LogFAQs > #976135447

57 Albums: A Postmortem
Ever since joining the community, Ive loved to run ranking topics. Most of mine have been musical. I ran a non-vgm song ranking in 2021 (Owen Palletts I Am Not Afraid won that). Part of me wanted to do something comparable again, but I genuinely dislike talking about music I always have. I dont know music terminology. I struggle to even identify instruments. I feel very insecure about expressing music opinions. But I love music, so the drive was still there.

Im an occasional participant in FoolFantastics Rank the Tracks weekly topic series. Every 25 albums, the participants can choose to rank the previous albums. I decided to give it a try. What I found was, paradoxically, giving thoughts on a whole album was much easier than giving thoughts on individual songs! So I said, you know, I could maybe do this with nominations.

There were two main problems with this ranking topic that I didnt foresee.

One was finding the time. I always listen to music, basically at all times; its a background process for my day. But I couldnt keep these nominations in the background. I needed to actively listen, because I wanted to write about them in the moment. So I couldnt throw on a nom and fold laundry, because I needed to be at my desk, taking notes. That was a bit of a drag.

The other problem wasokay, so I said I found something positive in every nom, and I mean that. But the problem was I guess, for me, its harder to get passionate about an album. Not like a song. Part of why I prefer listening to songs than albums is that too much similar-sounding music tends to tire me out. There was a lot to like, but it became something of a slog to say to myself, I need to devote at least 50 minutes to an experience where Im not even guaranteed to enjoy every song. That was also a bit of a drag.

In the end, I did find myself more able to speak about albums than songs. The actual quality of the writeups is up for debate. These are entirely stream-of-consciousness thoughts produced after one listen to each album I wanted to listen more than once, but it took me four months to get through one listen, so repeated listens werent feasible. You will see my brain in action. You will see my opinions change in real time, from song to song. There were so many times when I made a comment like halfway in and this album isnt holding my interest only to have the next song become a favorite. More than I count. Thats part of the fun for me. Because theres more to say with albums, there are more opportunities to go off-script.

As Im not versed in musical terminology, my writeups tend to focus more on emotional responses Im having to the album, in real time. I almost surely have gotten details about instruments or genres wrong. Thats not why Im here. If your song can reach me emotionally I dont care about that other stuff.

One thing I learned about myself through this ranking: there are some things I just cant get into. Some albums didnt click with me at all, despite being very acclaimed. Because the writeups arent written in list order, youll get to see my brain ping-pong around this idea throughout the ranking.

Finally, if youre what to expect in terms of writeup size, this might give you an indication:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/9/3/AAeDEnAAE2Zh.png

Next: Stats!