Is Apple Music 100 Best Albums really that bad?
And even if it is, Apple still win.
Lists are very important to me. They’re one of the few threads holding my strung out life together at this point. I’ve worked through Pitchfork’s top 200 albums of the 2010s. I also make a point of listening to their annual ’50 best albums of…’ lists. Not necessarily because I respect Pitchfork’s judgement above all else, but because without a list to work through, my brain will implode. If I have something to work through, I don’t have to think. I can operate on autopilot and there’s always a few pleasant surprises. Lists are where I found Interpol, Ratking and Purple Mountains and for that I’m eternally grateful.
With this in mind, the Apple Music Top 100 Albums list inevitably caught my attention. Now, ranking is arbitrary, in my eyes. It’s easy for me to say that ‘Led Zeppelin II’ (27th) and ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ (28th) are better than ‘Pet Sounds’ (20th) but it doesn’t really make a difference. Inclusion is what counts, and in my opinion, they’ve got it about 70% right.
No doubt, there is a huge leaning towards albums released in the past 10-15 years. I also believe it’s a list based on strategy as much as it is taste. Two Beyonce albums, Taylor Swift’s 1989 (18th), Lana Del Rey and Bad Bunny all feature. What do these artists all have in common? Incredibly vocal, extremely online fanbases. The sort of fanbases that have a unifying, potentially destructive, type of terrifying internet strength when triggered by, I don’t know, a snubbing on the album list of 2024. I’m surprised not to see an Ariana Grande album on there for this very reason. But I suppose that’s the exception that proves the rule.
Below, I have included an image of albums that are not included in the list. They’re full of albums that would be in my list. But they’re also in the lists of other music publications and Apple Music cannot just replicate the same lists we see on Pitchfork, The Fader, Consequence of Sound, etc. There must be some variety and I believe we’ve seen that here. There are 35 albums that I would classify as R&B/Rap, which seems like overkill. But then if you look at Pitchfork’s ‘perfect 10’ albums (of which I count 98), just 8 of them would fit under the same classification. Apple Music have tried to be different here and they’ve been successful in garnering a lot of attention. It’s hard to be mad at a list that isn’t really made for me.
Yes, Jeff Magnum’s whine on ‘King of Carrot Flowers’ is enough to make me weep. Yes, I do actually enjoy listening to Aphex Twin (best served stoned). And yes, I adore Wilco’s ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ despite Ellie having to ban me from listening to it because it sent me into short bouts of tremendous sadness. These albums, along with pretty much all those on the graphic above, would be in my top 100. But this actually says something far more disappointing about music consumption - something I’m quite scared to admit.
What is influential to me, a 25 year-old male from the UK, is the music that I’ve devoted the most time to between the ages of 18-25. I made the decision to take most of my music recommendations from Pitchfork and The Quietus, so it’s no surprise that my favourite albums tend to be the ones most highly praised on those sites. We are what we consume and we’re actually extremely hesitant to pitch our flag in the field of opinions without first seeing what everybody else’s flag says. I have to physically stop myself checking reviews before listening to albums in fear of my experience being coloured by the opinions of somebody else. There is only one reason that so many of us have spun Milton Nascimento’s ‘Clube Da Esquina’ hundreds of times. It’s a classic, granted. But I would never have listened to a Brazilian progressive, psych-folk album from 1972 unless a site whose opinion I cared about hadn’t recommended it.
One reason to be pleased that there are so many notable omissions on the list is that there is just too much great music. There are thousands of incredible albums that could stake their claim on a top 100 list, but there’s just not enough space. If there was just one definitive list with all of the best music, I’d be incredibly depressed once I’d finished with the list. The beauty of these things is their subjectivity. There is an unspeakable joy of finding an unknown mind-melting album on your 10th ‘top albums of the year’ list. Discovery is one of the great pearls of music culture, and even if 90% of our taste profile is curated through massive music publications and algorithms, the 10% that is ours is worth it all.
To conclude, Apple Music succeeded with their Top 100 Albums list. They sparked conversation, they made people angry and they appealed to the most ‘influential’ fan bases in modern recorded music. And to those who are disappointed not to see MF Doom, Slipknot, Death Grips or SOPHIE on the list, be glad someone is still yet to discover them.
Let me know what you think about Apple Music’s Top 100 Albums List here!