Top 50 Albums of 2023

What would you rather read in middle of July beginning of August - some other publications' first half of 2024 recommendation lists, or mine top of whole 2023? Well I only have one of these to offer so I hope you're fine with that!

No particular reason why it took so long, at 547 albums it's only my second most scrutinized year. I think I just took more time actually enjoying the music and less scoring and ranking it, which is naturally preferable. But I never stopped, and at last I'm happy to offer you my favorite music for 8th consecutive year.

Top 20 Albums of 2022

Wait a second… It’s January… And my AOTY list is already ready? What sorcery is this?

Since I’m done so early, I hope it’s okay that I’m going back to top20 albums (cheating with 10 HMs). I definitely felt like I wasn’t really that excited about the lower half of my last year’s ranking and I might never return to any of them (except for the Dooms Children album which I should’ve put higher), and focusing on 20 should produce a significantly tighter list. I’ve also somehow reduced my top singles playlist to just 10 - I think I just forgot it used to be 20 when I was making it, but now it looks just right and I don’t feel like adding anything to it.

Top 50 Albums of 2021

Welcome to May 2022. It is at this time that I, WillQ, have completed listening to all the albums that seemed interesting from 2021, and am ready to deliver a ranking.

Why do it now, and not in December like everyone else? Well, for one, I was always a big believer in waiting until the year actually ends so that I don’t have to awkwardly treat the releases that come out after my ranking as next year’s. Secondly, as an independent music ranking maker, I like to rely on the hard work of professionals - i.e. check out all the big outlets’ end of year lists and select some albums to listen to from them. Ok but how many records could I possibly have needed to check out? Well...

Games that caught WillQ's eye at E3 2021 expanded universe

Hello gamers. How did you like E3 this year? Do you think the event is pointless now that it went online? Or did you think it was already pointless since 2016 when they opened up to the public? Or since 2013 when Nintendo and EA pulled out of the event? Or since 2007 when they closed to the public, as they were actually originally open to everyone before that? Or maybe E3 was never good? If it's hard to pick a stance with such a range of options, I suggest a dice roll - however, this is not actually the point of this blogpost. Rather, I'd like to brag that I've watched every single trailer aired as part of the extended "Summer Conference" series of events. I'd further like to self-indulge by linking stuff that I found interesting in some way or another and share some brief thoughts. Maybe you'll also find some of these games interesting - in any case, here they are in somewhat chronological order.

Top 20 Albums of 2020

Welcome to my sixth annual Album Of The Year ranking. Last year we left off on listening to 300 records and deciding this is way too fucking much and I should never do it again. After that I basically didn’t listen to any new music for a few months and only started checking out stuff mid-autumn… And now we’re less than a year later (since I only finished 2019 aoty in May and it’s Feb now) and my docket is saying that I’ve reached 366, exactly one album per day of 2020.

The End of Bobo Pony

You’re flying now

You see things much more clear than from the ground

It’s all okay, it would be

Were you not now halfway down

Bojack is over. After the crazy 6-season ride, we got our final 8 episodes on January 31st 2020. As you can tell by the date of this post, I didn’t have any initial thoughts - or rather, I did, but I wasn’t jumping to share them with the world. It was a long, drawn out story and it actually feels good to finally put it to rest. Maybe the decision to split this season into two halves helped? The first part built the tension and left us hanging at one of the most suspenseful moments for the series, and then asked us to wait 3 months before finally diffusing it. And that last part has thrown everything it could at us - relapse, redemption, reflection, restarts, literally everything that could go wrong for Bojack did. Meanwhile, his friends slowly started to push their own respective boulders up the hill, proving that it can be done, but leaving their horsefriend behind as a result.

Ending on the 6th season seemed like a good call. The show was in a really good place at this point, hasn’t overstayed its welcome quite yet, but it felt like it already said everything it needed to, and all that remained was to write the closing chapter. But here’s the thing - one of the series’ stronger themes was that real life isn’t like TV, it doesn’t follow storytelling rules, you can’t expect to find meaning or closure in everything. While the show still tried to weave an interesting narrative as a work of fiction, it consistently broke through dramatic structures and subverted the expected tropes to support that message. So you just had to wonder - what would be a proper finish to the Bojack Horseman story? Is there any way it could be satisfying in the classic storytelling sense while staying true to the aforementioned motif?

[Spoiler Warning: I’m gonna talk about a lot of the events from the second half of the season rather specifically, including the last two episodes.]

Top 20 Albums of 2019

According to albumoftheyear.org catalogue, there were over 17.000 EPs and LPs released last year. Out of these, I’ve listened to a laughably small sample size of 300 records. And I’m pretty sure this is the highest number I’ll ever get to for any single year - it was way, way, way too many albums. I managed a good pace until around June, monitoring new releases and checking them out as they came, but then I kinda burned out and wanted to spend more of my listening time on favorites and exploring various artists and genres, and before I noticed it was December and I was binging entries from end-of-year lists to catch up on the last 6 months (as well as stuff that flew under my radar before). And for a long time it seemed like for every album I’d file away, I’d discover two new ones I was interested in.