Accounting For Taste; or, The Top 10 of the Bottom 100 of the Top 500 Albums of All Time!

Taste is a strange animal.*

Why do we like what we like? How do we choose what to wear, what to eat, or what to listen to in 'an age of endless choice,' to borrow a phrase from Tom Vanderbilt.† Ever since the internet busted onto the scene in all its vulgar glory, it has become increasingly possible to purchase any item or watch virtually any film or TV show at any time. Music is a perfect example. With unlimited choices at our fingertips, the soundtracks to our lives are no longer limited by what happens to be on the radio, or by an assortment of LPs collected with great effort and devotion. How do you decide? Do you make playlists and then remain perpetually shackled to the same tried and tested tunes? Do you let those Swedish algorithmicists at Spotify do the work for you? Do you come back to the same artists again and again? Or are you always on the hunt for something new?

When we discover a new song or artist, how do we decided if we like it or not? There are countless artists that I love that no one I know can get into. And there are bands that I can't stand that all of my friends are crazy about.

We sometimes tell ourselves that when we enjoy a certain artist or album or song, our enjoyment is based on an entirely objective assessment. We sometimes insist that our tastes are “correct,” that the music we like is “good” music, plain and simple—that we are somehow the arbiter of taste. But, in my experience, it is totally evident that my taste in music has emerged haphazard and has taken many turns over the years. I'll like a band in one stage of life and not in another. I'll enjoy a song one day and get sick of it the next. Clearly there's more going on than objective assessment.

Enter taste.

Personally, my taste in music has clearly developed in seemingly arbitrary ways over the last 30-odd years. It has built upon happy associations from my childhood. I've been a fan of They Might Be Giants since they appeared on Tiny Toons in 1991. In 1995 I was into Weird Al (like any 10-year-old boy), a fact that surely influenced my discovery of a number of bands that he parodied, a number of which I still love today.° My taste has grown in concert with the modest musical skills and principles I have acquired (the learned ability to appreciate virtuosity and clever chord progressions). It has undoubtedly been positively influenced by the tastes of people I respect; I’ll give an album a chance if someone I love loves it. I happily married into an affinity for Paul Simon; my wife got ELO. Conversely, I can’t deny that my taste in music has probably been negatively affected by the tastes of people I have disliked for totally unrelated reasons. I'm thinking of that classmate in grade seven who vandalized my student planner with all kinds of Sugar Ray lyrics. He just wanted to fly.

In high school, and the five years or so that followed, I played in various rock bands. I was exposed to music constantly and my taste, accordingly, was challenged and developed. Then I went to college and got married, and my exposure to music plateaued somewhat. I still listened to a lot of music, but I found that I was going back to the same albums, year after year. Now, I'm back in a band and thinking a lot more about music and taste. As a result, I've embarked on a fairly straightforward attempt to expand my exposure and enrich my palate. 

Allow me to explain.

Over the last few months I’ve been listening through Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the "500 Greatest Album’s of All Time." Such a list is, of course, absurd since the true value of any art is almost entirely subject to the tastes of individuals. In an effort to account for this subjectivity Rolling Stone asked 273 musicians, critics and industry figures for ranked lists of the 50 greatest albums of all time. The resulting list can be considered a) a balanced compilation based on the knowledge and expertise of well-informed individuals, or b) a totally useless representation of 273 people’s individual tastes.

In any case, I’ve been listening through it. Starting from the worst of the best, at times it was a bit of a slog. I started with #500 (Outkast, Aquamini) and I’ve just finished #401 (Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Californication). As I listened to these 100 albums—not especially attentively, mind you, as I was usually doing school work at the time—I made a note of my general impression of each, giving them a grade out of 10. Having now listened to 100 albums, I thought it might be worth highlighting some favourites. Five albums received 10/10 so they went straight onto the Top 10 list.ˆ 21 albums received 8 or 9 out of 10, so, with great difficulty, I narrowed them down to my five favourites. My list includes some albums that I already loved previously and many new discoveries. The genres range from bossa nova to hip-hop, and the 10 albums were released over a span of more than 50 years.

Once again, this may be nothing more than yet another arbitrary list based on the tastes of an individual. There is certainly no guarantee you will like any of these albums. Given the arbitrariness of taste, I could just as well have made a list of my bottom 10; then, if you and I happen to derive pleasure from exactly the opposite things in music, you might discover some things you’ll like on such a list. But I for one think these 10 albums are wonderful, each in its own way. And, I should add, I think my taste in music is, if not mainstream, at least somewhat ordinary and certainly not obscure. So if you see anything on the list that you like, maybe we derive pleasure from some of the same things in music. In which case, maybe you’ll like some of the others. 

So, for whatever it's worth, here it is:

Matt's Top 10 of the Bottom 100 

of the Top 500 Albums of All Time:

10. MGMT, Oracular Spectacular (2007) (#494 on Rolling Stone list)

It's hard to believe that a couple of midwesterners studying music in Connecticut got together and concocted an album like this. Somehow these guys managed it. It's an extremely ambitious debut album. It's at once poppy and depressing. And somehow wonderful.

9. Stan Getz and João Gilberto Featuring Antonio Carlos Jobim,  Getz/Gilberto (1964) (RS #447)

This is considered one of the great bossa nova records. It is a collaboration by the American jazz sax player Stan Getz and the late Brazilian bossa nova guitarist João Gilberto. It did much to popularize the genre around the world. This one of those records you  put on when you want to feel like you're living in a foreign film.

7. George Harrison, All Things Must Pass (1970) (RS #433)

This massive album was recorded over a six month span starting immediately after the Beatles officially broke up in April 1970. It sounds a bit like a Beatles album containing only George tracks, and was actually made up of the deluge of songs that George had written but not found a place for on Beatles records. You really get the sense that he was revelling a liberation from Paul and John's tall shadows. The record features one of the greatest post-Beatles tunes "My Sweet Lord" (copyright controversies aside), and a plethora of other awesome numbers.

8. My Morning Jacket, Z (2005) (RS #457)

For some reason this was one of the few albums on the list that wasn't on Spotify. I had to go looking for it, and I'm glad I tracked it down. Some of the best 21st-century psychedelic synth-pop I've heard.

6. EPMD, Strictly Business (1988) (RS #453)

I admit I'm a novice when it comes to hip-hop lore, so I won't speak to the significance of this record for the development of East Coast hip-hop. Nonetheless, this record rules. It's super fun and groovy.

5. The Police, Outlandos D’Amour (1978) (RS #428)

The Police are one of my favourite bands and Stewart Copeland is one of my favourite drummers. This is a sample of their initial reggae/punk rock phase. For a debut album, it's phenomenal with enduring hits like "Roxanne," "Can't Stand Losing You," and "So Lonely," as well as more aggressive gems like "Next To You" and "Truth Hist Everybody."

War, The World is a Ghetto (1972) (RS #444)

Who knew that there was so much more to War than "Low Rider" and "Why Can't We Be Friend." This is a fantastic funk record, which incorporates jazz and soul elements, and clearly anticipates certain hip-hop sensibilities with it rhythms, tones and lyrical content.

Richard and Linda Thompson, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974) (RS #471)

This is a fantastic and far too short record. It is a classic of British folk-rock with rich instrumentation and renaissance overtones. It was recorded by members of the legendary group Fairport Convention. The title track alone is worth the listen, but the whole thing is beautiful in all its bleakness.

2. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend (2008) (RS #430)

What can I say? I'm a sucker for baroque pop (if you'll excuse the vampire pun). This record is killer. Plus the lead singer Ezra Koenig is Quincy Jones's son-in-common-law, so how can you lose? 

1. Wings, Band on the Run (1973) (RS #418)

At the risk of exposing the deeply Beatles-centric nature of my taste in music, I admit that this has long been one of my favourite albums of all time. The title track and "Jet" are timeless. The story behind "Picasso's Last Words" is hilarious. And I can never stay near a piano for long without mashing out the part from "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five." Perfection.

So there you have it. I'm sure the albums I chose say a lot about my taste. It would be interesting and informative to see which 10 albums you would pick from the same list. Stay tuned for the Top 10 of the next 100 albums in... let's say... six months or so...

———————

* Incidentally, "Strange Animal" by Gowan is one of the places where my wife's and my taste diverge most markedly. I'll leave it to the reader to guess which one of us loves it and which hates it.

† Tom Vanderbilt, You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice (Toronto: Knopf, 2016).

° My early, not to say foundational, affinity for They Might Be Giants and Weird Al meant that my ears were accustomed to the accordion from an early age. I didn't have to wait for The Decemberists to help me overcome an aversion to the instrument, as is surely the case for some.

ˆ Full disclosure: There were two Police albums that received 10 out of 10. I'm a huge Police fan. But for the sake of variety I only included one on the final list. Synchronicity is great but Outlandos is better.

The Yogourt Chronicles—Episode 2: Céréale Killers

Previously on The Yogourt Chronicles: 

I had promised an instalment of TYC dealing with maple syrup, assuming such a quintessentially Canadian product would be steeped in linguistically interesting packaging and promo examples, but as it turned out I spent twenty minutes in the vast syrup section of my local grocery store and came up wanting. A little further down the breakfast aisle, however, I stumbled upon a veritable treasure trove of kooky, kwazy and krunchy bilingual product packages.

Ladies and gentlemen: Breakfast Cereal.

Breakfast cereal is one of those products that has 1) a considerable amount of surface area, 2) off-the-wall zany child-oriented advertising, and 3) 97,000 different varieties. As a result, Canadian breakfast cereal boxes boast some of the most complicated and interesting examples of the strategies that companies use to comply with the nation's bilingual packaging and promotional standards.

Given the excessive amount of surface area on a cereal box, one common strategy is to print one face of the box entirely in French and the other entirely in English (Fig. 1):

Fig. 1

This is a useful space-saving tactic, but it is not always an option, because oftentimes marketers want to use the back of the box for some sort of crazy bilingual word finding game or mail-in contest or other child-mesmerizing scheme (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

In this case, the French and English text will all have to appear on the front of the box, which, despite the expansive cereal box face, can result in some cluttered looking products. Fortunately for designers, registered product names don't have to be translated. So you end up with things like "Can't get enough of that... On n'a jamais assez des céréales... SUGAR-CRISP" (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3

Of course, sometimes when the English name of a product might be confusing or meaningless in French, the marketers prefer to come up with an alternate version. Cinnamon Toast Crunch, for instance, is rendered more succinct and comprehensible as Croque-Cannelle (Cinnamon Crunch) in French, because cinnamon toast isn't really a thing outside of Anglo-North America. The result? One of the most chaotic (and slightly psychedelic) looking cereal boxes in the universe (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4

Incidentally, Cinnamon Toast Crunch has even been translated for English speakers outside of North America. In the United Kingdom they call it:

Fig. 5

Elsewhere, they're called Cini-Minis, as seen on this trilingual package designed for sale in Eastern Europe with text in Polish, Czech and Romanian (with some English thrown in for good measure):

Also, apparently it was necessary for Cap'n Crunch's name and rank to be Frenchified, possibly in order to align with the Quebecois branch of the Canadian navy (Fig. 7). The word Crounche, along with its derivative Crounchifique, is entirely made up.

Fig. 7

Sometimes the promotional masterminds at these food companies try to get creative and use the opportunity of translating product names to make some sort of hilarious hilarious pun. Quaker's kiddie oatmeal "Dino eggs" become "Dinosoeufs" (which sounds a lot like the French word for dinosaurs) (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8

And sometimes they blow it. They let the world down and miss the chance at a perfectly good pun. Such is the case with my son's toothpaste (Fig. 9):

Fig. 9

Watermelon Burst toothpaste/dentifrice.

Honestly? 

You couldn't come up with Pastèque-splosion?



By the way, breakfast cereals are one of the worst offenders for cavities, so if you're planning to Croque on the Capitaine, or if you're feeling Curious about Cini-Minis, don't forget to use that Pastèque-splosion or whatever it's called. This has been a public service announcement.

Next time: Over-the-counter medications (or something).

Link: H-Net Haiti Interview

I was recently interviewed on H-Net Haiti about my new English translation of an old Haitian novel. Fernand Hibbert's Les Simulacres was published in 1923 during the United States' Occupation of Haiti. It's a comedic and poignant look at the pretensions of powerful nations from the perspective of the underdeveloped world. A classic of Haitian literature, is is still studied and enjoyed in the country today.  My translation, Pretenders, contains valuable insights for ongoing issues of sovereignty and development in Haiti.

Check out the interview here.

Buy the book here.

The Yogourt Chronicles—Episode 1: Introduction, or, I've got 99 problem(e)s but a grave accent ain't one

Ever since Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau initiated the official bilingual policy at the federal level in 1971, products sold in Canada of all sorts have been required to display all text in both English and French, regardless of where they will be sold. That goes for nutritional information; it goes for ingredients; it goes for any advertising slogans—in a word, tout. With the limited amount of usable surface space on any given product, advertisers and packaging designers have had to muster up no small measure of ingenuity in order to meet the federal requirements. One of the most cited examples is yogurt. While English Canadians generally write 'yogurt' and French Canadians write 'yoghourt', Canadian dairy companies tend to label the product, 'yogourt,' which is a less used but acceptable spelling in both languages.

Design strategies to meet the requirement range from patently clever to awkwardly wordy to downright embarrassing. Normally, the only solution is to present text in both language, but quite frequently designers attempt some form of compromise, as in the case of yog/h/o/urt. 

Here's a typical example from a bottle of shampoo/shampooing:

5 problems, 1 solution. Or, in French, 5 problèmes, 1 solution. It's a bit ugly to an English speaker (what's up with the extra E, eh?), but it works okay in French because French speakers are pretty accustomed to seeing letters in parentheses; French grammatical rules regarding gender agreement mean you'll often see things like: "es-tu content(e)?" or "chaque étudiant(e)." Also, accents are typically not necessary on capital letters, so the designer was able to avoid the grave accent (`) on the first E by simply using capital letters. In sum, the designer found 1 solution to about 5 problems.

This series of blog posts is my modest attempt to track and highlight the best and the worst of product designers' attempts to create products that are attractive and that meet the language requirements. The Sleek, the Chic and the  Linguistique, if you will. Tune in next time to learn about bilingual product design strategies on that most quintessentially Canadian of products, maple syrup.