I've spent an unreasonably huge amount of time tending to my metacritic file for 2010. Last year's file, which I shut down on Jan. 12, 2010, accumulated year-end-list results from many sources, winding up with the top vote-getters at 224-212-191 (Phoenix, Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear). This year the top vote totals are already 438-391-364 (Arcade Fire, Kanye West, National). Last year I listed 3106 records; this year I have 3450. Don't know how much longer I'll keep this up, given that I've already learned most of what I'm likely to eventually get out of the exercise. The list is generally useful for predicting the outcome of the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop Poll (ballots due Dec. 24; results out Jan. 19), although one needs to bring some extra information there. I just count list mentions all the same, so no extra weighting for high slots, but P&J uses a lot of weighting (both explicitly and by limiting ballot size to 10 records, whereas I usually count everything mentioned, sometimes 100 or more records). Last year Phoenix had more total mentions, but Animal Collective topped 15 major lists vs. 3 for Phoenix, which more than made up for a 12-count deficit (about 5%).

Arcade Fire and Kanye West are locked in a similar but less clear cut battle: West has topped 8 lists to Arcade Fire's 3. That's not as big a margin, and Arcade Fire has a larger count margin (12%). On the other hand, West's record was released very late -- about the time the first lists started appearing. As it was climbing up to about a peak 25-vote deficit it seemed like a lock. In the last week it has plateaued and even lost some ground to Arcade Fire. Still looks like the winner to me, but I've come to doubt that it will ever catch Arcade Fire here. For a while I thought LCD Soundsystem might be a serious contender, but it seems to have stabilized at #4. Over the last weeks the top seven have been remarkably stable, while the 8-9-10 slots are in a tight, shifting wad (currently Janelle Monae, Sleigh Bells, and Big Boi, reversing the order of a week ago).

You can follow the link and get the list. I was curious about momentum so I subtracted last week's (Dec. 13) list from today's. The top gains over the last eight days (the numbers in braces: previous rank, present rank, total count):

1. Arcade Fire: The Suburbs 215 {1:1:438}
2. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 199 {3:2:391}
3. The National: High Violet 172 {2:3:364}
4. LCD Soundsystem: This Is Happening 168 {4:4:331}
5. Beach House: Teen Dream 146 {5:5:308}
6. Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest 136 {6:6:277}
7. Vampire Weekend: Contra 125 {7:7:250}
8. Janelle Monae: The ArchAndroid 114 {10:8:228}
9. Sleigh Bells: Treats 103 {8:9:222}
10. Big Boi: Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty 103 {9:10:219}
11. The Black Keys: Brothers 98 {11:11:210}
12. Sufjan Stevens: The Age of Adz 101 {12:12:199}
13. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: Before Today 88 {19:16:164}
14. Joanna Newsom: Have One on Me 82 {16:14:167}
15. Best Coast: Crazy for You 84 {27:18:148}
16. Gorillaz: Plastic Beach 78 {13:13:176}
17. Caribou: Swim 77 {15:15:164}
18. Tame Impala: Innerspeaker 76 {82:33:108}
19. Yeasayer: Odd Blood 73 {14:17:164}
20. Robyn: Body Talk 69 {31:24:128}
21. Titus Andronicus: The Monitor 68 {18:19:145}
22. Spoon: Transference 65 {20:21:139}
23. Flying Lotus: Cosmogramma 65 {22:22:136}
24. The Walkmen: Lisbon 62 {17:20:142}
25. The Tallest Man on Earth: The Wild Hunt 62 {30:26:124}
26. Surfer Blood: Astro Coast 60 {26:25:125}
27. Laura Marling: I Speak Because I Can 58 {37:30:112}
28. Jonsi: Go 55 {21:23:128}
29. The Roots: How I Got Over 54 {24:27:122}
30. Grinderman: Grinderman 2 50 {23:28:120}
31. Four Tet: There Is Love in You 49 {28:29:113}
32. Broken Social Scene: Forgiveness Rock Record 46 {29:31:109}
33. Broken Bells: Broken Bells 47 {34:34:102}
34. Twin Shadow: Forget 47 {54:42:91}
35. Cee Lo Green: The Lady Killer 45 {35:36:101}
36. Hot Chip: One Life Stand 45 {44:39:94}
37. Crystal Castles: Crystal Castles [II] 43 {36:37:97}
38. Foals: Total Life Forever 43 {25:32:108}
39. Gil Scott-Heron: I'm New Here 43 {38:38:97}
40. Warpaint: The Fool 43 {32:35:102}
41. Local Natives: Gorilla Manor 42 {42:40:93}
42. These New Puritans: Hidden 40 {41:41:91}
43. Wavves: King of the Beach 44 {51:45:89}

In most cases, new lists reiterate the spreads of the previous lists. Robyn is another late release that's been gaining ground, but is getting close to stable. LCD Soundsystem and Sufjan Stevens had marked rises earlier, but now appear stable. Tame Impala came out in May, got very little critical attention, but has become a regular fixture in the lower reaches of indie-centric lists. Best Coast's rise was more predicted, while Foals (for instance) has fallen off. For some reason a lot of the early big lists came from the UK, so we're shifting away from that now.

Some general comments on the lists:

• The supporting data breaks into three big chunks. The first, in { }, are actual year-end lists, with abbreviations for sources where a record was top-20 or higher, and numbers where the record was top-10. The second, was collected during the year, mostly based on Metacritic (MC) values for various reviewers (generally 80+, with some exceptions). The third is a list of critics' grades, including Robert Christgau, Michael Tatum, and myself at the end. (That way I get the last word.)
• Blue indicates a physical record I have; green is a record that I've heard from a download source (usually Rhapsody). One reason for hacking this list is to give me a sense of how much of what's of critical interest out there I've actually heard, and to point me to new things I should hear, so the color-coding is good for me.
• As I mentioned, I only do raw, unweighted counts of mentions. The supporting data gives some indication of weight, but it's not factored into the count. Also I tend to pick up as many mentions as one bothers to list. Christgau's Dean's List typically runs 70-80 records. My own A- list usually runs a little over 100, but I listen to a lot more jazz than he does (and grade a lot of non-jazz more promiscuously).
• I started with literally everything popular enough that it got picked up by Metacritic (up to about December 1). I collected every rating in Metacritic ≥ 80 (some lower). In many cases I went to the source pubs and scoured through them: for some (like Spin) this was easy and I did a comprehensive job; for others (like PopMatters) this was difficult and I didn't waste much time there. Most of the year-end lists were linked through Largehearted Boy and a couple of other sources. I went out of my way to get ratings for genres of personal interest, especially jazz, but also (less successfully) world, country, hip-hop, and electronica. I picked up everything that AMG recommended except classical. I'm really not interested in classical, you know. I've also pretty much ignored Christian music lists (e.g., at Amazon). I've also tended to ignore metal, although I picked up AMG's and Amazon's metal lists.
• When processing a list, I skip all records that are clearly 2009 (or earlier) releases, based (where applicable) on US release dates (e.g., Mumford & Sons is counted this year, but some records that came out in 2009 in US and 2010 in UK aren't). I don't rigorously check dates so there is some room for slop -- what identifies a 2009 release is primarily that it polled notably in 2009. (Mumford's UK release did poll in 2009, but Americans are right to treat it as a 2010 release.)
• In some cases, I don't count records that I haven't already listed: it's a lot less work to add a count than to add a whole record entry, and the later we go the less prospective value new records are likely to have. I'm especially likely to ignore unknown records on lists that are long, sloppy, extremely arcane and/or esoteric, and/or from foreign sites. (I'm interested in world music, but not necessarily into German music on German lists, French on French, etc.)
• I list some EPs and some mixtapes but don't do lists specifically on them, and I'm more likely to skip them -- and real likely to skip things identified as 7-inch singles. Also not interested in bootlegs, and generally uninterested in download-only releases, although some inevitably leak through. (Indeed, some should.)
• Some lists group similar items together, sometimes confusingly. I deal with them as best I can, sometimes combining related releases (e.g., folding Zola Jesus Stridulum into Stridulum II), sometimes not (Robyn has three separate listings for Body Talk, where "Body Talk 1-3" is counted three times, but "Body Talk" is only the full-length album). Yelawolf's Trunk Muzik has separate listings for the mixtape and official album, but Freddie Gibbs has one listing for both. (I may eventually combine Yelawolf, but it's too late to disentangle Gibbs.)
• Reissues and reasonably aged vault music have been shunted off to a separate file. Usually all that takes is for someone to identify the record as such in a specialty list. Although the reissue file is much smaller, I'm more generous in including things, mostly because of my interest in Recycled Goods. New as well as old Various Artist compilations are included in that file -- I often can't tell the difference until later, and listers frequently have the same problem.
• I've set up some genre-specific selection options under each of the files. I usually follow specialty lists or AMG, and some show up in more than one. This is stuff I'm interested in, stuff that gets buried under the indie rock glut most listmakers wallow in. The genre-definitions are pretty loose -- if a record shows up on a "best electronica" list it gets flagged as such, although that sweeps up a number of things I wouldn't normally put there. The ABC(F) (and I could have added G) category may seem perverse, but think about it. Latin and reggae are included in World, although Scandinavian rock/pop groups (mostly) singing in English aren't.

Continuing to add occasional lists, but don't expect things to change much.