I can see your point completely. People are carrying over their expectations of what they should be hearing from their masterpieces in past years, hoping that their new releases sound that way. What people don’t get is that usually there is a progression of artistic experimentation within an artist and their sounds definitely change as they become exposed to different opportunities. Anyways, I don’t disagree that False Priest was good nor do I disagree that the Spoon album or any of the others that were missed were great, I just don’t think that they provided anything new, refreshing, or innovative to the progression of music. I think a lot of it was just a rehash of their past musical styles with a little bump up, but not much difference. A lot of it was actually stuff I was expecting to hear, which is why I enjoyed many of these albums, but wasn’t blown away by them.

In your instance, by saying that False Priest should be above Small Black (I think by saying one album should be above the number 49 ranked album) really doesn’t make a huge difference. But to include something like False Priest, of any of those other albums in the top 10, or even in the top 20, would be ridiculous as there was so much better “art” / “music” out there this year.

Exactly what I said above. People are just commenting on those albums being missed simply because they are groups that people traditionally like. The newest Spoon album was enjoyable, but way more inferior to many of the great achievements on this list. Same goes for The New Pornographers, Belle and Sebastian, and especially of Montreal. I did enjoy these albums, but found them to be ones that I liked, rather than ones that I thought deserved to be recognized for their greatness (which none of them really had).

I would have to agree with you on the Erykah Badu statement. Definitely an album worth being recognized but somehow being missed on a lot of lists. I am also sad to see the exclusion of Four Tet’s great album, “There Is Love In You.” Definitely an album worth being recognized for its accomplishments as well.

Unfortunately, we can’t all get what we want, but definitely think the albums on this list are great and worth being praised.

I completely agree that MPP was the best album last year. I LOVED that album. But ask a lot of bloggers now about Animal Collective and MPP and they will tell you the backlash that that specific album received due to the enormous amount of press it got for being Album of the Year. So many “hipsters” bash that album now because it became TOO popular or TOO mainstream. When in reality, it was just a damn good album. Just like the new Kanye album. So what if Kanye West isn’t the most unknown band/artist/musician. He still put out a freakin’ good album that plays through cohesively from beginning to end…

And trust me, I’m not a Kanye lover. I love this album though. A true critic needs to seperate their personal distaste for someone and just the music they put out. Too many times people take into their own personal taste when critiquing music (which is fine), but creates a totally subjective list. Therefore, I really do enjoy the list of top 10 singles according to Rolling Stone as it includes some top 40 pop music as well as some independently released singles.

With that being said, even though there were many great independent singles released last year, I think Single Ladies was by far the best single released.