Ron Pinkney, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
This is a list of the Top 20 altrockchick reviews of all time (2011-2023), based on reader visits, updated monthly.
The list does not include my most-read posts. That honor belongs to my four-episode erotic biography. Each episode earned more than double the hits of the top-read review. I had to take it down because some people interpreted the series as an advertisement for illegal services and I found my inbox filled with sleazy propositions.
It’s important to remember that the list is based entirely on reader interest, and is not a compilation of what I consider my best work. Some of the reviews in the Top 20 are negative reviews of albums cherished by a seriously pissed-off fanbase.
The Top 20
- Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Rust Never Sleeps
- The Kinks: Preservation Acts 1 and 2
- Jethro Tull: A Passion Play
- Jethro Tull: Songs from the Wood
- The Doors: Strange Days
- The J. Geils Band: “Live” Full House
- The Pretty Things: Parachute
- Radiohead: In Rainbows
- Frank Sinatra: In the Wee Small Hours
- The Kinks: The Great Lost Kinks Album
- King Crimson: In the Court of the Crimson King
- Sinéad O’Connor: I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
- Sade: Love Deluxe
- Yes: Close to the Edge
- Pretenders: Pretenders
- The Kinks: Arthur
- The Bill Evans Trio: Portrait in Jazz
- Jethro Tull: The Broadsword and the Beast
- The Zombies: Odessey and Oracle
- Woodstock
Commentary
My review of Rust Never Sleeps shot to the top of the all-time list one week after publication, breaking the record for most hits in a single day four days in a row. Thank you, Neil Young fans!
The two entries I find most surprising—and delightfully so—are Sinatra and Bill Evans. I published the review of In the Wee Small Hours on the 4th of July when I thought no one would show up. I tend to publish reviews of albums that are interesting to me but unlikely to be of much interest to my audience on American holidays (including Super Bowl Sunday). For a long time I thought people weren’t interested in jazz reviews, but I based that belief on the immediate response. As it turns out, my jazz reviews have legs, and both Miles Davis and Coltrane are pretty close to breaking into the Top 20. Yay!
In the end, the stats do not influence what I choose to write about. The stats on my four XTC reviews to date wouldn’t put them in the Top 400, but I’m still fully committed to reviewing all their albums. If I find music that is interesting to me, I’ll write about it sooner or later, statistics and trends be damned.
