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

"Dälek"

Daft Punk - Discovery 38
Part of me wants to ask why, part of me just wants to sadly nod and move on.

I don't love anything out of that lot, but if I had to pick I'd go with Stankonia.

haha i was coming here to post that after relistening tonight the lack of votes for stankonia is totally wack

Eh. Great album, but I'd be hard-pressed to vote for an act's 4th-best as the greatest album of a decade.

well it's my fav of theirs, so that's why i would think that

I want to just throw out one thought on the "taste is sacronsanct" debate. I have no doubt that taste is socially conditioned in various ways, that it's not just somehow an independent act of the individual. At the same time, I think it's really difficult to tease out exactly how taste in a given individual (or, I think I'd also say, taste as represented by the sort of aggregated scoring under discussion here) has been shaped by those social forces. I tend to think it's so difficult to unravel that, that it's better to be really cautious about saying that this or that preference is sexist, racist, etc.

As a practical guideline, "taste is sancrosanct" makes a certain amount of sense to me. But I think it's pretty indefensible as a strong philosophical claim. And as others have pointed out, people's sexual preferences are at times the object of criticism or at least question, as in this old somewhat discomforting thread: Being sexually attracted to (or repulsed by) certain racial types: the acceptable face of racism?

Again, my tendency would be to leave those preferences be, but I can understand why others might want to analyze them in terms of larger social considerations.

Frank kogan had a good post about this

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/175403.html

Frank's article almost implies that there's no "value judgment" involved in our taste in sexual partners - whereas perhaps the difference between musical taste and sexual taste is that magazines feel less comfortable commissioning articles announcing "this person is the Best One Night Stand of the '00s."

More generally Frank's spot on that writing (or even talking) about music involves a value judgment, and the writer or talker has to take responsibility for that by backing it up.

People's outrage or contempt at our taking Mariah and Taylor and Ashlee seriously (to take Dan's triumvirate of dislike) isn't outrage at our taste, at our personal preferences, but at our thinking that we're at least in some way right, and that those who dislike those artists are wrong, and at our thinking these women are worthy of time and space, the reader's or listener's time as well as our own - and those who won't give them time can fuck off with their opinions (except that such opinions are usually a sociological gold mine).

This is kind of a massive misrepresentation of my position.

First off, I don't dislike Ashlee Simpson. She didn't release an album I would consider as one of the greatest of the decade but I do not dislike her.

Secondly, I dislike a lot of Mariah's newer material but some of it (particularly "It's Like That" and, to a lesser degree, "We Belong Together") is very good. Still, I would not pick her as a top artist of the decade, largely because in comparing her 00s work to stuff she released in previous years, a lot of her earlier stuff causes what shine I see on her newer stuff to fade.

Taylor Swift I totally cop to disliking but I don't dismiss her because I think she's unimportant in the grand scheme of music or not worth anyone spending their time on. I dismiss her because I hate her vocal production and I hate the juxtaposition between her Barbie-doll looks and her "woe is me, no one will ever notice me because I'm not pretty" songs. She is, however, one of the nicest people currently working in the music industry.

I am absolutely certain there are people out there picking out these artists and saying "pah, this is disposable pop music unworthy of my time". I have never been one of them and it's pretty galling to see my name attached to it; dismissals and dislike can still take music seriously, and in fact should take the music seriously.

I do agree with the core conceit he's working with re: value judgments in how people rank music but how different people's judgments rub up against each other is a function of the people making them and can't have a blanket statement like the one I quoted thrown over them.

i dont think hes accusing you of being contemptuous, dan--just of disliking those three.

It's a by-proxy thing; sticking my name on there implicitly ties me to that mindset. Also, as I said, I don't actually dislike 2 of the 3!

Yeah I agree with you Dan - the mindset he's describing exists elsewhere.

Following these links led me to this AMAZING short discussion on internet snark that Tom blogged:

http://tomewing.tumblr.com/post/212276849/why-snark-works

oh wow that is fantastic

the snark argument is wrong wrong wrong for many reasons, some kinda obvious.

if all the critical voices i know who disliked taylor swift justified their dislike in as clear and sensible terms as dan, i'd have no problem with them disliking her. as it is i assume that 75% of taylor dismissers are basically assuming that a blonde teenage american girl cannot be a great songwriter and not bothering to listen to her songs.

^ nah

the definitive taylor swift song was recorded 18 years ago tbh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb2K6TsMmgo

BTW Lex maybe you didn't see my question for you a little bit upthread w/r/t Fall Out Boy et. al.

the snark argument is wrong wrong wrong for many reasons, some kinda obvious.

Expand?

Read that Kogan piece a few days ago. Was bothered by the implication that I'm failing to perceive the value judgments contained in our expressions of artistic taste. My argument is more that, where deep taste* is concerned, such value judgments are often little more than an intellectual smokescreen used to rationalize and universalize an atavistic response. Obvious caveat that deep taste isn't clearly distinct from any other sort (see Rudipherous' point above), so it's hard to draw a clean line between what this applies to and what it doesn't.

FWIW, I regret introducing the destabilizing comparison of musical taste to sexual taste/orientation into this discussion. Should have known that things would go pear-shaped from there on out, no matter how well-intentioned my argument. I intended only to draw a connection between a form of "taste" that we regard as beyond criticism, and one that we don't -- and to question the mechanisms involved. But I could and should have picked a less inflammatory example.

I agree with Kogan that the critical arguments we use to communicate our value judgments can and should be subject to criticism, analysis, etc. But I see such critical arguments as separate from (though necessarily related to) our underlying tastes, which, it seems to me, are never right or wrong. That's why I'm hesitant to draw conclusions regarding the political implications of even collective expressions of taste -- Pitchfork list, etc.

* "Deep taste" being the sort that seizes us from within and leaves little room for intellectual/aesthetic equivocation: "I LOVE THIS SONG!!!"

"Deep taste" being the sort that seizes us from within and leaves little room for intellectual/aesthetic equivocation: "I LOVE THIS SONG!!!"

This isn't an actual category though. There's always room for intellectual/aesthetic equivocation. It's just that we don't always need to - our taste in the music and our value judgment that the music is deserving of enjoyment simply overlap so well that the issue doesn't arise.

But the "taste" part isn't necessarily more "deep" than the value judgment part. In fact, in many instances people's tastes appear to change quite rapidly while the underlying value judgments remain constant; indeed, the value judgments determine - or, rather, constrain and delimit - the tastes.

See where yr coming from, Tim, but respectfully disagree - to some extent. I believe that value judgments and the intellectual devices that support them are very flexible, or at least can be, depending on the person involved, but that what I'm calling "deep taste" (a phrase for which I feel I must apologize) is very difficult for any of us to consciously alter. That's a presumptive and unjustifiable argument, I admit, but it reflects my personal experience and at least seems to be true of the people I've known.

That said, I'd never deny that value judgments never influence taste, or that taste in general isn't extremely flexible.

"...I'd never deny argue that value judgments never influence taste, or that..."

Something I haven't said and that maybe isn't clear from what I have said: I feel that intellectual equivocation regarding deep taste is a form of lying, or worse, self-delusion, and that this kind of lying/delusion is very common among people who pride themselves on having "good taste". I.e., it's not so much that you can't think your way around your fundamental tastes, but rather that you shouldn't.

Tim, I'm not ready to argue the point (especially with you), but I haven't observed in myself or others that value judgments about music appear to be more constant than taste in music.

I tend to be sympathetic with what I think contenderizer is saying that reasoned accounts in defense of value judgments are frequently ad hoc attempts driven by taste. I don't see some underlying value judgments as driving taste.

I also agree with contenderizer's view that taste is not particularly easy to alter (certainly not through submitting to other people's arguments about music*). I can think of times when I've tried to nudge myself in the direction of a certain genre or artist, and it's "taken," but I can also thinking of plenty of times when it hasn't.

*I don't think the many years I've spent reading ILM have changed my taste much.

I'm not saying that value judgments take priority over tastes - if anything, I'd say they're so intertwined that working out where one stops and the other starts verges on impossible (ha, like nature and nurture). If, for example, I say that I like my dance music cheesy, is this taste or a value judgment?

Exactly! It's impossible to say for certain. If you make some argument concerning why cheesy dance music is the best, I might take issue, but yr fundamental taste-and-or-judgment is beyond reproach, IMO -- no matter how much my own taste/judgment might differ. Not sure you're saying any different...

"I might take issue, but yr fundamental taste-and-or-judgment is beyond reproach"

Why?

All human conduct is a difficult-to-untangle mixture of impulse, learned behaviour and will. That doesn't make it beyond reproach.

As I said upthread, there are other reasons we may choose not to interrogate the musical tastes of others, but it's not because of some fundamental right.

Yeah, I suppose that that's the part on which we do disagree. I can't see any good that might come of the temptation to fault basic taste, and I can't see any sound grounds on which to fault it in the first place -- given the inseparability of deep taste and our more superficial ideas about it (nature vs. nurture, etc.). I think it's great to suggest that people might find this or that thing interesting, perhaps more interesting and compelling than they seem to imagine, but that's as far as I'll go.

For what it's worth, this is a matter of something approaching personal ethics for me. I feel strongly about it, but don't insist that I'm right or that others need to see things my way.

The ground gets shaky real damn fast, though. Taste can certainly reflect values that we reject, and it's often useful to call into question the values reflected in taste. In such cases, however, I prefer to observe an arbitrary line drawn between sacrosanct personal taste and fair-game cultural/demographic/collective taste.

You know, like the Pitchfork list...

Well in practice I agree, I don't go around personally criticising people's tastes as a rule - as you note it's more the reasoning people use which tends to be risible.

I just don't wish to transform a contingent social practice into an immutable metaphysical law.

Why fault basic taste? We're all embarked on the task of constructing our selves, and basic taste is just another layer of construction. What you're calling "basic" is just lower down in the strata that have accumulated in this construction: earlier stages in the construction of self. Why should those earlier stages be privileged? I think our construction of self is dialogical, in that we carry out self-definition in dialogue with others. But that's why I think "basic taste" shouldn't be privileged: because those dialogues mean something, and if basic taste isn't negotiable, then those dialogues ultimately don't mean something. They're the equivalent of "well, I see where you're coming from, but I disagree". Otherwise, why talk with others about music? Are you just using them as a source of news, e.g. of songs or bands presently unknown to you? I talk with others about music in the hopes of learning new ways of experiencing music, and of understanding music.

Now you might say: people have their starting positions in dialogues, and that's what I mean by basic taste. But again, the point of dialogue is to adjust starting positions. So I don't see any bedrock here.

^^^ 100% OTM

21-40 poll should be crazy, right

guys

x-post

I think it's mostly hot air, especially the less of your taste you share in common with the person you are dialoguing with.

You might as well seriously try to convince someone to give the texture of a dried coconut another chance by talking about the way its firmness combines with a trace of its previously moist state.

Music: more complicated, but you soon run into similarly simple simples.

My experience is that discourse around music rarely comes anywhere close in changing my perception of music to: seeing how people (who are part of the musical sub-culture) move to it, learning how to dance to it (where things are formalized enough that that makes sense), drugs, and maybe heightened states of emotion, or simply being in an unusual context (staying up all night on a long ride home from somewhere).

I don't mean to say that it can't be somewhat interesting to find out how other people experience music, but I find those accounts have minimal persuasive force.

All of this may be less true of discussions of lyrical content, but lyrical content doesn't figure too significantly in my experience of music. (Maybe that's because I am otherwise attracted to so much foreign language music).

My experience is that discourse around music rarely comes anywhere close in changing my perception of music to: seeing how people (who are part of the musical sub-culture) move to it, learning how to dance to it (where things are formalized enough that that makes sense), drugs, and maybe heightened states of emotion, or simply being in an unusual context (staying up all night on a long ride home from somewhere).

I've said this before, but dancing is discourse. All you're saying here is that writing hasn't changed your perception of it much.

Part of my problem with the handwringing surrounding this thread is that suspending critical integrity and dismissing things you haven't really listened to based on contempt for the general aesthetic is FUN and nearly everyone does it including some of the people railing most vociferously against it on this thread (eg The Lex and the Arctic Monkeys).

I mean, if I ever stop having lazy gratuitous pops at mimsy tweepop bands with cardigans and recorders and xylophones then just kill me then and there. And I would say people with infinitely more critical clout than me doing it at, say, up and coming indie bands (or MCs, or singers, or whoever) is much more damaging to the artists than a perceived lack of critical respect for multi-million selling globally famous pop stars like Taylor or Mariah.

I mean, what this comes down to more often than not is a filtering of those aesthetics you consider worthy of lazy dismissal and those whose lazy dismissal you are outraged by. And the outrage is totally 100% OTM and justified in the case of say Lady Stush or some band playing a currently unfashionable strand of guitar pop but I can't think of anyone who is likely to be less affected or bothered by a lack of respect from the indiecentric internet critical sphere than Mariah Carey.

(God I think in a roundabout way I've just defended Pipecock - I'm going to go and hang myself now)

And yes I do realise that there's a world of difference between indulging lazy dismissal on a message board and doing so from a position of power and/or influence but the conversation seems to have moved away from Pitchfork and onto more general internet attitudes so I'm trolling a bit. But it doesn't really matter in the case of Mariah Carey who is so ridiculously successful without the critic's help.

Personally speaking I don't really want to give Mariah any time because a)there's so much else to listen to and b) she comes across as such an unbelievably unpleasant person and I can't see how I could possibly identify with her music on any level.

My experience is that discourse around music rarely comes anywhere close in changing my perception of music to: seeing how people (who are part of the musical sub-culture) move to it, learning how to dance to it (where things are formalized enough that that makes sense), drugs, and maybe heightened states of emotion, or simply being in an unusual context (staying up all night on a long ride home from somewhere).

I don't mean to say that it can't be somewhat interesting to find out how other people experience music

I am very confused by this line of reasoning! Aren't all the things you list "how other people experience music"?

I just banished the image of Mariah Carey excitedly photocopying the Sasha Frere-Jones New Yorker review of The Emancipation of Mimi

... in a pair of tiny hotpants with 'Animal Collective' written on them.

This is not a pleasant vision to wake up to.

Good morning, Ned!