Best of the year lists hardly show the best – Year-end lists are coming and, boy, they stink

As the Christmas season draws near, publications are forcing out year-end lists. At a little past 3:30 p.m. on a Monday, I sit looking at SPIN and Rolling Stone’s top 50 candidates for best albums of the year.

Until the actual end of the year, I will peruse all publications’ “best of” lists. I will do what most readers will do—agree with 5% of the selections, balk at the lack of “obvious” choices, then roll my eyes.

While the very notion of making a “best of” list is to get clicks, these also give a peek at the year of entertainment.

2013 isn’t without its merits—the perfect ending of “Breaking Bad,” Brass Bed’s The Secret Will Keep You, Joe Hill’s NOS4A2, and the science-fiction powerhouse Gravity. At the same time, sequels and nostalgia continued to dominate pop culture. 2013, instead, is a year where audiences, including me, caved in and said, “Well … OK, nothing else is out.”

If you throw out five films I’m not embarrassed to discuss from this year’s selection, you get entries in franchises I’ve convinced myself to like.

While I enjoyed Hugh Jackman being dark and angry in the underrated Prisoners, I longed for a good movie in The Wolverine. Save a brilliant train sequence, I can’t tell you what else happened in Jackman’s latest turn as the X-Man with adamantium claws.

For years, I’ve relished Brad Pitt’s turns in flicks like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and last year’s amazing Killing Them Softly to only see the biggest box office take of his career become an ultra-long “Walking Dead” episode in World War Z.

I laughed during Robert Downey Jr.’s chiding of the orphan in Iron Man 3 and told friends the film was the best of the series. I even got chills from watching Man of Steel.

As the season winds down, I’ve almost convinced myself I should buy a ticket to The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Thor: The Dark World.
But are these truly the best films of the year? Hell no.

However, the cynic in me says these franchise entries will be remembered alongside the worthy new and upcoming releases 12 Years a Slave, All is Lost, The Wolf of Wall Street and Dallas Buyers Club.

God help us. Surely, music had a better year … right? WRONG.

When Eminem had nothing left to say, we still bought the sequel to his best album, The Marshall Mathers LP 2 because “he can still rap.” When Eminem’s sequel is made out to be better than Pusha T’s My Name is My Name, I’m not sure anyone knows what rapping means anymore.

When Daft Punk returned with Random Access Memories, we didn’t care that it was a repetitive throwback to Homework. I’m also not sure the best album of the year is something easily purchased at CVS. I get that the duo is popular now, but you might as well say Bruce Springsteen’s Lucky Town is the best album of 2013.

Then, there’s Kanye West’s Yeezus, an over-mastered, distorted mess that has no sense of humor and is dark, bro. Critics are hilariously calling this album punk rock when it’s just another calculated move in the career of rap’s biggest spoiled brat.

Everyone is “ooing” and “aahing” over “New Slaves,” while West signs a deal with ADIDAS, marries Kim Kardashian and still can’t defend any of his creative choices without yelling.

This is seriously the best we can come up with when asked about the best of the best? Just because an artist, actor, musician or writer had a great moment doesn’t give him or her carte blanche. The mere mention of Kanye West, Arcade Fire, Joss Whedon or Will Ferrell doesn’t mean the outcome will be great. Yet, time and time again, we’re concluding what they do will be great because of what preceded it.

Pop culture might as well say, “To hell with being original, tie your thoughts to something that’s already popular and hope for the best.” And we’re gobbling it up.

To which I say, “Nah, son, you can stop all that.”

Ignore the lists with mentions of franchise entries as the best of the year. The best entertainment challenges us, pokes fun and opens our minds to new worlds. If the best we can do is celebrate the past, then we’re not looking hard enough.

To those making a list, think again—2013 was better than that.

Here are some things from 2013 Matthew Sigur actually likes:

Europa Report
Este Haim’s enthusiasm
Queens of the Stone Age’s “If I Had a Tail”
Episode 14 of season five of Breaking Bad: “Ozymandias”
Steve Gleason introducing Pearl Jam at Voodoo Fest
Kevin Costner in Man of Steel
“Wanna fight?”
Cass McCombs’ Big Wheel and Others
Mads Mikkelsen in Hannibal
The Eric Andre Show
Danny McBride
Gerald Wallace being on the Boston Celtics
Chicken Salad
Vanilla porter beers or bourbon on the rocks
Shocked Alabama fans
Singing Toni Braxton’s “Unbreak My Heart” during a morning shower