The Problem with Lists

Why Apple Music’s Best Albums could be a valuable corrective

Apple Music recently released their ‘Best 100 Album’ list. It has caused quite a stir with The Misadventures of Lauryn Hill coming in at number 1. Its methodology for reaching this conclusion has been questioned by nearly everyone online. Apple, rather than using modelling like Spotify’s terrifying abuse of personal data that is the annual Wrapped media blast, or some other de riguer AI generated list, went with a list curated by humans. And it shows.

At the turn of this century, there was a slew of ‘best albums of the century’ lists by every major outlet, all of which drew some sort of complaint. At the time I asked my brother why each list was so different and he gave me a very sage answer to the effect of:

“Remember, every one of these lists says more about who was deciding it, and their audience, than it does about the overall quality of the media.”

It seems childishly simple but I feel like we all forget this whenever someone announces a definitive, concrete example of something like a ‘best of’.

Apple’s ‘Best Albums’ are their best albums, not some sort of empirically proven list of the actual ‘Best’. Other outlets may try to hide this fact by deferring to data, stating that the best album that…