Better than anyone's list: 100 albums of the decade

I. An introduction
The problem with lists is they're so arbitrary. Anyone can throw together a list of favorite albums, but based on what? What's the logic behind numbering things you like from 1 to a certain number? Forget about subjectiveness for a while. That's another topic we lack the space and time to cover. The act of crafting a list in itself is by its nature absurd. Without guidelines or a true system of evaluation, lists are subject to the capricious whims of their individual authors and are therefore meaningless.

But here I am doing a list. And there's no way I'd be doing this if I hadn't discovered a workable system that I think judges every album I've listened to that came out in this decade fairly. An explanation of this system follows. If you just want to see the list, you can skip to part III - THE LIST.

II. An explanation
The first criterion for an album to be eligible for this list is that every song from it still needs to be on my iPod. It seems obvious, but you'd be surprised how many albums didn't make the cut despite having several of my favorite songs on them. If I didn't come up with this system, I might have included these albums anyway, but this method lends itself to a more accurate judgement of the merit of an entire album. So that's the first criterion: it must be an album I'm still willing to listen to all the way through.

Now when I break down the system, you'll see why it's important that every song is included. Looking over my earlier list, the top 500 songs of the decade, I regretted my decision to limit it to 5 songs per album. I resolved to come up with a better way to rank this list. Rather than simply tally up the number of plays and rank accordingly, I decided to come up with a way to calculate a "score" for the album using the plays weighed against the number of tracks (this way otherwise mediocre albums with huge standout tracks wouldn't dominate more solid albums with evenly-distributed numbers of plays, although presumably criterion #1 would nip this in the bud already). I needed an additional factor, since dividing number of plays by number of tracks wasn't cutting it. I decided to take the number of plays of the most-played track of a given album and subtract by the number of plays of the least-played track on the album, resulting in a number I will call the "spread". The formula I came up with is this:

score = (spread/tracks)plays

Or, score equals spread divided by tracks times plays. To use an example, "Kid A" by Radiohead has a total of 97 plays spread across 10 tracks on my iPod. The most played track, "Morning Bell", has 22 plays. The least-played track, "Idioteque", has 4 plays. 22-4 is 18. 18 divided by 10 is 1.8. 1.8 times 97 is 174.6. So the album has a final score of 174 (I will truncate rather than round up to keep things simple).

This method results in a unique score for nearly every album, though in the event of a tie I will allow my capricious whims to decide the order.

III. THE LIST (from left to right: rank, artist, album, score, year)
001. Yea Big + Kid Static - Yea Big + Kid Statoc - 2495 - 2007
002. The Mae Shi - HLLLYH - 1551 - 2008
003. She & Him - Volume One - 1315 - 2008
004. Converge - Jane Doe - 1098 - 2001
005. Doomriders - Black Thunder - 1026 - 2005
006. The Blood Brothers - March On Electric Children - 1011 - 2002
007. Made Out Of Babies - Trophy - 960 - 2005
008. Doves - The Last Broadcast - 955 - 2002
009. Botch - We Are The Romans - 829 - 2000
010. Wu-Tang Clan - 8 Diagrams - 827 - 2007
011. Kid Static - In The Meantime - 782 - 2008
012. The Appleseed Cast - Low Level Owl vol. 1 - 708 - 2001
013. Subtle - For Hero: For Fool - 699 - 2006
014. The Evens - Get Evens - 669 - 2006
015. The Aquarium - The Aquarium - 601 - 2006
016. Oxbow - The Narcotic Story - 572 - 2007
017. The Blood Brothers - Young Machetes - 572 - 2006
018. The Blood Brothers - Crimes - 540 - 2004
019. Joanna Newsom - Ys - 507 - 2006
020. The Evens - The Evens - 452 - 2005
021. The Blood Brothers - ...Burn, Piano Island, Burn - 421 - 2003
022. Tera Melos - Drugs to the Dear Youth - 400 - 2007
023. Pretty Girls Make Graves - Élan Vital - 370 - 2006
024. The Austerity Program - Black Madonna - 351 - 2007
025. Made Out Of Babies - The Ruiner - 350 - 2008
026. Wu-Tang Clan - Iron Flag - 325 - 2001
027. Cat Power - The Greatest - 298 - 2006
028. Nina Nastasia & Jim White - You Follow Me - 297 - 2007
029. Kayo Dot - Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue - 294 - 2006
030. Pet Genius - Pet Genius - 290 - 2007
031. Rob Sonic - Sabotage Gigante - 290 - 2007
032. ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead - The Secret of Elena's Tomb - 289 - 2003
033. Eleni Mandell - Miracle of Five - 287 - 2007
034. ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead - Source Tags & Codes - 280 - 2002
035. Gregor Samsa - Rest - 273 - 2008
036. Cat Power - You Are Free - 262 - 2003
037. Clouds - We Are Above You - 262 - 2008
038. Yeasayer - All Hour Cymbals - 220 - 2007
039. The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic - 186 - 2000
040. Ungdomskulen - Cry-Baby - 186 - 2007
041. Kayo Dot - Blue Lambency Downward - 180 - 2008
042. The Knife - Deep Cuts - 177 - 2004
043. Radiohead - Kid A - 174 - 2000
044. Spoon - Girls Can Tell - 174 - 2001
045. Codeseven - Dancing Echoes/Dead Sounds - 166 - 2004
046. Zozobra - Harmonic Tremors - 161 - 2007
047. Cat Power - Jukebox - 158 - 2008
048. Liars - Liars - 157 - 2007
049. Made Out Of Babies - Coward - 157 - 2006
050. Battles - Mirrored - 148 - 2007
051. Sufjan Stevens - Come On Feel The Illinoise! - 145 - 2005
052. Clipd Beaks - Hoarse Lords - 133 - 2007
053. Kayo Dot - Choirs of The Eye - 132 - 2003
054. The Knife - Silent Shout - 126 - 2006
055. Sleater-Kinney - One Beat - 113 - 2002
056. These Arms Are Snakes - Oxeneers or The Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home - 111 - 2004
057. M.I.A. - Arular - 110 - 2005
058. Maps & Atlases - Trees, Swallows, Houses - 109 - 2006
059. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! - 105 - 2008
060. Spoon - Gimme Fiction - 103 - 2005
061. The Austerity Program - Terra Nova - 99 - 2003
062. Mission of Burma - The Obliterati - 98 - 2006
063. The Shins - Wincing The Night Away - 94 - 2007
064. Cave In - Perfect Pitch Black - 94 -2005
065. Radiohead - In Rainbows - 93 - 2007
066. Battle of Mice - A Day of Nights - 92 - 2006
067. Jaguar Love - Take Me To The Sea - 89 - 2008
068. Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass - 88 - 2007
069. TV On The Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain - 87 - 2006
070. Jucifer - L'Autrichienne - 87 - 2008
071. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus - 86 - 2004
072. Dälek - Abandoned Language - 84 - 2007
073. Q & Not U - Power - 83 - 2004
074. Benton Falls - Guilt Beats Hate - 79 - 2003
075. Some Girls - All My Friends Are Going Death - 73 - 2003
076. At The Drive-In - Relationship of Command - 72 - 2000
077. El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead - 68 - 2007
078. The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema - 68 - 2005
079. consonant - consonant - 63 - 2002
080. Jesu/Battle of Mice - Jesu/Battle of Mice - 62 - 2008
081. Read Yellow - Read Yellow - 62 - 2003
082. Spoon - Kill The Moonlight - 61 - 2002
083. Fugazi - The Argument - 60 - 2001
084. Holy Fuck - LP - 59 - 2007
085. PJ Harvey - White Chalk - 58 - 2007
086. Cave In - Antenna - 56 - 2003
087. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga - 53 - 2007
088. Rob Sonic - Telicatessen - 50 - 2004
089. Isis - Panopticon - 48 - 2004
090. The White Octave - Menergy - 47 - 2001
091. The New Pornographers - Electric Version - 2003
092. Edie Sedgwick - Things Are Getting Sinister and Sinisterer - 41 - 2009
093. Gorillaz - Gorillaz - 40 - 2001
094. Eddie Vedder - Into The Wild - 40 - 2007
095. Cave In - Jupiter - 38 - 2000
096. Lupe Fiasco - The Cool - 38 - 2007
097. Red Animal War - Black Phantom Crusades - 38 - 2003
098. The Blood Brothers - This Adultery Is Ripe - 37 - 2000
099. Nisennenmondai - Neji Tori - 36 - 2008
100. Black Eyes - Cough - 36 - 2004

IV. Notes
- My original idea, upon completion of this list, was to write 100 more blogs, consisting of an essay for each album trying to justify its place in a top 100, including a download link. I may still embark on this project at some future date, but right now I'm content that the list speaks for itself.
- I can't tell you how many albums I wish I had deleted at least a couple of songs off certain albums, thus rendering them ineligible. To be sure, this is probably not what I would call my favorite 100 albums of the decade. But it is an honest summation of new music I've been listening to since mid-2007(which is part of the reason why the years 2006, 2007 and 2008 are so inordinately represented). And that's all I was going for with this - honesty.
- Nor does this list give an accurate picture of what I've been listening to since the beginning of the decade. That would only be possible if I'd had an iPod at the beginning of 2000 and it kept track of all my plays since then. I listen to music on several different formats, but I use the iPod most often, pretty much due to my work, walking, and sleeping habits. I don't know how I'd judge what I listen to the most without the iPod. Maybe I could count the scratches on my CDs.
- Update 10-3-09: so I went through and changed a couple of these because I had to make sure there weren't any on this list with tracks I wanted to delete. 99 and 100 are now changed. But that's it. Assume everything else on this list is an album where I could not remove even one song from it without losing something from the listening experience. Anyway now I gotta get started on next decade's list.