‘Bake me off!’ illustration by Lisa Cradduck
The end of the year is at once the most stressful and the most rewarding time to work for The Quietus. Our co-founder John Doran has already explained the existential dread that list-making invites for a website that doesn’t believe in scoring music at all as part of his introduction to our top 100 Albums list, more eloquently than I could ever hope, but so too do the practical aspects of putting our three big lists together take their toll. I’ll try my very best not to whinge too much about what’s essentially my dream job, but on the other hand our website is so knackered we have to manually code every time we want to make something bold, italic or a bigger font, and when it comes to coding the dazzling array of links, embeds and subheadings you’re about to take in, the frustration makes me want to bash my computer’s stupid face in.
Yet for all those interminable hours spent trying to find the one missing forward slash that’s broken the whole website, there’s a real thrill to finally pressing publish on each of our end of year top 100s. Without wishing to blow our own trumpet, it’s so genuinely heartwarming when people tell us they’ve waited all year for our list, or discovered something they really love. It bolsters our resolve to cover the kind of music that we really don’t feel like anyone else is really covering, and the kind we feel so deeply passionate about sharing. I think I can speak for all of tQ’s staff when I say that we all get introduced to at least one or two new records we haven’t heard ourselves in the process; a particularly saucy, serene, sad or psychedelic record or two thrown our way by one of our columnists among their personal top 20s. When the top 100 gets published, I usually spend as much time as I hope you will devouring every one of our picks, whether for the first time or the fiftieth.
Which brings us neatly enough to the inevitable. The ability to bring you all this incredible music gets harder and harder every day, and without your help there’s every chance that this year’s end of year lists could be our very last. As more and more of the advertising that online publications like us rely upon to survive gets swallowed up by Facebook and Google, and as social media algorithms continue to squeeze out the kind of in-depth writing we try to provide in favour of clickbait and bilge, every year it becomes harder and harder just to keep the site running. If you’ve ever been introduced to any music you love via our website, and if you’re able to spare the money, please do consider donating to the site via the link below. Once you’ve done that, please enjoy our favourite 100 reissues, compilations, mixes, live albums, soundtracks and miscellany of 2019.
Patrick Clarke, Staff Writer
PLEASE DONATE TO THE QUIETUS HERE.
This chart was compiled from ballots by Jennifer Lucy Allan, Bobby Barry, Tristan Bath, Charlie Brigden, Patrick Clarke, John Doran, Christian Eede, Noel Gardner, Ella Kemp and Sean Kitching. It was compiled by Doran and built by Clarke and Eede
