtney barnett
sheela-na-gig - pj harvey
ya hey - vampire weekend
dreamer - supertramp
turn it around - lucius
stoned and starving - parquet courts
the way you move - outkast
feel good inc - gorillaz
Yes, I know, I’m tardy for the party. Gonna be honest though, I’m not a fan of reducing all the amazing music I’ve listened to over the course of a year to a top what-have-you list.
Sure, it’s something I’ve always done for my jobs over the years, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but it’s always felt like I’m totally excluding a whole slew of other worthy records – and also failing to account for music from a given year year that I don’t arrive at until much later, for one reason or another – and I’d wager most fellow music obsessives are in the same school of thought as me.
Definitive takes are a lie. Hierarchy is a tool of the patriarchy, and an increasingly irrelevant one. There’s got to be another way. So this year, for my own year-in-the-rearview recap, I gathered together a list of 100 unranked albums, presented alphabetically. Gonna be honest again – it was ridiculously difficult getting the list down to 100, even, so there’s about 20 honorable mentions at the bottom, and if I didn’t tell myself I had to stop at some point, there’d be who knows how many more.
I encourage you to listen, reflect, broaden your sights (uh, sounds?) and go into 2017 wanting to absorb as much new music as possible. Especially considering it’s a year that’s poised to be rockier than the one we’re kicking out the door, it’s important that we listen to what people - especially voices from marginalized communities - are saying to us through art.