Tis’ the season – of lists. The best albums of 2007, best songs of 2007, the biggest surprises and biggest disappointments – everything gets a list at this time of the year. But the problem is: they all kind of look the same. While going through the process to make my top ten list for 2007, I looked at a lot of other lists, and saw pretty much the same things in slightly different orders on most of them. Except one – I was particularly intrigued by Pitchfork’s Guest List: Best of 2007. Pitchfork accepted submissions from a variety of artists (The Mountain Goats, Deerhunter, Panda Bear, Blitzen Trapper, Caribou, etc.) – some people ranked their top 5 or 10, others listed projects in no particular order.
So I got curious – I wondered if there were any aggregate trends that could be pulled out. After about an hour in Excel, I was done. The result? While a lot of top ten lists from magazines and blogs were similar (most featuring Radiohead and Arcade Fire), the artist compilations were completely different, yet with statistically significant trends. So what were they?
1 – (13 Votes) M.I.A. : Kala
2 – (12 Votes) Panda Bear : Person Pitch
3 – (9 Votes) Animal Collective : Strawberry Jam
4 – (8 Votes) Deerhoof : Friend Opportunity
5 – (8 Votes) Dirty Projectors : Rise Above
6 – (7 Votes) Battles : Mirrored
7 – (6 Votes) Justice : Cross
8 – (6 Votes) Liars : Liars
9 – (5 Votes) Robert Wyatt : Comicopera
10 – (5 Votes) No Age : Weirdo Rippers
The other thing was that artist frequencies had a long tail distribution – meaning that after #20 or so, every other artist listed had only one or two votes. See Artist Aggregated 11-40 after the jump.
11 – (4 Votes) Caribou : Andorra
12 – (4 Votes) The National : Boxer
13 – (4 Votes) Cappuchino : High Grade
14 – (4 Votes) Neil Young : Live at Massey Hall 1971
15 – (4 Votes) Feist : The Reminder
16 – (3 Votes) Papercuts : Can’t Go Back
17 – (3 Votes) Radiohead : In Rainbows
18 – (3 Votes) Om : Pilgrimage
19 – (3 Votes) Beirut : The Flying Club Cup
20 – (3 Votes) Burial : Untrue
21 – (3 Votes) Studio : Yearbook 1
22 – (2 Votes) Malcolm Middleton : A Brighter Beat
23 – (2 Votes) Simian Mobile Disco : Attack Decay Sustain Release
24 – (2 Votes) Amy Winehouse : Back to Black
25 – (2 Votes) Britney Spears : Blackout
26 – (2 Votes) Deerhunter : Cryptograms
27 – (2 Votes) R. Kelly : Double Up
28 – (2 Votes) Cass McCombs : Dropping the Writ
29 – (2 Votes) Queens of the Stone Age : Era Vulgaris
30 – (2 Votes) Deerhunter : Fluorescent Grey EP
31 – (2 Votes) The Field : From Here We Go Sublime
32 – (2 Votes) Mum : Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy
33 – (2 Votes) Black Lips : Good Bad Not Evil
34 – (2 Votes) Kanye West : Graduation
35 – (2 Votes) Grinderman : Grinderman
36 – (2 Votes) The White Stripes : Icky Thump
37 – (2 Votes) Jose Gonzalez : In Our Nature
38 – (2 Votes) St. Vincent : Marry Me
39 – (2 Votes) Private : My Secret Lover
40 – (2 Votes) Witchcraft : The Alchemist
