[whomario]

Originally Posted by Karlifornia

I hate hate beer snobs. When I tell someone I drink Budweiser, I know it's shit. If someone was making a list of the Top 100 beers of the past decade, I'd know better than to try and throw Budweisers hat into the ring. I'd get laughed out of the discussion. That doesn't sway my own appreciation for Budweiser, but I know better than to try and flaunt Budweiser into the faces of those who obviously have invested more time into the intricacies of beer.

Basically, American Idiot is the Budweiser of music to me.

now that´s a well constructed metaphor that can be understood by nearly every 15+ year old human being

I love those lists, gives me ideas on what to check out or reminds me of artists/albums i haven´t heard in a while.

I make it a habit that arround the end of a year i take a day or 2 (mostly some weekend filled with little activity, preferably rainy outside) to go through about 5,6 blogs that i enjoyed reading (not even regularly reading them) and got bookmarked to see if they have a year ends list up and then got a couple tabs open with youtube, myspace, lastFM etc (often the blogs offer a song or 2 for download per artist/album) , good (albeit nerdy) times

@ DC : In my Top list there would/will be a lot from your list so i´ll definitely have a look at the albums/artists i haven´t heard of/listened to on that Most of the so-called "indie" section of my "repertoire" is covered on your list, missing is Post-Rock (Explosions in The Sky,
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mono f.e.) and some more artists like Franz Ferdinand or Maximo Park. And of course a few german acts that obviously haven´t made it across the Pond other than maybe The Notwist.
Will post a list on the weekend mabye ...

Agree that mainstream success shouldn´t exclude albums from such lists at all. Heck, there was a period when a ton of Indie music got played on shows like The OC or Greys Anatomy and suddenly they were accused of that on blogs while by now it should be clear it had a immensely positive effect.
I also hate things like a lot of artists get discredited from the internet public once they start to sell big (Death cab For Cutie is one example here. Everybody on the web basically says "Transatlanticism was their best album, then they were merely good but weren´t as good because they wrote for a bigger audience" . Makes me cringe...)

Then again : Just because you haven´t heard of it doesn´t mean it´s obscure (or even "artsy") either. A lot of those albums, they are on a ton of personal lists of people that are a bit more than casual music listeners. They have also been introduced to a whole new group due to the much more frequent use of songs in popular TV series (think the OC or Greys Anatomy who have produced amazing soundtracks and introduced a ton of amazing artists to a lot of people)

I´m not saying you have to like them or even know them, but there´s tons of people that do, more than you think And it IS a certain group of people, but those are the people that make those lists in the first place.

It´s also not just weird people either, try to embrace us
Sales often don´t back that up, but there´s a plethora of reasons to that...

A lot of artists/albums on those lists also are from Europe and/or from lesser-known genres and if you don´t actively look out for them you aren´t going to have heard of them.
Yet with the digital age you can get to know them whereas 20 years ago only the biggest stars even go a fanbase on the other side of the pond. So don´t say they are obscure just because you haven´t heard of it. Actually a lot of the acts you might find "obscure" or "artsy" are actually very easily digested.
Take "The Postal Service", "Death Cab For Cutie" or "Nada Surf" (just to name personal favourites) who create pop-songs essentially. Listen to Death Cab´s opener to Plans (Marching Bands of Manhattan), Nada Surf´s (See Theese Bones) or Postal Sevice´s "Such Great Heights" (yeah, the UPS jingle does originate from that !) , this isn´t "artsy" music but just beautifully structured pop songs.