Whither the "Best of 2013," or #blogworldproblems

This is how I’ve started to look at the concept of the “Best of” list that I always end up compiling at the end of a year—

They’re like an incredibly honest and confessional letter that you write to somebody. You seal lit up in an envelope, apply the proper postage, and you walk it down to a mailbox. The INSTANT it leaves your hand, falling into the mailbox, landing atop a pile of other letters and bills—in that instant, you are filled with nothing but regret, wishing you could take every last word back.

They say the Internet is “forever.” In a way, whoever “they” are is right. With a letter, there’s no getting it back. Even with an email—there’s no way, to my knowledge, anyway, that you can “unsend” something. I mean in the days of AOL email you could, from one AOL user to another. BUT THOSE DAYS ARE GONE NOW.

But somebody’s “Best of” list for a year? Well you could just delete the post from whatever website it is on. You could just delete the “note” that you published on Facebook, subjecting whatever Facefriends you have to read how incredibly articulate you are at expressing your opinion, and what a subject matter expert you are when it comes to what records are better than others in any given span of 365 days.

It’s December—and another stupid year is coming to an end. The major, mainstream music magazines already have their “Best of 2013” lists up and running. In a major shocker, Spin chose Yeezus as the number one record of 2013, but unless I missed something, couldn’t actually explain why—just a bunch of hyperbole, talk of Pinterest, and a mention of a smart phone game people are playing. Rolling Stone, on the other hand, went out on a limb and picked Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of The City as number one.

Yes, it’s true. It’s 2103 and a band named “Vampire Weekend” exists. And what’s worse? People listen to them, and take them seriously.

For the last six years, at the very least, I’ve written up rather lengthy bits on my favorite songs and albums of the respective year. And while I still stand by my number one choices (for the most part) it’s those later numbers that I almost always instantly regret. Like in 2010—I put Transference by Spoon and Forgiveness Rock Record by Broken Social Scene on my list of the Top 20 albums. BLURG! Seriously? OH MY GOD YOU GUYS WHAT WAS I THINKING? I haven’t even listened to either of those albums SINCE 2010.

I go into my year end list with a “you are all of my favorites” mentality—there’s obviously only going to be ONE album that gets to be my “favorite” of the year, and the rest are kind of like “and these were okay too.” But how many “others” do you pick? Do you do a top 10? Is that not enough? Who am I leaving out? OH MAN I almost forgot about THIS record! Well now I have to do a top 20 for sure? OH FUCK YOU GUYS can I even name 20 records that I genuinely liked this year? Well, I’ll just toss on this Spoon album for good measure to round things out…

And how do justify your level of liking from something like number 20 and number 19? What makes one just slightly not as good as 19 others, but makes it good enough to include it on the list?

In 2011, I did a “Gold, Silver, and Bronze” ranking for three albums, and then alphabetized the rest of my list. Is alphabetizing a total cop out? Other music bloggers/writers would have me believe that it is.

As someone who fancies himself some kind of amateur music critic/taste maker, shouldn’t I be looking forward to making such an important list? Instead, I’m dreading it. I’m absolutely dreading whittling down a list of albums to just 10—making that incredibly difficult cut from the team where you bench an album that you really liked, but just didn’t like enough to include.

And then there’s the task of basically re-reviewing all of these albums. It’s like “Hey I really liked this when it came out a few months ago and I wrote a bunch of things about it. But now I like it EVEN MORE since it’s on this list so I wrote SOME MORE things about it!”

Everyone wants their “Best of” list to be unique and show how superior this taste is. How unoriginal am I going to be if I put Yeezus on my list? Was it my favorite album of the year? Man I don’t know! I just don’t know. I really liked it though so it will be on the list. But I also liked Haim too. Am I gonna get shit from people for liking something that’s kind of become super mainstream? I have a friend who really hates Haim. What is he going to think of my list?

I’m having all of these #blogworldproblems. Today is December 2^nd. I’ve got less than a month to figure this out. I guess I’ve got some records to start re-listening to and some important decisions to make.