Old-timers will recall that Robert Christgau ran what he called a Turkey Shoot every Thanksgiving from 1988 to 2005. For most of that time he limited his pans of bad albums to one "dud" per month, so he tried to collect his reviews over the year. Even so, the pains of listening to so much unpleasant music built up, so when he left the Village Voice and retooled his Consumer Guide for a series of blog formats, he dispensed with the turkeys, and even the duds. I've heard it said that you have to write some negative reviews to establish credibility for your positive reviews. I even tried that for a while with my Jazz Consumer Guide, and learned two things: one is that the negatives are easier to write, and second is that people respond to them more (at least I always got more feedback on them). Still, I've always had the nagging suspicion that my distaste for a record is as much (maybe more) a reflection of my own limits as of the record's. Actually, I'm sure that's sometimes the case, but I also suspect that some records really are awful, and that it's rarely worth the time to clearly distinguish one from the other. So I mostly look for good records, and as a matter of conscientious bookkeeping note the records that for one reason or another don't make the grade.
Still, a few years ago I noticed some folks complaining about Christgau no longer writing up his Turkey Shoots, so I came up with the idea of spreading the agony around by crowdsourcing a set of turkey reviews. I published the first one of these in 2012, and another in 2013. One reaction that I got from the former was that some writers would have been willing to contribute but only wanted to write about their finds, so for 2013 I added a second column, the Black Friday Special. Last year and this year I tried to talk other people into taking over this project. I failed both times, so that's your loss.
I also tried rounding up some bare overrated/unappreciated lists, and didn't get much response there either (although I'll share what I did get below). That leaves me with my own subjective impressions, plus some underdeveloped data.
Actually, I do have one piece of "objective" data: a list of "most overrated albums of 2015" posted at ILXOR (I'm adding my grades, where known, in brackets):
There's no formal explanation of the methodology here: just one snippet of data which makes me think they're subtracting the user score from the critic score at Album of the Year. For instance, Fifth Harmony has a critic score of 74 (based on 5 reviews) and a user score of 54 (based on 36 ratings), so it comes out +20. Sleater-Kinney has a critic score of 90 and a user score of 78, so it is +12. James McMurtry is (85 - 75 = 10). Kendrick Lamar is (94 - 88 = 6). I only checked the top 20 critics scores (plus Fifth Harmony) and they come out pretty much in this order (7 of the top 20 made the overrated list, which by my figures would also include Bassekou Kouyaté). One obvious problem here is that high critic scores are simply more likely to lead the user scores (20 of the top 20 do, with Jamie XX closest at +1, but also with the second lowest critic score, 84). Grade distribution on both scales probably makes this effect more extreme. (Users grade on a 100 point scale, where critic grades are quantized rather arbitrarily.) Other problems relate to sample size and selection: e.g., note that while Mbongwana Star and Sleater-Kinney are both +12, the latter has approximately four times the number of data points (critics: 26/7, users: 352/76).
In any case, some of the user scores are so high that the record can't possibly be considered a turkey; e.g., Kendrick Lamar at 88, or even Sleater-Kinney at 78. In fact, I'd argue that Lamar's 94 critic score isn't out of line with a user score of 88, although Sleater-Kinney's drop from 90 to 78 does appear to harbor a problem: I'd argue that critics are very prone to overrating comeback albums (No Cities to Love came out 10 years after The Woods). No secret I'm not a fan of the band, but I'm not being petty in thinking that this particular record is rather overrated. Indeed, I think what we've seen so far in EOY lists shows that the record is underperforming relative to its initial (back in January) reviews: its top ranks so far are { 10, 11, 14, 23, 34, 35 }, although the record does occur on virtually every list I've tallied so far, making it tied for 12th overall. It should finish higher -- the early UK list bias hurts it a little while helping other records which will eventually fade -- but it's unlikely to come in 2nd (behind Lamar) as its critic scores had projected.
Still, no matter how much other people overrate it, I don't consider No Cities to Love anywhere near turkey level. Looking at the EOY Aggregate data, the following strike me as most suspicious (again, with my grades, where known, in brackets; order comes from the aggregate score, not some measure of turkey-ness):
That doesn't include every B record in the EOY List Aggregate (but it does pick the top few), nor does it include some unlisted but fairly well known records I've run across, but mostly it doesn't include a lot of things I haven't bothered chasing down. (I did include Low, which I've never graded higher than B, and 2 (of 4) times graded lower.) But those dozen records would in my mind make a fair Turkey Day repast.
Of course, crowdsourcing would have added more informed opinions, including some folks who actually get paid for listening to bad music -- and therefore pay more attention, and take more offense, at it than I do. Michael Tatum, for instance, has panned several records that I gave low B+ grades to after a cursory listen, including (first my, then his grades in brackets; I'm using his B- as a threshold here -- he listens deeper and gets more annoyed than I do, therefore grades lower):
I have very little invested in my grades of these records -- I certainly didn't play them enough to let them get annoying. I omitted Björk [C-] and Beach House [B-] from Tatum's list as I had already picked on them. He also panned some records I haven't listened to:
I got a couple other lists: Lucas Fagen went straight at the records that are dominating EOY lists:
Jason Gross also picked:
I rather enjoyed the Grimes [B+(**)] and Staples [B+(***)] albums, but again dealt with them superficially. Each appears on only a single list to date, but are certainly well known and widely regarded artists. I doubt that the Grimes will poll as well as well as her debut, but I liked it better -- more pop, which often rubs critics the wrong way. I figure Staples will do better as US lists come in -- should be one of the top 3-5 US hip-hop albums this year. I'm not convinced it's that good -- I seem to be having a lot of trouble hearing mainstream rap on Rhapsody -- although I know people who are into it.
I haven't heard Adele or Newsom, but the others were mentioned above. Tame Impala is a group I regard as too perfunctory to get worked up about, and I'm even more blasé over Kurt Vile: when I see records like those on EOY lists I wonder how much listening the listsmiths have actually done. Still, my impression is that there are a lot fewer bland-outs and a lot less mopeyness on this year's lists than several years ago. Also the wave of prog shit that seemed overwhelming back in 2009 (Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors) has returned to the margins -- sure, this year we still have Father John Misty, Panda Bear, and UMO, but at a more tolerable level.
Actually, the big thing that happened in 2015 was that a lot of long-departed groups have followed Sleater-Kinney's lead and come back from long hiatuses: my favorite thus far is New Order. I'm not up to reconstructing the list, but I don't doubt that the return of so many older musicians has helped to make this year seem more comforting to old ears like mine.
I also asked for candidates for a Black Friday Special: records that aren't widely known but should be -- at least, records that might appeal to those of you who aren't stuck in one musical rut. My correspondents wrote back:
Tempest and Tagaq were 2014 releases, although the latter -- an electronica-charged Inuit throat singer whose record was the toast of Canada at 2014 list time but unknown elsewhere -- wrangled a US reissue in 2015, so I'd say give her another shot. I have Tempest and Lyrics Born at A, Graves/Laswell and Songhoy Blues at A-, Tagaq at high B+, and the others on my search list.
I thought about trying to construct some lists from ongoing lists-in-progress, especially from Chris Monsen and Phil Overeem, but I'll leave that to you. You'll also find many A-list obscurities in my in-progress jazz and non-jazz files. Rather, my one last list come from Robert Christgau. The following are 2015 releases he reviewed in Expert Witness, graded A- (or better), and are things that virtually no one else has noticed (at least they're not in my EOY Aggregate file yet; my grades in brackets):
Less than half of those came as total surprises to me (Kruth, Paranoid Style, Paris, Rubin, Slutever -- well, I wasn't aware Anderson, LaVere, Lewis, or Tinariwen had new records but had I been I would have checked them out). I was more than vaguely aware of Trumpet, and had actually reviewed Tal National. Other 2015 A-list records according to Christgau: Sleater-Kinney, Ata Kak, Heems, Lupe Fiasco, Kendrick Lamar, Rae Sremmurd, James McMurtry, Courtney Barnett, Nellie McKay, Young Fathers, Mountain Goats, Miguel, Hop Along, Go! Team, Yo La Tengo, Boz Scaggs, Leonard Cohen, Jamie XX, Shamir, Future, Jason Isbell, Mbongwana Star, Bassekou Kouyaté, Craig Finn, Lost in Mali.