So. Will of Will’s Band Of The Week, set out an exercise for the members contributing to the podcast : List out your top 10 albums of the decade 2010s.
I will not get into the conversations as to when does the decade start. That’s a whole other discussion. The parameters were list your top 10 from 2010 to 2019.
At first I was against this idea. Top 10 of decade means a deep dive into all the albums for last 10 years!! That’s insane. But it got stuck in my head like a fly. Buzzing over my thoughts day in day out. So I finally gave in.
Here is my list of top 10.
| Ranking | Artist | Album |
| 1 | G.L.O.S.S | G.L.O.S.S |
| 2 | Waxahatchee | Ivy Tripp |
| 3 | Courtney Barnett | Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit |
| 4 | Radiohead | A Moon Shaped Pool |
| 5 | The Chemical Brothers | HANNA |
| 6 | Feist | Pleasure |
| 7 | Leonard Cohen | You Want It Darker |
| 8 | The Beths | Future Me Hates Me |
| 9 | Car Seat Headrest | Teens Of Denial |
| 10 | Bob Dylan | Tempest |
Here is the podcast link : http://willsband.net/anurags-favorite-albums-of-the-decade
For those looking for the list, you can stop here. For those interested in knowing how I generated the list, let’s carry on.
I have been doing top 10 lists for a few years now and it was always a fun but a cumbersome project. This time I decided to make my life easier. I wanted to just enter the name of the album, enter some numbers and get my top 10.
Here are my controls :
Ranking : Is obvious
Artist / Album : are obvious
Highlight Song : My favourite song in the album
Songs I Loved In The Album : How many songs I really really liked
Total Songs In The Album : obvious
Songs Liked (Weighting) : Since number of songs varies in the albums (some have 20 songs and some have 5), I calculate a percentage.
Extra Weighting Based on Songs Liked : This is an argument I had with myself. We live in an era where emphasis is paid on a song and not the whole album. Hence I wanted to credit an album where I “liked” more songs than a certain threshold.
So, if the “Songs I Liked (Weighting)” is 8 or more, I gave an extra nudge. I increased the weighting by 50%. Hence the score under “Extra weighting” will become 12 or more.
If “Songs I Liked (Weighting)” is 5 and less than 8, I increased the weighting score by 25%. Hence the score under “Extra Weighting” will being 6.25 to 8.75.
This came in handy as the number of albums on my list numbered more than 50. You will see from my list that the higher ranked ones, universally, have a very high percentage of songs I have liked.
Lyrics Rating (out of 10) : I gave a score out of 10 for the lyrics. I am a lyrics guy. The song needs to explain (or at least attempt to explain) the meaning. So if an album can kind of “sync” with my thought process lyrically, I gave it a high score. There are a lot of amazing albums out there but they were lower in the list specifically because of this criteria.
Case in point St. Vincent’s album from 2014 titled St. Vincent. Lyrically I find it incomprehensible. It got a score of 5.45 under this criteria.
Music Rating (out of 10) : Music is the key. Music is everything. Music raises your heart to heavens and shows the true meaning of your life. So the music on the album needs to give me the “chills”, gives me a conduit to the mind and “soul” of the musician and with those sounds, we become brothers/sisters. For a few moments.
And there you have it. My method of coming up with the silly little algorithm. It’s stupid but I like it.
Caveat : This system is HEAVY on your subjective mind and thought process. The number I used to rate music is essentially what I “feel” about it. And feeling has no scientific basis. Same goes with lyrics.
And that’s that.
Desi In Toronto 