Note: sorry for being ridiculously late to the game when it comes to writing about Beyonce. If it helps, this article mostly uses Beyonce a starting point to talk about a broader subject. Still, it has been 18 days and I'm pretty fucking late. My bad.

On December 12th, 2013, the internet exploded. I had been away from my computer all night, watching LaMarcus Aldridge put up 31 points and 25 rebounds as his Blazers defeated the Houston Rockets. I assumed that was what everyone I follow on Twitter would want to discuss. Instead, Beyonce surprised everyone by releasing a new album exclusively to the internet at midnight. And when that happens, pretty much every other thing in existence is irrelevant.

But as the flood of B worshiping tweets came in, one stood out to me in particular. It came from Rookie founder Tavi Gevinson, who commented that Beyonce had "fucked up all of our listicles." It was hard to deny the truth here. Rolling Stone had already published its Albums of the Year list, as had Spin. Pitchfork's had yet to come out, but the chances are, the votes among their writers had already been placed. This was a bit of a problem, based on the early returns, Beyonce had almost certainly released one of the best albums of 2013. And yet, it would go unrecognized. This raises a question that rarely gets mentioned: why the fuck does every prominent music publication make their AOTY list in early December?

There's three whole weeks left in the year; you're just assuming that no one else is going to blow anyone's mind until after the ball drops in Times Square? Well, usually that is the case. December is a notoriously weak month for album releases. Really, until Beyonce's midnight shocker, I can't think of any major act who released an album of much consequence in December in the past decade. Now, some of you in the comments might gently remind me of one, but as a general rule, it doesn't happen.

Based on this, it seems like there's some unspoken agreement between the record industry and the music journalism industry - we won't release any key albums in December, and that way, you can comfortably rush out your AOTY lists a few days after Thanksgiving. If this code does exist, Beyonce clearly did not give one single fuck, cheerfully making every Best Albums of 2013 list obsolete. If you doubt that last claim, consider this: even if your Best Albums list wouldn't have included Beyonce, the lists were made before the voters had a chance to consider it. That along causes a conflict.

We might feel bad for Beyonce, not getting included on the major Best Albums lists, but really, it worked out well for her. Her album exists on a plain of its own. We can't stack it up against the efforts of Kanye, Vampire Weekend, or Drake because the lists were rushed out before anyone had a chance to. If Beyonce releases her album even three weeks sooner, we'd have to compare it to every other record that came out in one of the best year's for music in recent memory. But since Beyonce's albums exists by itself, we can put her at #1 without actually determining if she was #1.

Based on what happened, there's a damn good case to be made for writing until January, when every album actually has been released to publish Albums of the Year list. It's unlikely that this will happen, though, partly because situations like this are so rare, and partly because magazines and web sites might not be able to wait that extra month to sell copies and earn page views. Still, Beyonce taught every music writer a serious lesson: if you count the score before the game's over, you wind up with dozens of lists that all look pretty foolish.