My ‘Top…’ lists are never cohesive. The choices on the lists never complement each other, they feel like a handful of names strewn around the page, thrown together, without much thought, into a bullet point list.
Let’s not break that pattern now with this list.
I’d say my top three criteria for this list are cohesion as a body of songs, artistry that breathes fresh air into Music (yes, with a capital M), and, most importantly, the capacity to strike a chord within my cold and bottomless pit of a heart.
The following albums are not necessarily the best in terms of production, songwriting or lyricism. No, if anything’s made it onto this list, it’ll be because I enjoy listening to it (though excelling under the aforementioned criteria will undoubtedly grant brownie points).
That is how I rate albums. Consider: it takes so much effort for me to listen to a new artist/album that everybody has massively hyped. So much effort. And ridiculous amounts of patience as well, as I wait for the waves of supposed jaw-dropping amazement to hit me, since my expectations have been raised to ridiculous levels by hype. This, especially with the artists which almost every single living hipster blogger seems to be in love with (this year it seems to be tuneyards, St Vincent, Fleet Foxes, Girls, M83 etc etc). I listen to a bit of an album, I get so tired of having to pour my whole soul and mind into absorbing, and being absorbed by, the music and lyrical content and heart of the album that I just press stop and switch to some Lady GaGa. Or maybe Beyoncé. I don’t know, it’s an ongoing battle in my heart between these two divas.
But essentially, an album needs to hold onto your attention. And if my attention isn’t completely devoted to an album, that may be because of the excessive hype it has received, and my consequent wariness of its potential for scoring brownie points in my eyes. I am still a pretty prejudicial girl, what with my apparent need to be different from both the hipsters and from anything mainstream, and therefore I by default am wary of most over-hyped things. So, it is my aim next year to ignore what everyone’s saying and listen to new music with an open mind. BIG AIM, YEAH.
So, with that outpouring of my deepest, most burdensome and most painful of secrets, I present to you my top 11 of 2011.
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10. Beyoncé – 4
I really like the direction Beyoncé has taken with this album, and I’d say that, if her music were human, it has now developed into a grown woman. Despite the definite let-downs on this album, ‘Love On Top’, ‘I Miss You’ and – the one accompanied by an excellent video (in fact my favourite video of the year) – ‘Countdown’ outshine the albums’ flaws, and make it – most importantly – fun to listen to. I for one like ‘Girls’ though I recognise it’s not the most brilliant, and despite being a little slow at times ‘1+1’ is nevertheless fantastic.
Love On top
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9. SBTRKT – SBTRKT
Perhaps not the most cohesive of albums, yet SBTRKT still succeeds to move me and move my body, with its brilliant production and feet-movin’ tunes.
Something Goes Right
![pl_tennis](https://finallythetruth.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/pl_tennis.jpg?w=750)
8. Tennis – Cape Dory
Best find of the year, and the most charming premise for an album (husband and wife sold all their posessions and embarked on sailboat adventure straight after college, and made an album recounting their experiences). It is not at all a perfect album, but is filled with smile-inducing tracks which take you back to bygone times and for this I loved it because it provided a starkly positive contrast to most of this year’s other records.
Long Boat Pass
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7. Cults – Cults
Continuing the theme of albums which bring a smile to your face is this wonder. I had the good fortune to see them play at Reading and they were even more enchanting on stage than on record. Nostalgia is fused with twee, dreaminess and energy on this lo-fi pop album, with excellent use of glockenspiels.
Bumper
![Yuck_Album_Cover](https://finallythetruth.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/yuck_album_cover.jpg?w=750)
6. Yuck – Yuck
A big fan of Cajun Dance Party, I was wary about Yuck, worried that it wouldn’t live up to CDP’s calibre. Any of these worries were extinguished by this record’s surpassing of the standards set by Cajun Dance Party. With its catchy melodies and spellbinding guitars, Daniel Blumberg & co. have constructed a beautiful record.
Operation
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5. Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation
It seems I can’t get enough of ‘cute’. But Year of Hibernation isn’t just about the (cute) sound. It also does terrible, terrible things to your heart. Trevor Powers’ voice, the delicate melodies, the achingly beautiful bits that catch you unawares, they all contribute to the terrible mess my heart was left in by the end of this painfully short album. All this is achieved while sounding ridiculously joyful, which makes it all the more admirable.
Cannons
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4. Drake – Take Care
When I listened to this album, I finally understood why so many critics had ripped Thank Me Later to shreds. At 18 tracks, it is too long and thus seems a little overdone and excessive, yet Take Care is far superior to its predecessor with its honesty, lyricism, and the right guests whose contributions neatly fuse their own styles with that of Drake.
Practice
![orig-14345541](https://finallythetruth.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/orig-14345541.jpg?w=750)
3. Lady GaGa – Born This Way
For the greater part of this year, I shunned Lady GaGa. The birth from the egg, the video of Born This Way, ‘Judas’, my brief love affair with The Edge of Glory, her album – enough with the antics already, Lady, I sighed exasperatedly. Her stuff was all over the place (not in a good way) and her publicity stunts were getting wearisome. When I finally got round to properly listening to the album, it slowly but surely tickled my fancy. And then the Marry The Night video came out, and I stopped hating. At times Born This Way feels like a roughly heaped-together collection of songs, some brilliant, some dispensable, thus it could be cut shorter, and the track order could have been given more consideration so as to make a more flowing listen. The Madonna influence (/imitation, however you want to see it) is undeniable, but there is that slightly mad tinge to the music which could only inhabit a Lady GaGa album. Anyway, adding some Madonna can only do good, right?
The Edge Of Glory
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2. Frank Ocean – Nostalgia, Ultra
How is such a beautiful soul possible? Tell me, how? He gets the beauty spot-on, not too disgusting, just enough to make you love him. And it’s partly the falsetto that coaxes the love from you, but the music more so. Hey, he sings songs to get at women. The only reason this doesn’t get to #1 is because there are too many samples in this mixtape and this niggles at me a little because I can only imagine from his original material (Songs for Women, Swim Good, even I Miss You produced for Beyoncé) how much he can achieve without help from music that isn’t his own.
Songs for Women
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![TheWeeknd_Thursday-450x450](https://finallythetruth.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/theweeknd_thursday-450x450.jpg?w=750)
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1. The Weeknd – The Mixtape Trilogy
What an empty, damaged soul this mixtape trilogy evokes (yeah, the English Lit terms are coming out). And yet I – and probably you – can’t get enough of it. Really, imma let my inner hipster out as I admit that I desperately want this guy to remain as elusive as he did in the outset of his musical career, because that really kept the focus on the music. Music to empty your soul to. For me, it goes 1.House of Balloons, 2. Echoes of Silence, 3. Thursday. The lo-fi quality of this R&B won me over on first listen, nine months ago, when Wicked Games began being circulated online. I never looked back.
What You Need
2011 has been a good year in music. I remember at the beginning of this year writing on this blog that something was going to change in music and I guess it has, since there’s been a major move away from guitar music. The Weeknd and Frank Ocean are set to take over the world. Goodbye 2011.