#2 A Brief History of the Best Album Brackets (repost from Substack)
While we’re all getting used to the idea of the Best Album Brackets moving from Twitter to Substack Buttondown, temporarily (?), and getting updates via email, here’s another post for you. Gather ‘round, folks, here’s how this whole thing started.
The summer of 2015, in my memory at least, was the peak of putting non-sports things into brackets and making a tournament out of it. Grantland (again, per my memory) was the standard bearer for this kind of thing, but it seemed like lots of other publications were doing it as well. It was in the digital air, is what I’m saying. So, me being me, I asked myself, How can I get in on this? This would be the 20th anniversary of every album that came out in 1995, and that sounded like as good an idea as any. (I’m a very “least resistance” kind of guy; I only walk downhill.) So I found a blank bracket sheet, did some research to name 128 albums, figured out the seeding, and voila, I had the very first tournament, The Best Album of 1995. It was pretty easy to name the first 32 or so albums — I just picked my favorites! — but after that, it got tougher.
The seeding, by my current standards, was a mess.
Now, here’s the first part that might surprise you, if you don’t already know this story. In the original iteration of the Best Album of 1995, there was one voter: me. I would listen to both albums, then select one to move up through the bracket. At that point in 2015, the Twitter polling function did not exist, and I wouldn’t have had any idea of how to bring this tournament to other people. I did it publicly on Twitter, so my friends could yell at me for my dumb choices, but otherwise it was a personal project.
I think I got through 3 matches before I gave up.
Now, here’s the second part that might surprise you. You might presume that I gave up because the project — 127 individual matches, 254 complete album listens (because I would relisten to each album before each match) — was too much, too gargantuan an undertaking, that I collapsed in the face of the work in front of me. That is not why I gave up. That part was easy. I gave up because the act of deciding the fate of two albums, giving one the thumbs up and one the thumbs down, gladiator-style, was too much responsibility. I was essentially presiding over the execution of 126 albums, and for what? Because they weren’t Elastica? Even if I genuinely thought one album was better, it didn’t seem fair somehow, so I mothballed the project.
And then, sometime in the fall, Twitter introduced the polling function. I pretty much knew immediately how I wanted to use it, and quickly set up a new Twitter account to take advantage of it. Bestalbum95 debuted on November 2, 2015, as a kind of pre-announcement of what I intended to do, and I think about a week later the tournament started.
Here are the results of the very first match:
(Technically, on that first day, I posted two matches. I don’t remember what the second one was, and can’t be arsed to look. Anyway, by the end of the first day I realized that it should be one match per day, a rule that I don’t think any other Twitter tournament bracket runner believes in.)
Nineteen votes may not look like much — it isn’t much — but let me tell you, I was thrilled to have any amount of engagement. Eight years later, and the average vote total is now around 500-600 votes, with matches often exceeding 1,000 total votes. That’s nutty to me! Again, a huge thank you to everyone who votes. It means a lot to me.
I don’t think the tournaments have changed that much in these last eight years. In the first three tournaments, seeds were determined by me, and I determined them more or less by starting with my favorites, assigning them the top seeds, and working my way down. In the second and third, I would have followers send in lists of what they thought were worthy albums, and use that as guide to their popularity and proper seeding. I only took those lists as advisory, though; if I didn’t like an album, down the seed ladder it would go. In the third tournament, the Best Album of 1994, something happened that changed that policy. My straw poll indicated that Digable Planets’ Blowout Comb was fairly popular (“Digable Planets Determined to Strike Tournament”) but I didn’t like it at all [1], and all the way down to seed #117 it was banished. In the first round, it went up against seed #12, Green Day’s Dookie, one of my all-time favorites. The following happened:
Starting with the next tournament, then, the straw poll became the official way to determine seeds: the album with the most mentions was seed #1, next most was seed #2, on down the line. This has resulted in tournaments with far less upsets and a more consistent, predictable outcome. I kind of miss that wackiness, but I still think, for now, this is the best way to determine seeds.
This post is getting too long, so I’m going to cut it off here. Is there any other part of the Best Album history or process you’d like me to expand upon? Or any particular topic at all? I’m going to need ideas to fill out these newsletters, apart from prep for the 2000 tournament, so let me know if there’s something you want to see.
See you next week!
[1]: I’ve listened to it a couple times since. Still don’t like it!