Best Music of 2012

As I always tend to do around this time of year, I wander through the music websites and see what the "Best Album" lists have to offer.  Sometimes an excellent album that has been reviewed well--Walkmen, Heaven--finds its way to being excluded from almost all of the lists.  Other times an album that has been reviewed as being good--but not necessarily mind-blowing--vaults to the top of a list or two (Grimes, Visions).  We look for surprises; they cooperate by giving them to us.

All of this makes it fun for me, a person who cannot . . . ever . . . turn away from a list.  I go to the Yahoo news loop for precisely this effect when I need 15 minutes--or 6 hours--to burn.  I can usually find a list or two there, and the list almost always has absolutely nothing to do with my life.  Ten dirtiest U.S. cities.  Ten foreign retirement spots.

So when the list is actually something that I care about--well then, it's time for a blog post.

Here are the top ten albums from a variety of websites--Pitchfork, Allmusic, Spin, and that piece of shit RollingStone.




Pitchfork

1. Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d. city
2. Frank Ocean, Channel Orange
3. Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel
4. Tame Impala, Lonerism
5. Swans, The Seer
6. Grimes, Visions
7. Beach House, Bloom
8. Chromatics, Kill for Love
9. Death Grips, The Money Store
10. Grizzly Bear, Shields



Allmusic

1. Grimes, Visions
2. Frank Ocean, Channel Orange
3. Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel
4. Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d. city
5. Miguel, Kaleidoscope Dream
6. Flying Lotus, Until the Quiet Comes
7. Torche, Harmonicraft
8. Jessie Ware, Devotion
9. David Byrne and St. Vincent, Love This Giant
10. Carly Rae Jepsen, Kiss



Spin

1. Frank Ocean, Channel Orange
2. Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d. city
3. Japandroids, Celebration Rock
4. DJ Rashad, Teklife Vol. 1, Welcome to the Chi
5. Miguel, Kaleidoscope Dream
6. Bat for Lashes, The Haunted Man
7. Swans, The Seer
8. Killer Mike, R.A.P. Music
9. Ty Segall, Twins
10. Santigold, Master of My Make-Believe




That Piece of Shit Rolling Stone

1. Bruce Springsteen, Wrecking Ball
2. Frank Ocean, Channel Orange
3. Jack White, Blunderbuss
4. Bob Dylan, Tempest
5. Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel
6. Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d. city
7. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Here
8. Green Day, Uno!
9. Japandroids, Celebration Rock
10. Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Psychedelic Pill



A few observations.

1. Frank Ocean comes #2, #2, #1, and #2.  Even though other albums did very well on year-end lists--making every list included here, like Kendrick Lamar's album, or three out of four lists, like Fiona Apple--no other album comes close to Frank Ocean's list-making skills.
2. In this blog, I predicted that Frank Ocean's album would be the best of the year.  I think.  If I didn't write it, I at least thought it.
3. Rolling Stone truly is a piece of shit.  Any website that claims that Springsteen's Wrecking Ball is the number one album of the year should be fed to a dog, shat out, then fed to the same dog and doubleshat.  Rolling Stone is worse than shit.  It is shit that comes from a dog eating nothing but shit.  Rolling Stone is shit squared.  And to think that, years ago, I used to subscribe to it.  I want to travel back in time, find my earlier self who used to subscribe to shit-within-shit Rolling Stone, and shoot me in the face, unless that would kill the present me--it probably would--in which case I would just throw the earlier me down some stairs, in the hopes that the resulting injuries will not last long enough to reach me in 2013.  At the very least, Past Me should be bitchslapped by Present Me.
4. Happy New Year!