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

Alison Krauss (of Robert Plant &)

their list is still worse than pfork's tho

It's just too short. A top 20 list just isn't that interesting. Expand to 100 or 200 and you start to see more interesting stuff. I was thinking an anti-consensus thread of favorite albums that probably won't make the megalists.

For what it's worth, I've been ignoring the thread title and talking about the entire top 200 all the way through.

where are mariah carey, ellen allien, ce'cile, ashlee simpson, taylor swift, teedra moses, busy signal, young dro

This is where "personal taste" roars to the forefront because I personally have a VERY hard time taking seriously ANYONE who would say that Mariah Carey, Taylor Swift or Ashlee Simpson released albums that were among the best of this decade. I have not liked Mariah as an album artist since her first album and I maintain that "Vision of Love" is her best single. Ashlee Simpson did some fun, quirky songs but nothing I ever actively want to listen to. Taylor Swift is a talented songwriter who can't sing for shit and writes about stuff that I alternately don't care about or actively can't stand. I couldn't name a single song by any of the other people you listed.

Conversely, I would seriously consider Depeche Mode's Playing The Angel one of the best albums I encountered this decade; ditto The Cure's 4:13 Dream and New Order's Waiting For The Sirens' Call. Also, Poem-Cees' Paranoia.

This is really a matter of perspective at the end of the day; I don't particularly care if my tastes are reflected in the decade's canon or not because I've already identified what's important to me and I'm more than happy to exist in that self-defined space. You want to redefine the global discussion to privilege the stuff you like, which makes sense given your vocation.

I'm curious if other ppl think deej should have voted for Amy Winehouse given what he said about the way he saw the impact she had.

("privilege" is the wrong word to use in my post because it is too loaded, it should really be "explicitly include")

I have to admit an aversion to seeing artists who've been around for ages placing high on these things. This wasn't really a conscious thing but when I think of my 00s favourites they're almost all by artists who weren't already established ten years ago.

/ageist

I don't particularly care if my tastes are reflected in the decade's canon or not because I've already identified what's important to me and I'm more than happy to exist in that self-defined space.

^this is basically a perfect sentence as regards my feelings on the issue - good articulatin' Dan

That said I can definitely see Lex's POV in that so many of his favourites are at least as visible and commercially successful as much of this top 20 here - far more so in some cases - whereas finding yourself gravitating towards a lot of stuff that sells a few thousand copies or whatever, like I have I guess, doesn't put you in much of a position to wrong your hands about it not being given mainstream coverage/canonical status

apols for wring spelling

I can't complain about this list, as it had led to inappropriate shamu jokes.

Okay, rather than search out all the other threads, I'll just say that I was reminded how much I used to enjoy albums by the Libertines, Dismemberment Plan, DYBE, Fugazi Boredoms and Fennesz and will make a new playlist to re-listen to them all together. Two notable albums I had not heard are #86 Belle and Sebastion - The Life Pursuit (which is odd as I have all their others) and #43 Luomo - Vocalcity. I've had plenty of friends laugh at Original Pirate Material back in the day, and it's nice to see it's had staying power at #36, though I wouldn't personally rank it that highly, and I don't much like his other stuff. Also good to see S-K's One Beat at #72. I've heard people say they sound like Rush on that album, but it's not entirely a bad thing!

With Justin Timberlake's hilarious bits on SNL, I want to go back to Futuresex and see how much of that wit is lurking in there. I also need to reconsider some of the albums by Band of Horses, Califone, Hold Steady, Shins, Camera Obscura, Ghostface Killah, Mountain Goats and Vitalic which didn't make a big impression the first time.

"finding yourself gravitating towards a lot of stuff that sells a few thousand copies or whatever, like I have I guess, doesn't put you in much of a position to wrong your hands about it not being given mainstream coverage/canonical status"

the above is why I ultimately can't get too worked up about the list as a whole.

http://www.discogs.com/Convextion-Convextion/release/787518.

A record like this doesn't even factor for so many people...

I am not sure I would afford it "best of decade" status but Tamara Wellons' Life Is... is a pretty great album which hardly anyone knows about because it was self-produced and released mainly in the DC area.

http://www.myspace.com/tamarawellons

http://i35.tinypic.com/zxa83k.jpg

Hey, Dan, Taylor Swift writes about and to teenagers in a way that a Cure fan should understand. I mean, The Cure haven't grown up, so imagine how much smarter Swift will be when she looks like Robert Smith.

1. lol at the image of a Smithified Taylor Swift
2. "understand" does not and will never automatically mean "like" or "enjoy"

"Look, Taylor, Robert Smith was the best abuser of make-up of all-time. all-time etc etc"

x-post

You want to redefine the global discussion to privilege the stuff you like, which makes sense given your vocation.

sums it up for me too!

of the 3 you cited i think the lack of mariah is most o_0. swift's rise has been too recent to be canonised by anyone yet, and she's talented enough that i'm pretty sure she'll become a canonised artist in the end. simpson jr, sadly, doesn't really enjoy the sort of critical respect commensurate w/the quality of her output b/c of...other factors. but mariah - the emancipation of mimi was critically acclaimed, its entire narrative is that it's a phenomenally successful commercial and artistic comeback, it's an album which has "classic" status among the record-buying public. if pfork doesn't have enough people willing to rep for it in a list like this, the problems are to do with pfork, not mariah.

well, that or else it's an entirely predictable divergence of taste. either way...

the woman's only been around for two decades receiving a substantial amount of critical success and a huge amount of commercial success. she's an important & unignorable figure in pop music. if pfork is unable to get to grips with her...it reflects badly on them. maybe it's like when they didn't bother reviewing the erykah badu album last year until it got a ton of positive press - hey it's ok to like THIS black woman, jump on that bandwagon!!!

wtf

but anyway all the defences basically boil down to "but pfork is indie, get over it" and "but ilx is indie, get over it" - i would like to find somewhere which ISN'T BLOODY INDIE now.

i would expect big coldplay or dmb fans to make a similar argument re the absence of those bands on the list despite their massive success and perceived excellence.

but the indie mindset is obviously pre-disposed to disregard that kind of band almost if not as much as artists like Mariah. that said Coldplay will surely get some support in UK rock mag lists.

yeah i don't follow the plot too closely, but pfork is not a pop music entity.

is the problem not then the indie mindset and its being prejudiced against an artist without, i'm guessing, even bothering to hear the critically acclaimed album in question?

i mean your defence of the place basically makes it seem irrelevant to everyone except those with an "indie mindset"! so why do so many people pay attention to it?

I think you're overselling the critical acclaim of The Emancipation of Mimi. I don't disagree that it was an enormous commercial success, but the "artistic comeback" narrative was largely because her previous two albums had been such unqualified flops. Mimi scored a mere 64 on Metacritic, which, according to that site, makes it tied for the 3,662nd best album of the decade.

- i would like to find somewhere which ISN'T BLOODY INDIE now.

yeah i mean 2 out of 209230459820348 websites are indie centered, wtf is a pop lover to do?

lex, why are YOU paying attention to it? why do you give a fuck? why are you buying into giving it this importance that so clearly it doesn't deserve?

looks like they gave decent reviews to rihanna, ciara, beyonce, amerie, etc. but maybe mariah is too much a part of the old-school megapop establishment for pitchfork.

anyway, mariah doesn't need help from p4k.

xp

i think you know as well as i do how meaningless metacritic ratings are as stats that prove anything. mimi is almost universally canonised within its genre, by r&b fans and critics; most r&b fans will tell you it's one of the best r&b albums of the decade.

xp because it's bloody EVERYWHERE - i can't ignore it. 5 million threads on new answers here, cluttering up my twitterfeed...

lex i think that mega-successful artists are a blindspot for a lot of people, esp. those who fancy themselves as looking for stuff outside the mainstream (could be indie, techno, hip-hop, whatever). tbh mariah could make a million albums and i'd never listen to one all the way through--that is also how i feel abt dylan, the stones, bowie, etc. fwiw. this may not be the best reason but hey whatever it's kind of how i feel about really ubiquitous musicians a lot of the time.

looks like they gave decent reviews to rihanna, ciara, beyonce, amerie, etc

did any of these show up in this canonised list? oh wait

Yeah, basically that album got props because Mariah took some cough drops before she went into the studio to record it and stopped whispering on ever single fucking track; I still don't think it's anywhere near as good as her first album and I would actively campaign against it being in a "best of the decade" list because the current incarnation of Mariah is something I wish everyone would stop paying attention to.

xp: lol your whole stance of "only the albums matter" makes you just as conservative as the mindset you are criticizing!

lex i think that mega-successful artists are a blindspot for a lot of people, esp. those who fancy themselves as looking for stuff outside the mainstream (could be indie, techno, hip-hop, whatever)

i) is following the critical mainstream any better than following the commercial mainstream? is pfork so unself-aware that it doesn't realise how critically mainstream it is?
ii) appreciating mega-successful artists and obscure experimental underground shit = not mutually exclusive, at all, and anyone who thinks this should not be a critic

i have to say that i've never heard 00s mariah when hanging out with any of my friends who are hardcore r&b fans.

xp i don't really disagree with either of those points, i'm just sayin

xp because it's bloody EVERYWHERE - i can't ignore it. 5 million threads on new answers here, cluttering up my twitterfeed...

Then don't read ILM? subscribe to different twitter feeds? But I think you like being alone in the wilderness, it's how you self-identify.

without, i'm guessing, even bothering to hear the critically acclaimed album in question?

― lex pretend

That's assumptive, lex, and likely rong besides. I'm sure that a number of sometime PFork writers have heard the friggin Mariah album -- at least in passing, at least in part. It doesn't surprise me one bit that most of them didn't go for it in a big way, and I don't fault them for it. No more than I fault the Mariah Carey Fan Club's monthly newsletter for failing to cover many hundreds of extremely important Wavves singles.

The point isn't what's good or bad, important or unimportant in some ridiculous/fictional "objective" sense. It mostly comes down to what specific people are personally interested in for basically arbitrary reasons. I mean, no one's obliged to be interested in Mariah Carey. Certainly not at Pitchfork lolindie central.

i guess what i really want is for mainstream popular music critics to stop being so indie-centric in the main; i had really high hopes of this happening about midway through the decade, but it's even worse now! i don't really enjoy being a voice in the wilderness; it's just a consequence of interacting w/mainstream critics and those who engage with/talk about them.

If Blender is still around I'd imagine they'll come up a list that is more inclusive of mainstream pop and R&B. Rolling Stone to a lesser extent.

what i really want is for mainstream popular music critics to stop being so indie-centric in the main; i had really high hopes of this happening about midway through the decade, but it's even worse now!

― lex pretend

I think what you were observing (WR2 Pitchfork) was a combination of mainstream American rock critics becoming more indie-centric, and PFork-style indie criticism becoming A) more mainstream and B) more interested in non-indie music. Whiney was saying this the other day, and I kinda disagreed, but I see his point.

Once Pitchfork attained a certain level of popularity/influence, they not only could boost indie popularity into mainstream sales, they could also pull records out of other genres (dance, hip-hop, etc.) into the view of their massive, cash-flush indie-crossover nation. This seems to have created an open-minded audience and fertile ground for cross-pollination. And maybe it's true that they've become less inclined to use their power this way in the 2nd half of the decade -- or less successful at it.

Yeah, lex, sorry, but the only consistent critical props Carey ever got (apart for "Vision of Love" very early on) was for Mimi (it even got a proper SFJ review in the ol' New Yorker).

mariah carey fucking sucks

Honestly before I saw who Lex was talking about I thought he meant Kate Bush.

i think 'mimi' is a dope record & i voted for it

'we belong together' was song of the summer that year

& while i dont agree w/ all of lex's specific complaints & criticisms I think hes absolutely on point that its an acclaimed record & were I voting for pforks list (heyyy -- i was!) i would choose mimi before 90% of that list (heyyy -- i did!)

not really sure why thats super objectionable to ppl