2021 EOY Predictions Thread

3 months left til EOY lists start arriving, and I feel like I have a much poorer sense of what the critical and popular consensus is compared to years past.

What do you predict will be the most popular and/or ILM AOTY and SOTY contenders and winners?

Red Dress SOTY

In all seriousness, the ILX EOY tracks is much more unpredictable (and fun) than the albums these days imo and I'm more or less ready for anything there.

Albums will be a procession and Low will probably win again

As for the critical consensus, Little Simz will win every single UK critic poll going

Here's an unscientific barometer that's going to be skewed toward albums released in the first half of the year: I aggregated a bunch of Best Albums of the Year so Far lists from June (Rolling Stone, NPR, Guardian, Paste, Spin, EW), the RYM Top 20 to date, and the Pitchfork 8.0+ albums. Here are the ones that appeared on at least 4 of those:

Arlo Parks Collapsed in Sunbeams
Black Midi Cavalcade
Dawn Richard Second Line
Dry Cleaning New Long Leg
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra Promises
Japanese Breakfast Jubilee
Jazmine Sullivan Heaux Tales
Mdou Moctar Afrique Victime
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis Carnage
The Weather Station Ignorance

Dry Cleaning was the only one that appeared on 6. Floating Points/Pharoah Sanders, Jazmine Sullivan, and The Weather Station each appeared on 5. The rest, 4.

we need to very, very quickly find some songs that are more popular than Ten Minute Taylor. our entire credibility as a music website depends on this

now that Pope Tim has canonised it with a spot of the ol' literary analysis (for that vapid, self-obsessed brat of all songwriters) and a peak-Bjork comparison, mobilisation has become essential

I assumed Olivia Rodrigo would take SOTY in many polls.

lj, this is exhausting

did this get talked about somewhere on ilm?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwPyZgE-FKk