LogFAQs > #966531710

I'm fond of the idea of adding AM weeks to our cycle as delineated on a decade-by-decade basis - my personal preference is that we cycle through the full set of decades every year, so about one AM week per seven/eight user select weeks. I agree that doing so would help cover the gaps resulting from our current nomination process. However, there are a few points I'd like to raise in relation to that:

First off, I think the 60s poll should be expanded to the 60s and before. This would begin including the (to me) surprising amount of acclaimed 50s albums in the rounds eventually while still accounting for the embryonic start of the album as a means of popular music consumption. Conversely, expanding the 10s poll in a similar way seems somewhat less essential to me even independent of AM currently lacking the stats with which to do so. The dust arguably has yet to settle on 20s albums, especially critically speaking.

I'm also skeptical about cycling a bunch of the same albums over and over again until they finally take. Would it just be tiresome for us to see two-thirds of the same poll as before most AM weeks? I think I would personally rather ditch all three albums regardless of the winner and cycle back to the other two eventually, though without any discussion, it's hard to say how alone I am in that. Perhaps we could use a formula based on how many best-of lists each album appears on to determine when losing albums should return to the AM polls, halving each album's effective total on loss?

Of course, there's some major downsides to that idea, the biggest one being the questionable correlation between the simple amount of lists each album from even a specific decade appears on and the way AM actually compiles rankings. In that sense, such an approach arguably sacrifices the point of AM polls in favor of practicality. The other key problem with this proposal is that it would force even Pet Sounds to wait multiple years for its next AM poll after a loss in its original poll. As such, it perhaps overcorrects for the problem of seeing two of the same albums as before (by decade) in most AM polls.

A milder version of this plan could consist of cycling out losing albums on an artist-by-artist basis, so that (for example) we need not wait to tackle the 51-minute Highway 61 Revisited until we've ranked the 73-minute Blonde on Blonde. These two are of course practically right next to each other on the AM rankings, and we'd accommodate artists with albums from the same decade far apart in the all-time rankings by making way for albums with higher rankings from different artists. For example, if Pet Sounds were to win the above 60s slate, our next three choices would be Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Highway 61 Revisited, and Astral Weeks. The obvious flaw here is the risk that, say, we'd never get a chance to rank Revolver via the AM weeks in this scenario.

Lastly, if Rubber Soul and Hotel California (versus Appetite for Destruction, among others) are anything to go by, 'classic' albums are unlikely to affect our participation much unless they're at least metal adjacent. I don't think this is exactly a constructive point against having AM polls, though - more of a lament that they'll be mainly for the sake of us regulars rather than also helping attract new or otherwise infrequent participants.

On a somewhat related note, I'm planning for all three of my albums next week to fall under the classic label we've been discussing.