December 22nd, 2011 | 4:00 pm | AMG Staff
The big news in retrospectives for 2011 was undoubtedly the first official release of the Beach Boys' SMiLE Sessions, the legendary lost album Brian Wilson left uncompleted in 1967. SMiLE appeared as a double-disc set and as a lavish five-disc box, one of many extravagant deluxe reissues of a single album. So many of these appeared -- McCartney I and McCartney II, Quadrophenia, Some Girls, Nevermind, Achtung Baby -- that they overshadowed other excellent box sets, like the Smiths receiving their first remasters, Howlin Wolf's complete Chess masters, and Mickey Newbury's early albums collected as An American Trilogy. But the reissues of 2011 didn't just appear as box sets: there were plenty of excellent single and double-disc retrospectives, two-fers, and straight-up album reissues that made this an excellent year for pop's past.
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December 15th, 2011 | 9:00 am | AMG Staff
If any one trait defined 2011 it was that there was no defining trait. Plenty of albums inspired discussion and generated passion but there was no consensus pick for Album or Single of the Year...with the possible exception of Adele, who topped charts around the globe and captured plenty of Grammy nominations. As good as 21 is, Adele popped up on only one of the album lists from the 19 contributing editors to Allmusic Loves 2011, which goes a long way toward illustrating how much good music was released this year. Those 19 editors chose 297 different albums as their favorites and only 59 of those records appeared on multiple lists. And the one that showed up on the most lists? Shabazz Palaces' Black Up, the first hip-hop album to be released on Sub Pop, the first of many surprises: alt-rock veterans PJ Harvey and Stephen Malkmus jutted up against left-field balladeer James Blake, retro-soul singer Raphael Saadiq, indie poppers Veronica Falls, and '90s throwback Yuck, a diverse selection proving that there was plenty of music to love in 2011.
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Each fall, AllMusic's intrepid editors and writers present their picks for the best classical albums, out of the hundreds of CDs they reviewed over the year, and their lists are as varied as their opinions. For 2011, the choices range from the Baroque sacred music of Jan Dismas Zelenka to Michael Gordon's newly premiered percussion work, Timber, so diversity still reigns supreme in the classical department. But 2011 was also the 200th anniversary of Franz Liszt's birth, so his music was strongly represented in AllMusic's coverage.
