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

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")

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?