Finished!

Finally finished the challenge as no. 275. What a journey it's been!

https://1001albumsgenerator.com/shares/60b16b9a32c64936a5c15889

The way it's changed my music listening is mostly by breaking down the invisible barriers around my listening. I'm not a guy who listens to hiphop or country, so why would I put on a hiphop or country album? This project has challenged me to change that thinking.

I've also come to realise that I was sort of ready for a new direction. A lot of the best scored albums on my list are still the "usual suspects" in rock music since I grew up with those albums and love them, but stuff I hadn't heard before in those genres didn'y excite me as much as genres I was less familiar with, like soul, funk or certain types of world music.

During the project I also became more intrigued by some of the more experimental music on the list. A single listen was maybe not enough to learn to fully appreciate some of that stuff, but it's something I'll be looking to delve deeper into from now on.

As my user submitted album, I had a couple of candidates. Should it be one of the, to me, most glaring omissions of the last decade-ish in Sufjan Stevens' Carrie and Lovell, should it be someone like Mitski or Phoebe Bridgers to help not only improve the indie selection from the recent past but also the gender gap on the list, should it be Mew's Frengers to help get my own country some representation?

In the end, I went with the selfish choice of Boxer by The National. I put High Violet as my favourite album from the list, but I only consider it their third best album, and I do think it's a bonafide classic of the late 00s.

Finally, I just want to say that I've really appreciated this community. I've found it to be one of the more positive places on reddit, where people tend to support positive thinking about music, and where the disagreements mostly feel good-natured. It's definitely helped me keep my nose to the grindstone, to read everyone else's experiences.