By :
Mark Etinger
Are you a list maker? For as long as I can remember I have been an obsessive list making psychotic. Each year December would come along and I would meticulously go over each and every record that meant anything to me. I would amass a list of the best albums, music videos and of course the best new songs 2011, 2010, 2009...1996, 1995, 1994... seriously, this has been going on far too long.I guess I have always attempted to use this list-making to help put order into a chaotic world. After I spend weeks pouring over the music I've been enjoying all year long I start to listen to songs with a more scientific ear. Inevitably it becomes about what each song says about me. Including one band over another, after all, must have some rhyme or reason within the context of my life. As I allow those thoughts to come into my list composition I begin to question their motives. "Shouldn't I be trying to give people a list of music that feels objectively good? Isn't that what the people want?" Of course this ignores the fact that "the people" likely do not give a hoot or holler about what I have to say about the greatest songs of all time or the best songs of a given year.In all I think I make a lot of these lists to satiate some desire in myself to have a better list than all of the ones I read in magazines and on websites each year. This year in particular I found the consistent snubbing of a crudely named band's album David Comes To Life in favor of the ubiquitous Adele and Bon Iver to be indefensible. My annual music list is a great way to acknowledge that while many are ignoring a record by Ted Leo, I totally get it. Most of these bands probably never hear of my lists even if they end up on the web. But as in a political campaign the word on the ground matters over the long haul.In the end the songs you love are just that; songs you love. We might not see eye-to-eye at all. One man's Das Racist is another man's Fleet Foxes. This is just the way it is. As long as I am making lists of the best songs ever or of a given genre or period of time, my opinion will be well represented and there for the taking, should "the people" ever decide they needed it.
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