Best Albums of 2015

[Dirty Water]

TPAB & Currents

[theMoMA]

To Pimp a Butterfly
Carrie & Lowell

[Harpie's Feather Duster]

TPAB
Currents

I like Hamilton a lot and all, but there's no way it's as iconic as TPAB.

Also, I have to offer my sincerest apologies to all question editors for the next year or more who will have to deal with receiving 10 billion submissions on Hamilton.

[heterodyne]

TPAB: I write this listening to "Aaron Burr, Sir", so it obviously pains me to vote against Hamilton, but I think TPAB is the better work.

Carrie and Lowell: My previous opinions stand.

[Off To See The Lizard]

TPAB
Carrie and Lowell

[Ailing Knight-at-Arms]

To Pimp a Butterfly
Carrie & Lowell

I realize now that Courtney Barnett reminds me of Liz Phair

[hydrocephalitic listlessness]

To Pimp a Butterfly (To me, musicals are only artistic insofar as they are musicals--a musical soundtrack on its own is just a gimmick.)
Carrie and Lowell

To lazy to post thoughts; this is the correct ballot.

same

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

To Pimp a Butterfly (To me, musicals are only artistic insofar as they are musicals--a musical soundtrack on its own is just a gimmick.)
Carrie and Lowell

To lazy to post thoughts; this is the correct ballot.

same

if we're all doing it

same

[Adventure Temple Trail]

(To me, musicals are only artistic insofar as they are musicals--a musical soundtrack on its own is just a gimmick.)

Pardon the digression, but this sentiment leaves me scratching my head in confusion. Do you mean something like "musicals are only artistic while they are being performed on a stage, visuals and acting and all -- and lose their art-quality when reduced to a recording of the music alone"? If so, that's at least sort of defensible (though I of course disagree). But it's definitely at odds with a large slice of recording industry history going back to Oklahoma! in 1943, and probably before (to say nothing of, like, cast recordings of operas, or printed scripts of straight plays, which are vulnerable to the same objection). One might not get the whole experience by picking up the cast album, but in my view it's an unalloyed good that people who can't get to New York (or afford a ticket once they're there) (or keep the entire content of a show stored in long-term memory after seeing it) can purchase and keep a pretty important component of the experience for a fraction of the cost of a ticket.

[gyre and gimble]

Matt, I think you correctly understood my point, and I also agree that there is, of course, value in a cast recording. But the values you identify aren't things that make the compositions artistic.

Maybe you'd disagree with my next point much more strongly, but the reason I dislike musicals is that the format doesn't lend itself to enough an authenticity of experience. I don't mean that a musical about Hamilton has to use 18th century musical styles. What I mean is that because the arrangements are really there just to support the vocal parts, and because the vocal parts are obviously sung, it's hard (for me at least) to experience a musical at any emotional level. The forcing of plot and emotion into a set of pretty (musically) basic songs just doesn't work for me--it feels like theatrics for the sake of theatrics.

But maybe I'm just full of shit and can't get over the fact that it doesn't make sense for characters to randomly break out into song.

(All of this, plus the creepy plastic-happiness facial expressions of the performers, is also why I hate things like glee and a capella.)

To keep things on topic, the above is why I find Hamilton to be a cool idea but not much else. I really don't care for listening to people rap about a dude who lived 250 years ago. But as someone who doesn't know rap, I can't really say that Hamilton isn't musically innovative.

[vinteuil]

pretty (musically) basic songs

Maybe you have, but I find it hard to believe that you've actually listened to Hamilton, or any other really good musical. (This is coming from someone who—as Matt knows—absolutely can't stand the more "Broadway" parts of most musicals and operas. Including Hamilton.)

things that make the compositions artistic...authenticity of experience.
...experience...at [an] emotional level.
...it doesn't make sense for characters to randomly break out into song.

It's obvious enough (probably to you, too) that what you're looking for isn't prioritized in the aesthetics behind most musicals—or operas, or most theater, or, hell, most literature in general! Sure, there's no reason you have to go out of your way to "appreciate" the genre or whatever, but it's not really fair to call something "inauthentic" when you've missed a fundamental point of what it's all about. (Something like the Collingwood thing about "sympathetic appreciation" of a philosophical position before you dismiss it—otherwise you run the risk of missing the point.)

[EDIT: misread part of your post. irony]

(All of this, plus the creepy plastic-happiness facial expressions of the performers, is also why I hate things like glee and a capella.)

I can understand this (and also hate that kind of performance), but again good luck watching kabuki etc. with that attitude....Sometimes it's not the genre's fault that you're looking for something that it's not "about."

[Auroni]

Yeah like Joanna Newsom is a lyrical and compositional genius whose songs have a ton going on; just because I don't like her doesn't mean I'm going to advance an argument against her "authenticity of experience" or artistic merit or whatever

[gyre and gimble]

I mean, I'm just trying to explain why I personally don't like musicals (I guess I phrased it like an objective point but I thought it was taken for granted that this thread was just about personal thoughts, sorry), and specifically why I don't see the artistic value in them. Maybe instead of equating them to opera or literature, you guys could point out what exactly is the artistry I'm supposedly missing?

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

Yeah like Joanna Newsom is a lyrical and compositional genius whose songs have a ton going on; just because I don't like her doesn't mean I'm going to advance an argument against her "authenticity of experience" or artistic merit or whatever

Well...the whole point of this thread is to argue over the "artistic merit" of different albums. As a corollary, it's healthy to criticize entries that you don't think are good, since doing so illuminates qualities that make the other entries good. Stephen's claim was too polemical, but if he wants to say Hamilton is too gimmicky to make it to the finals, he's definitely allowed to argue that.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Matt, I think you correctly understood my point, and I also agree that there is, of course, value in a cast recording. But the values you identify aren't things that make the compositions artistic.

Maybe you'd disagree with my next point much more strongly, but the reason I dislike musicals is that the format doesn't lend itself to enough an authenticity of experience. I don't mean that a musical about Hamilton has to use 18th century musical styles. What I mean is that because the arrangements are really there just to support the vocal parts, and because the vocal parts are obviously sung, it's hard (for me at least) to experience a musical at any emotional level. The forcing of plot and emotion into a set of pretty (musically) basic songs just doesn't work for me--it feels like theatrics for the sake of theatrics.

But maybe I'm just full of shit and can't get over the fact that it doesn't make sense for characters to randomly break out into song.

(All of this, plus the creepy plastic-happiness facial expressions of the performers, is also why I hate things like glee and a capella.)

To keep things on topic, the above is why I find Hamilton to be a cool idea but not much else. I really don't care for listening to people rap about a dude who lived 250 years ago. But as someone who doesn't know rap, I can't really say that Hamilton isn't musically innovative.

I wish you didn't feel this way -- I certainly don't share these feelings -- but this strikes me as a good explanation of a perfectly legitimate view of the art form, so thanks for elaborating more. I'd be happy to talk to you more off-thread about what I see in musical theater that might not be resonating with you, but it's not something I can argue another person into seeing, so I'm fine leaving things here for now and don't begrudge you the stated reason for your vote.

[Auroni]

Yeah like Joanna Newsom is a lyrical and compositional genius whose songs have a ton going on; just because I don't like her doesn't mean I'm going to advance an argument against her "authenticity of experience" or artistic merit or whatever

Well...the whole point of this thread is to argue over the "artistic merit" of different albums. As a corollary, it's healthy to criticize entries that you don't think are good, since doing so illuminates qualities that make the other entries good. Stephen's claim was too polemical, but if he wants to say Hamilton is too gimmicky to make it to the finals, he's definitely allowed to argue that.

There's a difference between criticizing something for not being good and between claiming that something is not even artistic to begin with.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

Matt, I think you correctly understood my point, and I also agree that there is, of course, value in a cast recording. But the values you identify aren't things that make the compositions artistic.

Maybe you'd disagree with my next point much more strongly, but the reason I dislike musicals is that the format doesn't lend itself to enough an authenticity of experience. I don't mean that a musical about Hamilton has to use 18th century musical styles. What I mean is that because the arrangements are really there just to support the vocal parts, and because the vocal parts are obviously sung, it's hard (for me at least) to experience a musical at any emotional level. The forcing of plot and emotion into a set of pretty (musically) basic songs just doesn't work for me--it feels like theatrics for the sake of theatrics.

But maybe I'm just full of shit and can't get over the fact that it doesn't make sense for characters to randomly break out into song.

(All of this, plus the creepy plastic-happiness facial expressions of the performers, is also why I hate things like glee and a capella.)

To keep things on topic, the above is why I find Hamilton to be a cool idea but not much else. I really don't care for listening to people rap about a dude who lived 250 years ago. But as someone who doesn't know rap, I can't really say that Hamilton isn't musically innovative.

I wish you didn't feel this way -- I certainly don't share these feelings -- but this strikes me as a good explanation of a perfectly legitimate view of the art form, so thanks for elaborating more. I'd be happy to talk to you more off-thread about what I see in musical theater that might not be resonating with you, but it's not something I can argue another person into seeing, so I'm fine leaving things here for now and don't begrudge you the stated reason for your vote.

As someone who doesn't know anything about musicals, I'd be interested in hearing this.

[women, fire and dangerous things]

Yeah like Joanna Newsom is a lyrical and compositional genius whose songs have a ton going on; just because I don't like her

you're off the team

[Rococo A Go Go]

Let's just make everybody nobody happy and convince Joanna Newsom to write a one-woman musical for next year's ballot.

[ryanrosenberg]

Let's just make everybody nobody happy and convince Joanna Newsom to write a one-woman musical for next year's ballot.

on john dickinson

[Rococo A Go Go]

Let's just make everybody nobody happy and convince Joanna Newsom to write a one-woman musical for next year's ballot.

on john dickinson

Just try and imagine Newsom singing The Liberty Song at next year's Tony Awards.

[ThisIsMyUsername]

I’m not Matt Jackson, but I happened upon this little back-and-forth about the value of musicals. I could write so much about this, as it is perhaps my favorite art form of all time. But I’ll say a little bit (well, a little by my standards anyhow), to get a basic point across.

Some of the things that you complain about, Stephen, are unavoidable parts of the art form, such as the fact that people are going to burst into song. Other things that you talk about—the secondary role of the arrangements, the “basic”ness of the music, the cheesiness/campiness of something like a cappella or Glee—are properties of particular styles of musical theater, perhaps even the dominant styles. But they are not essential properties of the musical. (And indeed that the argument that musical are musically “basic” is the most suspect. Most popular music scholars consider musical theater songs to be among the most musically complex popular songs of the 20th century. And Sondheim's music is arguably more complex than that of half the vocal composers in the canon.)

A musical is just a multimedia form, like a film. Like films, most are written for commercial entertainment purposes, and have little to no aspiration to be art; some are purely art-minded; and some straddle that divide. And like films, most are written by people who aren’t interested in the unique properties of the medium and are doing things that could be done just as well or better in a play or novel; and some are exploited by people who recognize the fact of it being a multimedia form as an opportunity to manipulate all the different component elements (lyrics, music, dramatic situation) and make them interact with each other.

If you have fundamental objections to people singing in dramatic situations, then the form may just not be for you. But if you are open to these elements being manipulated skillfully, that can be found. Unfortunately, it is difficult to make a case with excerpts from the more artistically substantive musicals, because they are often those in which the songs are least separable from the greater dramatic fabric. But I have found two examples to offer.

To see an example of fully traditional musical theater being done with high craftmanship, here’s “Some People” from Gypsy. All the dramatic context you need to know is that the protagonist is a “stage mom” who has dreams of her children becoming musical stars. At the beginning of the song, she lives with her father and is begging him to hock an award plaque to fund her entering the kids into show business: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6A9vR48Wnc. You might wish to consider: the richness of the language in the lyrics; why the musical patterns change when they do, and how this interacts with text; the combination of character exposition and plot exposition.

To see something where the music too is written in a more fully “artsy” style, I submit the “Now / Soon / Later” trio from A Little Night Music, which is a musicalization of the Bergman film Smiles of the Summer Night. (And it is worth considering what Sondheim does with this scene that Bergman could/would not do, given the medium he is working in. Bergman was a fan of the musical for this reason: that it adapted the film rather than just trying to set it to song.) In case you do not know the film, here’s context: middle-aged Fredrik is frustrated by his very young wife Anne’s insistence of protecting her virginity. As she chatters on while preparing for bed, he (with lawyerly logic) tries to figure out how he might entice her to relent. Meanwhile, Fredrik’s teenaged son Henrik, who is training to be a priest, reflects on his struggles with adolescence and his attraction to women, as he practices the cello. Finally, Anne promises to sleep with Fredrik…eventually. There is so much going on lyrically and musically in this scene that I don’t think I need to say any more.

Here is audio only, from the cast album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoXZSrV-rOk
If you’d prefer to watch the scene, start at 2:53 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB8f4HbqsWY; and then proceed to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e-wsE2217U

(One last thing for the curious. For a fun introduction to the early history of the American musical, the many different genres it entails, and its development from the late 19th century through until the early 50’s (including the changes in how and why characters “break into song”), you might want to watch this entertaining program written and presented by Leonard Bernstein: http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/le ... _episode_4)

I hope some of you found this helpful.

[Steeve Ho You Fat]

I have no opinions on the artistic merit of musicals as a genre, but I can't get over people randomly breaking out into song. Frequently, a whole bunch of people even happen to know the same song, and all want to sing it together. Maybe me, and all my friends, are really boring, but that's not how anyone I know behaves in real life, and it's hard for me to relate to characters who do that. For example, I'm a big fan of The Sound of Music, because it makes sense: this woman likes singing, so sometimes she sings to herself, and she teaches some kids to sing, and sometimes they sing songs together that she's taught them, to bond, or make each other feel better, or to have fun! That's great, and it has a lot of good songs in it! But if she was taking care of the kids and suddenly decided they were all going to press pause, and sing a song they all just magically happened to know all the words to, I doubt I'd enjoy it.

[vinteuil]

This is a serious question: do you guys not enjoy Shakespeare plays? Plenty of breaking out into song there, not to mention tetrameter and rhymed sections.

[Steeve Ho You Fat]

I find the songs in Shakespeare plays to be generally better-integrated into the structure of the play than the ones in most musicals, although at times, yes, I do wish there were fewer songs.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

Neither matchup was particularly close; as I count it, To Pimp a Butterfly won 18-10 over Hamilton, and Carrie and Lowell won 20-8 over Currents.

Your finalists are Sufjan Stevens' Carrie and Lowell and Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. Voting will close on Sunday at 11:59 PM.

Some frank preliminary thoughts: I think it's going to be very hard to beat To Pimp a Butterfly here. If you're inclined to vote for Sufjan, you would be wise to state your case forcefully to try and persuade some swing votes.

[gimmedatguudsuccrose]

TPAB is the clear choice here.

[gustavadolf]

I remembered disliking TPAB a lot when it came out, but in the interest of fairness I listened to it again last night. It still sucked. Musically, there are very few inspiring songs/songs that I would like to listen to again: in fact, there are a lot of songs that I actively disliked listening to ("For Free?", "u", and of course "Mortal Man" come to mind). In addition, Kendrick's poem-motif thing is dumb and cringe-worthy, and the fake Tupac interview/dialogue is just terrible/annoying/everything. I recognize that TPAB is a powerful statement about race in America and police brutality and discrimination and all that, but it's not inspiring music, and the best album of the year title should be evaluated on the merit of an album as music, not on the merits of its message (which is part of the music, certainly, but not all).

I joined this thread solely to vote against TPAB, and I'm going to continue to do so. Carrie and Lowell.

[Cody]

Carrie and Lowell.

[Habitat_Against_Humanity]

Carrie and Lowell.

Continuing to find correct ballots and piggyback off of them.

[Quinctilius Varus]

TPAB

[LHDoroschuk]

After giving both a final listen before voting, I think I have to give my vote to Carrie and Lowell, the album I played the most this year as well as my gateway drug to Sufjan Stevens.

[Harpie's Feather Duster]

To Pimp a Butterfly

[Maury Island incident]

To Pimp a Butterfly

[Sylvia Pankhurst]

Carrie and Lowell

[Auks Ran Ova]

All three albums I really cared about are gone :(

C&L, I guess.

[merv1618]

Carrie and Lowell.

Continuing to find correct ballots and piggyback off of them.

[tpmorrison]

TPAB

[John Ketzkorn]

To Pimp a Butterfly

[schen]

Carrie and Lowell

[Auroni]

TPAB

[gyre and gimble]

Carrie and Lowell

I think it's more timeless than TPAB. Assuming that this country's racial problems will be solved sooner than the "problem" of death, that is.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

All three albums I really cared about are gone :(

C&L, I guess.

"Best Albums of 2015," brought to you by death and futility.

[hydrocephalitic listlessness]

TPAB

[ryanrosenberg]

TPAB

[Mewto55555]

KOBE

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

KOBE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl_WkTiH6-Q

[Steeve Ho You Fat]

To Pimp a Butterfly is a powerful statement on race relations and a glimpse into the psyche of a tortured man. Sadly, it stops at the depression. Carrie & Lowell gives us a powerful statement on the most permanent of human problems, shows us an incredibly vulnerable side of someone, and then allows us a peak at what's beyond - recovery and hope. Carrie & Lowell is also beautifully sung and just minimalist enough to put the focus on the lyrics, without being stripped bare. It's far and away the best album of the last several years, and one I fully expect to listen to 10, 20, or 30 years from now.

[Bosa of York]

Carrie and Lowell

[heterodyne]

Carrie and Lowell.