Flak Magazine: They Don't Love You Like We Do: Introduction, 02.03.04

Criticism, especially music criticism, increasingly is a list-based business. In 2003 alone, Rolling Stone busted out its top 500 albums of all time. Q Magazine brought us the 1001 Best Songs to Beg, Buy, Borrow and Download Right Now! Pitchfork told us its top 100 albums of the 1990s ... for the second time. At the end of the year, the website even put out a book detailing the year's top 50 albums and singles.

Can an all-list magazine be far behind? Or weekly polls, like they have for college sports? A future in which bespectacled, argyle-sporting music nerds spend Monday morning arguing whether the critics, musicians or radio stations got it right this week is a grim one, indeed.

If there's one thing about lists, though, it's that they're evolving through specialization. Witness Q's 100 Songs that Changed the World special issue or the entire website devoted to break-up songs. The 2003 edition of Flak's year-in-music feature, however, one-ups the narrowcasters by extreme narrowcasting. Why recap the "best songs of 2003" when you can list the "Most Convincing Evidence That Studded Belts Have Feelings, Too?"

As in years past, our roundup takes the form of a metaphorical (read: not for sale or distribution or even in existence) mix CD that clocks in just under the 80-minute mark. The mix's title, They Don't Love You Like We Do, comes from one of its tracks: the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps." It refers to the highly subjective, unscientific art of nailing down why the hell it is you like something, a task whose impossibility is familiar to anyone who's ever tried to explain why anything is the best of its kind.

Also as in years past, most of our writers have compiled their own mix CDs of their favorite music from the past year, should the specialization of the primary feature fail to fulfill your specialized needs.