Top-selling albums don't mean an album of the year win

Rumours was (is) a fantastic album and rightly deserved that win. A few shockers here though.

So then what determines the album of the year if it isn't sales numbers?

The (Detroit) Rockets 1979 album should have won something. It's a great blues/rock album.

I don't think The Modern Lovers won anything either.

@FizzBit, nice obscure name drop with the Modern Lovers. Is that the Jonathan Richman vehicle that was way too left field novelty to get any mainstream success but prefaced decades of quirky lo fi garage bands like Guided By Voices?

Every year the world's most versatile band, NOW 63, gets snubbed by the judges.

Doesn't even mean the album is any good, either.

That said; there's a couple of crackers mentioned above. Led Zep IV is peerless, it really is. But Pink Floyd's effort is overblown, moribund and too self indulgent (even for Roger Waters).

@FizzBit, nice obscure name drop with the Modern Lovers. Is that the Jonathan Richman vehicle that was way too left field novelty to get any mainstream success but prefaced decades of quirky lo fi garage bands like Guided By Voices?

@TorafusuTorasan

Yep!

The keyboardist went on to join Talking Heads. Which, by the way was only nominated twice, and only around the mid 80's.