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

do think pitchfork's given a lot of centrality in the discourse around popular music by the music press that is out of whack with its areas of focus.

deej, are you getting paid by the word to repeat and write your thesis or are you bored?

pitchfork's given a lot of centrality in the discourse around popular music by the music press that is out of whack with its areas of focus.

^^^^^^^concisely summing up what kate and i kept saying earlier, which contenderizer seems intent on misrepresenting

Possibly because I'm British, I actually *don't* think that Pitchfork is as influential as it's being made out to be here. No one here ever mentions Pitchfork in non-critical circles and even in the Brit critical discourse the NME (old and new) and yer Reynoldses and so forth loom much larger.

Look at bands like Spoon, Wilco, etc - revered by the Pitchfork kids but with next to no cultural or critical cache over here. Lex I think you're paying disproportionate attention to the critical discourse in messageboard land at the expense of the professional critical discourse you're actually part of and the market you're writing for.

i do think pitchfork's given a lot of centrality in the discourse around popular music by the music press that is out of whack with its areas of focus.

― deej

Horrible, endless can-of-worms argument. Pitchfork should receive less attention because it's not aggressively universalist? I just don't see what good can come of this.

The only people I ever see giving Pitchfork centrality in the discourse around popular music are complainers on this board who don't like it when their lists exclude women and R&B! No one in my circle ever talks about it, ever.

(I would not be at all surprised if this is a 20s vs 30s divide.)

Pitchfork should receive less attention because it's not aggressively universalist? I just don't see what good can come of this.

hopefully either

a) pfork becomes more universalist and more representative & respectful of the whole spectrum of popular music; or
b) pfork receives less attention

jesus christ dude stop putting words in ppls mouths every time you argue with them xxp to contenderizer

at any rate, pitchfork & 'indie' are at some level about whats cool / trendy, i think R&B & hiphop are cool and think they make sense in pfork's broader rubric, in a way old man rock doesnt.

I don't even like Dylan at all, but to dismiss him as an old man who gets good reviews because of his reputation does him a disservice. It's not like we're talking about Jann S. Wenner giving five stars to Goddess at the Doorway. Anyway, I think there's always going to be older stuff that the Pitchfork audience likes and respects, even if it's just because M. Ward lists them as influences. And Dylan fits into that. I know guys of his generation are never going to be the site's main focus, but I wouldn't be surprised if Amanda Petrusich or William Bowers or Josh Love all put "Love and Theft" high on their ballot.

concisely summing up what kate and i kept saying earlier, which contenderizer seems intent on misrepresenting

― lex pretend

Shit, I'm just trying to understand where yr. coming from. And I don't think that deej's argument makes any kind of sense. Essentially you guys seem to be saying that PFork's focus should marginalize it, and that people are wrongly treating it as central. And this is just horseshit. There is no right or wrong in questions like this. No one has an obligation to make sure that the center is centrist.

I actually think even Drownedinsound's influence vastly outstrips Pitchfork's in the UK and THAT'S not going to get a thousand-post thread when it puts up it's rubbish albums of the decade list.

i dont know why this is such a big deal -- pfork's staff already acknowledge & have actively recruited ppl to make up these deficiencies, from an editorial level ... so its like you guys are defending them from something theyve already acknowledged is an issue back when ryan wrote that funny intro to we are the world ....

getting the uk critical establishment to respect r&b is EVEN MORE of a non-starter and if you get me started on that i may end up stabbing someone UGHHHH critics' stupidity and bad taste is so frustrating sometimes!!

I don't even like Dylan at all, but to dismiss him as an old man who gets good reviews because of his reputation does him a disservice. It's not like we're talking about Jann S. Wenner giving five stars to Goddess at the Doorway. Anyway, I think there's always going to be older stuff that the Pitchfork audience likes and respects, even if it's just because M. Ward lists them as influences. And Dylan fits into that. I know guys of his generation are never going to be the site's main focus, but I wouldn't be surprised if Amanda Petrusich or William Bowers or Josh Love all put "Love and Theft" high on their ballot.

― katherine helmand province (jaymc), Wednesday, October 7, 2009 3:28 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

jaymc i never said no one should review bob dylan, just that arguing his later-years records (however good they are) are kind of a ridiculous thing to compare to the central records of the 00s R&B canon when it comes to discussing what was excluded from the list

(I would not be at all surprised if this is a 20s vs 30s divide.)

hahah i think it is a crazy weirdo vs. normal ppl divide.

The older records have had the chance to really cement themselves, so initial reviews of say Discovery are not quite as relevant. But how different do you think things would be if a different Pitchfork writer wrote the review for the new Animal Collective and gave it a 8.3? I want a machine that generates outcomes in hypeland based on Pitchfork reviews.

and if you get me started on that i may end up stabbing someone UGHHHH critics' stupidity and bad taste is so frustrating sometimes!!

pro tip writing like this is why you catch shit sometimes.

pitchfork's given a lot of centrality in the discourse around popular music by the music press that is out of whack with its areas of focus

If a reading audience, by and large, including writers and commenters on music in their own right, chooses to limit the vast majority of its music reading to Pitchfork alone, is the fault Pitchfork's for not giving said audience anything and everything or is the fault the audience's for only reading Pitchfork and nothing else and/or prioritizing what Pitchfork thinks at the expense of anything else out there?

Who are you really more disappointed with?

For myself, I assume that whatever audience I have, in whatever venue, reads and reacts to my thoughts as part of a large context. It may be Pitchfork, it may be something else. But I'm not going to waste time chasing down phantoms. There's music to listen to -- like the Lady Leshurr mixtape the Lex recommended a few weeks back, and which is v. good -- and thoughts to consider, and work to do, and life to live.

pro tip writing like this is why you catch shit sometimes.

do you catch shit for being fucking dense?

i do think pitchfork's given a lot of centrality in the discourse around popular music by the music press that is out of whack with its areas of focus.

― deej

I'm not trying to put words in yr mouth, deej. I'm honestly and sincerely trying to parse the implications of what yr saying. You complain that PFork is "given a lot of centrality" in a way that's "out of whack with its areas of focus".

Okay. This suggests to me that you think that PFork's focus (shmindie) should naturally marginalize (decentralize) it to some degree. And the "out of whack" bit suggests that the "music press" is making a mistake in failing to enforce this marginalization. That's what I took from yr statement, rightly or wrongly.

If my read is way off base, lemme know. If not, I think yr making an indefensible argument about what critical entities should be obliged to do.

I actually think even Drownedinsound's influence vastly outstrips Pitchfork's in the UK and THAT'S not going to get a thousand-post thread when it puts up it's rubbish albums of the decade list.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, October 7, 2009 8:29 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Well we have a head start, let's make this dream a reality ILM Drowned In Sound Top 66 Albums Of This Decade

If a reading audience, by and large, including writers and commenters on music in their own right, chooses to limit the vast majority of its music reading to Pitchfork alone, is the fault Pitchfork's for not giving said audience anything and everything or is the fault the audience's for only reading Pitchfork and nothing else and/or prioritizing what Pitchfork thinks at the expense of anything else out there?

Who are you really more disappointed with?

For myself, I assume that whatever audience I have, in whatever venue, reads and reacts to my thoughts as part of a large context. It may be Pitchfork, it may be something else. But I'm not going to waste time chasing down phantoms. There's music to listen to -- like the Lady Leshurr mixtape the Lex recommended a few weeks back, and which is v. good -- and thoughts to consider, and work to do, and life to live.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, October 7, 2009 3:34 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont know why this is such a big deal -- pfork's staff already acknowledge & have actively recruited ppl to make up these deficiencies, from an editorial level ... so its like you guys are defending them from something theyve already acknowledged is an issue back when ryan wrote that funny intro to we are the world ....

I suppose it depends on whether you read this as correcting deficiencies versus simply expanding their coverage.

just that arguing his later-years records (however good they are) are kind of a ridiculous thing to compare to the central records of the 00s R&B canon when it comes to discussing what was excluded from the list

― deej

And I think that the assumptions yr broadcasting here about what is and should be important to critics are at least as questionable as Pitchfork's failure to respect R&B. You haven't just dismissed Dylan, after all, but "old man rock" in general, and by usage of that phrase a bunch of other people and ideas. Don't see how this is any different or better than what you accuse PFork of. Worse, really, cuz it's so much more obviously prejudiced.

Saying this as someone with no interest in Dylan.

I suppose it depends on whether you read this as correcting deficiencies versus simply expanding their coverage.

― katherine helmand province (jaymc), Wednesday, October 7, 2009 3:39 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

one & the same

You haven't just dismissed Dylan, after all, but "old man rock" in general, and by usage of that phrase a bunch of other people and ideas. Don't see how this is any different or better than what you accuse PFork of. Worse, really, cuz it's so much more obviously prejudiced.

OTM

And I think that the assumptions yr broadcasting here about what is and should be important to critics are at least as questionable as Pitchfork's failure to respect R&B. You haven't just dismissed Dylan, after all, but "old man rock" in general, and by usage of that phrase a bunch of other people and ideas. Don't see how this is any different or better than what you accuse PFork of. Worse, really, cuz it's so much more obviously prejudiced.

Saying this as someone with no interest in Dylan.

― That's not just me saying that, that's the Pentagon. (contenderizer), Wednesday, October 7, 2009 3:42 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

jesus dude get over it, i was just being mildly troll-y in order to emphasize the ridiculous of the comparison between dylan & the entire genre of R&B

the ridiculousness

why don't you get over your little R n B snit, then, and we'll call it even?

let's ALL untwist our panties

i mean, its basically the only spot for long-form music criticism read by a wide audience ... they get like 2m readers a month, which i imagine blows any other niche non-gossip music review site out of the water ....

at this point I would guess Rolling Stone is the only music-related publication with a larger audience than ours in the world. We also have 1.2 Twitter followers, #101 in the world last time I looked, between the NFL and Amazon.com.

I only point this out for context and because I know it pisses off the Lex.

MDC: I have no way to quantify our influence on other crits or whatever in the UK, but to give two examples, the biggest crit bands over there last year-- Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver-- I would guess were introduced to the UK music press via us. (BI we ran as a headline review of the self-released LP in early autumn 2007; Fleet Foxes we began to cover in late Jan or early Feb after hearing a song on their MySpace, then booked for our fest and our SXSW party) (same with Bon Iver on both counts.) I don't care about the credit, it's an empty claim anyway esp since FF wound up on Sub Pop and BI on Jag and would have reached an audience anyway, but I find it hard to believe that major UK music pubs aren't looking at our site and there isn't some ripple effect. (We obviously look at the Guardian/NME/Uncut/Mojo/DiS/etc as well.)

straight white male indie rockers with guitars were a serious minority in, say, the top 50 of our tracks list, but of course that hardly fits Lex's arguments so let's ignore that

but...but....you're only sincere if you rate their albums!!

one & the same

― xhuxk mangione (deej), Wednesday, October 7, 2009 3:43 PM (21 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah, but you can expand your coverage without it implying that you were wrong not to have done so earlier.

re: straight white male etc, I guess I should go w/o saying I'm being flippant and reactive to everyone's else demo complaints and the way they can be bent around a POV you want to advance rather than actively reducing the artists we cover to types and demographics and thinking in those terms, but just in case...

So would the ideal Pitchfork be totally universalist, equally aware of and interested in every genre and style of music? Would it democratically cover blues and classical and hip-hop and Bulgarian folk and punk and metal and dance pop and electroacoustic experiments (and everything under the sun) without any distinct POV or editorial identity?

I think that Pitchfork is valuable (and popular and influential) precisely because it DOES have a distinct point of view. And that in having a distinct point of view it is necessarily narrow, even myopic. These qualities are GOOD things in that they help make Pitchfork what it is: at least somewhat individual and distinct. Even to the extent that it's not equally interested in all things. Even to the extent that certain stuff gets slighted.

Then again, it's hard to reconcile that argument with my earlier complaints about its gender imbalance. Hmmm... I guess I just don't see "maleness" as a essential component of its individual (collective) identity. Maybe I'm wrong about that...

That last in response to deej saying that correcting deficiencies and expanding coverage are "one & the same."

Also, deej, I really don't see how Mariah Carey is obviously more in keeping with Pitchfork's aesthetic than Bob Dylan is. This is a site that devoted an entire week to the Beatles remasters.

bob dylan remasters =/= of-little-note records bob dylan makes in his 60s

We also have 1.2 Twitter followers

they're that bad?

contenderizer keeps spilling out little crazy readings into what i said that doesnt actually link to what ive said at all -- might keep letting him do this?

Gaaah! It was a friggin'

question

You say that correcting deficiencies and expanding coverage are "one & the same." What do you mean by that? Do you mean that Pitchfork should be truly universalist? Or only that it needs to cover some things more than it currently does? And if the latter, why only those things?

Huh, I just checked to see if Pitchfork reviewed Emancipation of Mimi and look what I found: a 2008 column from Scott about albums Pitchfork never reviewed and why they didn't review them:

Mariah Carey: The Emancipation of Mimi [Island]
Miranda Lambert: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend [Columbia]
My Chemical Romance: Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge [Reprise]

Over the course of this decade, Pitchfork has slowly expanded its coverage, taking an increasingly more wide-scale view of the pop landscape. Our more cynical readers tend to think that we do so in order to attract readers. Well, really, the opposite is true. Frankly, we're gambling: We approach Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé, Lil Wayne, or Kylie Minogue as artists rather than personalities, when most of our readers don't want to consider them as either.

When it comes to pop-minded performers, those who spring from the underground (Annie) or strike out on their own (Robyn), or mainstream artists who get oddly dicked-around by their record labels (Clipse, Amerie), seem more palatable to many of our readers, suggesting that the mechanics behind creating or selling music, whether listeners are assaulted with marketing, or whether listeners feel they are making different choices than the "masses" are, in some ways, still important to many of our readers.

The only two pop groups we've really criminally overlooked are UK chart-toppers Girls Aloud and the Sugababes, but since we've examined their greatest hits collections, I'm setting them aside to highlight an even more objectional-to-many trio of records, each a success in a genre many of our readers likely despise: Melismatic, superstar r&b, mainstream modern country, and mall rock. You know the names already, you've likely formed an opinion, but keep the records at least in the back of your mind and someday, somewhere give them a chance.

So would the ideal Pitchfork be totally universalist, equally aware of and interested in every genre and style of music? Would it democratically cover blues and classical and hip-hop and Bulgarian folk and punk and metal and dance pop and electroacoustic experiments (and everything under the sun) without any distinct POV or editorial identity?

Sorry of this is a bit obvious but the complaints about Pitchfork are usually damned-if-they-do-damned-if-they-don't. When they are very open about their limitations and admit that they come from a specific culture/music background people complain about the ethnocentrism and oppressive indie-ness of their tastes (Lex's argument, sort of), but when pitchfork tries to overreach and be a "music-loving citizen of the world" and tackle all comers then the accusation is pretension, that the site doesn't know their place and should stick to Indie Land.

x-post

i think it depends who is writing about these records, Cunga

So would the ideal Pitchfork be totally universalist, equally aware of and interested in every genre and style of music?

how could it? discernment is part of the deal. we're talking about what codes 'they' are using to discern.

Would it democratically cover blues and classical and hip-hop and Bulgarian folk and punk and metal and dance pop and electroacoustic experiments (and everything under the sun) without any distinct POV or editorial identity?

no, but it would discuss/argue/debate which of these deserve more/less coverage. which is what we're doing here.

i put 'they' in quotes bcuz we get to borderline tinfoil hat territory the more we talk about this like its a conspiracy instead of inadvertent bias

xpost to Cunga

Def there is damned if we do, but in part that's because people assume Pitchfork is one brand with 50 similar voices, as if I'm handing a Pole record to some dude who spends most of his time listening to skinny jeans indie and asking him to give it a chance instead of assigning it to, in that case, Philip Sherburne. We have a staff that's mostly eclectic, curious generalist listeners, and some specialists (and even they are less specialist than they are perhaps typecast by their assignments for the site). It's not like a bunch of indie kids groping around in the dark though, sorry (not these days at least).

That you all are complaining that Pitchfork isn't covering enough R&B LPs or modern country, as if it's something Pitchfork obviously should be doing, is surely some sign of how much the publication has changed in the past half-decade or so.

i think its a sign of how much yr audience has changed, too

you music critics sure like to drastically exaggerate the importance and impact of music criticism huh. kinda cute.

i mean, with the 'mainstreaming of indie' & the increasing readership, at some point u end up with readers who have different backgrounds & perspectives, but are drawn to the site / indie as a whole .... one person i know who reads the site is an af-am woman who listens to a lot of the kinds of music pitchfork's pushing (esp. the beach-y stuff) & she grew up w/ her dad throwing parties with house music & disco, & her mom listening to R&B albums ... its not like shes super-anti-mariah-carey or something