Top Music 2011

My top of 2011

Let’s go quickly. My top 10 (and 2/3) of the year are the following:

Dum Dum Girls - Only In Dreams
The Fresh & Onlys - Play It Strange (released in 2010, but y’know… whatever… this link links to english content by the way)
Real Estate - Days
The Black Keys - El Camino
Acid House Kings - Music Sounds Better with You
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Veronica Falls - Veronica Falls
Hanni El Khatib - Will The Guns Come Out
British Sea Power - Valhalla Dancehall
Atlas Sound - Parallax
Maison Neuve - Joan

Special Mentions :

The “Soledad Brothers” Prize for Best Concert: Pulp (Primavera Sound)
The “Fredo Corleone” Prize for Biggest Let Down: She & Him
The “Badly Drawn Boy” Prize for Biggest Let Down In Concert: The La’s
The “Sheetah & les Weissmuller” Prize for Best Name: Paul Simon
The “Sonic Youth” Prize for That Group That Everyone Loves But I Don’t Really Get It: Frànçois and the Atlas Moutain
The “Andrea c’est toi” Prize for Humor in a Song: The Black Keys for their Lonely Boy video
The “Jean Rochefort” Prize for Veterans that Never Let Down: The Black Keys

The Big Picture

As we did in 2010, here we go for 2011: an integrated analysis of “top 2011 lists” from our favorite music sites of the year!

Pitchfork: The Bible of American music sites, at the same time covering mainstream and eclectic and unknown, you can find as much new music as you can articles about Bruce Springsteen and Weezer
Stereogum: Also an American source, a bit more alternative in spirit, but pretty similar to Pitchfork
I Guess I’m Floating: My favorite US “pre-hype” blog, they have their small network and they often discover really interesting treats
Les Inrocks: The essential French source
Magic: An alternative French source that I like more and more
Bon Pour les Oreilles: a blog by Swiss Christophe Schenk
Rolling Stone Magazine: Covering mainstream US
NME: UK site covering mainstream music
Ground Zero: French record shop
Gimme Indie Rock: A comic blog from Les Inrocks

I created a point system, attributing points to the groups cited by each site - based on a) the “credibility” of the site (based on my personal judgement, which I realize is completely biased and perhaps, unfair), and b) the ranking of the group.

The verdict

Bon Iver
M83
Girls
Jay-Z & Kanye West
Destroyer
Drake
Real Estate
PJ Harvey
St. Vincent
Fleet Foxes

The analysis

The ranking is much closer than last year, and Bon Iver seemed to be the only clear winner across the various sites. And the victory is merited. I am not a huge fan, but the album is ambitious - and succeeds.

The ranking for Girls was also well-deserved. Real Estate and Fleet Foxes too. PJ Harvey’s presence is probably due to the mass of 40-somethings writing for these music sites. Eh.

For the rest, let’s give a shoutout for M83 (a French band). We would’ve preferred something a bit more rock’n’roll - we’re going to come off again as French-Touchers, but for once, we’re at the top, so I won’t complain. Kanye and Drake are not really my cup of tea, so I won’t dell. As for St. Vincent, I’ve already said what I thought here.

The pleasant surprise comes perhaps from Destroyer, a potential candidate for the 2011 “Deerhunter” prize (re. a band I didn’t know and only discovered in doing this top 2011 analysis).

I’m very disappointed by the Black Keys’ absence from the top 10 list (coming in at #24) and I would like to mention that Metronomy got excellent reviews on the “old continent” (Inrocks, NME, and Magic all ranked Metronomy in their top 3), but the group was completely ignored on the other side of the atlantic. Bizarre…

The complete list

The complete rankings are shared in this Google Doc.

Also, here’s a tag cloud of all the artists evaluated during the analysis. Feel free to play around:

The 2011 mixtape will be arriving shortly.