Album Rating: 4.0

hey guys make the 'b' an 'f' and then swap the 'r' and 'a'



lmao!

Album Rating: 2.0

You're saying engage with this album as flatulence? Could work

Album Rating: 3.5

Club Classics is incredible for its first thirty seconds imo and then weird for its last two minutes, but the weirdness feels like a solid or defensible or at least interesting artistic decision so I’m fine with it. The huge synths and the drums that kinda slide and click around in the first part and the build to that is incredibly exciting though. The feeling of something coming alive in the first notes of the muffled synth. Overall a good song

Album Rating: 4.0

yes doof! we turn the synth pads to farts!

Album Rating: 2.0

Brat and It’s Completely Farts but Also Still Brat

‘10 second snippet from the Love Island theme’

🎯

Girl so confusing with Lorde is 6/5

Album Rating: 4.0

Yesss banger

Album Rating: 3.0

I get WHY it pisses people off that staff voted this #1, we are one of the few independently operated publications that hypothetically could offer a dissenting voice instead of just repeating the same thing that all the bought websites are saying. But I don't care enough to put up a fight for it.

Album Rating: 1.5

Yeah, all music media seem to follow the same formula.

Album Rating: 4.0

crazy idea maybe we liked it

Album Rating: 4.0

it's funny because our picks usually tend to go against the consensus historically

Album Rating: 3.5

Well, if the consensus that year is one album, which is usually a shaky concept but maybe not this year, then there are countless ways to go against it and only one way to go with it



I actually do get feeling frustrated because this kind of thing dovetails with the thing I complain about where we used to get our recs from breathing people and now it feels less that way, which has an overall homogenizing effect. (And the homogenizing effect is frustrating on scale—it would obviously be lame if year after year our lists and #1 picks /really/ looked like those elsewhere on the internet, right?) But I then again think about that I liked this album, maybe hovers around #10 for me, and didn’t even vote for it, and it still won. Hard to overcome that kind of thing when it’s just a bunch of individual lists added up. Tinymixtapes had interesting lists I wonder if they were really just “the results added up”. Might not be the way to do it these days if you want consensus-busting



I believe over half the top-15 list I submitted was albums only I voted for.

I disagree that there are 'countless ways to go against it' (though I take the point) for the rather moot reason that the only alternatives are inevitably less popular options we've given ourselves. If we're talking about AOTY picks from the contrarian perspective of not just regurgitating consensus and exciting optics - which I'm sympathetic to, ok ok let's go there - then I think some distinction needs to be made between the perspective and edge that comes from individual voices (which I think sona is alluding to re. Tinymixtapes) and the very palpable crossover that exists between certain groups of staff writers. Is the consensus surrounding various schools of sputcore really any less homogenous within the site than that within broader discourse? State Faults would have been such a lowest common denominator #1 within the site that I struggle to see a strong argument being made against Brat based on the same phenom applying from without

Album Rating: 4.5

I'd rather jam this than most "skramz"

looking through our recent lists right now and struggling to find a pick for #1 that wouldn't be viewed as a huge deja vu for either wider online trends or Sputnik's internal feedback loop:
-> In 2023, StH as a viral #1/There Will Be Fireworks as a Sputcore-to-a-fault #2 strikes me as a virtually identical pattern to Brat #1/State Faults #2 this year. Beyond this, this list is a hodgepodge of niche Sput picks and gluttonous establishment acts - honestly don't think anything could have topped it better than StH's trademark fuckit energy, but although this helped us dodge a bullet I'm not sure how well it will age
-> 2022 was dominated by the same indie picks as everyone else was repping (Big Thief/Alvvays/BCNR), and the breakthroughs we were on top of (Chat Pile/Yeule/Ethel Cain) were also well accounted for beyond the site. City of Caterpillar as #1 would have caught the site and certainly the rest of the world by surprise, but ultimately still stand as an extremely Sputnik pick through their status as a skramz legacy band
-> 2021 was imo a terrible list for overrepresented Sput consensus artists (ETID, World is a Beautiful Place, Converge, Mastodon) and also pretty tame in its inclusion of wider e-hype (Sweet Trip, Julien Baker, Injury Reserve). The fact that we featured the fucking Killers here is one of the most 'interesting' things about it -- though both Iosonouncane and (though not at all to my tastes) Musk Ox are bold picks that speak to weird niches of Sputnik rather than site inevitabilities and would have given us a really distinctive footing relative to other sites
-> Both 2020 and 2024 are good lists that reveal a lot of the Sput character, and represent a strong and diverse group of artists -- but I don't see any alternative contenders for #1 from either that could both sit the throne and dodge the whiff of consensus? Perhaps Protest the Hero or Paysage from 2020 and Alora Crucible in 2024? None of these seem particularly likely
-> The closest we've come imo to delivering a genuinely distinctive AOTY without either leaning into viral hype or pandering to sputcore's lowest common denominators was getting Saya Gray to #3 in 2022. I'm biased here, but if there's one concrete missed opportunity to have delivered Real Exciting Change Within And Beyond Sput, this is the one
interested to hear other weigh-ins here -- how do we burst the bubbles of Homogenous Music Journalism *and* Passe Sputcore at the same time? what were the correct decisions for each year? throw me a bone!

Album Rating: 1.5

Saya Gray was a) a great pick that resonated with me on a personal level, b) was a small part of an overall stellar and possibly standout year for Staff rankings generally (working on memory here, but I distinctly remember that year being an easy win for Staff vs the user equivalent)

Album Rating: 5.0

https://www.sputnikmusic.com/list.php?memberid=1062739&listid=204839



every sput top 10 from 2010-2022 can be found on this list for quick reference (with an entirely objective ranking ofc)

Album Rating: 1.0

it’s no silk sonic

Album Rating: 4.0

didn't expect to like this but honestly, album rules. so much attention to detail and actual songwriting going in beneath the surface.