# Rewind (The Wire)

Rewind is the annual year-in-review issue of The Wire, a British music magazine founded in 1982. The year-end issues have been published every January since 1986, adopting the current "Rewind" title in 1997. Each year-end issue has included an annual critics' poll, collating critics' ballots into a list of the year's best releases. The polls survey writers affiliated with the magazine.
Across its history, critics' polls in The Wire have tended to reflect the magazine's eclectic, avant-garde sensibility and coverage of experimental music across a broad variety of genres. The magazine's first few polls were limited to selecting the best jazz LP of the year, in accordance with its original focus on jazz music. As the magazine's coverage expanded, it began incorporating other lists of the best albums in selected non-jazz genres, but kept the jazz poll at the centre. In 1990 the magazine had its first all-genre poll, and the following year the main poll opened to include albums from any musical genre. Beginning in 2011, the main poll expanded to encompass not only albums, but any musical release of any length in any conceivable format. Nevertheless, the poll has typically continued to emphasise releases from the album format above all others.

## History
### 1985–1991: jazz era

The early polls were limited to jazz albums, mirroring the magazine's focus at that time, but the purview gradually expanded; by 1990, the main jazz list was published alongside lists for blues, Latin music, "composition" (i.e., classical music) and "suspect rock" (i.e., experimental rock). The magazine published an all-genre poll for the first time in 1991, a so-called "open vote 'beyond' category" that was still subordinate to the "main" list of jazz and improvised releases. The Mix, a remix album by German electronic group Kraftwerk, was the first release to top an all-genre poll.

### 1992–2010: Record of the Year

In 1992, The Wire stopped privileging its jazz poll and instead began to designate its all-genre poll as its primary year-end list. The blurb accompanying that year's poll announced that the "main chart takes the form of an all-inclusive, open-ended category—contributors were asked to vote for their favourite records across all genres, from jazz to Techno, opera to Africa, metal to Minimalism." The magazine continued to publish genre-specific lists, including for jazz. In 1993, The Wire started calling its all-genre poll the "Record of the Year".

### 2011–present: Release of the Year

In 2011, The Wire switched the name of its annual critics' poll from Records of the Year to Releases of the Year. The change meant that critics could cast votes for "any self-contained audio entity, be it a vinyl LP, 12" EP, cassette, CD, download, mixtape, etc." Editor-in-chief Tony Herrington explained the reasoning and observed how it had changed critics' submissions:
   We made the change in a spirit of 'all formats acknowledged' democracy, but while a few up-to-speed contributors took us at our word and ran with it, submitting Web 2.0-driven charts containing YouTube uploads and tracks given away via Twitter, the bulk of the electorate continued to cast their votes for old fashioned albums, records or otherwise."
The cover design for the 2017 Rewind—published January 2018, issue number 407—was a work of interactive audiovisual art. Using a custom augmented reality app, a smart device's camera would show the abstract magazine cover as a three-dimensional, with accompanying audio. The project was cited in the 2019 book The Fundamentals of Graphic Design as "an immersive and dynamic experience perfectly reflecting the publication's long-running championing of experimental approaches to making and performing music."

## Critics' polls

| Year | Artist | Album | Musical genre | Nation | Poll name |
| 1985 | Ronald Shannon Jackson | Decode Yourself | Avant-garde jazz | US | "LP of the Year" |
| 1986 | Pat Metheny and Ornette Coleman | Song X | Avant-garde jazz | US | "LP of the Year" |
| 1987 | Ornette Coleman | In All Languages | Avant-garde jazz | US | "Top LP of the Year" |
| 1988 | Cecil Taylor Unit | Live in Bologna | Avant-garde jazz | US | "Top LP of the Year" |
| 1989 | David Murray | Ming's Samba | Avant-garde jazz | US | "Critics' Poll" |
| 1990 | John Scofield | Time on My Hands | Avant-garde jazz | US | "The Critics' Choice" |
| 1990 | Cecil Taylor | Cecil Taylor in Berlin '88 | Avant-garde jazz | US | "Special Wire Accolade" |
| 1991 | Sheila Jordan | Lost and Found | Avant-garde jazz | US | "The Critics' Choice: Jazz & Improvised" |
| 1991 | Kraftwerk | The Mix | Electronic | DEU | "The Critics' Choice: 'Beyond' Category" |
| 1992 | Arrested Development | 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... | Alternative hip hop | US | "The Critics' Choice" |
| 1993 | Björk | Debut | Electronic pop | ISL | "Record of the Year" |
| 1994 | Portishead | Dummy | Trip hop | UK | "Record of the Year" |
| 1995 | Tricky | Maxinquaye | Trip hop | UK | "Record of the Year" |
| 1996 | Tortoise | Millions Now Living Will Never Die | Post-rock | US | "Record of the Year" |
| 1997 | Robert Wyatt | Shleep | Art rock | UK | "Record of the Year" |
| 1998 | Sonic Youth | A Thousand Leaves | Experimental rock | US | "Record of the Year" |
| 1999 | Mouse on Mars | Niun Niggung | Electronic | DEU | "Record of the Year" |
| 2000 | Antipop Consortium | Tragic Epilogue | Alternative hip hop | US | "Record of the Year" |
| 2001 | Björk | Vespertine | Electronic pop | ISL | "Record of the Year" |
| 2002 | Sonic Youth | Murray Street | Experimental rock | US | "Record of the Year" |
| 2003 | Robert Wyatt | Cuckooland | Art rock | UK | "Record of the Year" |
| 2004 | Albert Ayler | Holy Ghost: Rare & Unissued Recordings (1962–70) | Avant-garde jazz | US | "Record of the Year" |
| 2005 | The Books | Lost and Safe | Folktronica | US | "Record of the Year" |
| 2006 | Burial | Burial | Dubstep | UK | "Record of the Year" |
| 2007 | Robert Wyatt | Comicopera | Art rock | UK | "Record of the Year" |
| 2008 | The Bug | London Zoo | Dubstep | UK | "Record of the Year" |
| 2009 | Broadcast and The Focus Group | ... Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age | Psychedelic pop and sampledelia | UK | "Record of the Year" |
| 2010 | Actress | Splazsh | Tech house | UK | "Record of the Year" |
| 2011 | James Ferraro | Far Side Virtual | Vaporwave | US | "Release of the Year" |
| 2012 | Laurel Halo | Quarantine | Avant-pop | US | "Release of the Year" |
| 2013 | Julia Holter | Loud City Song | Avant-pop | US | "Release of the Year" |
| 2014 | Aphex Twin | Syro | Electronic | UK | "Release of the Year" |
| 2015 | Jlin | Dark Energy | Footwork | US | "Release of the Year" |
| 2016 | David Bowie | Blackstar (★) | Art rock | UK | "Release of the Year" |
| 2017 | Chino Amobi | Paradiso | Sound collage | US | "Release of the Year" |
| 2018 | Sons of Kemet | Your Queen Is a Reptile | Avant-garde jazz | UK | "Release of the Year" |
| 2019 | 75 Dollar Bill | I Was Real | Avant-garde jazz | US | "Release of the Year" |
| 2020 | Beatrice Dillon | Workaround | Electronic | UK | "Release of the Year" |
| 2021 | L'Rain | Fatigue | Avant-pop | US | "Release of the Year" |
| 2022 | Lucrecia Dalt | ¡Ay! | Avant-pop | Colombia | "Release of the Year" |
| 2023 | Yo La Tengo | This Stupid World | Indie rock | US | "Release of the Year" |
* ↑ Several critics had voted for Cecil Taylor's 11-CD box set, In Berlin '88, as their number-one choice for the 1990 poll. However, it was kept off the main list altogether because, according to the introductory essay, "11 against one wasn't really fair odds for the rest". Instead, In Berlin '88 was separately "honoured ... with a special Wire accolade of the year's most impressive recording project."