Hot on the heels of our traditional Year End Top 25, the Senior Staff chops up their choices, talks some honourable mentions and ruminates on the year that was 2019. Insights into our review process, whether our mode of thinking about what constitutes an eligible release is still valid and various statistics from the last nine years of the exercise are discussed, dissected and eventually discarded. Also we get mildly tipsy. You can rate and subscribe on iTunes, Google Play Music, or download directly or stream from Spotify or the widget down below.
As always, the top 25 was a great list of things I both enjoyed throughout the year and need to check out, and I appreciate the additional suggestions in this week’s podcast. That said, I am a bit of a statistics nerd, so I poked through all the linked top 25 lists to see what jumped out, waffled on posting it, and then y’all discussed it and that encouraged me some. So here’s what I came up; it’s not really useful to speaking to larger trends, but it is a fun bit of trivia:
– As was mentioned in the podcast, Mr.Kitty and Rome are tied for the most top 25 appearances at 5 records each. Beneath that is iVardensphere at 4, and then seventeen bands at 3 appearances, twenty-eight bands at 2 appearances, and one hundred five bands with a single appearance. That technically adds up to 226 but you had a V▲LH▲LL and M‡яc▲ll▲ split release on the 2012 list, so I had to count that for both of them.
– The longest gap between appearances is a tie between Agent Side Grinder and ohGr, who both had seven years between their appearances.
– ∆AIMON, Boy Harsher, Comaduster, Encephalon, HIDE, High-Functioning Flesh, lié, Seeming, Twin Tribes, Wulfband, and Youth Code are in a special mentions category for having at least every major release they’ve made chart somewhere on the Top 25. There are a fair few other bands that would qualify if we gave them a bye for album but I wouldn’t want to speak to your feelings on their work.
– And y’all brought up what I came up with in regards to any mentions on labels.
Thanks again for everything this year, enjoy your break!
Gave them a bye for any albums released before 2011, that is. That’ll teach me to post without proofreading.
Wow, thanks for crunching those numbers Mark! Really fascinating to see someone else examine them. Cheers!