I made this thread because I was curious about the effect of an album being more than the sum of its parts. Media Players (Windows Media Player can for sure, its what I use) allow users to rank each individual song of an album and then give that album a score based the average score of each song of the album. Assuming that all media players have some sort of function like that, I thought it might be interesting to see what the differences were between how we feel about the all of the songs on an album as compared to the album as a whole.

In my case, only one album was ranked exactly the same but there were a number of albums that ranked highly based on the Media Player score that were left of my list totally. Anyone else care to participate?

The list below is ranked how my media player ranked them, with my actual year end rankings in parentheses afterwards.



1. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals (3)
2. Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea (8)
3. TV on the Radio - Dear Science (16)
4. The National - Virginia EP (7)
5. British Sea Power - Do you like Rock Music? (10)
6. The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns (4)
7. Pete and the Pirates - Little Death (17)
8. Girls in Hawaii - Plan Your Escape (NR)
9. Longwave - Secrets are Sinister (NR due to not having gotten the album until after list was posted)
10. The Hood Internet - Mixtape Volume III (NR)
11. Why? - Alopecia (1)
12. The Decemberists - Always the Bridesmaid (15)
13. Margot and the Nuclear So and So's (2)
14. Wolf Parade - Mount Zoomer (NR)
15. Magnetic Fields - Distortion (NR)
16. Human Highway - Moody Motorcycle (Honorable Mention)
17. Shearwater - Rooks (14)
18. The Airborne Toxic Event - ST (The same)
19. Ra Ra Riot - The Rhumb Line (12)
20. Ladytron - Velocifero (NR)

Honorable Mentions

Drive By Truckers - Brighter than Creations Dark (11)
Conor Oberst - ST (19)
Crystal Castles - ST (6)
Flight on the Conchords - ST (5)
Andrew Bird - Live in Montreal (NR)
Atmosphere - When Life Gives you Lemons you Paint that Shit Gold (NR)


Albums on my End of the Year List that weren't ranked on Windows Media Player:

The Dodo's - Visiter at 13th
Hot Chip - Made in the Dark at 20th
Calexico - Carried to Dust at 9th
Okkervil River - The Stand - Ins (Honorable Mention)
Tokyo Police Club - Elephant Shell (Honorable Mention)
The Duke Spirit - Neptune (Honorable Mention)
Air France - No Way Down (Honorable Mention)
Fleet Foxes - Ragged Wood (Honorable Mention)