Back in about 2014, I put together a list of possibilities for my top 20 albums of all time; back to front, no skips, all bangers. The methodology was entirely vibes-based, I threw in a couple compilation albums, and I've only very rarely remembered to add albums to it in the dozen years since. I don't think I ever posted it here - I think just my top 100 listened-to songs. Likely because I never narrowed it to 20 -- I think the original list was at least 40 before I added a couple in the intervening years (while I'm not positive which ones, I'm pretty sure Disappearance of the Girl (66/avg play count) and ...Like Clockwork (57) were two).
So as I was trying to decide which albums might be worth adding from the intervening years, I decided to do it a bit more scientifically. Theoretically, a top album should have a high number of listens to every track, leading to a high average track count. So I tallied up the averages of those already on my list, further separating them Albums added pre-2005/2006 and post-. This is because I don't have play counts before itunes (2005) and for the first year or two, any listens on an ipod didn't sync to the itunes count. Obviously some favorite albums from middle/high school must have much higher total play counts than I have a record of.
Of my pre-05/06 on the list, the average is 66, and my post- is 80. Not super surprising, although there are a couple pre- that I clearly don't listen to very much anymore. For example - Extraordinary Machine (21) (although I did listen to it a couple of days ago when Tidal turned 30 and I remembered I hadn't listened to it in a while. (Actually, I didn't even bother checking Tidal, because I feel like I only ever listen to half, and it's at 44. To be discussed lower*)
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| Sorry, Madge. I'm looking forward to the new album. |
The two compilation albums on there are both quite low (Immaculate - 2 (!) and 1 - 13) The other lowest ranked in the pre- category are Evita (27; my guess is I no longer listen straight through like I used to, but mostly hit my faves), Is This It? (18), Play (14), and Ray of Light (14). I'm loathe to drop any of these though, as they are all really good albums pretty much front to back, I just haven't listened to them as much in the last 20 years.
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| Quelle surprise |
My highest rated pre-05/06 are:
Elastica - 103
Elastica - 103
Sing the Sorrow - 112
Bleed Like Me - 123
American Idiot - 129
American Idiot - 129
Garbage - 215
And, surprising absolutely no one, Version 2.0 - 227.
Ah yes, three Garbage albums in my top 5 here.
Some other interesting tidbits from this group:
- Choirgirl is getting awfully close to 100 listens/song average (99), and while I would have guessed To Venus and Back would be my most listened to, I think the fact that it's a double album means I have more songs in the 20-30 range. Dookie is also close at 97. (As for other Tori, Little Earthquakes is at 42 and in the old list. I checked all her other albums and Boys for Pele is 25, Scarlet's Walk is 19, Strange Little Girls is 34, but very skewed by the title track (16 otherwise*), Tales of a Librarian (not a true album) is 32, and Under the Pink at 25. My highest b-side album is the BofA Pavilion show in Boston I was at with 12 listens.)
- Sixteen Stone is higher than I would have guessed (75).
- My first ever tape (along with Garbage) was Jagged Little Pill, which sits at 52, and my first CD, No Need to Argue is at 79.
- The musicals, just the three from this group, average 30.
- I included one soundtrack - Go - which is at 57.
- I would have thought Haunted would be higher (58), but I think the interludes drag it down. If you take those four out, it would be at 73.
For the post-05/06 group already in the list, the lowest are:
H.A.A.R.P. - 41
Bullet in a Bible - 42
Hamilton - 43 (Again - double album, with some interludes/skips like Stay Alive (reprise), Meet Me Inside, & Blow Us All Away.)
Them Crooked Vultures - 50
So two live albums and a musical (with a lot of interludes). Bullet doesn't really surprise me because I listen to Awesome as Fuck more (66). As for Muse, Absolution is at 85 and Black Holes & Revelations is at 75. (That surprises me a bit! I would have guessed the other way round on those two. More on Muse below.)
The highest are:
Who Killed Amanda Palmer - 108
21st Century Breakdown - 109
American Idiot (musical) - 124
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson - 128
Crash Love - 154
So both the early Garbage albums - despite a far less accurate play count - wildly outpace any albums added after the advent of itunes.
Other interesting tidbits:
- I am surprised American Idiot (the album) has a higher play count than 21st Century, since in general - AFI aside - a band's album produced by Butch Vig tends to be my favorite album of theirs. I would say 21st Century is my favorite, but I wonder if the more overt protest songs have... mmmm.... rung louder in the last decade. (I knew, obvs., that Crash Love is my favorite AFI album, outpacing the Vig-Produced Sing the Sorrow (112)] Also in this group is the Vig-produced Wasting Light (60).
- Amanda Palmer outpaces the Dresden Dolls (Yes, Virginia at 80.)
- For early Lana, Paradise (92) is higher than Born to Die (84).
- The oldest album in this group is Ziggy Stardust at 53.
- The three musicals in this group are 98, given two are in my top three of this category. That means the six musicals already in the playlist average out to 64 (pretty nonsensical, since RENT is SO low compared to any type of accurate count, but ah well.)
SO. Given all this, what can we determine about other albums that could be added?
Some that are instant excludes:
Pang (18), Be the Cowboy (20), Dance Fever (15), Prelude to Ecstasy (22), Let All We Imagine Be the Light (6 - I really could have sworn I listened to this more already??? To the point that I double checked my phone was syncing properly.), Blame My Ex (24 - I'm surprised on this one, too!), Screen Violence (18), Chromatica/Mayhem (20/13), Ashes (26), FFS (22), Misfit Cabaret (27), Cry Baby (22), Humanz (17 - double album), and the Miles EP (15).
Two from the last nine months that aren't there yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if they get there: Everybody Scream (13), You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love (8 after just a month).
One that feels SO WRONG and I'm torn on: Preacher's Daughter (23). In reflection, this makes some sense - I listen to American Teenager, Thoroughfare, Gibson Girl, and A House in Nebraska a LOT (although I would have guessed that all of those would be past 100 already, and apparently not yet). I don't listen to Western Nights, August Underground, Strangers or Hard Times nearly so much. It also feels skewed because I listen to the Sun Bleached Flies x Dancing on my Own mashup a LOT, and if those plays were included, it would bump up to 27. I think it has to be left off for now, but I should probably play it straight through a bit more.
The instant includes:
The Outlander Soundtrack - 68. Very surprised by this! I think I listened to it a fair amount while working, so. Also - this reminded me that Last of the Mohicans Soundtrack wasn't on my list...
The Resistance - 78. Even though I would say this is the most important/favorite Muse album for me, I didn't even bother calculating it at first, since I rarely listen to the exogenesis symphony that makes up the last three tracks*. However, since Undisclosed Desires and Resistance are two of my favorite songs -- and I really like MK Ultra, Uprising, & I Belong to You -- it crept up here.
Strange Little Birds - 84. Not surprised - my favorite Garbage album post-hiatus.
Bronco - 90. Not surprised. I love this album. I did think Let Me Drown might be skewing this, but even taking that out, it's at 68.
Candy Bar Creep Show - 117. (This shouldn't really count, as an EP, but I do love it.)
Jet Plane and Oxbow - 153. Not surprised at all. I would easily list this as a favorite album.
Last of the Mohicans - 208. I love this album AND I put it on when I'm on a work deadline, particularly The Kiss, which I often put on repeat for about an hour. But taking that out, it's still at 145.
After that, I think we get into groupings.
Group 1:
Burials - 52. Surprised! I didn't think I listened to this one so much.
Chemtrails Over the Country Club - 54. Not surprised. Love this album.
Ash & Ice - 55. My favorite from The Kills.
Animal Joy - 55. A little surprised by this, but my second favorite Shearwater.
Pomegranate - 56. Surprised - I would have guessed I only listened to a few songs.... and that actually holds up, but the high play counts are SO high it really skews things (we'll get to that in a minute*).
The Unfortunates - 57. Yup.
Theatre is Evil - 61. That tracks.
Group 2:
Darling Misfits - 35 (I would have guessed Darling and Misfit Cabaret would be more on par, but revisiting the track list, I'm less surprised, as this has Uh Oh and The Apple Pie and the Knife - two of my favorites. Of course, these days Kat releases everything as singles, so a bunch of my favorites will never be in an album, like Criminal, Dirty Little Secret, Charade, and You Miss Me. In fact, if I tallied up my 20 favorite singles, well, they only equal 26. Huh. I really thought I had listened to Psycho Hysterical, M, Siren Song, and Break My Heart more this spring. I really feel like my phone like didn't sync after the UK or something.)
Bad Times at the El Royale - 36. Surprised! Again - Soundtracks don't generally come to mind.
Pure Heroine - 41 (surprised!)
Norman Fucking Rockwell - 41 (I would have guessed higher!)
Sour - 44
How Big How Blue How Beautiful - 46
Ultraviolence - 46 (I definitely would have thought NFR would be higher than this, but I guess I've had five more years to listen this.)
Group 3:
GUTS - 29 (surprised! I would have thought higher)
Melodrama - 30 (ditto)
Nevermind - 30 (The lone pre-05/06 true album I'm analyzing for the first time. I realized I had Ten on my list (34) but not Nevermind. It doesn't surprise me Ten is ever so slightly higher. I would pick the first five songs of Nevermind over Ten, but as a full album, I listen to Ten straight through more often. I am surprised I've listened to Sixteen Stone more than twice as much that either of these in the last 20 years, although I have been listening to Ten a fair bit this year.
When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go - 30
Aerial Report - 32. Weirdly delighted by this, a group of demos Phildel released to her patrons.
Wave Your Flags - 33 Surprised it's this high!
Dirty Computer - 33 Really surprised it's this low!
Fellow Travelers - 34, although I don't know that I would count this? Yes it's Shearwater's take and production, but all the songs are written by other bands they've toured with. It's a cool concept album, but I wouldn't have thought to put it toward a top 20, necessarily.
If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power - 34
A couple of thoughts here:
- The musical I plan to add, the Unfortunates, falls in the middle of the two groups of already added musicals. Given how high some of my musical albums were, I went back to look at others, most of which were lower than I expected, but again - many of these would have been much higher with elementary school/high school counts: Chicago (9), 1776 (18), Hedwig (38 (!) - Midnight Radio is wildly skewing it*. It's 16 otherwise.)), Moulin Rouge (the film) (16), Phantom is a surprisingly high 17, tick tick Boom (14), Company (11), Aida (14). I'm SHOCKED to find Hair is higher than Chicago at 11 and Newsies is close at 8. Oklahoma is shockingly high at 17, but that's very much a product of Rebecca Naomi Jones' Many A New Day. I'm not going to bother with Hadestown.
-- Cabaret is particularly hard to measure as I have multiple versions and the movie is different than the stage show, but if I combine versions and drop the intros/reprises, I get 18.
- Of the old list there are 21 albums featuring female singers (excluding mixed musicals/soundtracks) out of 48, or 44%, which surprises me! I'm guessing it's all the Green Day/AFI. Of the ones I'm considering adding, it's 18/26 (69%), so all together (less the mixed albums), it's 53% female singers. Of the ones that may make the list in the future, it's 15/17. I have a feeling this has to do with the lack of male rock bands these days.
- Total play count for the already added albums, and my new maybes/definites are 73,944. Assuming an average song length of 3 minutes, that's about 221,832 minutes, 3,697 hours, 154 days, or 5 months.
So there are two issues with the methodology above:
*1 - Most clearly to me from Tidal, The Resistance, Hedwig and Pomegranate: The Spiders Georg problem. While some outliers don't meaningfully skew the average (as in Bronco), they certainly can in other albums. The best way I can think to get at that is to incorporate average deviation from the mean, which would skew low for albums that I tended to listen straight through, as opposed to albums where I listen to a few songs ad nauseum. Several of the original list with very low AvDevs, but a reasonable number of plays are: Bullet in a Bible (avdev: 13), Little Earthquakes (19), Ten (19), What's the Story (22), and HAARP (22). At the other end is Sing the Sorrow (79), American Idiot (musical) (82), Crash Love (83), Absolution (86), and Version 2.0 (101 - Medication really brings down the score there.). I think a possible way to combine the two would be to look at average plays less average deviation. With that, Absolution, Ziggy Stardust, Hot Fuss, Haunted and Them Crooked drop low, while the top are Bleed Like Me, Crash Love, Bloody Bloody, Version 2.0, and Garbage all stay close to the top.
For the new albums, the most consistent plays across the album are Bad Times at the El Royale, Dirty Computer, Burials, When We All Fall Asleep, and If I Can't Have Love I Want Power. The more skewed are Pomegranate, Candy Bar Creep Show (3 I listen to a lot, 1 I don't), Resistance, Jet Plane & Oxbow (surprising! But I think it's because I've listened to Quiet Americans SO much and Glass Bones, Wildlife in America only 64 and 65 times, respectively), and Last of the Mohicans (given The Kiss is such an outlier. Without the Kiss, it drops by almost half, but still top 5 - I think because I listen to the Trevor Jones pieces far more than the Randy Edelman pieces. (Those are still good! But not the original composition.)).
Average plays less average deviation keeps Pomegranate and Resistance low on the list, joined by How Big, How Blue, Nevermind (probably because I listen to the first half more), and Fellow Travelers. Top of the pile is Mohicans, Jet Plane, Candy Bar, Strange Little Birds, and Outlander/Bronco.
(I suppose you could take standard deviation, but I think it would trend in roughly the same direction as AvDev, and also I don't remember my stats well enough to remember why you use one over the other, only that I vaguely feel like if your values are pretty evenly dispersed above and below the mean, StdDev & AvDev would be roughly the same, whereas in a Spiders Georg, AvDev will be higher, and StdDev even more so?)
2 - Probably an even more scientific method than just averages is taking average play count and dividing it by number of years I've had the album. Based on that I listen to Ten, What's the Story, Rent, Weezer and Californication about twice a year; American Idiot (the musical) eight times a year, Crash Love and Bloody Bloody 9 times, Garbage 10 times, and Version 2.0 11 times a year.
For the new albums, Nevermind is about once a year, Melodrama and Pure Heroine three times (fitting), and a whole host at four a year: Dirty Computer, Ultraviolence, When We All Go to Sleep, Theatre is Evil, Burials and Darling Misfits (all of which would put Everybody Scream and You Seem Pretty Sad on the high probability list for the future).
Up at the top we have Chemtrails Over the Country Club at 11x/year, Animal Joy at 14, Guts (!) and Jet Plane and Oxbow - 15, and Bronco at 22. Who'd've thunk. Country in the top spot.
Final
Taking out musicals, soundtracks, EPs, or similar (while noting that several of those - American Idiot (musical), Bloody Bloody, Mohicans, Candy Bar Creep Show would all otherwise make it into the lists below), my Top 20 by listens can reasonably be assigned as:
By Average Plays
By Average Plays less Av Dev (Av Dev alone was pretty far off the other methodologies)
By Average Plays per Year
The 20 that Ranked Most Highly Across All Three Categories
If I were asked to name my Top 20 albums without looking at any of the above, I would have guessed: Jet Plane and Oxbow, Haunted, Version 2.0, Crash Love, 21st Century Breakdown, If the Pawn, No Need to Argue, Jagged Little Pill, Ten, Bronco, Disappearance of the Girl, By the Way, Who Killed Amanda Palmer, From the Choirgirl, What's the Story, Elastica, Garbage, How Big How Blue, Chemtrails Over the Country Club, Celebrity Skin.
HONEST TO FUCKING GOD I JUST GOT ALL THE WAY HERE AND REALIZED I NEVER PUT CELEBRITY SKIN IN THE OLD LIST. AAAAAHHHHHH
(Average plays 62 (top 30), Average plays less Av Dev 15, 3 plays per year. All far more middle of the road than expected!)
So how's that for overthinking which albums to add to a playlist?
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