Another year end done (in the middle of the year)

   

So, having got to the end of a hasty run through The Guardian's Top 50 albums of 2017, how have they done this year?  

Overall, for what has been a pretty average year for the albums I've met in the main chart, I thought that, once we ignored the left-field offerings to make the list "interesting", this was a pretty decent list with some top albums that I'd missed out on. I'd only actually heard ten of the albums before, with eight of them having been previously written up. 

Best 16

Best 16?!? What kind of nonsense is this? Well, just wait until I explain the thinking behind it...

I've always done this exercise by listing the albums I like or admire and seeing where that leads us - generally, it's been somewhere between ten and fifteen albums so all has been good. But this year? Not so much...

...but for good reasons! I got to about 23 when I was still halfway through the top ten and decided desperate action was required - so all albums in the top ten are hereby ignored. I didn't like them all (although most of them were pretty decent) but, for a change, I actually think they all deserved a place somewhere on the list (if maybe not necessarily in the top ten) - #11 was the first one on the list I didn't quite understand the appeal of. And that leaves us with sixteen albums, which is close enough to fifteen to run with. 

#50 - Trio da Kali & Kronos Quartet
#47 - Mount Eerie
#43 - Kaitlin Aurelia Smith
#42 - Julie Byrne
#37 - Sparks
#36 - Rhiannon Giddens
#33 - Miguel
#32 - Four Tet
#29 - Alvvays
#28 - Slowdive
#26 - Paramore
#25 - The National
#19 - Laura Marling
#16 - Father John Misty
#15 - The Horrors
#12 - Wolf Alice

Interestingly, I'd only heard three of them beforehand - Slowdive through my own choice and Paramore and The National through meeting them in the charts. There were five artists I'd never even heard of - Trio da Kali (surprisingly enjoyable, but not my thing), Mount Eerie (woah - this is hardcore), Kaitlin Aurelia Smith (yeah, I liked this), Rhiannon Giddens (I really liked this) and Miguel (again, surprisingly enjoyable). Of the rest, I'm going to call out Four Tet, Alvvays, Laura Marling and Father John Misty as my favourites - they're all very decent albums. I also feel I should also call out my favourites in the top ten - The War On Drugs (much better than I was expecting), LCD Soundsystem (ditto), SZA (an enjoyable re-evaluation) and St Vincent (a worthy #1).

I always have mostly female vocalists/artists on this list, but this year, somewhat surprisingly we're only at 8/16 in my top 16 this year and 12/26 if you include the top ten - out of 20/50 if you consider the whole list (which is pretty par for the course). Given that I've not heard most of these albums more than once, I'm not sure I can call out a top three so let's just settle for saying that I certainly intend to revisit Rhiannon Giddens, Four Tet, Laura Marling, Father John Misty and The War On Drugs.

Worst 0

I certainly didn't love all the albums and there were certainly some that I struggled to understand their inclusion on this list - Richard Dawson was certainly different, Jane Weaver was very lucky to be as high as #11, bits of King Krule were very challenging, Baxter Dury isn't nearly as good as The Guardian thinks and Drake didn't even consider his offering an album. However, I don't think any of them are quite bad enough to be called out as actually bad, so we've got an empty worst section this year.

Potential Omissions

Looking at other year-end lists, it appears there was a high degree of correlation between the critics this year with most of the albums from this list also being selected by plenty of others, so all I can come up with for you is 

4:44 - Jay-Z
Capacity - Big Thief
Black Origami - Jlin
Plunge - Fever Ray
Turn Out The Lights - Julien Baker
Utopia - Bjork
Culture - Migos

None of which I've heard or, with the exception of Bjork or Fever Ray, have any expectation of ever hearing.

And with that, another Guardian list is done - just in time for me to write up 2017 as a whole (you lucky people!). Well done to all the artists that appeared and specifically to St Vincent for taking the top spot.

#1 - A very impressive album