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For VanRamblings, the very best part of year’s end revolves around ‘lists’.
Lists of the best movies, critics and critics’ associations ‘winners’ lists of best films, best music lists, best books, best TV shows … well, you know what we mean. All those wonderful top 10 lists! We are in list heaven!
VanRamblings can hardly wait for the announcements next Sunday and Monday of the Los Angeles and New York Film Critics list of best films of 2010 (cuz it sets the stage for the Oscar race over the next 3 months).
Entertainment Weekly — to which we have subscribed religiously dating back to 1991 (on the cheap, and because it makes great bathroom reading) — will publish their Top 10 lists later in the month, as will sister publication People magazine (the only time we purchase People all year is for the ‘lists issue’, making for great reading on Christmas Day … okay, okay, so you now know we don’t have a life!). Yes, VanRamblings believes in lists. Why?
Because the year end Top 10 lists have become an integral part of our ‘journey of discovery’, where year in, year out we have discovered new and wonderful pieces of music, films and books, and tech that has — in many ways — become transformative in our appreciation of the year just past.
During the course of the year we are provided with so much pop culture information, from so many different sources, that one could hardly help but suffer from information overload. No matter how many newspapers and magazines you read, how many hours a day you surf the ‘Net, how many friends you have that recommend books, TV shows, new music, new tech (we’re caving in and have self-gifted ourselves with an Amazon Kindle this Christmas), and their ‘favourites’ in every pop culture category, there’s just no possible way you might reasonably become apprised of all that is ‘best’ in the pop culture realm in any given year. Thus we have the Top 10 lists!
Now to the task at hand. Each year, the folks at PopMatters weigh in on the Best of everything pop culture that has occurred in the past 12 months.
We very much appreciate their Best Music lists (here’s an insight into their varied Best Music of 2009 listings). Salon magazine did a great year-end compendium for many years, but given that Salon has fallen on hard economic times, PopMatters has stepped into the breach to offer their particular take on the ‘best of’ lists for the year just past (& almost over).
What better way can you imagine to set about to discover new music?
Today, PopMatters has commenced their PopMatters Picks: The Best Music of 2010 compendium, kicking off with The 60 Best Singles of 2010, a couple of dozen of which are already situated in our iTunes library, and a few more that we were previously unaware of, or not entirely sensitive to, that we’ve downloaded, and added to various of our playlists, and onto our iPhone.
All you have to do is click on the picture at the top of this posting to, as PopMatters suggests …
Get ready for two weeks of musical greatness. Today it’s the best singles, next Monday brings the best albums, and in between leading up to the holidays will be more than 15 lists of genre bests. You should have more fun than usual finding out who goes where on what list, since 2010 was all about curveballs and crossovers.
Throughout the month, we’ll point you in the direction of the various Top 10 pop culture lists as they (slowly but inexorably) become available online.
We look forward to seeing you return often to VanRamblings.
