user poll results: 100-80
Today we begin unveiling the user poll results, and here’s our first batch of records:
100 Grouper, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill
99 Port O’Brien, All We Could Do Was Sing
98 Jason Collett, Here’s to Being Here
97 The Whigs, Mission Control
96 Passion Pit, Chunk of Change EP
95 Stereolab, Chemical Chords
94 Lambchop, OH (ohio)
93 The Last Shadow Puppets, The Age of the Understatement
92 Mount Eerie, Lost Wisdom
91 Flogging Molly, Float
90 TOBACCO, Fucked Up
89 Burial, Unture
88 Tift Merritt, Another Country
87 James Taylor, Covers
86 Eli “Paperboy” Reed, The True Loves Roll With You
85 Vivian Girls, Vivian Girls
84 Yeasayer, All Hour Cymbals
83 My Brightest Diamond, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth
82 Gang Gang Dance, Saint Dymphna
81 The Stills, Oceans Will Rise
80 Eagles of Death Metal, Heart On
Some notes: more than 10,000 ballots were filed. By far the biggest response we’ve ever had. Everyone was asked to vote for ten albums, and we ranked those in creating those lists: a first place vote was worth ten points, a second place vote worth nine points, etc. From there you get the ranking that you see above.
On the hub page, there are comments about each album. These came from the poll results, and there are some really great one-liners in there. One goof on our part, though, was that we didn’t ask for people’s names, so none of these are credited. If you get quoted by us, be sure to point it out!
There’s not a lot of crossover so far — glad to see Grouper make your list though! — but I think we’ll see more as we go on. Finally, there will be specific Top 20 lists for the UK, EU and Canada going up next week, too.
Interesting to see at least two 2007 releases on the list. “Listening to Tobacco makes me feel like I’m drowning in corn syrup” is a great quote.
I’m with ptolemy. Yeasayer was certainly an ‘07 release; it was one of my trial downloads while I discovered The Most Serene Republic (best album of last year!).
Nothing from my list yet, but I’m sure we’ll see some of it.
Yeah, and Burial was last year too. By the way, Johnathan, if you haven’t seen The Most Serene Republic live, then be sure to add it to your Bucket List. I think it’s the loudest and perhaps most fun show I’ve seen (with the exception of Langhorne Slim & the War Eagles).
I decided for the user poll that stuff that was borderline in terms of date we would just include. People voted for it, so who am I to disagree with them?
I’ll definitely keep that in mind for next year’s voting. It doesn’t hurt since we all vote with about a month to go in the year anyways.
Yes, that was weird to see Burial’s 2007 release on here. I’m glad to see two of my picks made the list (although near the bottom): Eli Reed and Tift Merritt.
I want credit for the one blurb I wrote for this batch of records: “Like the real thing: pleasurable, addictive, and probably bad for you.” It’s some of my best work (and it’s the first time you’ve used one of my quotes, too!).
Yeah, I find it odd that you all didn’t credit subscribers their quotes like in past years….
Purdy, yr in there now.
And qwyn, it was simply an oversight on my part. Really sucks.
I TOTALLY would have voted for Yeasayer if I thought it was eligible. Can I ammend my vote?
I still would not have voted for Yeasayer. It took me weeks to get into that album, and even then it’s just a half-good album.
Thanks, Yancey! I get a warm feeling inside when I look over the blurbs at the hub and see I’m the only contributor with an attribution. I also realize it’s probably the only one I’ll get.
Yeasayer made my best of 07 list, which holds up better than my 08 votes, which I’m already kicking myself about. (My 08 list as a whole is fine, though. I just hate my votes.)
I thought I remembered that All Hour Cymbals was actually really popular last year, so I looked it up — it was emu’s 28th best-selling disk of ‘07. That’s remarkable since it didn’t come out until October 23. The bestseller list ran through 12/31, but still.
On one hand, that’s evidence that any votes for it as the best of 08 should be discarded. Sorry folks, no matter how many votes we get, Old Yeller is not eligible for Best Adapted Screenplay for 2008. Those votes get tossed to make room for something that IS eligible.
On the other hand, there’s no freaking date on the All Hour Cymbals page. As much as anything else, this is something I’d love to see fixed at emu. (Maybe license CDDB or similar?) It used to be that I could assume that no date meant “this year,” which obviously other people did this time…but now there are just too many missing dates to be useful even for guessing purposes.
All of this reminds me of my tippy-toppest, most number one-est request: make lists like this findable again. Both you and we work too hard on them for them to disappear.
It happened that the list of ‘07 bestsellers was linked from the All Hour Cymbals page.
(Hmm, maybe I should be heartless and ask for a recount after all. You could have tossed those votes and noted in one of these 17 Dots entries that “All Hour Cymbals is already starting to stand the test of time – well, 14 months anyway” or something even cleverer- while also making room for another actual 2008 release in the top 100. Or at least the bottom 20 of the top 100.)
But I was still curious to see if it made the user Best of 07 list. You know what I had to go through to get THERE? I had to remember that something by Spoon made the list….which I only remember because of how much I DON’T like Spoon. From the Spoon record with the red and white cover (I refuse to learn its name), I got to the 07 list – nope, no Yeasayer.
BTW, thank JEEBUS that 2007 was the last year of the Best Of “Dozens” that were only TEN. I’m glad you took my advice and avoided the linguistic (nay, epistemological) trap of Dozens that are only 10 by freeing yourself of the tyranny of tens altogether.
I suggested a top 108, but you much more cleverly paid tribute to the very first rock and roll record, “Rocket 88″ by Jackie Brenston with Ike Turner. (Even though it was recorded on Sun, the earliest among emu’s 24 versions of the track is Bill Haley’s 1951 cover.
The other cool thing about 88 is that it’s actually the roundest number you can possibly have, isn’t it? Even 00 is only half as round. You guys freakin’ RAWK!!!
Except for Joe, who, of my suggestion for a top 36 rather than a top 30 said, “but ‘Top 36 of 2007′ just sounded… bizarre.” (He really said that. Look it up.) Unless he’s one of the ones who held out for 88 this time…in which case Joe RAWKS!!! But only if.
Since I found the best of 07 list, I thought I’d poke around a little more. It’s credited to eMusic Users, and if you follow the link to that profile, you find links to the best ofs for 05-07, but clicking on them only shows “Your request returns no data.”
Coolly enough, I COULD see eMusic User’s Neighbors, who, it turns out, only like jazz! Must be all that Black Saint/Soul Note crack card goodness.
Shaking off the distractions, I return to my quest. Maybe All Hour Cymbals was on the UK user lists – can’t find ‘em. Maybe on the editor’s list. Can’t find those either. What about the Eternal Flame 100 Best Best BEST lists? All 4 of ‘em. Maybe it’s on one of those. Oops, can’t find them either.
Quest thwarted. Long ridiculous blog comment begins.
So anyway, here’s my suggestion. You’ve already got these nice, neat URLs, like such:
http://www.emusic.com/features/hub/best08users/index.html
Nice! Now howzabout a page like http://www.emusic.com/features/hub/index.html — you know, an INDEX page for a HUB.
I’m pretty sure there’s an actual hub, right? Just not an index page that I can guess my way too…like, say, emusic.com/features/hub/index.html.
Once you have such a page, the “home” link, as in “Home » Your 100 Favorite Albums of 2008″ — would point back to the HUB, that is, the home of the lists. I can get back to the front page of the site by clicking on them 17 dots in the upper left corner of the page. Or hit the Back button.
Yap yap yap. You get the idea. It’s great work. We shouldn’t have to work so hard to find it.
Of course, if you have a hub page and I missed it, then…Well done, eMu! A hub is a wonderful idea! You guys RAWK!!!
It’s still too hard to find.
Surprised to see Yeasayer on the list at all. It’s an album I had to check to see if I actually had in fact downloaded it. I had and now recall that it was just not that remarkable.
Hoping to see at least one of my pics on the list. I stand by my belief that Sex Death Cassette should be the album of the year hands down.
I beg to differ with you, SaraDevil. There is some stellar stuff on Yeasayer. Spend some time with 2080, Wait for the Wintertime, and Red Cave and you may change your mind.
Since you speak so highly of that Rafter album, I think I’ll go check that out (it’s been on my SFL for ages).
My vote for best-late-2007-album-that-was-reissued-in-2008-on-another-label (and is listed on eMu as a 2008 release) goes to Canadian bands (and Holy Fuck buddies) WINTERSLEEP. “Archaeologists” would be a number 1 hit if I ruled the world (or at least the airwaves).
http://www.emusic.com/album/Wintersleep-Welcome-To-The-Night-Sky-MP3-Download/11290870.html
Re: Burial – Untrue, this arrived at emusic on Nov 5th (Bonfire Night in the UK aptly!), which is why I voted for it this year, a couple of weeks or so before the best of ‘07 voting started, that’s not really long enough to get a real feel for some albums. I think that’s my quote that points this out in the list, “I know it was a 2007 release, but it’s really become the massively popular album that it is now, during 2008.”
Thankfully it was No. 89 and not 88, because 88 is known as code for a certain Austrian guy who caused a lot of trouble for most of the world around the middle of the last century amongst his fans. Can we have a best of any other number than 88 next year please?
“Re: Burial – Untrue, this arrived at emusic on Nov 5th (Bonfire Night in the UK aptly!), which is why I voted for it this year, a couple of weeks or so before the best of ‘07 voting started, that’s not really long enough to get a real feel for some albums.”
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I get this. I think you’ll read much more about “Untrue” next year, when critics and fans release their Best of the Decade lists.
re; “88 is known as code for a certain Austrian guy who caused a lot of trouble . . .”
Learn something new every day!
All is not lost though:
“The number 8 is considered to be the luckiest number of all in Chinese culture and prices in Chinese supermarkets can often be found containing many 8’s”
(from Wikipedia for 88, number, which also confirms Dubdance’s point.)