I Listened to the BK Vegan Topster for 2024 and Learned Nothing

*Ok, that's a lie. But a justifiable one, read on to find out why.

Me, in a cool bathroom

Since 2015 the new music I encounter and listened to has increasingly come from a single, algorithmic source: Discover Weekly. While this has lead me to find untold numbers of modern and (now increasingly) older progressive indie bands from all 4 corners of the globe in all styles in 2023 from psychedelic funk, to 3rd Wave Trip Hop, to soul-tronic, to even delving into 1950s prog it still runs the risk of allowing a single corporate product to dominate my listening and perhaps develop a blind spot for certain kinds of music in the process.

To benchmark myself against the greater indie world, I decided consuming at least one EoY* topster was a requirement to ensure I wasnt becoming insulated and out of touch, like any other aging indie music fan. I quickly settled on Brooklyn Vegan for reasons I cannot fully remember, and have, for each topster since 2021, dedicated part of my year to going through each album, starting from the lowest ranked and listening to 4/week until the list is complete. While I look forward to this journey, I also acknowledge it forces me to do the worst thing possible: listen to albums, which as we all know are mostly filler, and even the non-filler songs can be hard to pick out over the monotony of the album.

Still I have set myself on doing my best to pick out 2 songs from each album, that on a single listen, stick out to me and memorialize these on playlists:

• 2021

• 2022

• 2023

And then of course, the latest year, 2024:

Consisting of 96 songs (more on that later), I started this year's listening on January 7th and continued until hitting the #1 album on April 3rd. Tiresome and tedious, as I listened to each ranked album somehow more pretentious than the last, yet I did still listen and found something (or actually 2 things in most cases) of value, that struck me, despite not having been pre-vetted for consumption by my algorithm. From this I was able to learn 10 valuable lessons, which you can scroll down to learn more.

10. Boiling music down to the 50/N greatest albums for a year is silly

Like ya, even if each ablum contained 4 of the greatest songs of the year, that is only 200 songs, when there is probably something like 5-10 great songs being released every day out of the 100k songs being posted each day and we are only going to listen to these 200 amidst 2000 songs of filler? No thanks.

9. My algo still got it

If you remove the rap, hardcore/metal, and mainstream leaving roughly 20-22 albums whose genres and artists fall into the purview of what my algo is set to to, I knew more than half. Am I gonna beat myself up about not knowing Martha Skye Murphy, Arooj Aftab, or High Vis?

8. My algo doesnt got it*

*It being hardcore, metal, and rap and R&B. I am ready to start making my second hardcore and metal playlist, and I continue to expand on my already in depth Afro Futurism playlist (which nears completion), and both of these projects are greatly helped by the selections on this and past year lists. Gatekreeper, Elucid, Schoolboy Q, and even, begrudginly, Knocked Loose's 2024 "You Wont Go..." are allowing me to build out my music in the genres my Discover Weekly dare not go.

7. I only have 96 songs

This was due to 2 things: forgetting to grab a second song from two albums (Foxing's eponymous and The Healer by Sumac) and deciding that the moment had passed, and because one artist who has been getting all the praise decided to not put their album on Spotify in some stupid act of defiance/self-sabotage. The ironic thing? I knew this artist from before, thanks to Discover Weekly

6. Mainstream is not OK

While suffering through the pointless reflections of Luke Bryan, rolling my eyes through the Cure's duck song (though A Fragile Thing and All I Ever Am are OK), and cringing at the top rated mainstream album by hipster-terrible Charli XCX, I couldnt help but bask in their utter listelessness and derivative nature. A playlist provided by my Discover Weekly in late 2023 which perfectly encapsulates the sound & feel of Brat (including a 2012 proto-hyperpop song called Brats!) underlies how ridiculous the hysteria is about someone creating a slightly more intelligent pop album than Billie Eillish (whose 2024 album did not make the list and I also have a playlist from 2023 that puts it to shame):

5. Mainstream Rap & R&B are OK

but still overrated. Is Kendrick's and Doechii's album hot? Sure, but so are countless of other recent albums in the genre by the likes of Billy Woods, Demae, Mach-Hommy, & Cruza. Obsessing over mainstream artists just cause seems pretty pointless.

4. There is no God

No, Mannequin Pussy hitting #1 ahead of MJ Lenderman doesnt show BK Vegan is "with it", just that they had to select someone to be on the top.

3. Glass Beach's plastic death perfectly encapsulates the failures of an album

So much effort was put into this 1 hr semi-experimental math rock album without it bearing a single fruit worth plucking. Maybe the average song is better than the average song on most albums, but who cares where there are 50,000 better songs scattered around thousands of albums and genres from the past 70 years? AKA the whole reason I rely on Discover Weekly.

2. Old Popular Indie Bands Are Not OK

Im sure life has been really tough for Bright Eyes and Vampire Weekend since they were erroneously thrust into the spotlight based on one good single between the two of them and earning millions of dollars and bangin tons of bitties* before fading into nothing. Despite 1.3 million monthly listeners for BE and 4.3 million for VW, neither was able to really convert those into major listeners on their new albums further proves how manufactured their popularity was by the pre-streaming system.

1. Im will go through this again next year.

Cause that's what heroes do.

Peace

*A bittie is similar to a smolt