Top artists of the past six months:
Byrds came in at #1, and are presently two plays out of the top 8, nipping at the tails of the flagging Papoose, whose plays haven't been able to keep up.
Otherwise, Janelle Monae creeps in at the bottom of the top 35, whose lowest-number-of-plays has risen to 364 from 216, where it was when last we checked in.
Otherwise, if we look at the top 8, we can see it's the same ol' artists, though slightly re-arranged, with Xiu Xiu and the Sun City Girls overtaking Neil Young, with Melvins and Jefferson Airplane overtaking Papoose. The Beatles slipped one position from #4 to #5. We can see a lot of inflation at the upper-echelons, with Sublime Frequencies gaining nearly a thousand plays in that time, and still coming in at #2 for most plays in the past six months.
With that in mind, let's recap which artists have entered and which artists have left the top 35:
There are a number of new entries, ten to be exact-ish, so let's give them a specific shout-out: The Byrds, Wiz Khalifa, Unsane, Dinosaur Jr., Mighty Boosh, Todd Barry, Gil Scott-Heron, John Fahey, and Janelle Monae. Let's call them the Freshman class of Fall 2010, shall we? Or maybe we can call it 2010.5? (as opposed to 2010.0?) Here is the full list of place-positions as of today, 7 December, 2010.
Sublime Frequencies
Xiu Xiu (+3)
Sun City Girls
Neil Young(-2)
The Beatles (-1)
Jefferson Airplane (+2)
Melvins
Papoose (-2)
The Byrds (New Entry)
Ennio Morricone (+23)
Scrapbooker (New Entry*)
Sonic Youth (-1)
Wiz Khalifa (New Entry)
Silkworm (-1)
Madlib (-6)
Patton Oswalt (-4)
Bear McCreary
Flight Of The Conchords (-8)
The Jesus Lizard (+2)
Sebadoh (-4)
Unsane (New Entry)
Dinosaur Jr (New Entry)
The Mighty Boosh (New Entry)
Bob Marley & The Wailers (-2)
Pavement (-10)
Bob Dylan (-1)
Todd Barry (New Entry)
Gil Scott-Heron (New Entry)
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti (-11)
Ravi Shankar (-3)
Shellac (-11)
Grateful Dead (-13)
Hossein Alizadeh (-5)
John Fahey (New Entry)
Janelle Monae (New Entry)
Let's also take a moment to note those artists who didn't make the top 35 for 2010.5:
Nirvana, Sir Richard Bishop, Dangereus, J Dilla, Oxbow, The Kinks, Super Furry Animals, Bill Fay, and Fugazi. I personally wouldn't count any of 'em out just yet, and the scouts tell me that the Dangereus might be heading for a championship year in 2011, so keep your ears peeled.
Otherwise, this'll be the last update for the year, excluding my 2011 round-up, where I list my favorite albums of the year (but not necessarily albums released in 2010).
Peace out.
*Full Disclosure: I am in this band, so the number of plays is a bit unfair.
