Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums is Not The End All Be All

Friday, September 25, 2020
Rolling Stone updated their Top 500 Best Albums of all time list and that means the fighting over what is the best album of all time is happening again.

First off, we don't, as a culture, listen to albums the same way anymore. I am known to play an album straight through, no skips, but most of the time I listen to music, it's a playlist I put on shuffle.

And since we are in the age of the single being the most important for an artist, when considering an album's quality you have to think about all of the tracks and not just the ones that were deemed good enough for promotion and radio play.

Now for the actual list. Of course you're not gonna like everything that made it and where it was placed. I'm excited for the gains made in the top of the list by female artists, since art made by women has historically not been considered with the same merit as men. There is no way that every person has listened to every album on that list and know the proper qualitative order that they should appear in. Art is subjective and there is art that speaks to us more than others. I can tell you that as someone who has not listened to a lot of rap, I would not know where to begin to place those albums.

It's important to know that this list was compiled in a big ranked ballot system, so it's not like one person sat there ranking them. This was the result of a lot of people doing their own ranking and seeing what had the most votes. The next time this list is made, it'll look different. There will be new albums released that blow your mind, the classics get evaluated again, and maybe some older albums are rediscovered and gain a new burst of appreciation.

What I like to do whenever these massive best of lists are published is make my own list. My favorite albums of all time and ask those I know to do their own list and compare those. I also like to use this as a big rec list to find something that is new to me that I may enjoy.

There will never be a definitive "best album of all time". But it's fun to see what shakes out every time we try to find it.


My 2020 Emmys Ballot

Sunday, September 20, 2020
This is a weird year. I don't think we'll really feel the effects of the coronavirus on television production for maybe another year so this year's nominations are still normal.

Some picks are my hopes, and some are because I know certain shows and people are going to win, so I want to highlight some other work that was excellent in the last year that is no less deserving of awards recognition.

What is Fashion in the Age of Corona?

Friday, September 11, 2020
My wardrobe has consisted of sweats, cotton shorts, and basic tees and tanks. The occasional skirt and my one pair of denim shorts. I haven't worn jeans since I fled to Florida. The rest of my wardrobe I don't even remember.

Given that when we leave our homes or wherever we landed to bunker down, there's very few safe places to actually go. Why would we get moderately dressed up to go grocery shopping?

Very few times I had gotten properly dressed, and it wasn't until months into quarantine when outdoor dining started to be a thing we could safely do. And it was weird. I actually put thought into what I looked like.

Because of that, I'm starting to look at my wardrobe that I would not put in my "comfy" section, and I remembered, "oh yeah, I have style".

And I think by moving past the urge to wear only clothes that we could comfortably sleep in, it could at least help in our quest to move through this seemingly never ending pandemic.

Can Disney Stop With the Live Action Remakes Now?

Monday, September 7, 2020
So, Mulan is finally out in the world, and it is not the last of the live action remakes that have been taking over Disney's production slate, unfortunately.

Earworm: "Ungodly Hour" by Chloe x Halle

Sunday, September 6, 2020
So, Chloe x Halle have become queens of the quarantine music performance. From the BET Awards, the Global Citizen concert, the GLAAD awards, and the US Open, whenever they are booked to perform on television, it is a treat.

But the queen of all of their performances is the one they gave of "Ungodly Hour" at the VMA Pre-Show.


It's been a week, and I'm still struggling to understand why they weren't in the main show. They were up for a few awards, one of them being "Best Quarantine Performance", and with the list I opened with, you'd think you want that caliber of performance in the part of the night people care about. But it was still one of the most talked about performances of the night, and a lot of people sharing that same thought, too. 

Can't wait to see what tricks they pull out next.


Powered by Blogger.
Back to Top