Music: Best Albums of the Year Series: 2016-Now

[Shareefruck]

A little bummed Weezer won 1994. I feel it's revisionist history. They were a cute band with those "nerdy guys" who put out a catchy record back then but their legend really wasn't a thing until they put out that third album and were playing arenas.

Last five years there's been a lot of great underground metal/noise/sludge/weirdness.

Agreed it was the drizzling shits.

That Van Weezer single last year was so bad I almost punched my monitor.

Still, what their third album did should have no impact on their first album in 1994. There were much bigger and better albums then, they didn't play Woodstock 94, they weren't on any big national tours.

They were some nerdy band who used the Forest Gump CGI Technology and made a clever and catchy video with Buddy Holly. They were sort of underdogs because there was a lot of testosterone in that era of music.

Pinkerton didn't even do that well when it came out. It wasn't certified platinum until 2016. It had a good word of mouth but didn't start to get noticed until 1999-2000.

If Weezer was such a big band, there would have been more buzz for The Rentals earlier in 1996 who opened for Silverchair and RHCP.

All of these people who say they love Weezer etc. most of them were not listening to the Blue album in 1994 or Pinkerton in late 1996.

It's total revisionist history that the album is the best or had the biggest impact in 1994.

No one had a Weezer poster in their rooms but they sure as hell had a Kurt Cobain poster. STP, Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, Mariah Carey, Snoop Dogg, Boyz II Men, even The Lion King all had more of an impact that year.

Did people who vote for Weezer did it because it made a lot of noise in 94? I honestly can't follow the point you're trying to make.

Exactly. Whether or not something made a lot of noise at the time seems completely irrelevant to me. If it didn't make a lot of noise but should have, it should be elevated on those grounds alone. That's not revisionism, that's correction and learning from historical/cultural oversights, which is what we ought to do.

 

[Roo Returns]

Did people who vote for Weezer did it because it made a lot of noise in 94? I honestly can't follow the point you're trying to make.

Best album of 1994. It depends if it's best or favorite. My favorite album in a year is not the consensus for best. If that's how people vote in these polls fine, but I read it as best not favorite.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Best album of 1994. It depends if it's best or favorite. My favorite album in a year is not the consensus for best. If that's how people vote in these polls fine, but I read it as best not favorite.

Select your 10 (or fewer) favourite albums. But either way, that you vote for what you think are the best albums, or your favorites, it's in neither case necessarily the ones that made the most noise, nor the ones that would have been your choice in '94.

And if you think there should be an objective consensus on these polls.... getoutofhere... I think the Weever album sucks, that's it's pretentious (in the sense that it pretends to have a legitimate garage sound), and I'm pretty sure I think whatever album you think should be in its place sucks too... but I also think (and know) that what I think doesn't mean much.

 

[Roo Returns]

Select your 10 (or fewer) favourite albums. But either way, that you vote for what you think are the best albums, or your favorites, it's in neither case necessarily the ones that made the most noise, nor the ones that would have been your choice in '94.

And if you think there should be an objective consensus on these polls.... getoutofhere... I think the Weever album sucks, that's it's pretentious (in the sense that it pretends to have a legitimate garage sound), and I'm pretty sure I think whatever album you think should be in its place sucks too... but I also think (and know) that what I think doesn't mean much.

Cool.

I don't think it sucks at all. I just don't want the aliens receiving Weezer's first album as the greatest accomplishment musically of a very important year but that's just me.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Cool.

I don't think it sucks at all. I just don't want the aliens receiving Weezer's first album as the greatest accomplishment musically of a very important year but that's just me.

No worry, aliens know Frusciante had the best album in '94.

 

[Roo Returns]

No worry, aliens know Frusciante had the best album in '94.

LOL I love RHCP and Niandra Lades is awesome, but objectively speaking....it's not the best album of 1994.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

LOL I love RHCP and Niandra Lades is awesome, but objectively speaking....it's not the best album of 1994.

Weird because "objectively speaking" I'm pretty sure it is. I guess you objectively can't see what's going on here.

 

[Ceremony]

With that, we've covered each of the individual years from 1965-now, over the course of roughly 5 months. I'm proud and pleased of all of y'all for coming together on this, and making it a fun exercise. Special shoutouts to those of you who voted, commented, and interacted in every single thread - @Pranzo Oltranzista @plank @belair @WetcoastOrca @Mescaleroman @kook10 @Cas @Ouroboros @jamppardi @frisco @kihei @Ceremony @WeThreeKings @BigBadBruins7708 @Teemu @beowulf @ItsFineImFine @Mikeaveli and countless others - y'all know who you are. Cheers. Enjoy the last few threads.

I'd just like to say that while I voted in several threads, I definitely didn't vote in all of them

Good polls, and I hope someone took my 2008 advice.

 

[Shareefruck]

Best album of 1994. It depends if it's best or favorite. My favorite album in a year is not the consensus for best. If that's how people vote in these polls fine, but I read it as best not favorite.

"Consensus for best" is a meaningless idea. That's just an appeal to popularity, convention, and authority, not objectivity.

Whatever the objective truth is in a vacuum, if such a thing exists (I actually think it does), it sure as hell isn't likely to be whatever everyone comes closest to agreeing on.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

"Consensus for best" is a meaningless idea. That's just an appeal to popularity, convention, and authority, not objectivity.

Whatever the objective truth is in a vacuum, if such a thing exists (I actually think it does), it sure as hell isn't likely to be whatever everyone comes closest to agreeing on.

If there was such a thing as objective truth regarging art appreciation, an agreement would be conceivable. It is not. My choices are more often than not (probably too much) influenced by (my understanding) of HR Jauss's aesthetic of reception. From that angle, I can say that my #1s are objectively more interesting and better than the albums winning these polls. Still, I don't think anybody but Jauss and maybe his mother would agree with me - and that's ok.

Following your hot take regarding The Beatles, I re-listened to Confield. I appreciate your passion and think the importance you give to your own appreciation of music is kind of cute, and Autechre should be up my alley, but it just doesn't work for me, a "curiosity" at best. You can force all the objectivity you want into your opinion, maybe your argumentation would make me appreciate it on an intellectual level, it still won't have much impact on me and won't come close to my top-10 albums from 2001... Not saying you're wrong, just that it's not objective.

 

[Shareefruck]

If there was such a thing as objective truth regarging art appreciation, an agreement would be conceivable. It is not. My choices are more often than not (probably too much) influenced by (my understanding) of HR Jauss's aesthetic of reception. From that angle, I can say that my #1s are objectively more interesting and better than the albums winning these polls. Still, I don't think anybody but Jauss and maybe his mother would agree with me - and that's ok.

Following your hot take regarding The Beatles, I re-listened to Confield. I appreciate your passion and think the importance you give to your own appreciation of music is kind of cute, and Autechre should be up my alley, but it just doesn't work for me, a "curiosity" at best. You can force all the objectivity you want into your opinion, maybe your argumentation would make me appreciate it on an intellectual level, it still won't have much impact on me and won't come close to my top-10 albums from 2001... Not saying you're wrong, just that it's not objective.

Wait, hold on, that's unfair and completely misframes my position-- I never said anything about my opinion being objective (it's clearly not), and the quote you're posting kind of argues against that premise just like you are.

By "(I think it actually does)", I was just clarifying that I wasn't giving a "everyone has their own tastes, nobody's right or wrong" response. I just mean that I suspect that if we could read each other's minds and had an infinite amount of time to process infinite new information/perspectives, everyone's opinions would probably come alot closer to aligning (whatever determines our unique biases are probably just walls that could conceivably be torn down for the better, IMO), and that could feasibly be considered the "objective best" (so in a sense, SOMEBODY in the universe could be objectively right about SOME things)-- that designation probably exists in the universe, in my view, but it certainly isn't knowable or something that I'd ever be arrogant enough to think actually aligns with my own current opinion. I don't know if I'm right about Autechre or if you are, but I do think an answer to that question exists and one of us is probably objectively closer than the other about that. THAT's my take, not what you're representing here.

To me, subjective opinions are just our best supremely flawed guess at that objective value (and that's all that that Beatles thing was about-- and I don't even think they're the or best or anything, I was just using them as an arbitrary ballpark measuring stick that I find useful). I do think our subjective opinions should be our temporary working assumptions for what we think is "best" or "great", as far as we can possibly know (rather than intellectual/technical appreciation, which I couldn't care less about and that I've always disagreed with everyone misconstruing as "best"), but that's very very different from "forcing objectivity into my opinion".

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Wait, hold on, that's unfair and completely misframes my position-- I never said anything about my opinion being objective (it's clearly not), and the quote you're posting kind of argues against that premise just like you are.

By "(I think it actually does)", I was just clarifying that I wasn't giving a "everyone has their own tastes, nobody's right or wrong" response. I just mean that I suspect that if we could read each other's minds and had an infinite amount of time to process infinite new information/perspectives, everyone's opinions would probably come alot closer to aligning (whatever determines our unique biases are probably just walls that could conceivably be torn down for the better, IMO), and that could feasibly be considered the "objective best" (so in a sense, SOMEBODY in the universe could be objectively right about SOME things)-- that designation probably exists in the universe, in my view, but it certainly isn't knowable or something that I'd ever be arrogant enough to think actually aligns with my own current opinion. I don't know if I'm right about Autechre or if you are, but I do think an answer to that question exists and one of us is probably objectively closer than the other about that. THAT's my take, not what you're representing here.

To me, subjective opinions are just our best supremely flawed guess at that objective value (and that's all that that Beatles thing was about-- and I don't even think they're the or best or anything, I was just using them as an arbitrary ballpark measuring stick that I find useful). I do think our subjective opinions should be our temporary working assumptions for what we think is "best" or "great", as far as we can possibly know (rather than intellectual appreciation, which I couldn't care less about and that I've always disagreed with everyone labelling as "best"), but that's very very different from "forcing objectivity into my opinion".

My bad, I thought you were implying that some were more right than others - which I don't even think is fundamentaly wrong if you take into account previous or overall knowledge/understanding of the art(s). I just think that even then, it remains subjective.

 

[Shareefruck]

My bad, I thought you were implying that some were more right than others - which I don't even think is fundamentaly wrong if you take into account previous or overall knowledge/understanding of the art(s). I just think that even then, it remains subjective.

I kind of see it as if we were all looking at an object, obscured by all kinds of optical illusions that we can examine, TRY to account for, and make guesses about where its location is. That object exists somewhere definitively, everyone's standing in a different location looking at it (or at least a reflection of it), and everyone has their own guess about what its coordinates are, and some guesses are better than others depending on their very limited understanding of whatever optical illusions might be at play, so there's SOME partial truth to the information that we all have. But nobody can know the actual coordinates for sure, and at the same time, I don't think people who just explain/dismiss that as "oh, it just depends on your perspective, the object has no concrete position" are correct either.

Edit: "I thought you were implying that some were more right than others"-- I kind of am saying that. I just don't believe we can have any idea about who is more right than who.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

I kind of see it as if we were all looking at an object, obscured by all kinds of optical illusions that we can examine, TRY to account for, and make guesses about where its location is. That object exists somewhere definitively, everyone's standing in a different location looking at it (or at least a reflection of it), and everyone has their own guess about what its coordinates are, and some guesses are better than others depending on their very limited understanding of whatever optical illusions might be at play, so there's SOME partial truth to the information that we all have. But nobody can know the actual coordinates for sure, and at the same time, I don't think people who just explain/dismiss that as "oh, it just depends on your perspective, the object has no concrete position" are correct either.

The analogy don't work for me because you take for granted that there's one existing location to your object. For this to apply, we should first agree on what "best" means, which in arts won't ever make consensus either.

 

[Shareefruck]

The analogy don't work for me because you take for granted that there's one existing location to your object. For this to apply, we should first agree on what "best" means, which in arts won't ever make consensus either.

I think it would have to at least be something like "appreciated value", as vague as that is, no? While that may be ambiguous/similarly unrealistic for any one person to know or for everyone to reach a consensus on (again, I don't see why existing consensus is necessary for the premise to make sense), I would think the same analogy can be applied to that as well. Like if you value something that I don't, for completely different reasons, I do think that one of us is probably undervaluing it and the other is overvaluing it and that with more shared perspective and information, we would come closer and closer to aligning on just what the actual appropriate value is (and perhaps what combination of factors actually does determine what constitutes value).

Afterall, if you're really close friends with someone to the point that you both understand each other intimately, you'll learn to appreciate what they appreciate more than if you didn't have that exposure and understanding, right? Taking that further, if you both had direct access to all of each others thoughts and experiences, it would essentially be indistinguishable from your own memories and you would both end up with more or less the same opinions, no? Taking that even further, if you did that with every human in existence, wouldn't you end up with some opinion that would pretty much represent its true objective value? Our subjective differences seem to basically just be the degree that we're ignorant of different circumstances and how we can potentially think and feel, no? The fact that we can't convince each other of this verbally with words and reasoning alone (in any manner that's more meaningful than just intellectually) doesn't mean that such a hypothetical universal value doesn't exist or couldn't be definitive.

That's what would make the most sense to me, anyways. Regardless, you don't have to agree with that-- the important thing that I wanted to communicate is that I don't claim that my tastes are objective.

 

[Cas]

With that, we've covered each of the individual years from 1965-now, over the course of roughly 5 months. I'm proud and pleased of all of y'all for coming together on this, and making it a fun exercise. Special shoutouts to those of you who voted, commented, and interacted in every single thread - @Pranzo Oltranzista @plank @belair @WetcoastOrca @Mescaleroman @kook10 @Cas @Ouroboros @jamppardi @frisco @kihei @Ceremony @WeThreeKings @BigBadBruins7708 @Teemu @beowulf @ItsFineImFine @Mikeaveli and countless others - y'all know who you are. Cheers. Enjoy the last few threads.

I just want to thank @Saturated Fats for this series. I've listened to a lot of things I haven't listened to in a while.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

In a thread about best album since 2016, we're discussing music from 1994. If this isn't typical of HF demographics.

I'll add one more to the list from my post in the first page. The Great Dismal by American shoegaze band Nothing. Perfect consistency, not the most standout track sort of album but an enjoyable listen and they don't drag out songs like certain other shoegaze bands. I'd still pick the Rose Elinor Dougall one from 2017 over it though.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

In a thread about best album since 2016, we're discussing music from 1994. If this isn't typical of HF demographics.

Roo obviously brought it up because the opening post here announced the winner for '94... But to keep up with the condescension level: "ah, coming in a thread to whine about stuff that went over our head, typical HF"... ;-)

I always find it hilariously ironic that people think they make themselves look good by crapping on a group they're a part of.

 

[frisco]

Sad commentary on my life when I check daily if the "Up to 1962" thread is up yet.

My Best-Carey

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Sad commentary on my life when I check daily if the "Up to 1962" thread is up yet.

My Best-Carey

Me two! My list is ready, I was listening to my numero unos again earlier today thinking about this thread! I was this close to bump it myself.

 

[Teemu]

*pounds fists* we want 1900-1964 @Saturated Fats

 

[Mescaleroman]

Me two! My list is ready, I was listening to my numero unos again earlier today thinking about this thread! I was this close to bump it myself.

I just hope Sat Fats is doing well in 2021 and only holding on to the final poll as a very special Valentine's gift for all the regulars in these threads .
I didn't have much to add to this poll and won't have anything to add to the next one.
Realised that my sweet spot in music was the early seventies to late eighties.
Also want to reiterate my appreciation for the effort they put into the project.
What a blast it was to research all the years bringing back all kinds of memories , not only recalling bands that you hadn't given much thought to in ages but recalling events of various stages in your life.
Would be fantastic to have the last thread ( if it happens ) stickied so that this awesome array of music could be easily accessible.

 

[Mikeaveli]

I have a feeling the next poll will be dominated by jazz

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

I have a feeling the next poll will be dominated by jazz

Ahah, if it's not, we have a problem !

 

[Saturated Fats]

OK, OK - I'll get on it later today!