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

the blueprint by some distance - silent shout only one to come close

hadn't seen the actual list before, that's a really horrible selection of albums

i like all the albums on this list that i've heard (around half of them)

Outkast over Ghostface and Daft Punk.

― a single man owns you (Ioannis), Sunday, October 4, 2009 4:11 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

The Avalanches vs. The Knife vs. The Strokes

person pitch

Voted Discovery. I agree that all the albums I've heard from this list (haven't heard Avalanches, Spoon, Sufjan or Wilco) are pretty great, if sometimes overrated, and don't understand all the hateration. Are people honestly offended that a music website put out a Best Of list that doesn't perfectly line up with their personal tastes?

white blood cells

Voted for Discovery

Silent Shout.

Tho, if I could, I'd write in for Untrue.

only heard about half of these ... Fave is YHF. Sorry, ILM!

The Strokes.

favorite to least

Daft Punk - Discovery
Jay-Z - The Blueprint
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
The Avalanches - Since I Left You
The White Stripes - White Blood Cells
Radiohead - Kid A
LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Ghostface Killah - Supreme Clientele
The Arcade Fire - Funeral
Kanye West - Late Registration
Spoon - Kill the Moonlight
Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica
OutKast - Stankonia
v
v
Interpol - Turn On the Bright Lights
The Strokes - Is This It
The Knife - Silent Shout
Panda Bear - Person Pitch
v
v
v
v
v
v
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

haven't heard: Sigur Rós - Ágætis Byrjun

jay or lcd. or maybe outkast

jesus fucking christ

i hate agaetis byrjun.

Having a good laugh pondering future Classic Albums documentaries involving these. Why the long face, David Fricke?

he likes the strokes http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/290610/review/5940478/roomonfire

Are people honestly offended that a music website put out a Best Of list that doesn't perfectly line up with their personal tastes?

I think some are confused by the notion of a list not composed mostly of challops. "Pitchfork presents: P2K - a bunch of albums that will confound you with their audacity and maybe scare off a few indie kids".

stroaks

Avalanches > Daft Punk >>>>> the rest

Nobody seemed to care nearly as much when SPIN's top 90 albums of the 90's or Rolling Stone's top 100 albums of the 80's were revealed, but the internet age gets people upset over stupid shit a lot more often and makes people think their exact opinions matter that much more.

voted for Discovery, with close runners-up: 2)Illinoise, 3) Silent Shout 4) Sound of Silver/ Is This It/ Since I Left You
I know Sufjan Stevens is not too popular around here, but when I hear this album now it still gets to me. Its density, the beautifual vocals/harmonies, the storytelling, the melodies, the semi-classical instrumentation all add up to something great.

I thought a lot of people here were cool with Sufjan.. I'm into it.

Voted for Discovery, it comes closest to being the 'decade's soundtrack'.

Are people honestly offended that a music website put out a Best Of list that doesn't perfectly line up with their personal tastes?

i don't feel offended or even that annoyed - the main emotion is pity w/a tinge of contempt

not particularly keen on radiohead, but kid A is easily the best thing in the list.

Nobody seemed to care nearly as much when SPIN's top 90 albums of the 90's or Rolling Stone's top 100 albums of the 80's were revealed, but the internet age gets people upset over stupid shit a lot more often and makes people think their exact opinions matter that much more.

― billstevejim, Monday, 5 October 2009 06:29 (4 hours ago) Bookmark

I'm sure they got a bunch of letters by people annoyed that Album X or Record Y didn't make it by people who had only one or two people to talk to about it. Now I can tell the whole freaking world if I'm annoyed by a list!

Not that I am, as I unashamedly love:

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
The Arcade Fire - Funeral
The Avalanches - Since I Left You
Daft Punk - Discovery
Ghostface Killah - Supreme Clientele
Interpol - Turn On the Bright Lights
Jay-Z - The Blueprint
The Knife - Silent Shout
LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
OutKast - Stankonia
Panda Bear - Person Pitch
The Strokes - Is This It
Kanye West - Late Registration

Kind of like:
Radiohead - Kid A
Spoon - Kill the Moonlight
Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
The White Stripes - White Blood Cells
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

And either haven't heard or just don't like the last couple.

Lists are fun!

(Don't know what to vote. Most probably Ghostface as it has my favourite single of the decade on it.)

Always get Agaetis Byrjun confused with Agyness Deyn.

my vote goes to this amazing little album which we recently polled, but a lot of excellent albums on that list:

NeighborPolled: Arcade Fire - FUNERAL poll

10:
Daft Punk
The Avalanches
The Knife

9.5:
Jay-Z
Panda Bear

9:
Animal Collective

8.5:
Ghostface
Radiohead
Outkast

8:
The Strokes
Kanye
LCD Soundsystem

7:
The Arcade Fire
The White Stripes.

I haven't heard the rest.

I'm not offended that these lists don't "perfectly line up with my own personal tastes."

However, what I AM very much OFFENDED - no, actually - OUTRAGED about - is that half the human race just seems to be routinely totally ignored or discounted when it comes to making these "canonical lists."

That's kind of a bit different than "personal tastes".

But I've learned that complaining about this sort of thing is like pissing in the wind.

...the results of which also tend to be heavily skewed along gender lines

Kate out of interest which female artists are in your top 20 for the 00s?

I felt a bit self-conscious that I only had 3 female artists in my top 20 and 25 or so female-only artists/groups in my top 100.

I don't *have* a Top 20 for the 00s because, well, I'm not really a list-making type of person. I suppose I could come up with one if you gave me a couple of days/weeks. And even if I did so, it would be again, accounting for personal tastes.

And for the record, I don't want to only "count" all-female artists/groups. It's the total *lack* of women - I mean, there are only 3 artists in that Pitchfork list that have a woman anywhere NEAR them, even in a drumming or accordian playing role. Perhaps the 90s only looked more gender-balanced because of the cult of the female bassist in 90s indie behemoths like Sonic Youth or the Pixies.

I don't pretend this is an encompassing list at all - because it's so heavily slanted towards mine own personal tastes - but here's a list of female artists or artists with a strong female presence that I would have to consider if I were going to make a "best of 00s" for mine own use... (and this is going to be incomplete because I don't have my record collection in front of me to look at)

School of Seven Bells, Goldfrapp (either of the first two albums), Ladytron's first album, Annie, Asobi Seksu (Citrus), Bat For Lashes (Fur & Gold), Aaliyah, Ellen Allien, Natacha Atlas, Missy Elliot, Blonde Redhead, Sugababes, Britney Spears (Blackout), Je Suis Animal, The Long Blondes...

Sorry, that's what I can come up with off the top of my head as people that have released albums in the 00s that I've listened to a lot without looking at my CD collection or my proper MP3 collection, and I'm sure I'm missing out several people whose names are on the tip of my tongue.

And even though I don't personally like them, I'm shocked that, say, indie heavyweights like The Gossip, that woman with the harp and the helium voice, oh what is her name, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the like don't make the Pitchfuckingfork list.

8 of my 9 albums of the year this decade were made by women - kelis, aaliyah, trina, teedra moses, kate bush, ellen allien, britney spears, erykah badu. and my album of 09 is almost certainly going to be electrik red. all of those albums are superior by a long, long, long way to everything in the p4k list except jay-z and the knife.

This is by no means an attempt to make any kind of canonical list. Just spouting a bunch of things off the top of my head. Every single one of which, I would certainly think had more right to be on the Best Of 00s than some of the options up there.

xpost

Both the Joanna Newsom albums placed OK on that list I think but to the extent that I gave a flying fuck I wouldn't have held my breath for either of them to place higher than they did. I prefer them to almost everything on that poll, personally, but there you go

kate i'm guessing that people will just respond with the usual "oh but why would you expect pitchfork to cover or acknowledge those acts, it's not in their white indie male demographic!"

as discussed on the other thread, yeah, you have to buy into a certain indie mindset to appreciate the pitchfork aesthetic. i'm not upset about it any more, but again...yeah, pity is what springs to mind. more fool you if you buy into that.

School of Seven Bells, Goldfrapp (either of the first two albums), Ladytron's first album, Annie, Asobi Seksu (Citrus), Bat For Lashes (Fur & Gold), Aaliyah, Ellen Allien, Natacha Atlas, Missy Elliot, Blonde Redhead, Sugababes, Britney Spears (Blackout), Je Suis Animal, The Long Blondes...

blonde redhead would be in mine, but none of the others im afraid.
But I only own 8 of the p4k 20 and none of them would make my own 20. Not even the modest mouse album and i love MM.

Joanna Newsom! That's her name. I kept thinking "Emily something..." but that was a single, right?

I mean, it's a cumulative effect here. People respond with the usual "oh but why would you expect pitchfork to cover or acknowledge those acts, it's not in their white indie male demographic!" and then the Uncut list that we were discussing on twitter, and the same "oh but why would you expect uncut to cover or acknowledge those acts, it's not in their white indie male demographic!" and then the RYM list and "oh but why would you expect RYM to cover or acknowledge those acts, it's not in their white metal male demographic!"

and it gets to the point of... OK WHERE IS SOME OTHER PERSPECTIVE FOR PEOPLE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE VAST AMOUNTS OF QUALITY MUSIC NOT MADE OR APPRECIATED BY WHITE INDIE MALES?!?!?

This makes me lose any kind of respect for even the idea of "canon" because it's already so slanted. (Not even getting into the gender politics of who gets to make and release records fullstop)

Oh god, I said I wouldn't talk about this any more, because it just makes me rant and rant and rant. But at least people on ILX are willing to entertain the idea that there *might* be some bias involved rather than "women don't make good music" or the crap I've heard elsewhere.

i like Joanna Newsom but again she wouldn't make my top 20. but then again i dunno who would. I like looking at lists but i hate compiling them.

This makes me lose any kind of respect for even the idea of "canon" because it's already so slanted

yes! completely. my brief period of conscientiously trying to get into the canon was marked only by disappointment. yet so many otherwise smart people seem to buy into the importance of it, the importance of lists like this, without acknowledging its flaws.

An Uncut review once made me buy a Neko Case album fyi, they don't all hate ladiez.

An album that didn't make the P4k list, so... I dunno, actually, forget I ever said anything.

My female picks would probably overlap a lot with a fuller list from Lex:

Teedra, Aaliyah, Kelis, Missy, Electrik Red, Foxy Brown, Sugababes, Trina, Stina Nordenstam, Maria McKee, Taylor Swift, Girls Aloud, Mis-Teeq, Robyn, Ada, Lhasa, Kylie Minogue, Bjork, Ashlee Simpson... And then mixed stuff like Gang Gang Dance, Low, Sonic Youth, The Knife, Fleetwood Mac.

Interestingly though of the non-mixed options the only one which seems Pitchfork friendly is Bjork (she made the list I'm pretty sure) (and Robyn ha). And then of the mixed options all of them seem pitchfork-friendly except Fleetwood Mac. Not sure what this means - possibly only that indie-friendly music is more likely to be comprised of mixed gender bands as compared to dance music, R&B, pop etc.

Other amazing ladies not yet mentioned, if we are in a macho-list making mode: Sleater-Kinney, Cat Power and Electrelane.

ha ha, the only reason I didn't list The Knife is coz they actually made the P4K top 20 list.

gah the obvious exception in my list is KATE BUSH.

god, you guys are getting worked up over nothing

his should be interrogated beyond just going "eh, writers' taste, what can you do!!!"

― lex pretend

not that anyone here has ever said such a thing...

it was ridiculously open to covering other genres as and when they were pitched

Pitchfork has reviewed country and opera, what do you want?

More stuff they like?

nah. it's not about quotas. equal numbers of male and female artists wouldn't necessarily mean fair, open-minded coverage.

hey cool we agree on something!

By my count, of Pitchfork's top 104 songs of the 2000s*-- a list to champion of white straight male guitar music only surely-- shockingly only has 24 songs by white straight male guitar bands. Someone start a thread on that cherrypicked statistic, use it as the only information you want to receive about who we are and what we do, and beat it into the ground for a month.

*I guess none of the rest of this counts as "our canon" though, just the parts that support what people want to get upset about.

oops, stray words!

As for Bat for Lashes, mentioned in the other thread, ok she isn't one of the three artists that made the 2000s list with a 2009 LP. Not sure what a sample size of "three" is supposed to prove (or "20")

B4L will do very well on our 2009 list; I imagine so will the YYYs, xx, Dirty Projectors, St Vincent, Fever Ray. And maybe Pains of Being Pure at Heart will make our year-end top 20, I dunno? Would we still be sexist then, if seven of our top 20 artists were in some part female? That's less than the m/f ratio in the world, but surely greater than the ratio of m/f making music, so I'm confused.

Who else might do well? Antony, Atlas Sound, Grizzly Bear, Raekwon, the Very Best, DJ Quik, Freddie Gibbs, the Hyperdub 5 comp, Bibio, Neon Indian, Mt Goats, CamOb, AnCo, Flaming Lips, Japandroids, Girls, jj, and Phoenix off the top of my head. That's 25 total: Let's say that ends up being our top 25. That could easily happen, it's as good a guess as I could make right now. Only five of the 25 are white straight male indie guitar bands, so if it shakes out close to that I anxiously await the complaints in a few months about how much we hate and are holding down white straight male indie guitar bands. (aka the Stereogum comments)

again, look, you can cherrypick facts and stats and easily use them to prove your agenda! Hey, it's fun!

anyway...I will leave alone the idea that a defunct magazine somehow proves there is an audience for what that magazine used to do. Especially since it hardly matters bcuz what that magazine did, from what I can tell, was "indie." And I think it strayed less from that than ours does.

songs vs albums.

Well, I just looked at the 40 reviews on Plan B's site, and there's not a single album among them that I couldn't imagine Pitchfork reviewing.

britfork tbh

For reference:
Manic Street Preachers, Wounded Knee, Fever Ray, Isaac Hayes, Fly Girls! B-Boys Beware, Marissa Nadler, PJ Harvey and John Parish, Beirut, Antony and the Johnsons, Telepathe, Frida Hyvonen, Women, Neil Kulkarni on DJ Gone, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Peter Rehberg, Sebastian, Anni Rossi, Fujiya and Miyagi, Suicide, Harvey Milk, Kayo Dot, Plush, Stanley Brinks, Death Cab for Cutie, Silver Jews, The Last Shadow Puppets, Thalia Zedek Band, Robert Wyatt, Boredoms, The Gossip, Rocket from the Crypt, Peter Brotzmann/Paal Nilssen-Love/Mats Gustafsson, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Cath and Phil Tyler, Mountain Goats, Helen Love, Los Campesinos!, Mogwai, Ponytail, Conor Oberst

http://buzzofla.com/Detail.aspx?aid=417

sad/hilarious irony to some of this complaining - though others would of course disagree, I would guess, if such a thing could be quantified, that Pitchfork has done as much this decade to assist the push against rockism than just about any other media outlet.

considering where the site was 10 years ago, where the audience for it in general 10 years ago, how many people we communicate to, and the ripple effect we lately can have on u.s. music criticism (unless those burial and field records somehow got into pazz/jop placements some other way, etc), our constant redrawing of our "borders" and what makes our year-end lists and what we cover, etc., might not be as demonstrative and combative and flag-planting as one NYT article about Christina Aguilera but I think we've changed the landscape more, and for more people. In 2001, indie and PItchfork WAS pretty much white straight male guitar rock; five/seven so years later, it was a no-brainer that M.I.A., or Ghostface, or LCD, or Burial, or Tim Hecker, or Robyn was "ok" for indie kids to like-- the things they got all pissy about was stuff like the Hold Steady! Or folky/jammy Grateful Dead/classic rock types. In any event, I think we've taken a lead with that and continue to do so. Maybe not at the pace some of you would like, but some people we can't please no matter what anyway, so...

nipple effect?

innovation. technology. yes, here at pitchfork media we're leading the way into the 21st century.

In fact, if we let Mats Gustafsson stand in for his collaborators, Pitchfork actually HAS reviewed 32 of those 40 artists. And most of the ones they haven't certainly don't seem far outside of Pitchfork's sphere. No Pitchfork review for Peter Rehberg, for instance, but plenty of reviews for other albums on Mego. Ditto for SebastiAn and Ed Banger. Or: no P4k review of Stanley Brinks, but two of his old band, Herman Dune. Etc.

Would we still be sexist then, if seven of our top 20 artists were in some part female? That's less than the m/f ratio in the world, but surely greater than the ratio of m/f making music, so I'm confused.

Well, it's really frankly amazing how the pop charts and best selling artists manage to be gender split pretty evenly 50/50 over the past few decades, as discussed on that poll (and how, as discussed above by Dan and myself, that even the retrogressive world of classical music is split pretty evenly between the genders) and yet your supposed progressive website seems to think that 7 out of 20 is ABOVE average?

classical music isn't necessarily more "retrogressive" than popular or folk music imo

you would hate the brass band world, kate

(no women in the major bands, there are a couple of women-only bands, but they're not very good)

I should have put "retrogressive" in quotes.

I don't think that 35% of the records released in the world have female artists on them, no. Particularly not rock music.

And I didn't claim that anything made us progressive! I was questioning your sample size and selective use of statistics, and then challenging the notion that we only cover and champion white guitar indie rock.

(I do think that, yes, female pop stars have dominated pop/R&B in the past decade though, as has been discussed here on other threads-- and when it comes to pop and R&B we do skew female more than male I would guess. Amerie, Beyonce, Rihanna, Ciara, Britney, Robyn, Annie, Kelly Clarkson, etc-- the vast majority of the pop/R&B performers who have placed on our year-end/decade/book lists have been female.)

the pop charts and best selling artists manage to be gender split pretty evenly 50/50 over the past few decades, as discussed on that poll

Link?

I just looked at all the #1 albums in the U.S. in 2008 and 2009. Discounting mixed-gender bands like Black Eyed Peas and Sugarland, as well as soundtracks and compilations, there have been 41 albums by men or all-male groups to hit #1 and only 19 albums by women or all-female groups.

bands with one woman in them are female, much like ppl with at least one black grandparent are black

All right, we'll give the female side two Sugarland albums, Now 31, the latest Black Eyed Peas album, and the Juno, Twilight, and Mamma Mia! soundtracks. That's still 41 to 26.

Include 2007 in the data, and it's even worse: 67 to 35.

The number of men vs. women actually making pop/rock records has been the elephant in this discussion for a while, or one of two. The other (perhaps disguised by the first in the sort of stacking maneuver that the species is known for) is the openness of the industry and audience to female artists of various sorts, relative to males. Scott calls attention to this by mentioning that "the vast majority of the pop/R&B performers who have placed on our year-end/decade/book lists have been female." Male pop critics do seem very willing to extend respect to female artists in the "R&B diva" role. Audiences and the industry are certainly more welcoming of female artists in some genres than others -- though exceptions will always be made for attractive girls who can sing moderately well.

All of that does suggest that it's unfair to simply count heads in search of proportional representation. Then again, it also calls attention to the pervasive and deeply-entrenched obstacles that female artists have to deal with in finding any kind of foothold in the industry -- especially if they aren't cute/sexy and don't fit into one of the obvious girl-shaped niches.

bands with one woman in them are female, much like ppl with at least one black grandparent are black

http://www.amalah.com/photos/when_you_marry/epson082.html

I tried to address lots of these issues (e.g. as between the representation of females and the discussions of particular genres) upthread.

With respect to Plan B I really do wish it wasn't being used as the yardstick as it always struck me as more indie rather than less than Pitchfork, columns and articles from people I like notwithstanding - and again, remember that Tom Ewing, David Drake, Philip Sherburne, Jess Harvell etc. all write for Pitchfork.

I would say the exact same thing that Kate says about pitching - I've never been told by Scott that something was outside the scope of what Pitchfork write about (the bigger problem is that I don't pitch or write enough).

That is meant less as a defence of Pitchfork and more of a way of saying that the difference between a writer's experience of what it is like to work for a magazine, and their memory of what their own articles and the articles of their friends covered, is very different from the overall perception of the magazine.

I mean you can say "oh but I always ignored the big cover articles on Plan B", but to say this is to apply a fundamentally different means of judgment which, if applied to Pitchfork, could be equally as complimentary of its non-indie-ness. e.g. If you just read the "Month In" columns you would assume that Pitchfork was about dance music and dancehall.

Remember that Tom Ewing, David Drake, Philip Sherburne, Jess Harvell etc. all write for Pitchfork.

^Real modest talk. Etc. = TIM F.

Don't mean to put him on the spot but I'd love it if Tim wrote and pitched more! (His forthcoming Electrik Red review will unite us all.)

Wow didn't even read the paragraph directly below what I quoted. Tim OTM about not getting a red light for coverage though which has basically been true since c. 2005. I got all kinds of crazy song reviews published, most originating in the teenpop thread!

Anyway I still don't think Pfork is the most useful target for this particular convo -- the real enemies are the network of music "coverage" sites that at best are incidentally uncritical and at worst actively disdain any form of critical thought or application of intellectual thinking to music. The worst I can say of Pitchfork is that it isn't [insert publication run for insane effort and no financial gain that is no longer with us -- say, Stylus].

But if you did like Stylus, note that a ton of their most frequent writers now have regular reviewing gigs at Pfork...

Now that it's been mentioned, and before anyone starts smelling conspiracy, I pitched an Electrik Red review to Scott before this thread was started.

By far the worst IRL example of what this thread is about is the "100 Greatest Songs of all Time" list as voted by Triple JJJ, the national "youth" radio station in Australia. If I recall it had ONE song by a woman in the entire top 100.

To be honest, the main reason I brought up Plan B was because they made a real effort - and showed genuine results - about coverage (at all levels, from new bands on MySpace reviews to cover artist coverage) of female artists *and* recruiting female writers.

Yes, Pitchfork is a scapegoat here - I don't think either of these threads are actually *about* P4k, but more showing discontent with the state of a thing of which P4k is the most obvious and visible example.