Just like your weird uncle overstaying his welcome on Boxing Day, “Albums of 2011” lists are an inevitable part of the end of the year. It’s every critic’s annual sabbatical from the boring job of actually forming eloquent arguments, instead turning an entire art form into a giant game of Top Trumps. Last December, The Independent published an article slating music critics everywhere because not one of the albums that appeared in HMV’s List of Lists, an agglomeration of all the critics’ lists, also appeared in 2011’s best-selling albums list. Where was Michael Bublé, one of British Columbia’s most successful non-pot exports? Jessie J? That ginger lad? Who was the true victor in 2011: the critics’ darling, PJ Harvey, or the Voice of the People, Adele? Who’s right: the masses or the critics?

Besides the obvious truth that in 2011 number of albums sold in no way equates to what people are actually listening to, when has quality ever equated with record sales? What would you expect The Beach Boys’ best-selling single to be? The cerebral classic that is ‘Good Vibrations’? The star-crossed serenade of ‘God Only Knows’? It’s neither of these. It’s bloody ‘Kokomo.’ Or to give it its alternate title, ‘that song you heard at a school disco and thought even then “Wow, their post-60s output really struggled without Brian Wilson’s creative control.”’

But who knows, maybe there’s an enamoured couple in Selwyn for whom ‘Kokomo’ is their song. Maybe he was gazing out from under a prosthetic palm tree at Lola Lo’s and lo and behold, there was his perfect girl. Hence that song will always remind them of that décor and that night and they have since accepted it as The Greatest Song Ever Which Wasn’t Written By Nickelback™. Anyway, why are they wrong and this Valencian is right?

The answer is: I’m not. Although no doubt tempted, no music critic has ever dissolved a Radiohead album in hydrochloric acid to determine its value empirically. It’s an opinion. Music critics are merely folks who have a way with words and have probably listened to a lot of records. For example, I happen to own all three of the Spice Girls’ albums and, in low lighting, if you squint, I look a bit like the singer from The Cribs. Similarly, if you knew someone who had indeed “ate all the pies,” they’d probably be a great place to start if you were looking for an excellent steak and kidney.

But even critics can get it wrong. Music oracle Q once awarded Oasis’s Be Here Now, an album generally agreed to be as enjoyable as being probed by a Cross Country train, five stars. We make mistakes. See, music critics are exactly like you. But better looking, obviously.

Reviews are perspectives, reflections that hopefully the reader can empathise with. They are ultimately self-indulgent: the only person whose opinion I understand is my own, and even then it’s iffy. They exist to inform, to entertain, to critique, to be critiqued themselves and are a part of the conversation. The argument of what is more golden: mass appeal or critical success is one that is meant to continue for the ages. There is no right and wrong. Even if your favourite song is ‘Kokomo.’