Bon Iver

The Hype Machine, the highly valuable MP3-blog aggregator, has given us the latest 2011 best-of list, and it’s an uncommonly democratic one. To put this particular thing together, the site canvassed the year-end lists of 403 different music bloggers, ranking the results and putting them all together into a single list. This must’ve been a lot of work!

The resulting list doesn’t have a whole lot of surprises. Bon Iver tops yet another list, and plenty of other usual suspects show up in the usual places. But when you’re dealing with music bloggers, you’re going to get a few curveballs — this is the first year-end list I’ve seen, for instance, that shows any love to Foster The People. And if you don’t like this list, there’s something you can do about it: Start your own MP3 blog, and make sure the Hype Machine takes your list into account next year. The Hype Machine has links to Rdio streams of all the albums, and we’ve got the full list below.

50 Tim Hecker – Ravedeath 1972
49 Gillian Welch – The Harrow And The Harvest
48 Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde
47 Cults – Cults
46 The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – Belong
45 Wild Beasts – Smother
44 Frank Ocean – Nostalgia, Ultra.
43 WU LYF – Go Tell Fire To The Moutain
42 Wye Oak – Civilian
41 Beyoncé - 4
40 Panda Bear – Tomboy
39 Feist – Metals
38 Nicolas Jaar – Space Is Only Noise
37 Lady Gaga – Born This Way
36 Cut Copy – Zonoscope
35 Metronomy – The English Riviera
34 Mastodon – The Hunter
33 Youth Lagoon – The Year Of Hibernation
32 Drake – Take Care
31 Florence & The Machine – Ceremonials
30 Wild Flag – Wild Flag
29 The Horrors – Skying
28 Washed Out – Within & Without
27 Foster The People – Torches
26 The War On Drugs – Slave Ambient
25 The Roots – Undun
24 Foo Fighters – Wasting Light
23 The Antlers – Burst Apart
22 Fucked Up – David Comes To Life
21 Yuck – Yuck
20 The Weeknd – House Of Balloons
19 Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring For My Halo
18 Tom Waits – Bad As Me
17 Real Estate – Days
16 The Black Keys – El Camino
15 Radiohead – The King Of Limbs
14 Destroyer – Kaputt
13 Wilco – The Whole Love
12 Shabazz Palaces – Black Up
11 Jay-Z & Kanye West – Watch The Throne
10 St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
09 James Blake – James Blake
08 The Decemberists – The King Is Dead
07 Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost
06 Adele – 21
05 tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l
04 PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
03 M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
02 Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
01 Bon Iver – Bon Iver, Bon Iver

Comments (11)
  1. Nobody start your own Mp3 blog.

  2. Weird, they didn’t include mine. I had to request they add Trash Talk’s Awake to the list of albums you could insert into the list, too, because it was missing.

  3. Sure this list is fine, but my aggregator canvassed all the blog comments of 2011, and it turns out (no surprise) that the best band of 2011 is 311.

    • You tapped into the Universal Pulse of the commenting community, hit the Jackpot and discovered that on the Other Side of Things 311 is still Light Years ahead of everyone else in the rap/rock game.

      “Don’t Tread on Me” — 311

    • Eventually, at some point in the future, this joke will get old.

      But for now, we enjoy the laughs.

      • You guys are still trumping 311? Pfttt… You might want to start checking into the band that went one step further on perfecting rap rock perfection. They’re a little band that went on to sell 1.5 million+ records steamrolled by the hit “Butterfly,” also known as Crazy Town:

        • It hurts my heart to see Shifty Shellshock rendered in such low resolution.

        • ha Shifty…’oh damn i’m outta drug money, (ring-ring) “hello, Doctor Drew?”…’

        • My favourite part of Crazy Town, is that someone, at some point, had sexual intercourse with a member of the band Crazy Town, and this exchange undoubtedly at some point, has occurred in the history of the world:

          “Hey what happened to you last night, you totally disappeared and I had to cab it home alone. You end up okay?”

          “I fucked one of the members of Crazy Town.”

          “Ohhhh. So no, then.

  4. - “call that a list?”

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