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

Yeah, I can't imagine someone turning up on ILM slagging off rap as a genre and getting clowned out of here

xp x 3

It really comes as a shock to you that loudly slagging Bowie/Beatles/Stones (etc. -- you forgot the very extensive "etc.") earned you a rep as a narrow-minded shit-stirrer on an indie-centric crit site? Really really? Cuz, man, I thought that was the whole point. Color me confused.

I wasn't aware that ILM was indie-centric.

If anything, in its original incarnation as the discussion board for Freaky Trigger, it was POP centric.

we could go on all day abt how sincere it is, but lol @ indie rock is pretty much the #1 conceit on this board.

the whole point of ilx for me when i joined is that it WASN'T just another indie-centric crit site - it was a place where all the genres i loved were held in as high esteem, or higher.

actually that's another thing that galls about the pfork-and-beyond critical consensus @ the end of this decade: it seems to be a total regression given all the pro-pop, pro-r&b, pro-hip-hop, pro-dance critical thought of the past few years. so many arguments made so eloquently for a shift in critical assumptions, and then...we get the same ol' same ol' bullshit.

let's not forget that according to those meddling poll results, ILM's favourite album of then 90s (and all time) is 'Loveless' and 'Kid A' won the 00-04 mega-poll.

that doesn't mean ILM hasn't traditionally been more popist (with Wu-Tang and Daft Punk at #2 in those polls/lists respectively) than most channels but it does always serve as a reminder of what i think is ILM's default direction (coming FROM indie) if not current position

Yeah, but wasn't that same bunch of polls that revealed Loveless to be the best album revealed Britney Spears as being best single?

Yeah, but "lol @ indie rock" is (or at least can be) a very indie thing to do. The non-indie thing is to just talk about something else. Indie gets a LOT of play around here -- at least it always has during the four or five years I've been reading/posting. Endless Vampire Weekend & AnCo threads, endless PFork threads, tons of Sonic Youth, Radiohead & MBV stans. Liking pop singles and indie albums is a TOTALLY indie stance. I think y'all doth protest too much...

yeah you're right obv, i guess my point is more that this is a shitty place to be an earnest new indie poster

louis ears burnin'

i think tons of lex's & MB's points are right on, but seriously looking @ the p4k albums + singles lists, for an indie-centric site the two lists taken together aren't even that bad! r&b & hip-hop (as well as female artists) have a pretty solid presence in the singles list, especially in the top 20. the albums list yea could use some work but i wouldn't call it a "total regression given all the pro-pop, etc" critical thought this decade

I mean, I totally feel lex on his last point, but fundamentally indie-oriented critics and fans collectively made a big point of embracing pop, hip-hop, r&b and dance music over the course of the past decade. That's a huge part of the indie narrative. Doesn't make the basic POV any less indie though, and it's totally unsurprising that this should show through in the end.

the characterisation of r&b and pop as genres which throw up brilliant singles but no worthwhile albums is the no 1 way of implying that they're not important, significant genres compared to indie rock, and not to be taken as seriously in terms of their form or values

fundamentally indie-oriented critics and fans collectively made a big point of embracing pop, hip-hop, r&b and dance music over the course of the past decade

well that's the point. it feels like lip service. it doesn't really show.

So, erm, basically, even if your tastes mature or grow or change, you are forever tainted with this "indie" association? Is it like Catholicism or something, that you can take the kid out of indie, but you can't take the indie out of the kid?

That seems pretty, um, ridiculous to me. If a genre has become that amourphous or all encompassing.

and this brings up another problem with my idea of trying to come up with a personal "best of" or "favourite of" for the 00s. My tastes have grown and changed and widened over the past 10 years. Am I supposed to be looking at "stuff I rated at the time" in early parts of the 00s, or "stuff that I rate now" - knowing full well that my tastes in music *do* change and in another 10 years, I'll have a completely different view of what the 00s were about?

Ten years is a long time. And I know that I certainly don't have enough perspective on the 00s yet to come up with any "best of" conclusions about the decade.

it seems to be a total regression given all the pro-pop, pro-r&b, pro-hip-hop, pro-dance critical thought of the past few years. so many arguments made so eloquently for a shift in critical assumptions, and then...we get the same ol' same ol' bullshit.

I think this point was covered on the other thread, but the list does make sense considering these advances. The number of early 2000's albums is indicative of it (though there are other reasons such as the further back in the past can = staying power/canon). The narrower taste of the early part of the decade wrapped up in the pre-mp3 craze colluding with the more major-label indie aspect having hot sex with the indie-kids-have-grown-up-and-broadened-tastes-mentality all means that everything is much more niche now than it was then, so sacred cows in recent times are harder to agree on.

That said, I'm coming from that being pretty close to my experience, and the p4k top 20 oddly reflecting that. Early 00's albums represented were some of my favs when they came out, but recent stuff like AnCo have completely passed me by, and as such I feel out of the loop in regards to p4k (American?) indie. Can't say what my number one would be, but I've listened to Studio's West Coast more than any other album over the last several years, and it's nowhere in the top 200. In 2002, Kid A and Moon and Antarctica and Is This It might have been my votes.

i think part of this is that pfork probably represents the best chance, by some distance, of achieving the diversity (as opposed to specifically reflecting their own tastes better) people here would prefer to see compared to their rivals. and tho it is a more diverse list than most you will see from major pop cultural arbiters (e.g. how many other mags will feature as many as 7 nationalities in their best of 00s top 20s?), what it lacks and obscures will stand out to ILM readers more than most people.

what other publications/websites might be producing a best of 00's rival canon?

genuine question, not a 'p4k stan(d)s alone' statement

Well, we discussed the Uncut one on Twitter - which SURPRISINGLY - actually had higher female content in their top 10 than the P4k one.

NME, Q, Uncut, Mojo etc.

Vice, Spin, Blender (i can't remember which of these still exist and which don't if any)

Drowned In Sound? actual UK newspapers (Guardian and/or Observer Music Monthly maybe)?

xposts

...even if your tastes mature or grow or change, you are forever tainted with this "indie" association? Is it like Catholicism or something, that you can take the kid out of indie, but you can't take the indie out of the kid?

― Masonic Boom

Thought this was worth highlighting, just cuz it's funny. Serious answer: it depends. I expect that we're all similarly marked by what we loved when, but then again, we all grow up different. My tastes have revolved around the punkish end of the indie rock spectrum for something like 25 years now, so I know where I stand WR2 yr question. I'm sure it's different for others.

Will The Wire run one? If so, I'd be curious to see what they come up with.

a runaway victory for Insane Clown Posse obv

I've not read in Uncut in years. Is it taken seriously as far as music criticism goes? I always felt it catered towards a particular affluent audience of a certain age, and would rather write about the heydey of Pink Floyd than address it critically. xposts

blueski: I suppose I was wondering which ones people on this board would take seriously. Surely the NME wouldn't be.

Well, we discussed the Uncut one on Twitter - which SURPRISINGLY - actually had higher female content in their top 10 than the P4k one.

alison krauss and meg white?

I wouldn't take any of them seriously as such, but there will be if a general end of year/end of decade thread listing all the lists surely, plus yet more pointless polls etc.

Gukbe, that's why it was so shocking to me to see a publication like that with higher female content than the supposedly female-friendly (at least originally back in the dinosaur sands of time) indie genre.

x-post no there was a third, but I can't remember who it was - her out the Arcade Fire probably. :-/

I always think AP magazine is hilarious but frustrating knowing the impact it has on shallow teenagers. Imagine how male dominated THEIR list would be. Paramore would be the only one on there, because Paramore is the first band where it is OK to have a girl singer you know...

lol yeah kate it was the arcade fire woman

I rest my case.

otoh the uncut top ten includes plant, dylan, brian wilson--whose deification years ago informs a lot of what we're talking about now

because Paramore is the first band where it is OK to have a girl singer you know...

god you'd think 'Bring Me To Life' has never been written

the characterisation of r&b and pop as genres which throw up brilliant singles but no worthwhile albums is the no 1 way of implying that they're not important, significant genres compared to indie rock, and not to be taken as seriously in terms of their form or values

― lex pretend

This is the usual read, and a fair one. But I don't think it's the only way we might reasonably interpret this common tendency. For one thing, the making of albums and the making of singles aren't exactly the same task. And I don't think that either one is necessarily any more important or significant than the other.

That said, I do notice that the list of my favorite singles of all time is more pop/fun oriented, and that my albums list is somewhat darker, heavier and more intellectually ponderous. And maybe that communicates my tendency to attach "real importance" to album-length work, but then again, maybe it just reflects that singles and albums function differently. They do different things and serve different contexts -- at least some of the time.

plus rap albums always have those stupid skits right guys?

otoh the uncut top ten includes plant, dylan, brian wilson--whose deification years ago informs a lot of what we're talking about now

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, 7 October 2009 15:12 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^read this as defecation

No no AP magazine kids live in their own sideways haircut world. There are no windows. Paramore was the first. Evanescence is for the nu-metalers.

fwiw it's pretty easy to train ppl out of the albums more valuable than tracks mindset--esp in the age of itunes.

one of life's little pleasures is noticing a new issue of AP in the store and having literally never heard of the band on the cover. i mean i keep my ear to the ground decently well but damn.

In retrospect, I'm slightly surprised/saddened by the fact that Dalek's "From Filthy Tongues of Gods and Griots" didn't make the list anywhere (at least I don't think it did).

Does anyone else still care about this record?

obviously not, I guess...

Looking at the site, I guess they never even reviewed it. sadface

for the record, women in Uncut's top 20

Amy Winehouse
Kate Bush
Meg White (of White Stripes)
Gillian Welch
Beth Gibbons (of Portishead)
Régine Chassagne and Sarah Neufeld of Arcade Fire
Alison Krauss (of Robert Plant &)

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")