By Josh Bayer
Making a year-end list is a terrifying thing -- it's a thought that has been incessantly rattling around in my head since early January of this year. Having never been a music editor before, I had never felt the journalistic pressure to carve out a definitive list of my “tops." But this year, I've felt an almost martyrish burn -- a desire to present to Ann Arbor my name-stamped list of 2009's finest releases. I sometimes worry that I'm just a narcissistic elitist who naively thinks he has really good taste. But what does taste even mean? Who determines the quality of taste? Is it completely subjective, or is there a sort of fuzzy logic to it, a sort of Taste God who governs a naturally occurring set of rules for listening to music? It's probably best not to think about these things too hard -- I'm just making a list, y'know.
Making a year-end list is a terrifying thing -- it's a thought that has been incessantly rattling around in my head since early January of this year. Having never been a music editor before, I had never felt the journalistic pressure to carve out a definitive list of my “tops." But this year, I've felt an almost martyrish burn -- a desire to present to Ann Arbor my name-stamped list of 2009's finest releases. I sometimes worry that I'm just a narcissistic elitist who naively thinks he has really good taste. But what does taste even mean? Who determines the quality of taste? Is it completely subjective, or is there a sort of fuzzy logic to it, a sort of Taste God who governs a naturally occurring set of rules for listening to music? It's probably best not to think about these things too hard -- I'm just making a list, y'know.
But, for whatever reason (probably my self-awarded burden of social responsibility), I have been working like a hog to compile an unbiased, well-informed list of this year's musical releases. And it has been very difficult, because I don't personally know most musicians. So I have to rely on this phenomenon called “word of mouth," that I acquire from (at least in my personal little media outlet-bubble) either websites or friends and from print resources like The Michigan Daily.
Making a year-end list is a terrifying thing -- it's a thought that has been incessantly rattling around in my head since early January of this year. Having never been a music editor before, I had never felt the journalistic pressure to carve out a definitive list of my “tops." But this year, I've felt an almost martyrish burn -- a desire to present to Ann Arbor my name-stamped list of 2009's finest releases. I sometimes worry that I'm just a narcissistic elitist who naively thinks he has really good taste. But what does taste even mean? Who determines the quality of taste? Is it completely subjective, or is there a sort of fuzzy logic to it, a sort of Taste God who governs a naturally occurring set of rules for listening to music? It's probably best not to think about these things too hard -- I'm just making a list, y'know.
Making a year-end list is a terrifying thing -- it's a thought that has been incessantly rattling around in my head since early January of this year. Having never been a music editor before, I had never felt the journalistic pressure to carve out a definitive list of my “tops." But this year, I've felt an almost martyrish burn -- a desire to present to Ann Arbor my name-stamped list of 2009's finest releases. I sometimes worry that I'm just a narcissistic elitist who naively thinks he has really good taste. But what does taste even mean? Who determines the quality of taste? Is it completely subjective, or is there a sort of fuzzy logic to it, a sort of Taste God who governs a naturally occurring set of rules for listening to music? It's probably best not to think about these things too hard -- I'm just making a list, y'know.
But, for whatever reason (probably my self-awarded burden of social responsibility), I have been working like a hog to compile an unbiased, well-informed list of this year's musical releases. And it has been very difficult, because I don't personally know most musicians. So I have to rely on this phenomenon called “word of mouth," that I acquire from (at least in my personal little media outlet-bubble) either websites or friends and from print resources like The Michigan Daily.
