Top Albums of 2013 Survey (Part 2)
Carrying on with my analysis of Top Album polls for 2013, if I assign a value of 50 to a 1st place finish, 49 for a 2nd, etc, here are the Top 54 albums of 2013 (all were mentioned in at least 3 of the polls):| Vampire Weekend | Modern Vampires of the City |
| Kanye West | Yeezus |
| Daft Punk | Random Access Memories |
| Arcade Fire | Reflecktor |
| Disclosure | Settle |
| My Bloody Valentine | mbv |
| Haim | Days Are Gone |
| Kurt Vile | Wakin on a Pretty Daze |
| Savages | Silence Yourself |
| The National | Trouble Will Find Me |
| Chvrches | The Bones of What You Believe |
| The Knife | Shaking the Habitual |
| Chance the Rapper | Acid Rap |
| Danny Brown | Old |
| Waxahatchee | Cerulean Salt |
| Queens of the Stone Age | ...Like Clockwork |
| Janelle Monae | The Electric Lady |
| Deerhunter | Monomania |
| Arctic Monkeys | AM |
| Run The Jewels | Run The Jewels |
| Phosphorescent | Muchacho |
| Deafheaven | Sunbather |
| Bill Callahan | Dream River |
| Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds | Push The Sky Away |
| David Bowie | The Next Day |
| Laura Marling | Once I Was An Eagle |
| Tegan & Sara | Heartthrob |
| Earl Sweatshirt | Doris |
| Mikal Cronin | MCII |
| Kacey Musgraves | Same Trailer Different Park |
| Drake | Nothing Was The Same |
| Neko Case | The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight |
| M.I.A. | Matangi |
| Sky Ferreira | Night Time, My Time |
| Oneohtrix Point Never | R Plus Seven |
| Parquet Courts | Light Up Gold |
| Nine Inch Nails | Hesitation Marks |
| Jon Hopkins | Immunity |
| Jason Isbell | Southeastern |
| Okkervil River | The Silver Gymnasium |
| Tim Hecker | Virgins |
| Autre Ne Veut | Anxiety |
| The Haxan Cloak | Excavation |
| Ashley Monroe | Like A Rose |
| Volcano Choir | Repave |
| James Blake | Overgrown |
| Darkside | Psychic |
| Julia Holter | Loud City Song |
| Pusha T | My Name is My Name |
| Rhye | Woman |
| Lorde | Pure Heroine |
| Speedy Ortiz | Major Arcana |
| Blood Orange | Cupid Deluxe |
| Majical Cloudz | Impersonator |
Looking at individual polls, I suppose it's no surprise that the Rolling Stone poll was the only one to include Beck, Sir Elton, Franz Ferdinand, John Fogerty (!), Keith Urban, Miley Cyrus (!!) and Pearl Jam. And while 2 polls included The Cute Beatle's latest, Rolling Stone had it as the number 4 album of the year. They really are all in their 70s, aren't they? (Not that there's anything wrong with that, Mom.)
All polls had a number of entries that were unique to their poll, with Mojo leading the way at 20 performers that showed up only in their poll. However, there were only 4 acts that showed up only in the two major British polls and nowhere else (Cate le Bon, Factory Floor, Primal Scream and These New Puritans).
There were two acts that managed to get a Top 5 mention in one poll but were totally left out of all the others - The Foals' Holy Fire was 4 in NME's poll and John Grant's Pale Green Ghost was number 5 in Mojo's but neither showed at all anywhere else.
Fun exercise! While I'd have gotten around to buying the Bowie and Neko Case albums eventually, there are a lot of people here I've never heard of. And certainly there's a hell of a lot of terrific music that didn't show up on any of these lists, because of lack of promotion or distribution or whatever, but it's a good place to start - time to get sampling!
Labels: Music
