Ok we have our 10 combatants.
beetlejuice 
mjiggy
jalfrezi
TheDuker
Smrk4
microbet
seities
Pauwl
MimosaDef
DodgerIrish
Five lists submitted so far.
I’d like to reveal on Monday if the remaining five don’t wait until the last minute. But if they do, that’s fine and the reveal will likely be Tuesday. The plan is to then alternate reveal days with seities.
I guess it’s possible to do this for every year because lol pop music, but it was just a confluence of things: most of my favorite bands are dead, in nursing homes, past their prime, or just not releasing new stuff. There were a few albums from my all time favorite artists that were released in 2019 (and I ended up choosing from there), but I was on the whole disappointed with those albums. Then I looked at the top 100 songs of 2019 from billboard, and just wow was that ever a wasteland of talentless derivative dreck. Hopefully these submissions prove me wrong though, I do have a very narrow range of favorite artists that screws me for a category like this.
I think you’re just looking in the wrong places. IMO the world is getting worse but music is getting better. More people have access to instruments, lessons, and a platform than ever before, and that’s a great thing for new music.
I’m not surprised Billboard’s top 100 is trash. The trick is finding a reviewer, magazine, or whatever that has similar tastes to yourself. Maybe try Pitchfork’s best of 2019, or The Needle Drop’s rapid fire best of the year, or for metal try Banger TV.
This debate can go on and on and clearly there’s a bias in favour of the music people listened to in their youth and musicianship is definitely improving, but all that is also true of films (cinematography and special effects are hugely better than before) but I don’t think anyone would argue that contemporary cinema is the equal of, say, the 1970s.
Both have somewhat run out of new ideas.
I hadn’t forgot. I came to post that I’ll get it in here by deadline.
From high school:
I need to get some work done this morning and then should be free for a reveal around 2:00pm PST. First category is weaker than the rest (lololds) but it’s still quite strong! I’m very happy with what people sent me. I probably enjoyed 40-45 out of the 50 total.
Send me some papers I’ll grade them
Haha, next time. I wasn’t grading, thankfully.
Can’t wait to hear the hep cat entries for contemp music. Cant be long now…
