Saturday, January 22, 2011

If every music publication decided on one top ten list, this is the monster they would create

Ultimate Top Ten

So, I'm a bit of a dork. After making and posting my own top 10 of 2010 list, I started looking through the year-end lists of major music publications. Seeing some of the similarities and differences between the lists, I decided to compile them all into a general top 10 of 2010 list.

This ultimate lists combines the following publications:
Rolling Stone
Spin
NME
Q
Huffington Post
Paste
Stereogum
Drowned in Sound
Billboard
Amazon
Spinner
Time
Pitchfork
Under the Radar
Hype Machine
NPR
Grammy nominations

My methodology
The first thing I did was look at just each list's top 10 choices and assign points to each position. So, an album at the number 1 spot received 10 points, number 2 received 9 points and so on down the line.

I then looked at albums ranked below number 10 on each list (if the list went beyond 10 albums) and assigned points based on grouping. Top 20 albums got 0.5 points, top 30 got 0.4 points, top 40 got 0.3 points, top 50 got 0.2 points and anything lower got 0.1 points.

Next, I considered Grammy nominations (only including nominees that were placed somewhere on a year end list - too many sub-categories to consider). For major awards, such as Record, Song and Album of the Year, I assigned 9-10 points to each entry. Bets New Artist received 8 points. Vocal performance categories (all genres) got 5 points. Finally, Best Album in any particular genre got 7 points.

One list, NPR's, did not rank the albums, so any album on their list received three points.

I added up all of the points, and the 10 albums with the most points were the general top 10 of 2010! If you would like see my Excel worksheet, I have uploaded it here.

And now, without further ado, my Ultimate Top 10 Albums of 2010!

10. Vampire Weekend - Contra 43.6 points (on 7 top 10's)
9. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest 44.1 points (on 6 top 10's)
8. Lady Antebellum - Need You Now 45.1 points (no top 10 placements, 6 Grammy nominations)
7. The National - High Violet 53.8 points (on 6 top 10's)
6. The Black Keys - Brothers 55.6 points (on 5 top 10's)
5. Eminem - Recovery 59 points (on 2 top 10's, 8 Grammy nominations)
4. Beach House - Teen Dream 62.4 points (on 9 top 10's, ranked #1 in Spinner)
3. LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening 69.4 points (on 11 top 10's, ranked #1 in Paste)
2. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 107.8 points (on 11 top 10's, ranked #1 in Pitchfork, Time, Billboard, Stereogum, Spin, Rolling Stone)
1. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs (on 13 top 10's, ranked #1 in Hype Machine, Huffington Post, Q)

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

No comments:

Post a Comment