Do albums from new artists gain more acclaim over time?

[Tortuga]

Or are albums from new artists actually getting worse? In terms of their AM rankings, I mean.

I have an MP3 collection, 250 albums strong, running from 1955-2014, representing 60 years worth of western pop music. The catch? Each artist can only be included once. So only one Beatles album, one Radiohead album, etc, and I choose the most highly ranked album from each artist by way of this website (although I also consult BestEverAlbums sometimes for a second opinion). The least acclaimed artists on my list have their best album ranked on AM mostly in the high 300s and low 400s.

I intend to keep adding around 4 or 5 albums a year to my collection for the foreseeable future. Problem is: only one artist since 2014 has had their best album definitely be good enough to crack my list, and that's Kendrick Lamar's TPaB. Beyonce, Nick Cave, Solange, Lorde, and St Vincent are debatable. That's only one or two albums a year, if I'm lucky.

So my question is: is AM being too harsh to the rankings of newer artists? Will those rankings go up over time? Or is newer music actually deteriorating in quality compared to older stuff?

[Jirin]

I think there's some psychology involved. People establish their favorites when they are discovering music and then it's difficult for newer albums to penetrate their personal canon.

There's also some other factors, "Popular and great" motivates critics to include a record more so than "Niche and great", and as the music world becomes more and more fragmented and niche oriented, there's less and less intersection of "Great" and "Popular".

New artists from 2014 forward besides Kendrick Lamar I'd personally rank in the top 300 or so, First Aid Kit, Sun Kil Moon (If you're not a fan of his older stuff), Perfume Genius, Frank Ocean.

[acroamor]

When you say "good enough" to crack your list, do you mean in your personal reckoning? Or do you mean based on critical acclaim? If you're talking about critical acclaim, I think the sometimes lower placements for newer releases can at least somewhat be explained by recency bias. Also, these releases have generally only been compared against releases from their same year, other than cases where publications have posted recent "best of all time" or "best of past twenty-five years". I'd imagine we're going to see a large shift at the end of next year, when end of decade lists come out and as these releases get more "tied into" the rest of the critical canon.

[CupOfDreams]

It usually takes some time for me to evaluate an album in an "All-Time" context. I've done "year end" lists and looked at them five years later and my opinions often change once the newness has worn off. Some rise, others fall. After a certain amount of time my opinions seem to stabilize.