Representative albums for each genre

Keppa4v wrote: debrewguy wrote: My main point was that it seems that we're saying that none of the  albums that form the top 100 list for a genre are representative of the genre. I just see it as a way for someone to do the same thing we accuse the fanboys - goose up a favourite of ours. That's why I made the point that such a thing should be avoided at all costs. Few people with a lot of knowledge of the genre, favourites forgotten, thinking as "objectively" as possible. I think it wouldn't matter if half of the chosen albums were on the top of the best rated albums list, that list keeps on changing slightly from time to time when new people get to know them, but this would be more of a permanent thing. The lesser known gems thingy is really a great idea too and much easier to make happen, so maybe more thought should be given to that?

No one here said that NONE of the albums in the Top 100 are not representatives of the genre, or of their respective subgenres for that matter (and anyway, we were talking about the Top 20 in each subgenre, not about the Top 100). No one would deny that Close to the Edge or Selling England by the Pound are excellent representatives of Symphonic. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the likes of Aqualung for Prog-Folk, or of Zappa's Hot Rats for Avant. Great albums and all that, but not really representative of those two subgenres - which means newcomers could be easily misguided in their approach to them. I don't think I expressed the concept in such a dismal way that my meaning didn't come through.



Edited by Raff - March 11 2009 at 16:12

Now that I have everybody's attention, can we discuss whether what we really want is M@x's suggestion - unknown gem(s) to discover in genre X ?
This seems a better idea than the generic "representative" album concept. No need to argue if a chosen album is indeed representative or just a favourite of the writer ...