How Laundry Day (Among Other Things) Helps Determine My Albums of the Year

If you follow me on social media you’ve probably seen me post about days when I go through the “Albums” folder of my inbox, tackling over 100 upcoming releases at a time, usually every month, or so. You may wonder how I manage to work my way from that monthly mess to my year-end “10 Must-Hear Albums” list (for which I focus mostly on indie releases that may have flown under the radar).

Well, today I’m pulling back the curtain to give you a glimpse into my process, including how clean underwear plays an important role.

Skim Skim Sugar 

Obviously, there aren’t enough hours in a day to get through 100+ albums, so the first part of my process involves a lot of skimming. I’ll start by clicking play on a random song, and give it 15 to 30 seconds. If the song isn’t my taste, I’ll know within that time frame, but if I like what I hear I’ll sample a few more songs. If I keep liking what I hear I’ll download the album, or save the Bandcamp, or Soundcloud link.

Through this process I’ll usually find 5 to 10 albums I want to listen to in full.

Yes, that means less than 10% of the albums sent to me ever make it past the skim stage. Is there a chance I miss something? Absolutely, but thankfully it doesn’t happen often.

Waiting For Wow Moments 

OK, so now I have 5 to 10 albums to listen to.

I’m a person who can’t listen to music when they’re writing unless it’s the music I’m writing about, so this leaves the new album listening for when I’m doing research-based work – and I do love to dig into a story, so I spend many a day doing research – or when I’m doing something totally outside of work, like attempting to improve my fantasy baseball teams, or swiping through profiles on online dating sites.

I’ll put on an album, and let it play in the background. Not all albums stay in the background, however. This is because when something is great, it’s obvious, and it causes me to stop everything else I’m doing, and pay full attention to the album. That’s the moment I’m looking for when listening to new albums, that WOW moment that makes me think, “This could be something special.”

The albums that give me that WOW moment get put on my “Best of The Year” list, which I start on January 1st of each year.

Laundry Day Listening 

At around the halfway point of the year (hey, that’s right now!) I start burning the albums that are on my “Best of the Year” list onto CD. I do this because I want to hear the albums FOR REAL, and to me that means on stereos with proper speakers.

In my home I have a really nice stereo system in my living room, and a smaller system in my bedroom. Each album gets at least one spin on the big system, and then I move all the albums to my bedroom, where on my weekly laundry day I listen to them while folding laundry.

Don’t worry, I don’t actually dance … that you know of!

Potential clean laundry dance party aside, the weekly spins are a great way for me to get the extra listens in necessary to know if an album is great, or if my initial impression/appreciation was just a fleeting moment.

My ultimate goal for my year-end list is to find albums that will stand the test of time. It’s tough to predict that, but knowing an album can at least stand the test of staying in rotation for a handful of months is a good start.

See, I told you clean underwear played an important role in this!

The Final Countdown 

Even having listened to each album numerous times, when December comes around I have one more listen to what I feel are my 10 favorite albums of the year before finalizing the order of my list (by this time I’m already being serviced albums that are due out in February, or later, so only a surprise release could affect things).

Some may say I put way too much effort into a list of ten albums, but hey, I’m a music loving weirdo who always goes above and beyond the call of duty. That’s just my thing.

That … and clean underwear.