Best vs favourite vs most played

we're really testing out the limits of music threads on ILE these days, eh?

I'm more interested in the philosophical idea behind this than the actual lists.

Most played more often than not=newer stuff, favourites tend to be older stuff (newer stuff may make its way into my top five after I realise that they have stood the test of time) and best albums.....well, you've really got to take in all spheres of music here and define which are the top five all time classics. Fir example, I'm not a huge Led Zep fan, but I would imagine there'd be one of theirs in there. It's more of an artistic merit thing than a personal choice thing.

Or of course you can do the typical tabloid poll thing of just stating the five newest good albums as all three simultaneously. I would certainly hope that you wouldn't, though.

Yeah, the age (as far as my experience of them is concerned, not when they were recorded) is important. It's also convenience - if your favourites are on vinyl but you mostly listen to music on the move, you may listen to favourite tapes/CDs more. Also mood: your favourite LP might make you less happy than something you like less. But for me, I don't think there would be so much difference. 'Best' is a different matter, and I'm not sure how I'd make that distinction. I guess I'd realise, for instance, that the perhaps total absence of instrumental jazz LPs from my top 100 might say more about my tastes than objective truth, so I might adjust them upwards a bit, shove a Miles and a Coltrane in somewhere, and try to compensate the other way for bias from youthful faves like glam and punk, so I might shuffle Slade and the Rezillos down a notch.

Well, I'd say there are some works that appeal to me very strongly, but aren't always appropriate for the particular setting.

For instance...one of my favorite albums ever is Mr. Bungle's Disco Volante. However, when I'm sitting here in an office, surrounded by (for lack of a better term) "normal people", and not tweaking out in a cave on acid or whatever, it's a little inappropriate of a spin.