The year is almost over and there are still around five albums that I want to get because I think they stand a good shot of making my year-end wrap up. That’s a lot for me. Usually I’m pretty much caught up by this point, but this year, between the move and the recession, I’ve found myself with leaner pockets that I’m used to.
So recently, I reluctantly picked up the latest issue of Paste. I say I was reluctant because it was the year-end issue and I was about to be faced with all of the great stuff that I’d missed out on this year. But as I flipped through it, I was really surprised at how light it was. It didn’t feel like a special issue; it felt like a normal issue.
Not that I didn’t enjoy their list of the top 25 albums of year, it’s just that something felt off to me. So I decided to check out their wrap up of 2007, and lo and behold, everything was larger. The list was of the top 50 albums of 2007. That’s double! Plus the actual dimensions of the magazine were larger.
I actually remember when Paste’s dimensions changed and how disappointed I was with it. Instead of standing out, it now conformed to the regular magazine mold. It was no different than Entertainment Weekly, in terms of width. It saddened me.
And I felt the same thing when I realized that the best albums of 2008 had been cut in half. I should have felt happy, those were potentially an additional 25 albums that I didn’t have to feel that I was missing out on, but now I’m really missing out on them because they haven’t been compiled.
So in some ways the latest issue of Paste granted me some relief. It showed me that I wasn’t the only one who had to restructure my routine in order to survive. But on the other hand, it’s kinda discouraging knowing that compromise had to happen to the one issue that I look forward to the most every year. Some of the artists who were in the bottom half of the last year’s top 50 included Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Norah Jones, Justice, Peter Bjorn & John, PJ Harvey, Björk, Spoon and The Shins. I can only imagine who’d just missed the cut this year.
And I’m really afraid that when I pick up Rolling Stone‘s year-ender that I’m going to be equally disappointed, especially considering how it’s no longer larger than life.
Eh, what are you going to do? These are the times in which we live. By typing this, on some level, I’m contributing to the demise of print media; I’m lamenting a problem that I’m helping cause. Quite the burden, no?
Then again, I am way sleepy, so I may be blowing this completely out or proportion.
