For the music explorer, the New Year is a good time. The latest crop of year-in-review "best of" lists has come in. From among the 30,000 albums released last year, a handful have consistently been praised by critics and music lovers. Whether you are looking for new albums to try, or simply want to know what's hot, these lists can be helpful.
Luckily for us, Web sites have emerged which make it easy to scan a number of these lists. The first place I go is the Metacritic site, which aggregates reviews from numerous publications. Each review is scored on a rating from 0 to 100 based on how much the reviewer liked the album. Each album then receives a composite score that averages the scores of all the reviews for the album. Metacritic's best of 2004 list includes 30 albums that have each received at least seven reviews. At the top of the list is Smile by Brian Wilson, followed by Van Lear Rose by Loretta Lynn, and Madvillainy by Madvillain. In many cases, links are provided to the reviews themselves, which makes the list more useful. If you're interested in seeing what a particular publication is recommending, Metacritic also provides 2004 best-of lists from major newspapers and music publications.
Like Metacritic, the Acclaimed Music Web site also provides composite rating scores, for singles as well as albums. Links are provided to a broad selection of best-of lists, more numerous and international in scope than what Metacritic provides. This is the site to go to for a European perspective on the top music of the year. The Acclaimed Music 2004 top album list starts with
Franz Ferdinand by Franz Ferdinand, Smile by Brian Wilson, and A Grand Don't Come for Free by The Streets.
Best-of lists are made better when you subscribe to an online jukebox service like Rhapsody or Musicmatch On-Demand, because then you can listen to the critic's picks without having to buy the albums. So rather than buying one or two albums based on critical recommendations, you can listen to many of them, and then decide for yourself which ones are worth a second (or third or fourth) listen. In a follow-up article I will look at how well the top online music services cover "the best music of 2004."
—Andy Breeding
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