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MVAs

As promised, now that I’ve counted down the best artist years, I now give you—again using Henrik’s method of ranking artists—the Most Valuable Artist (MVA) in each year from the beginning of the rock era to the present:

1954 Elvis Presley
1955 Little Richard
1956 Elvis Presley
1957 Buddy Holly
1958 Chuck Berry
1959 Miles Davis
1960 The Shirelles
1961 Bill Evans
1962 Ray Charles
1963 The Beatles
1964 The Beatles
1965 Bob Dylan
1966 The Beach Boys
1967 The Beatles
1968 The Beatles
1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival
1970 John Lennon
1971 Marvin Gaye
1972 David Bowie
1973 Bob Marley & the Wailers
1974 Bob Marley & the Wailers
1975 Bruce Springsteen
1976 Ramones
1977 Sex Pistols
1978 Elvis Costello
1979 The Clash
1980 Joy Division
1981 The Human League
1982 Michael Jackson
1983 U2
1984 Prince
1985 The Jesus and Mary Chain
1986 The Smiths
1987 Prince
1988 Public Enemy
1989 The Stone Roses
1990 Happy Mondays
1991 Nirvana
1992 R.E.M.
1993 Nirvana
1994 Oasis
1995 Oasis
1996 Beck
1997 Radiohead
1998 Fatboy Slim
1999 Eminem
2000 OutKast
2001 The Strokes
2002 The Streets
2003 OutKast
2004 Franz Ferdinand
2005 Sufjan Stevens
2006 Gnarls Barkley
2007 LCD Soundsystem

Re: MVAs

Fascinating ! See the changes in the face of pop-rock music with the years.

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Thank you, scheuse.

That means 4 gold medals for the Fab Four and than 2 gold medals for Presley, Marley, Prince, Nirvana, Oasis and Outkast. Nice bunch to meet in the pub!

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Very nice!

I'm surprised (but have nothing against the results) that Bob Marley beat Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder and Roxy Music in 1973. Must have been a tough call that year.

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1981 The Human League - They almost took the double crown home in the forum poll too, Ghost Town and Radio Free Europe overtook Don't You Want Me in the last 2 days though.

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Yeah, I think the ones that really stand out come in years where the competition’s pretty weak: Marley in ’74, the Human League in 1981, Happy Mondays in 1990, and the Shirelles in 1960 (sandwiched between Miles Davis and Bill Evans, no less!)

Henrik, I went back and checked—yes, 1973 was a tough year:

Marley: 18.91
Stevie: 18.99
Floyd: 18.99
Roxy Music: 19.21

Some other notes on the list:

-I was kind of winging it with 2007. I made a few assumptions about how the current rankings are likely to fit into the big lists, and the system came up with LCD Soundsystem as the winner. However, Arcade Fire ran a very close second; I’ll try to remember to check again once Henrik updates the lists later this year.

-Between 1954 and 2006, the weakest MVA year (using Henrik’s algorithm) is the Shirelles in 1960—no album, and only two songs. The only other artists to win a year without releasing an album are Elvis in 1954 (two songs, plus another bubbling under) and Little Richard in 1955 (only one song, but it’s in the top 30: “Tutti Frutti”). No artist has ever won a year without having at least one ranked song.

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Can you maybe explain how this system works. I was under the impression that Arcade fire had the best album of 2004, and as of now had 2007. Yet they arent mentioned? How do you come to these conclusions?

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For 2004 it's a simple matter of calculating the position of albums and songs with the formula. Although Arcade Fire has a slight lead over Franz Ferdinand when it comes to the albums, song-wise FF leaves Arcade Fire far behind with a #70 and a #2253 song, while AF only has one at around #1000.

As far as 2007 goes, I imagine about the same thing occurred. Yes, AF will probably have the most acclaimed album, but LCD has 3 songs in the top 20 and AF only 1.

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Gnarls Barkley as the MVA of 2006? That shows how overrated that album is based off one song.

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John, let's hope that Amy Winehouse gets some more acclaim for 2006 in the next site update and than kicks Gnarls from spot 1.

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I was kind of hoping Lily Allen or Hold Steady but whatever.

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Sorry to tell you this, Andre, but in the process of compiling the list, I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how Amy Winehouse would have stacked up in 2006, and she has virtually no chance of catching Gnarls Barkley.

(I don't know if that's a bad thing or not--I've never heard any of her stuff.)

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I think it's kinda interesting that the Stones never "won" a year. Not even 1972 with Exile could overtake Bowie.

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Schleuse, If you've heard Motown/60's R&B, then you've heard Winehouse. Her work is extremely derivative. (Her social habits also seemed to have been copped from certain rock stars of the past).

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Sorry to tell you this, Andre, but ...

No problem, schleuse, it was just wishful thinking from my side to hope that Amy would make it ...

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The Stones were in second place twice (1968 and 1972).

Something I forgot to mention: I decided to see what would happen if I implemented a rule that artists become ineligible to win again after they’ve won MVA once.

For instance, under this system, since Elvis wins 1954, he’s ineligible to win again in 1956, and the prize then goes to the second-place artist of 1956: Johnny Cash.

The complete list of years when this rule would apply is:

1956: Johnny Cash (2nd, behind Elvis)
1964: The Beach Boys (2nd, behind the Beatles)
1966: The Rolling Stones (4th, behind Beach Boys, Beatles, and Dylan)
1967: Jimi Hendrix (2nd, behind the Beatles)
1968: Van Morrison (4th, behind the Beatles, Stones, and Hendrix)
1974: Joni Mitchell (2nd, behind Bob Marley)
1987: Guns N’ Roses (3rd, behind Prince and U2)
1993: Björk (2nd, behind Nirvana)
1995: Pulp (2nd, behind Oasis)
2003: The White Stripes (2nd, behind OutKast)

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Thanks for clearing the arcade fire thing up for me...lol...Makes sense now, but who really cares about song rankings. It all in the album. As long as the have number one, im ok with that.

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can someone clear it up for me cuz i am still confused lol!

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I agree completely Kevin. My favorite band is Wilco who's 52 in the album rankings and 1100 in the song ratings. Seems a bit arbitrary to me; I'm an album man, and always will be.

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Kevin
Makes sense now, but who really cares about song rankings. It all in the album. As long as the have number one, im ok with that.


so now, Kevin why don't you do the same calculations with albums only?

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I love both albums and songs of course, but if I had to compare one against the other, I would argue that the song is the core of popular music and therefore the song ranking would be the definitive one. I don't know if you agree or disagree with this, but more people would probably agree if the critics' lists of songs/singles weren't so hit-oriented.

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I've always thought songs and albums should be on equal footing when it comes to determining an artist's acclaim. I can't think of many great albums that don't have at least one great song on them. However, the issue is that these great songs sometimes don't show up in critics' lists. To use the example of Wilco, the critics ranked Yankee Hotel Foxtrot high deservedly, but for whatever reason have not ranked songs like "Jesus, Etc." and "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" very highly. All great albums artists also have great songs that should elevate their ratings, but sometimes these songs are not ranked highly by singles-focused critics.

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One problem with album tracks vs. singles on AM is that a majority of the critics' lists are singles lists. I have methods to get album tracks very high on AM if they do well on the songs lists, but there just isn't the same amount of information about acclaimed non-singles and therefore AM becomes a bit singles-biased overall.

However, beyond that, the songs/singles lists seem a lot more hit-oriented than the albums lists, for reasons I'm not sure of. If artist XYZ makes a great album and a great single that sell nothing but are being picked up by a lot of critics, this album would probably appear in the top of a lot of critics lists, while the single probably would not do so well.

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Jackson, I agree completely. How can something be the #124 album of all time with only the #2000 something song of all time as it's best single?

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To me, it seems obvious that albums are more important than songs in determining an artist's acclaim.

Let's say an artist has only released one album "pigs and spiders", placing 100th on AM's album list. That album has 4 songs: "alpha", "beta", "gamma" and "delta". The song "alpha" is the only song on AM, placing 100th on the song's list.

So, AM's song ranking ONLY measured alpha's "performance", while AM's album ranking ALSO measured alpha's "performance" - while measuring even more of the artist's output IN ADDITION to that.

This is enough to convince me, but let's say that the artist decided to merge those 4 songs into a single one, just named "pigs". The record is exactly the same, only there is now formally just one track. Now, because it was merged with the other tracks, the song "alpha" is just a part of the song "pigs", and doesn't manage to appear on AM's song list. What we have now is that the artist's musical output is EXACTLY the same, but he will place worse in the artists' ranking. How much worse will that be depends on the weight of the AM song ranking. In this case, it's pretty clear that the less weight songs have, the more accurate an artist's ranking will be.

We could also say that it's far more accurate to determine an artist's acclaim by measuring the performance of large chunks of his career, instead of only very small parts, his very best moments.

In addition to that, I think it should be reminded that an artist can be a bit lucky and enter AM's top 50 songs. It takes talent, of course, but not that much. But there's no way an artist can get an album on the top 50 without A LOT of talent (and A LOT of good music). It's not enough to be talented - you have to be one the very best! So yeah, I like "Louie Louie" as much as any of you guys - but to say that "louie Louie" is more important to popular music and has had more acclaim than the White Album or OK Computer is, I think, simply not true. (And The Kingsmen don't exactly prove me wrong on this whole "Luck Theory" - they have existed for decades, and yet there's only one song on AM.)

And I mean - even literally: just go count the number of lists where Louie Louie appears, and the number of lists with White Album and OK Computer. Yes, I know there are more album lists (and reviews). That's the point. Albums are more important.

Albums have more acclaim than singles. Isn't the site called Acclaimed Music?

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Exactly Spiderpig. How for example, is Missy Elliott a top 100 artist if she doesn't even have a top 500 album of all time? That to me is fishy.

While I agree that say, before 1965, the single was more important than the album in popular music, today, it doesn't make much sense to rank The Streets above Wilco or Eminem above The Flaming Lips for those years.

Sure, The Streets/ Eminem's top singles were more acclaimed than Wilco's and The Flaming Lips but those singles are contained on albums that are deemed inferior. Unless they had two albums that year (like The Beatles in 1967) or a really great non-album single (Like Hey Jude in 1968, which wasn't on The White Album) than why should the single matter so much?

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At a curiosity,
What would the list of years look like if you only made it the top-rated "new" artists? i.e. debut albums, etc.?

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I think singles were more important up to 1965, then albums became more important. Simply because, by the end of the sixties all the best singles were also on albums.

Great albums are a mark of musicianship and consistency, whereas great singles are a matter of finding a good hook.

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It’s been a good long while since I’ve posted on this topic, but I’ve been following this argument (since it’s on a thread I started), and thought I’d weigh in.

When I started posting around here a few years ago, I was very much on the Songs side of the Albums v. Songs debate. My opinion has moderated since, largely because of what Henrik points out in his post, above—the AM list of most acclaimed songs, although it’s very good, is seriously skewed toward, not just singles, but high-charting singles.

So, yes, I understand the reasons—good reasons—why Henrik weighs albums almost twice as heavily as songs in determining artist rankings. But…

As BillAdama points out, songs (singles) were obviously a better measure of acclaim prior to 1965. However, there are a couple of problems with plopping The Album on the throne in ’65 and just leaving it there.

One is that, in some of the most important genres of the last 40 years—dance and early hip-hop, say—a huge proportion of the best, most experimental work has been done on non-LP songs. I’m uncomfortable with choosing not to “see” some artists when they don’t use the technology of the LP.

The other, more serious problem is that, starting with the advent of the CD in the mid-80s and accelerating hugely with music downloads in the early 00s, the individual album track has become much, much more central than it was from 1965-1985. Perhaps—perhaps—albums are more important than songs in 2009. But if so, that’s much less obvious than it would have been in 1979.

****

As for the claim that albums are somehow better than individual songs or reflect more talent, well, I respectfully insist that that’s nonsense. In poetry, the analogous claim would be that John Milton is better or “more important” than Emily Dickinson, since Paradise Lost is 1,000 times longer than one of Emily’s poems. If that makes sense to anyone who’s thought about the subject for more than a minute, then I suggest that person is more suited to real estate than criticism.

Yes, there’s something admirable and great about the sustained effort that can be found from the beginning to the end of Revolver, London Calling or Kid A. But surely we must recognize that the ability to distill perfection into a short, individual song—“God Only Knows,” “Once in a Lifetime,” “When Doves Cry”—is just as worthy of our attention and our acclaim.

Not better. Not worse. Different.

****

By the way, Daniel, that’s an interesting suggestion in your post. Really, the only way to do it (and it would only make sense after 1965) would be to identify the highest-ranked debut album of each year. I don’t have time to do the research; anyone else wanna take a crack at it?