From: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: David Bash >> Which brings me to a question, which I think I've asked on this >> list a few >> years ago: when people rank their albums, do they rank albums that >> are >> consistently good, but don't have any or many great tracks, above >> thosealbums that have a few great tracks, but several that aren't >> very good? > > I've stopped trying to adhere to the pretext or conceit that I can >objectively rate the quality of releases. Instead, my personal >rankings >are based on two things: how important the record was to me in the >year (basically, how often did I play it; was there a 2-month period >when >I left it in the CD player?); and, how likely am I to continue >listening to it >5, even 10 years from now. I don't use the latter criteria so much, because I'm primarily interested in how things hit me right *now* instead of their historical importance (mentally casting back to the stuff I was listening to obsessively in early 1995, Stereolab is the only band I can think of that's still way high on my personal playlist), but the former is my main gauge as well. The handy-dandy playcount feature on iTunes shows that my most-played 2004 tracks are almost all from Nellie McKay's GET AWAY FROM ME, which is certainly my #1 album of the year. However, the highest non-Nellie track of the year is "Me and Giuliani Down By the Schoolyard" by !!!, but I doubt that their album LOUDEN UP NOW would be likely to make it into a Top 10 list, because frankly, that's far and away the best song on the album, which is otherwise kinda dull in exactly the same way that full albums by A Certain Ratio were kinda dull -- this must just be a style of music that's best on 12" singles. S NP: "Me and Giuliani Down By the Schoolyard" -- !!! (this really *is* a fantastic single...)