Editor’s Note: Feel free to post as long or short a list as you would like below, but please keep your lists contained to these posts and do not open up your own or fill up the OT with them. The winners will be announced alongside the other winners of The Pits on 12/20 and will be calculated by adding up your lists (10 points for first, 9 for second, etc. with 5 per awarded for unranked Top 10 lists). Voting will be cut off some time on 12/20 so make sure to cast your ballot before then. If you wish to change your ballot later feel free to, but please indicate clearly that you are recasting your vote to make things easier to count.
Today is the day for us to consider MUSIC of 2017. There are three (3) categories. Behold:
- The Laurel Canyon Sound Award for Best Album
- The Anybody Killa Award for Best Song
- The “Weird Al” Yankovic Memorial Award for Best Live Show
The plan is simple. You post your top whatever for each of these categories. For the sake of reason and order, please make a separate comment for your top albums, one for your top songs, and one for your top live shows. Also, go ahead and celebrate and/or criticize and discuss each other’s selections, as if I needed to tell you that.
Housekeeping
• If there is any question as to whether something counts as a 2017 release, be prepared to provide a compelling reason. For instance, Run the Jewels 3 was released digitally last December but had an in-store street date of this year. Verdict: 2016 and ineligible.
• To restate: If you rank your list, the No. 1 entry gets more points than the No. 2, and so forth. Only the top ten entries get points for the ‘The Pits’ awards. If you don’t rank them, your top ten all get five points and the rest get zero (though their mention will count toward tie-breakers). The winners of ‘The Pits’ will therefore be the objectively and incontrovertibly best albums/songs/live shows of 2017.
• You should still post a long list, though. Post every damn 2017 album/song/live show you consumed. I sure am. The more you post, the more there is for us to argue about.
As for live shows, I doubt many of us went to the same shows, but probably some of us saw the same acts on tour in different locations this year. And more to the point, people who like to talk about music like to talk about shows they saw, and this category is probably more about conversation than ranking.
Some inspirational reading:
The A.V. Club’s 20 Best Albums of 2017
Consequence of Sound’s Top 50 Albums of 2017
Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Albums of 2017
The 54 Best Songs of 2017 (New York Times)