P2K: The Top 200 Albums of the 2000s: 20-1

I mean, this is the thing, isn't it? These people are not representing themselves as "Casual Listeners Who Like What They Like" - they are setting themselves up as Critics and Canonisers and Arbiters Of Taste.

And if you ARE going to do that, then you do have a responsibility to stick your head a little further out of your comfort zone and take some responsibility for what it is you are canonising, and what that says about you and about the world at large.

I think that is part of the job, yes.

A bunch of Brooklyn hipster boys can fart in a microphone and it goes to the top of the Pitchfork list as a work of staggering genius, but a woman can come up with The Hounds Of Love or something, and still not quite make the grade.

hmmmmmm

Yeah, but see, I don't like The Hounds of Love all that much. Or Kate Bush period. So, though I can appreciate her skills and contributions in a distant sort of way, I wouldn't put her at the top of MY all-greatest list, even if it was submitting it to Canon Central. Instead, I'd include stuff I do actually like. Which would probably skew male. And maybe that reflects some deep-seated internalized sexism on my part, but then again, maybe it doesn't. And there's no way to ever know. I work at appreciating all kinds of stuff and like a great deal of music made by women, but my very very favorite albums/artists lists would probably be just as bad as PFork's -- if not RYM's.

Personally, I suspect that my tastes are more indicative of what I relate to than what I endorse. And so, as a guy, it's entirely unsurprising that I most strongly relate to guy shit. If that's the case for any significant number of people, then Canon Central has an active obligation to gather opinion from a gender-diverse pool. Unless they actually intend to present a specifically masculine P.O.V.

And if you ARE going to do that, then you do have a responsibility to stick your head a little further out of your comfort zone and take some responsibility for what it is you are canonising, and what that says about you and about the world at large.

(a) this is all great but is unquantifiable to the point of meaningless in practice

(b) the % of reviews that are written with the actual intention to canonize its subject, as opposed to just saying how good the record is or isn't, is very likely close to zero

The one point I agree with IEC on is that the list is a reflection of the contributors; if you want the list to change, get different contributors.

You can "not personally like" something and still admit the fact that it is meaningful and worthy and even important as a work of art. That's kind of the point of a "Canon" - that it's removed from the idea of mere personal taste and raised up to some abstract idea of "this is what our society considered meaningful at this time."

I mean, this is what makes this all-male Canon so bloody dangerous - the idea that only white males are capable of making Great Art.

Isn't that the point of a Critic as opposed to a casual Fan - that they go beyond "I like this" or "I don't like this" to try and impose some order and meaning onto this sea of cultural product?

Or perhaps I've absorbed too much in the way of the idea of standards from art or literary or other forms of criticism - music always seems to be different from other artforms in that way.

Can I just ask, who brought "this is the canon" to the table here? Pitchfork, or the people who don't like this list?

I think it was Haagen-Daas.

I think that the moment you start making statements like "These are the Top 200 albums of..." you are making an attempt at claiming some kind of canonical status.

PFork's cultural uniformity/bias/skew is another matter. The culture they represent is a niche and therefore at least passively exclusionary. They aren't Music In General, they're PFork indie. So it's appropriate for them to represent a somewhat narrow range of cultural viewpoints. The tendency of niche cultures to skew this way or that, demographically, is not a problem. I'm not even saying they should be 50/50 male/female, necessarily. Just that 10/1 does surprise me a bit.

I think that the moment you start making statements like "These are the Top 200 albums of..." you are making an attempt at claiming some kind of canonical status.

I guess I'm questioning this because this list certainly isn't my canonical list of What Was Good this past decade, so I'm pretty much ignoring that aspect of it; I think the analysis of what ended up on it and where it placed in terms of sociological post-mortem is interesting but it also seems like this list is not the end-all, be-all of music this decade and needs to be combined with a myriad of other sources before one can start talking about The Canon, including other publications, the Mercury Prize shortlist, the Billboard charts, etc etc etc.

It's just this kind of build-up of frustration - as I said earlier - at seeing list after list being 90% male. And every one gets excused as "well, this is kind of a niche audience, so of course..." until you get to the point where you realise that there IS not a place where female artists seem to be getting rated as canonical until you go to places that are built to be pro-female by design.

This discussion is going round in circles at this point, because we are back to where we were yesterday again, talking about Plan B.

I just think that P4k have declared themselves to be this kind of bastion of What It Means To Be Indie circa the late 00s and they don't even accurately represent the state of their own self-proclaimed genre.

I'm not saying that it wouldn't be GREAT if the staff of these music organs were 50% female. I'm just saying that's not anywhere near the whole problem.

heh, this is the first list I've looked at tbh; I'm kind of shocked that 4 hip-hop artists made it but mostly shocked at The Knife because I didn't realize that Pitchfork loved them so much (ha I said both of these before so yes, circular talking)

I think that the moment you start making statements like "These are the Top 200 albums of..." you are making an attempt at claiming some kind of canonical status.

― Masonic Boom

PFork's relative prominence plays into it, too. It's not like their word is law or anything, but they are an influential critical/cultural voice.

I still disagree with you, MB, about the extent that one should force a kind of dispassionate distance on oneself when one's voice might be heard by the culture at large. It's fine to ask questions (like, "geez, why is my list all dudes?"), but at the same time, I think it's important to be true to yourself. Maybe I'd agree that Hounds of Love is an "important" album, but so is Thriller. And Universal Consciousness. And Born to Run. And Court and Spark, and Astral Weeks, and Odyshape, and Kind of Blue and Expensive Shit and so on. The job of the critic isn't simply to agree with some disembodied, objective voice that bloodlessly annoints "true greatness", but rather to express an individual point of view, a personal set of tastes and ideas.

kate, what would your top 20 look like?

Isn't that the point of a Critic as opposed to a casual Fan - that they go beyond "I like this" or "I don't like this" to try and impose some order and meaning onto this sea of cultural product?

i think impose is really the wrong word here. i do consider myself a feminist, but that doesn't mean i should be dishonest about my tastes-something that afaik is outside my control-in order for my list to reflect it. i think there are much more important ways to express your feminism than this silliness you're proposing.

In speaking of PFork's "niche", I wasn't excusing the massive (apparent) gender bias, MB.

The job of the critic isn't simply to agree with some disembodied, objective voice that bloodlessly annoints "true greatness", but rather to express an individual point of view, a personal set of tastes and ideas.

otm

Dude, you are preaching to the choir on that count. Hence why I liked the fact that Plan B *didn't* run best of lists or ratings. But it's that these things are being represented as some kind of subjectiveness when they are clearly so far up their own objectivities they don't even seem to admit it. There *IS* a difference between "I like this" and "This is Canon". If the latter, you DO need to ask "why is my list all dudes?"

And that's why a diversity of voices is important. I agree with you that there need to be more female voices within the community of criticism... BUT...

My (albeit limited) experience of the music press has been that it's actually somewhat *less* sexist than many other aspects of the music industry. It was *MUCH* easier for me to get a place as a female music writer (even before I got the Everett True stamp of approval) than it was, say, to get a place as a female musician or female songwriter or female DJ or some other more active and public-facing role.

I don't know if that is true for other women. I don't know if it's indicative of the scarcity value of female voices in music criticism or indicative of what direction mine own talents lie. And you can dismiss my experience with "that's not the experience of most women" like you did yesterday.

I mean, maybe this is the point of a good editor - to balance all the individuals making their scribbled lists so that you get a balanced viewpoint. (That was certainly the way that Plan B operated.)

But I *DO* believe that as a Critic - or even as a *serious* music fan, you do have to ask these questions and challenge those boundaries. Otherwise, how on earth would you ever grow, as a music fan or as a human being?

im not sure if ur against The Canon or canons in general.

MB: I didn't mean to dismiss yr experience yesterday, just to draw a line between individual experience and broad statements about the way things are. Sorry if I came across as belittling or diminishing what you had to say.

FWIW I don't think that PFork presents their list as an inviolable canon. Sure, it's gonna be received that way, at least by some, but they're reasonably humble about it. The whole thing seems framed by an admission of subjectivity, at least to me.

Neither am I, really. x-post

idk, read anything about lists to see why the mediocre rises to the top as here. it is interesting that the lowest common denominator is what it is at p4k, that beeing said. possibly critics internalize the canon as they perceive it (ie vote for "what's important").

cf the 'white ribbon' thread title: feels like classic even as you're watching it. not 'feels like a good film' but 'feels like a film that will be deemed good'.

Maybe relevant?

What the PnJ results would look like if only women voted.
Pazz and Jop 2004: If Only Women Voted

what's kinda crazy abt this discussion is how ppl insist on viewing pitchfork as some kind of music-crit death star, when all they actually do is review 5 records a day and have a really great marketing department.

Those are relevant, and interesting. At least as much for the discussion they generate as for the results themselves.

I feel you, cad, but I can't imagine arguing that PFork isn't influential. Like maybe even 70s Rolling Stone influential.

yeah i would never argue that it's not influential but i think there's a huge gap between its self-presentation and perceptions of it. smartest thing they ever did was not add user comments.

kate, what would your top 20 look like?

― Ømår Littel (Jordan), Tuesday, October 6, 2009 12:29 PM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i also would like to know.

snap

I would have to give a lot more consideration and time and looking through my record collection than I am able to give during boring downtime at work.

these lists all end up looking the same because sure, maybe everyone's top ten picks only have two or three of the "usual suspects" compared with a bunch of relative obscurities, but then everyone probably has different obscurities and probably mostly the same picks from the more popular pool. so you end up with everyone "agreeing" that kid a is the definitive album of the oughts.

My top 20 list at this point is overwhelming female, I think. I don't know if there was sexual bias, but I was shocked that Neko Case didn't place higher (and more often), no Rilo Kiley that I noticed (could've been far up on the list), no Dixie Chicks/Carrie Underwood/Taylor Swift/Little Big Town (tho as Tim noted, country in general has issues, and IIRC Miranda Lambert and Loretta Lynn both were listed? Or maybe Lynn was just listed on the singles list, when she dueted with Jack White, which might be an entire other issue), Beth Orton, Cat Power, Kathleen Edwards, Laura Marling, Regina Spektor (was there really not a single Spektor album?), the Yeah Yeah Yeah's poor placement, the Gossip, Amy Winehouse (Still blown away by her non-inclusion), Kelly Clarkson, Pink, Rihanna, Noisettes, Pretty Girls Make Graves.

And that's sticking to the genres that readily come to mind as being relevant (theoretically or actually so) to the PFM aesthetic.

(Though I did earlier post a list of albums I would at least have to give consideration to above.)

I would want to be perverse and put Britney Spears' Blackout as the album of the decade on so many levels.

snap

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Tuesday, October 6, 2009 1:28 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it wasn't meant to be a snap. i honestly would like to know.

mordy i would just say that for a lot of the examples you gave pfork has been pretty consisting in maybe liking them but not loving them--i was surprised that for neko case records only blacklisted made it, i thought they loved fox confessor--but other than that, they've never expressed more than like standard approval of pretty girls make graves, amy winehouse as an albums artist, yyy's albums after fever to tell, etc. etc.

also like kelly c. and rihanna where way the hell up there on the tracks list--i don't think it's insane for an indie rock reviews site to not rate them as albums artists.

(Though I did earlier post a list of albums I would at least have to give consideration to above.)

but most of the albums you posted were in the list, just not in the top 20.

Yeah, just noting that it's possible to stay within the P4k aesthetic and rank female artists near the top of the list. My own list will, I'm guessing, be predominantly female artists. "never expressed more than like standard approval" is maybe worth looking at closer, tho, maybe? Like, why not?

it wasn't meant to be a snap. i honestly would like to know.

i was meaning snap as in "me too"

I think that's an unanswerable question, Mordy. Why should PFork staff be fond of Amy Winehouse or Pretty Girls Make Graves? We can justify our love/respect for things, but that doesn't mean that other people have to love/respect them in the same way. Personally, I hate Pretty Girls Make Graves, and I don't think that my distaste is worth any particularly close examination.

mordy yeah maybe--someone could go read the reviews. i remember they did have specific issues with the amy winehouse record, mostly because i really love that record. pretty girls make graves were basically an a++ emo band. kind of gets into personal taste because ultimately most of the list was created by the votes of what, 30 people max?

like yeah i do strongly doubt we could find evidence of gender bias at work tbh

Huh, that actually is an accepted definition of "snap," according to Urbandictionary.com, but it doesn't appear until the second page.

yes how shocking that the dixie chicks, taylor swift and miranda lambert didn't make the pitchfork end of decade list. i remember when they reviewed all the albums by those artists and gave them high ratings. stunning.

Yeah, I really have no clue if there's systematic lowering of grades for female artists. And if there is, I have no idea what kind of bias that exposes. Like someone mentioned above, different genres are gender-coded differently, and there could be any number of issues in there. Do country website round-ups (I know a couple ILXors contribute to those) rank female artists much higher than male artists? Is the RS list going to feature Dylan/Bruce/Radiohead in the top 3 spot?

XP yeah, that's why I noted there's a genre issue there.

guys, it's not gender bias, it's genre bias. there is plenty of fawning words for neko case's work in the new pornos (as well as one of her albums placing) and they've long been head over heels for annie & robyn. relax.

Yeah, I really have no clue if there's systematic lowering of grades for female artists.

i mean can we just get baseline agreement that is does not happen?

*that this

I can't imagine that it's true.