Open Your Ears
Esquire|December 2017 /January 2018

How to master the YEAR-END SWEEP

Ben Ratliff
Open Your Ears

I hate writing year-end top-ten-best-albums lists. They are short-term distractions, formalities, hate-reads, a cultural plague. An imperious culling seeking to identify the best, they are also, by necessity, full of absurdities—what criteria do you use to decide whether a record of electronic polyrhythms by Jlin is better than a postpunk one by Protomartyr?— and compromised judgment. Most people just want to know who’s at the top of it, and for the list maker who aims to qualify as “relevant,” there is no escaping Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Rihanna, Drake.

This story is from the December 2017 /January 2018 edition of Esquire.

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This story is from the December 2017 /January 2018 edition of Esquire.

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