Last year, I made an infographic and post analyzing a decade of Metacritic's end-year top ten lists by critics. This annual report amalgamates the rankings that professional journals assign to their favorite albums of the year and in addition to scrawling through them to find music I missed, I always find them super interesting and think others might as well. So I wanted to share some trends I feel can be picked out (mostly for the most recent year). Please keep in mind this is through a critical lens so if you feel these statistics are not reflective of the wider culture, that too is an interesting trend.
The report may be found here with and if you are a visual person, the infographic here. If you want a prettier but larger version of the infographic, it can be found here.
Trends:
It was a banner year for female artists. In addition to the top spot for the past four years belonging to women, the same years saw a shift towards female artists and female-fronted bands dominating the majority of the critic's list, tied with 2018 for largest split and often in the upper half of the rankings (12.5/16 this year with the .5 owing to Low's having a male and female vocal split).
Banner year for post-punk, hardcore, and emo as well. Five albums had one of the above (binned together by me) as their primary or secondary genre - more than the past four years combined.
Rough year for electronic music. Predominantly electronic music in the past few years has slid into the domain of electropop and in 2021, only Porter Robinson's Nurture made the list with Billie Eilish's Happier than Ever contributing electronic as a secondary genre. In 2015, by comparison, electronic music had been the dominant genre in this report.
So long, cowboy. Second year in a row of no country on the list.
Highest rated at release fell in estimation by the end of the year. Some years, as with Fiona Apple in 2020, Kendrick Lamar in 2017, and Frank Ocean in 2012, the critic favorite of the year goes to the best reviewed album. In 2021, several of the best reviewed fell middle of the pack for year-end lists, six of which scored higher than the ultimate top spot, Little Simz' Sometimes I'm Introvert.
The world takes the world stage. This year was the first time a "world music" album that was not latin broke this l
... keep reading on reddit ➡
https://www.metacritic.com/pictures/worst-video-games-of-2021/5
https://preview.redd.it/w1620p118h781.png?width=825&format=png&auto=webp&s=897ad188cc707a1a996b402b5d3aa371cccf1365
I mean, it's a good average score, but not fantastic. However, to me, this game deserves to be among the greatest. And definitely above 90.
Even on Steam it gets an Overwhelmingly Positive.
So, I just noticed that the first Metacritic reviews for Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are out! And while I didn't expect them to get an extremely high rating the result is still pretty underwhelming...
Brilliant Diamond got a 77, Shining Pearl a 76, which makes BDSP one of the worst rated mainline Pokémon games ever on Metacritic.
I know that Metascores aren't an indicator whether a game is good or now, since opinions between critics and players often differ, but it still makes me kinda sad to see that their rating is even lower than Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee's. I hope that The Pokémon Company doesn't lose faith in ILCA as a developer when they look at critic reviews...
What do you guys think, is a 76 / 77 fair for BDSP or should it be higher/lower?
