Speaking for music best-of lists, as compiled from votes of critics: I've found these lists are not very helpful in finding music I actually care about. It's frustrating, because there seems to be so much utility there.
I've explained it like this: To get on the list, something has to be considered at-least-good by a lot of people, and this tends to reward (1) herd mentality; (2) lowest-common-denominator. The list selects against anything in any niche, even when it's excellent.
As I look back through music that has meant a lot to me, there is just not much overlap with best-of lists.
Note: I'm talking about critics-vote, pooled, best-of lists. Single-critic best-of lists don't average out niche tastes and, for the right critic-listener match, can be very helpful indeed.
Moreso for music than books, but I personally find that most of my favorites tend to have at least as many people that hate it as love it.
Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", for example, is an extremely polarizing album. Between Mangum's nasally vocals, beginner-to-intermediate technical talent, the inclusion of saws and theramin as instruments; it all adds up to a love/hate affair. I'm not a big fan of any of Mangum's other works, but AOtS has an allure that is just... indescribably gripping.
I don't go around recommending it, but when it comes up in my playlist, I find that I am simply compelled to stop what I'm doing and listen to the entire album, which is thankfully short, as far as albums go.
Thank you. Haven't thought about that album for many years, but now that you brought it back to my attention, I'll listen to it later today - which nicely supports the point you're trying to make.
I remember a counter-example to this (which may be a fluke) a few years ago when Burial got album of the year on metacritic for a spacey, ambient dubstep record. Maybe not super-niche but definitely not mainstream.
It's not necessarily bad, but "best" books should be judged on rating, not recognition. With this rating system a book with 1000 reviews rated at 3.5 stars would score higher than a book with 500 reviews rated at 4.5 stars.
I used to balk at anything on the "best-sellers' list," assuming the majority would be poorly-written beach read material, but I realized that there can be compelling reasons to read beyond the literary merit of a particular work. Pop literature can help us understand and analyze the culture we're living in, tap into the zeitgeist, participate proactively. It can lead to moments of cognitive dissonance, for sure, but that's healthy.
there's a phycological effect (I don't remember if there's a name for it) where we tend to value or rank more favourably things that are popular or familiar. Tests have been done with groups classifying newly heard songs with and without knowing a fake ranking and the group exposed to the ranking tended to follow it.
