Unbest

Unbest: What Music Meant in 2011

In early December 2011, as the great year-end listmaking bonanza began once again to sweep the Internet, we started wondering: What if there was an outlet for writers and fans to celebrate the music that meant the most to them over the course of the previous year, regardless of who made that music or when it was released, without having to worry about lists or rankings or points or quantification? What would that look like?

Over the next two months, we got our answer: It would look like dozens of folks—professional writers, aspiring professional writers, staunchly self-professed “non-writers”—spilling their guts on a hugely diverse array of artists, waxing honest and gut-wrenching and melancholy and often very funny. It looked like nothing we could have predicted the afternoon we hastily cobbled together our original mission statement and threw together the website before the notion passed us by.

A huge huge thank-you is due to all the writers who submitted (often multiple entries!) and to everyone else who supported the project with links and kind words.

We’ve already been asked if Unbest will return at the end of 2012; we have received at least a few threats of bodily harm if it does not. The answer is, well, it probably will. To keep tabs on us, you can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. You can also read through the 2011 archives by scrolling below or by perusing the list right here: