The Last List

I love lists.  I've been ranking my favourite music of the year for over a quarter of a century.  I always look forward to reading the flood of year-end lists come December, and using them as a springboard to discovering music I missed out on during the previous twelve months.  I write about "Best of [decade][genre]" lists featured in major publications all the time.  And yet, I'd been feeling a sort of apathy toward these lists recently, which is something I wrote about in last year's Top Ten post.  I still love the idea of lists, but wasn't enjoying compiling them like I once had.  My brain was committed, my heart was not. 

Resident Advisor published an editorial a few weeks ago that had a profound effect on me.  They announced the immediate cancellation of all their year end polls -- readers and staff polls, top DJ's, songs, albums, mixes, everything.  You should read the whole thing, but the essence is that they felt the polls didn't represent what was really going on in the scenes they were covering.  They provide a number of examples (underrepresentation of women and LGBTQ performers, many of the same artists appearing in some of the rankings every year) but it goes deeper than a slight of any particular artist, scene, group, or gender.  The end of year lists weren't providing a true synopsis or additional insight into the year that was.  They weren't effectively communicating what it felt like to live through the highs (and lows) of the year's music.  They reinforced stereotypes in a scene that prides itself on constantly driving creativity forward and not conforming to stereotypes.  The day-to-day reality is one thing, end-of-year lists had become something else entirely.

I have experienced the same thing in my own music fandom.  I listen to music all the time.  I love discovering new music and reconnecting with older music.  I like reading about music and discussing music, contextualizing music.  Like I wrote last year, I love music but I don't like following music, at least not like I used to.  End of year lists are about fighting to stay current, remodeling and adding to the canon one year at a time, connecting with the musical heroes of today and securing their spots on the pedestals next to the heroes of yesterday.  That's all very noble work.  But it doesn't represent how I see myself as a music fan, at least not right now.  And it gets harder to put together a top ten list every year. 

I spend less and less time cumulatively listening to my "top" albums each year.  No single album takes over and dominates my listening and my personality anymore (the last one that did was probably "Bloom", or maybe "Trouble Will Find Me" if I'm feeling generous).  I connect to albums over shorter periods of time.  Over the past week, I connected to Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" (I think I understand this album now, it's the album 21st century FM fans listen to when they think they've gotten bored of "Rumours") and Junkie XL's "Radio JXL: A Broadcast From the Computer Hell Cabin".  Next week I'll cycle through other albums, and maybe I'll come back to those two, or maybe I won't.  And there will be some contemporary albums mixed in the rotation somewhere, but chances are they'll be cycled out at about the same rate as the older ones.

I will post a Top Ten of 2017 list this year ... but it might be my last one.  Chances are it won't be, much like the Last CD probably won't be the last, despite my prognostications.  But it could be.  Both would have been unthinkable not too long ago,