respectfully while i kind of agree with your general point there are like endless other music sites on the internet where you can find this
then what is the issue haha? a niche music site with a specific taste since it has existed is continuing to put out lists for the same niche. if you get coverage for other genres and stuff elswhere, who cares?
for the record im not like defending the list, ive heard maybe half of the list and the majority of those are records i don't think are good at all (thrice record is one of their worst sheesh) and the majority of the ones i haven't heard are the starting line where there is no point in me listening. a lot of the people on this site seem to think my choice for aoty (geese) sucks. again, who cares?
just sharing how I think the site can improve. why would we only want writers with the same taste of music and who all agree with one another? just seems like an echo-chamber. this feels like a community and I visit this site more than other music sites because of that communal feel. I bring recs from other sites here, because I feel somewhat connected to the other users here. part of the joy is the discussion and having that with people you've "grown up with." hope that makes sense.
From reading the members lists I was actually surprised by how varied the choices were and which didn't reflect much of the bands which are traditionally favoured as a consensus here.
i guess i mean why do you need the site to improve? at this point we have all been coming here long enough that i doubt any of our attachments to the site are solely based in Online Music Discussion anymore. if you find the writing for other styles of music elsewhere like you said, why do you need/want other writers for chorus? i know the site isn't named absolutepunk anymore but there's no reason for it to start diving into covering pitchfork-core or diving deep into rap tapes just for the sake of having more varied writing arbitrarily
i do think what you're saying makes sense, not trying to attack you or whatever, i just get my fill of other music writing elsewhere and don't think there's any need for music publications to become even more homogenized
Again, it's a list made by 10 people. The shared reference points are what make the final list by virtue of showing up on multiple ballots. If you actually go look at the individual lists, there's a lot of variety there. Only one album in my top five made the combined list. A lot of what I voted for wasn't on a single other ballot. It's not an echo chamber so much as it's just how consensus lists work.
The irony will always be that my inbox and DMs on social media always ends up filling up with people saying how thankful they are for these lists, how many NEW BANDS they discover, or new albums they didn't know came out, and how happy they are to find out about a band like Moving Mountains or Beauty Dropout that they had never heard before but love. It's why I try not to let the negative comments get to me, because there are a lot of people that do not breath music every second of every day that check out this feature and get to find out about new music to them. Usually in a genre they love and have loved for most of thier lives. The most die-hard music listeners that listen to a thousand genres are probably not going to find much on this specific list made by ten people where most of the consensus was 4-5 people having the same album on their list. (There were over 188 unique albums combined, the whole point (besides trying to make personal eoty lists cause it's fun) of our "list" is what albums ended up having some consensus. By that inevitable design that means it'll lean toward the albums multiple people heard, listened to, and probably have a history with to even check out in the first place. That's not an echo chamber, it's just going to be what the math does, the things where there's crossover in taste is what builds the list - that's how it's made.) Like the amount of work it is getting people to even contribute to this list is hard! I didn't get the final blurbs until this morning at like 4am. I don't think I had 25% of them until late yesterday. There's really like 3-4 people that "write" regularly on the website and it's mostly me and Adam with reviews and the occasional extra feature from Craig and Drew. People have five thousand other ways of talking about music (forums, twitter, reddit, their instagram, youtube, making their own substack) that there's not really many these days that think "Oh, I want to write something and put it on a website (if they even know what those are these days) that a niche audience reads" when they can just toss out their take at anytime the thousands of other places. So that self selects who even contributes to these lists and this website in general. And we got more people than usual this year! Ten people, last year had only seven! And I think it made the list better. There's albums on the main list I had never even heard of! And now have. I dunno, I shouldn't get bummed out at the comments. But the hours I put into trying to get this together, and writing my own list, just for people to slam on it, or make comments questioning the integrity?, brings me down.
Chorus.FM List Day! 2025 AOTY 1. The Starting Line - Eternal Youth 2. Moving Mountains - Pruning of the Lower Limbs 3. The Callous Daoboys - I Don’t Want To See You in Heaven 4. Beauty School Dropout - Where Did All the Butterflies Go 5. Mayday Parade - Sweet 6. Pool Kids - Easier Said Than Done 7. Hot Mulligan - The Sound a Body Makes When It’s Still 8. The Technicolors - Heavy Pulp 9. Anxious - Bambi 10. Saturdays at Your Place - These Things Happen HM 1. The Maine - Dyed 2. All Time Low - Everyone’s Talking 3. LS Dunes - Violet 4. Michigander - Michigander 5. Turnstile - Never Enough 6. Hayley Williams - Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party 7. La Dispute - No One Was Driving The Car 8. Slow Joy - A Joy So Slow At Times I Didn’t Think It Was Coming 9. Motion City Soundtrack - The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World 10. Arms Length - There’s a Whole World Out There Excited to check out some things I may have missed from others’ lists!
all fine and good. I was just thinking out loud and genuinely not trying to upset or offend anyone, or to criticize Jason's hard work in putting it all together. I'll just stfu and continue parsing through the individual lists people posted :)
And I do want to say thanks to @Fucking Dustin for contributing and me discovering Jennie! And for Craig's list and me finding Ryan Hurd! And Trevor for this Billie Marten blurb. Cause I still love to find new stuff to listen to, and even after a year where I listened to close to 900 different artists, I know I barely scratched the surface of what's out there.
I'm very grateful I was allowed to contribute at all hahaha I was so surprised when you reached out about it. I'm glad you've discovered something from it and I do hope many others can as well for sure, I already have from others here and a lot of my list comes from people I've known for years on here too
This is kinda where I end up when I look at the list. I'm like, yeah sure there's a lot of other albums that are great that aren't on our list but those are pretty damn well covered by now and it's cool that this list can deviate from that pretty heavily I felt the same way when Jason Schreier (NO chance I spelled his name right and I was too lazy to google) posted his end of year video game list and people complained Clair Obscur wasn't on it. Like, yes it's already won every award and everyone loves it (including me it's my #1) so isn't it a good thing that he's giving a totally different take because his opinion is different and not just falling in line on that? I dunno I do think everything's been pretty well covered by now but wanted to echo that from you for sure
I think the Chorus list is pretty cool, at least it’s not the same as all the others, plus Rosalia has a good spot (not good enough though) and that’s really all you need to do to get me on board this year
I just blasted through this thread this evening and kept queuing songs from high ranking albums I hadn't heard of. Safe to say I've found a good handful of interesting albums to check out as a result of this experiment. This community rules. Adding these to my rotation for the week: - Psychonaut - World Maker - Greet Death - Die in Love - Clark - Steep Stims - Aesop Rock - I Heard It's a Mess There Too - Snooze - I KNOW HOW YOU WILL DIE - Dijon - Baby
My perfect list 1. Agriculture - The Spiritual Sound 2. Baths - Gut 3. Adult Mom - Natural Causes 4. Home Is Where - Hunting Season 5. Deftones - private music 6. Pretty Bitter - Pleaser 7. Chat Pile/Hayden Pedigo - In The Earth Again 8. Hotline TNT - Raspberry Moon 9. Geese - Getting Killed 10. Cloakroom - Last Leg of the Human Table 11. The Callous Daoboys - I Don’t Want To See You In Heaven 12. Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power 13. Greet Death - Die In Love 14. Alex G - Headlights 15. They Are Gutting A Body of Water - LOTTO 16. Planning for Burial - It’s Closeness, It’s Easy 17. La Dispute - No One Was Driving The Car 18. For Your Health - This Bitter Garden 19. Turnstile - Never Enough 20. Wednesday - Bleeds 21. Destroyer - Dan's Boogie 22. Liquid Mike - Hell Is An Airport 23. Stay Inside - Lunger 24. Big Thief - Double Infinity 25. Shearling - Motherfucker, I am Both: ‘Amen’ and “Hallelujah’… 26. Momma - Welcome to My Blue Sky 27. Ragana/Drowse - Ash Souvenir 28. Algernon Cadwallader - Trying Not To have a Thought 29. Hayley Williams - Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party 30. AFI - Silver Bleeds the Black Sun...
Part of Rosalia being higher is only catching I accidentally left it out of my ballot top ten when I was writing my blog post, haha.
I would be willing to wager that if I'd listened to The Spiritual Sound more it would've cracked my top 10. An incredible record, can't wait to see them in February.