-have come out in that calendar year (to the best of the internet's knowledge)
-not be a best of
-not have run in a previous tournament

Loosely! It all depends on Kent's availability, making sure there's enough time for everything, and other random things. For example, there was a run-off tournament for 2000 to determine the last eligible album. That lengthened the timeline.

The best way to know what's going on is to follow the newsletter. Issue 205 has a good rundown of how it usually goes.

This is all run by one person, so please have some grace.

(From "Interview: Kent Beeson":) The “Policy” has essentially two parts. The first part is, did an album win with enough votes to win against any other album? Did it win with enough votes that it could theoretically win any and all matches? If so, that’s strike one. The second part is, did an album do that twice? That’s strikes two and three, and it’s out. There are exceptions to all this, but that’s basically it.

Welcome to the Best Album Brackets, where we pick a year, pick 128 albums, and put them through the bracket wringer until we emerge with a winner. We just finished crowning The Pixies' Doolittle as The Best Album of 1989 and are next moving on to 2001.

If you’d like to help nominate albums and determine seedings or otherwise join the conversation, you can subscribe to the newsletter, leave comments on the newsletter archive, and/or hang out with us on Bluesky. Links above. Hope to see you there!

In Kent's words: "The summer of 2015, in my memory at least, was the peak of putting non-sports things into brackets and making a tournament out of it [...] So, me being me, I asked myself, How can I get in on this? This would be the 20th anniversary of every album that came out in 1995, and that sounded like as good an idea as any. [...] I found a blank bracket sheet, did some research to name 128 albums, figured out the seeding, and voila, I had the very first tournament, The Best Album of 1995."

Since then, Kent has run tournaments for each year of the 90s as well as a Best Album of the Nineties tournament. When that was completed, he moved on trying new methods of reaching people outside of Twitter. The tournament is currently alternating up and down from '99 and '90, respectively, and is primarily homed in a Buttondown newsletter and on Bluesky.

1990 - Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet
1991 - My Blood Valentine, Loveless
1992 - R.E.M., Automatic for the People
1993 - Wu-Tang Clan, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
1994 - Nas, Illmatic
1995 - GZA, Liquid Swords
1995 Redux - Radiohead, The Bends
1996 - Beck, Odelay
1997 - Radiohead, OK Computer
1998 - Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
1999 - Fiona Apple, When the Pawn...
Best of the Nineties - Radiohead, OK Computer
2000 - OutKast, Stankonia
1989 - The Pixies, Doolittle

Kent (bestalbum): DCs, if you ask for editing access to a master-ish list and don't get a response in a day or two, general questions not on the website

Alana (lanna): website errors, you only have 1-2 albums to add to the list and don't think it's worth requesting access (but read the top of the list for formatting instructions)

Layout: Itinerae Pixels: Fool lovers

"Designated Cheerleaders" are user-submitted opinions, stories, etc. on one particular album, usually in the hopes of swaying opinion. Anyone can submit a DC on any album. Kent writes more on the topic here.

This will be where the DCs go

In event of a tie, the highest seed takes it.

If you find out, tell me, because no one has said anything concrete yet. I just know there are a lot of them. -Alana

Nanette & Putnam39
RenaMJ
Mike Bogacz
Kevin Alexander

get your own