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

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.

This is rapidly devolving from an interesting conversation into painful concern-trolling. Can we not generate diabolical active conspiracies to rail against? The actual passive reality is hard enough to resolve without chasing windmills as part of the process.

Can't post at length on bberry but the most salient recent pts seem to be

- kate on editorship - if pfork has any pretences to being more than a ghetto/niche site then this is evidence that it needs a wider variety of voices; I don't believe necessarily male or female but certainly more who are prepared to look beyond the white indie male canon (I'm aware it has like a couple of these already, and no coincidence that tom e, tim f and david d are like the only readable ppl on the site)
- whether or not pfork wants to be more than a niche - contenderizet frustratingly otm re its influence. If we and it accept that it's just an indie niche, it should not have that level of cultural tastemaking influence. At all.

Yeah, I was throwing that out there as what this isn't. It's not conscious. It's probably built into the genre codes and idk, maybe for some people the male voice sounds more important/significant (maybe going back to Dylan being rated over Boez or whatever). My only point was that they could've clearly included more female artists. It's not like the artists/albums don't exist.

How does p2k singles list compare with albums list for gender stuff?

there's a pretty good reason why Dylan is being rated over Baez. I'll let you guess what the reason is.

i always lol when i read something (not necessarily on pitchfork, though i think i read this re: rilo kiley once on the site) that dismisses a female artist as being too "lilith fair" or something. i'm almost positive i've read that kate bush or nina nastasia or vashti bunyan, even. i mean a lot of music with "softer" aspects is just totally disrespected, on both sides of the coin, but it's a little tougher for women.

lex i don't really know what you're saying except that you don't like pfork except for when ppl you know write for it?

lol jon lewis why don't you go see for yourself?

I don't want to get all critical kung fu out (I try to save that shit for school), but our critical methodologies for evaluating value aren't immune from gender considerations. Oh god this is becoming a retread of a popist/rockist argument how did i get sucked into another one of these. For what it's worth, I don't give a shit about how many female artists are on P4k's list. It's a boring list, non representative of the kinds of stuff I like, and for me to care about how many female artists are on it, I'd have to first care about anything that's on it.

maybe going back to Dylan being rated over Boez or whatever

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_7HIPu3-ElDI/SOIY6KQO1wI/AAAAAAAAAF8/pjhTt5sIn0I/s400/DEFENSA+BOEZ.jpg

Pitchfork's top 20 tracks:

20. The Walkmen
"The Rat"
[Record Collection; 2004]

19. R. Kelly
"Ignition (Remix)"
[Jive/BMG; 2002]

18. Hercules and Love Affair
"Blind"
[DFA/Mute; 2008]

17. Annie
"Heartbeat"
[679; 2004]

16. The Rapture
"House of Jealous Lovers"
[DFA; 2002]

15. The Knife
"Heartbeats"
[Rabid/Mute; 2002]

14. Jay-Z
"99 Problems"
[Roc-A-Fella; 2003]

13. LCD Soundsystem
"Losing My Edge"
[DFA; 2002]

12. OutKast
"Hey Ya!"
[LaFace/Arista; 2003]

11. Gnarls Barkley
"Crazy"
[Downtown/Warner; 2005]

10. Arcade Fire
"Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)"
[Merge; 2004]

9. Animal Collective
"My Girls"
[Domino; 2009]

8. Radiohead
"Idioteque"
[Capitol; 2000]

7. Missy Elliott
"Get Ur Freak On"
[Elektra; 2001]

6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs
"Maps"
[Interscope; 2003]

5. Daft Punk
"One More Time"
[Virgin; 2000]

4. Beyoncé [ft. Jay-Z]
"Crazy in Love"
[Columbia/Sony; 2003]

3. M.I.A. [ft. Bun B and Rich Boy]
"Paper Planes (Diplo Remix)"
[XL/Interscope; 2007]

2. LCD Soundsystem
"All My Friends"
[DFA/EMI; 2007]

1. OutKast
"B.O.B."
[LaFace/Arista; 2000]

So 6 of 20 in the singles list?

ftr that LCD Soundsystem song eats dog balls

which one

haha "All My Friends", oops

i always lol when i read something ... that dismisses a female artist as being too "lilith fair" or something. i'm almost positive i've read that kate bush or nina nastasia or vashti bunyan, even.

― omar little

Well, to be fair, a lot of male music gets dismissed for being "too jockish" or "for frat boys". It's basically the same complaint (that the thing in question is gender/culture coded in a way that is boring or even offensive), just broken out for use in different contexts.

At PFork, I suppose it's really just a way to say "not indie enough" (too ordinary, suburban, mom & dad, etc).

When was LCD Soundsystem dismissed for being too jockish?

So 6 of 20 in the singles list?

7 if you include Arcade Fire

Wasn't talking about LCD, Mordy. Think PFork most recently leveled the "fratboy" thing against a Bob Marley comp they were (the writer was) otherwise positive about.

lol jon lewis why don't you go see for yourself?

Bcuz cannot get away with looking at p4k at work at this particular moment.

k sorry i was harshin up there

"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."

I take it by "places" here you mean indie magazines or websites? And if so, then it is a niche audience. Let's not conflate music crit with indie crit.

Her complaint has general validity. The canon-forging (crowning?) critics' lists that get the most attention at year's end tend to be male-dominated in most genres. The tendency isn't confined to indie-land. Pazz n Jop voters seem to take pains to be inclusive/generalist, but still...

pazz n jop was created by a dude who dismissed the runaways as sluts so maybe his torch continues to be carried?

i think pazz n jop has the opposite problem, where old lechs vote for feist

"At PFork, I suppose it's really just a way to say "not indie enough" (too ordinary, suburban, mom & dad, etc)."

But ordinary suburban moms and dads listen to "indie" music. It's not like Kid A or OK Computer was just bought by the secret heads that are totally into this hermetic indie. Fuck, this stuff shows up in car commercials. I think we can stop pretending that it's not mainstream.

k i'm going to gently suggest that we not do the what is mainstream argument here

is feist hot?

the what is mainstream argument seems slightly less annoying than the current 'SEXISTS!~!!! SEXISTSSS!' argument

xpost

Always fascinated when gender comes up. Seems like it was such a part of indie discourse back in my youth ie 90s. Not always as much anymore.
I always think the phrase self-selecting doesn't quite nail it. Maybe self-reinforcing is better? I always seem to tell the same story on this issue: back when I was promoting shows in college our little organization was all of 3 guys. We never turned any females down, or anyone for that matter, yet we didnt have any in our group. At one point, a couple of females did want to join but they ended up not doing it, and even felt dissuaded by the gender imbalance. Yet we wanted them to join, and not because of our genitals but because we needed the help and they were cool people. Nobody was actively or passively trying to exclude or be excluded and yet it happened anyways (the only caveat we, two nice-guy hippies and a harmless house dj, stoners all, gave to any prospective members is "be ready to coil microphone cables").

Which is why sometimes it is really important to try and interrogate perceived imbalance. Its not about trying to prop up some false, rigged parity to satisfy "gender police" or something like that its more about making sure options are perceived as existing. so the whole "what percent of top 20 are female" is a bit of a distraction. more important is to try and see if there are certain roles that must be played (yes there are, but for both genders) and whether the hierarchy of those roles favors one gender or another.

as for me, given what i felt about music this decade, it was really the listener that was unfairly discriminated against.

on another note: r&b/pop production, is for the most part, ultra-fordist so I would imagine Usher should suffer just as much as Rihanna in the whole "don't write their own songs, can't program synths, etc" rockist discourse.

Lastly:
Fever Ray wuz robbed!

let's try to prove that the #1-selling album among women 25 - 40 in Shakopee, MN is Bat For Lashes

I will pay for gas if you drive.

But ordinary suburban moms and dads listen to "indie" music. It's not like Kid A or OK Computer was just bought by the secret heads that are totally into this hermetic indie. Fuck, this stuff shows up in car commercials. I think we can stop pretending that it's not mainstream.

― Giorgio Marauder (I eat cannibals

Since cannibals said it, and since I'm now safely insulated from cad's objection by several posts, it doesn't matter how popular indie gets or who listens to it. It's still (and inherently) coded as non-mainstream. This is, I think, a big part of comfort-indie's success -- and PFork's influence -- in the "we're all non-mainstream!" social climate that nabisco describes in his essay on the Decade In Indie.

i'm watchin you contenderizer!

Re: Shhh!

Self-selecting and therefore self-reinforcing?

Plus Fever Ray OTM.

well, in the case i described there was agency involved, eg girls not choosing to join, but because they didnt join the concept "girls can be part of this organization" never became established so other people coming along later who didnt know about this earlier choice may have never understood that the above statement is true.

I keep thinking that maybe Fever Ray suffered because of the lateness of the release but really I was a few months behind in May when I bought the album and I would hazard a guess that Pitchfork got to hear it before its March release date. WTF?

bitte orca and veckatimest came out way later than fever ray so i don't think it's that.

For what it's worth, it took FR quite a while to grow on me. I mean, I liked it at first, but was inclined to (partially) dismiss it as a pleasant but less-catchy Knife offshoot. I.e., really good mood/background music, but still... (This in spite of many warnings from other ILXors that real appreciation would likely take time.)

Maybe a lot of PF staffers never had that eventual "aha!" moment with it?

I guess I can see that album being a slow-grower if you're coming at it from the context of The Knife, but I instantly loved it.

Also, if I were making a short best of the decade list, I might be inclined to slight Fever Ray in favor of The Knife, who I still prefer, if only by a slight margin. Just to make room for other stuff...