Best Moderately Acclaimed Album of 2015

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Jirin
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Best Moderately Acclaimed Album of 2015

Post by Jirin »

So I'll be running this again. Plan is for nomination to open on Dec 1 and voting to open up Jan 1 and run through January. One nomination per person, as usual, and a nonparametric scoring formula designed to not penalize albums for having fewer rankings. Winner gets automatic entry into next year's BMAA.

I want to open up discussion for what people think the qualification criteria should be because there were some borderline inclusions in previous years. (Nominations that might not have really been only moderately acclaimed).
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GucciLittlePiggy
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Re: Best Moderately Acclaimed Album of 2015

Post by GucciLittlePiggy »

Last year the qualification criteria was that the album couldn't place in the top 50 in either OtisRedding's Megacritic chart or the AMF Megacritic chart, but given that Lana Del Rey's Ultraviolence (which I think is what we're talking about here being not "moderately acclaimed") ended up at 110th on Otis' chart with a 74.1 score, I'm not sure what the best option is. We could limit it to albums outside of the top 100 or albums with less than a 75 score, and just hope that an outlier like Ultraviolence doesn't emerge (I mean it is pretty unlikely).

I think the best option would be to wait until the EOY spreadsheet is completed and base our nominations off that, but that won't be for a few months.
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Jirin
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Re: Best Moderately Acclaimed Album of 2015

Post by Jirin »

Not just that, Foxygen got in the year before that and it was a bit iffy to call moderately acclaimed too. Maybe it is best to wait until the EOY spreadsheet.
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Romain
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Re: Best Moderately Acclaimed Album of 2015

Post by Romain »

Can we just take albums we are sure to be totally unacclaimed instead of moderaly acclaimed?
phil
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Re: Best Moderately Acclaimed Album of 2015

Post by phil »

One consideration for qualification could also be the number of reviews used in the Megacritic chart as this is an indication of the coverage it has gotten (and so avoids albums which are already well known getting nominated). Anything with 20+ reviews (and certainly 25+) has already had very strong coverage I would say and so many have already had the chance to consider it.

This would cut out Lana Del Rey's Ultraviolence from last year (had 28 review sources used).

To take an example from this year: I could be inclined to vote for The Decemberists, 'What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World', which I do think has been underrated and probably won't get much of a chance on the year end lists. (And based on the Albums of 2015 thread there are at least a few who agree with me). But I probably wouldn't nominate this in any case as I think most have had the chance to hear it if they want to and I'm unlikely to introduce anyone to anything new, so it would miss the point of the game. The album has 25 sources used on the last Megacritic, so could be considered ineligible if this was used as a qualification.

I guess it depends if we want to simply be awarding albums that have just been underrated or whether we also want use the game as an opportunity to explore albums we haven't heard before (and I'd gear towards the latter).
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Re: Best Moderately Acclaimed Album of 2015

Post by Nassim »

phil wrote:One consideration for qualification could also be the number of reviews used in the Megacritic chart as this is an indication of the coverage it has gotten (and so avoids albums which are already well known getting nominated). Anything with 20+ reviews (and certainly 25+) has already had very strong coverage I would say and so many have already had the chance to consider it.

This would cut out Lana Del Rey's Ultraviolence from last year (had 28 review sources used).
I think that makes sense, looking at the MCCh 20+ seems a good cut.
Limiting to albums outside the top 100 seems too harsh, there are a lot albums in the 51-100 range I think a lot of us haven't heard. (and hopefully Hop Along can fall from the top 50 so I can vote for it !)
Best would be to also wait for the EOY rank to be ready (or at least well advanced) which would have eliminated highly acclaimed album like the Foxygen one... but I realize this would delay the schedule of this game, and thus the schedule of next year's Moderately Acclaimed poll.
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Re: Best Moderately Acclaimed Album of 2015

Post by Jirin »

The trouble with just going by Metacritic or any source that is not about year end lists is that they go by raw or adjusted average. So albums that are a lot of people's favorite but a lot of people dislike will fall much lower on those lists than year end lists.

I don't mind pushing back the start of the game, but I also like the 20 reviews idea. That would of course qualify Mbongwana Star.
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