The older I get, the less impressed I am by the "best of" lists that pepper the papers & blogs at the end of every year. It's not just that they take forgettable commercial radio drivel seriously - they have to, there's so much money poured into it! - but it's also that I have virtually nothing of interest in common with those lists. I don't think my taste has changed much, but I think most of the music press' taste has changed. Because the money's moved around constantly, so critics have to go where the most lucrative labels tell them, from well-financed distractions like Gaga Googoo (or whatever that person is called) to whatever hip Brookyln band has had too many Youtube hits to ignore. I actually wish I gave enough of a shit to go back some amount of time to see what their "best of" lists contained then & compared that to their "best albums of all time" lists. It's all a popularity contest at heart, but at least with perspective artists like Nick Drake or the Velvet Underground - music that went virtually unnoticed at the time but which are now considered classic - shine through, while whatever flavor-of-the-year with a label that can send out a shit-ton of review copies to lazy critics (who, I am convinced, don't really seek out music on their own but rely upon labels to give them their collections) makes the list then disappears (mostly) forever.
Of course, I am not saying what I like is "the best." I don't even know what that means. I think critics should be a little more honest themselves. Instead of saying, "the best of 2011," they should say, "The stuff I have been paid (both openly & under the table) to listen to & rubber-stamp this year." & then perhaps they could tell us what they were really listening to. It was probably classic rock radio.
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