Starting this year I’ll be making some major changes to the Music Year in Review. Firstly, I will be expanding eligibility to anything I added to my music library within the given year, regardless of release date or whether I already had music by that artist. Secondly, there will now be only two categories: “Best Miscellaneous” and “Best Albums.” “Best Albums” is self-explanatory; “Best Miscellaneous” is essentially a catch-all for anything I want to feature that doesn’t fit into the “Best Albums” category. Thirdly, I will no longer be separating “Best of” and “Honorable Mentions;” instead, only some of the entries on the list will get full blurbs. This way I’m not demoting an album to “Honorable Mention” simply because I can’t think of anything worthwhile to write about it—and not forcing myself to write some substanceless “Basically, this is good” blurb just so I can put an album in “Best of.”
All of this is intended to simultaneously expand the purview of the Year in Review list so that music I want to feature doesn’t get left out while also reducing the amount of work I’m forcing myself to do. I’ll be making changes to the Podcast list (and possibly YouTube as well) for similar reasons, though those likely won’t get their own explanatory note. Mainly I’m writing this because I think of the Music list as kind of the flagship of the Year in Review lists, and I’m just trying to reassure myself that these changes are a good idea.
Certain of Eventual Failure 