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

I haven't giving much credit to it because in my observation, it hasn't made much difference to my own experience of music. I stand corrected and accept that it apparently does make a big difference for others (something I should have realized a long time ago just from spending so much time around here).

I think I had the same experience with criticism of poetry, back when I was very interested in poetry (except that I tended to find critical writing on poetry more interesting than most of the music criticism I read). Ultimately I didn't find it have much impact on how I experienced what I read. (An extreme case would be L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry vs. discussion of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. The theory initially made it seem pretty exciting, but then I kept running against the misery of actually reading the stuff.)

'Getting' music, like all experience, is a creative exercise, (which is one of the reasons yr idea of basic taste is anathema to me) it requires you to break up and organise the sound, to follow and move with it, to focus on certain features, to anticipate and to listen for details&to build a context in which they are significant... these are all things music crit can help with, but it can't listen to it for you, and its criticisms won't have any effect if you don't find some truth in them and tie them into your own experience

sure - it's not necessarily incumbent on the listener to do it either, but it is incumbent on critics to do it (point taken re: specialists w/limited tastes being amazing, but from an editorial perspective there should be relatively few of them). as for non-critics who like to discuss these things, ie all non-critics in this thread, i'd like to think you're interested enough to do this creative exercise. eg after deej and i repped for mariah's emancipation of mimi upthread, i'd like to think some people were curious enough to check it out. and yeah, "but i know i don't like mariah, oh noes her vocal technique and ability to sing" - stop and think about how much of her material you're actually familiar with, or whether you're just parroting (indie-)critical consensus!

music crit by outsiders and insiders both valuable. the former is riskier - with the latter, the worst that can happen is dull writing, but even if the critic in question is no wordsmith, the writing will usually be accurate and informative - very helpful to outsiders! thinking of grime here - 100% would take the writers of that period who knew their shit, were on the ground, could bridge the gap between the artists and the mainstream press and report the scene accurately, over the weedy white men who wibbled unhelpfully about critical theory and were all poetic and emo on the internet.

music crit by outsiders can be AMAZING but tim got it absolutely otm upthread - the outsider can't just bring their own unquestioned values and preconceptions to the criticism, you have to approach with an open mind and be respectful to whatever you find. the example i always cite is when the telegraph sent their opera critic to review björk live at covent garden opera house a few years ago - provided a real insight into how she could be perceived outside of her own converted fanbase (and indeed how an opera fan might respond to pop musicians generally). a terrific piece of writing.

tom ewing saying he's not a specialist is a red herring b/c he's a lot more knowledgeable about different genres than he says/thinks he is!! and in any case absolutely typifies the ideal outsider approach of looking at what the artist and the music value, without ever losing sight of what he values. not many outsider critics do this, to put it mildly.

^^ 100% OTM.

What I really like about Tom's writing is that he displays sensitivity to the music in question, even if he doesn't like it much. So when he does introduce unusual or personal stuff to what he's writing about, both sides (the music's "interests", his interests) are illuminated. I thought his piece on "Elanor Rigby" and the forgotten people of the 60s (for Popular) was an excellent example of this.

Even a lot of really enthusiastic criticism often doesn't show that sensitivity, it's more like a mechanistic application of rote critical buzzwords and compliments to prc-conceived qualities in the music.

on a grumpier note i have to say that 90% of the "outsider perspective" criticism i read nowadays is fucking terrible and makes me want to shoot people in the face. ESPECIALLY people who constantly go on about "pop", and constantly whine whenever a song doesn't have a huge galumphing electro beat or immediate one-listen hook or obvious mainstream appeal.

"respectful and open-minded" i think is the main thing here, but that's also edging closer and closer towards just saying "good writing." writing respectfully and open-mindedly well this is how everyone wants to write and it's not until someone more knowledgeable than you is calling you out on some stupid shit that you'd realize you've got it wrong. there's also a balancing act going on, for the outsider, between respectful, honest and interesting. are these pop whiners just being too honest and letting their first impressions on the page? as outsiders they probably just don't get the genre and no amount of respect or open-mindedness will correct that until they do. i can relate to this; in genres i have no knowledge of, often the only songs i can relate to are those with instant hooks. that's just because the majority of it's charms are knit into its generic code which i've yet to figure out.

Yeah kind of think sensitivity is the key, the outsider tag I would only really use for ppl writing about music where there's a pretty distinct core of listeners they don't belong to. Like me writing about Hindustani music. I think most vaguely popular stuff bleeds together a lot more and it's too nebulous to have obvious cores (or they're tiny and yr insider specialism is extremely narrow) and its part of the job of the listener/critic to tie things together&map out connections in useful ways, not nec. always down the usual lines. Someone trying to write authoritatively about an entire area they don't know much about nearly always bad news though.

"the weedy white men who wibbled unhelpfully about critical theory and were all poetic and emo on the internet" < I thought you all liked that kode9 interview?

on a grumpier note i have to say that 90% of the "outsider perspective" criticism i read nowadays is fucking terrible and makes me want to shoot people in the face. ESPECIALLY people who constantly go on about "pop", and constantly whine whenever a song doesn't have a huge galumphing electro beat or immediate one-listen hook or obvious mainstream appeal.

Are these outsiders though or just popjustice/G.A.Y. fans?

There are negative qualities to insider writing just as there are to outsider writing: insularity, the arcane nature of acquired tastes, defensiveness and/or scene boosting, unquestioned aesthetic assumptions, a tendency to take basic familiarity for granted, an attachment to minutia that can occlude the big picture, etc., etc. Nevertheless, all other things being equal, I'll grant that expertise is almost always an asset.

*** *** ***

In response to a few x-posts, I'm not saying that all taste is "deep taste", or that thinking and talking about one's taste has no value. I'm saying that taste is complicated, and it's hard to clearly distinguish between one's ideas about art and one's atavistic responses to it. Therefore, I'm not inclined to question or criticize straightforward expressions of taste on (for instance) political grounds. I happily grant that tastes change over time, and that we can easily expand our tastes simply by being open to new things. But none of that really subverts what I'm trying to say.

I started out defending the indie-centric narrowness of Pitchfork's decade list (not its gender imbalance; see below). I saw the narrowness of the list as an expression of a house aesthetic, an indie aesthetic -- as an expression of Pitchfork's collective taste. Pitchfork's expressions of taste are successful, influential and (to its audience) seemingly useful. They are therefore defensible, even in some sense "good". I don't see the point in arguing that the Pitchfork list should be less indie or more inclusive of other genres. If Pitchfork's taste were markedly different, it would likely be less successful, influential and useful to its audience. That is, I see Pitchfork's success as largely dependent on an audience's interest in and respect for its specific, indie-centric taste.

The idea that taste might be "sacrosanct" came up in response to a different set of complaints about the Pitchfork list. These complaints were more political in nature and revolved around Pitchfork's apparently decided preference for male artists. Personal taste can certainly reflect social conditions, but I don't think that it's appropriate to treat expressions of taste as a form of political speech. This approach only invites reductive reactions, as though we should always be on guard to ensure that our tastes are demographically proportional. Worse yet, if successful, this approach eases a visible symptom in a manner that only camouflages the underlying conditions. Music criticism is boy's club. It isn't the expression of taste that's the problem -- the problem is that we only privilege certain voices to express themselves in this manner.

in genres i have no knowledge of, often the only songs i can relate to are those with instant hooks. that's just because the majority of it's charms are knit into its generic code which i've yet to figure out.

― samosa gibreel

The appreciation of the hidden charms you speak of, however, can lead to just the sort of insularity I was talking about. It's hard to think of many important, enduring, broadly popular pieces of music that don't display instant hooks. This is true of folk music, children's & holiday songs, classical music, jazz & pop. It's true of almost every pop sub-genre, too. The reason that certain disco and metal songs become widely-known and beloved mainstream classics almost always boils down to a simple combination of easy accessibility and massive hooks. (Plus timing, luck, promo money, etc., but the point still stands.)

If one is primarily interested in this sort of instant accessibility, and if one is speaking to a general audience, then genre-specific expertise becomes much less important, perhaps even a hindrance. One need only understand the genre well enough to know what stands the best chance of succeeding outside its confines.

i don't know, anyone who is satisfied just skimming the tops of genres for their most accessible and insantly affecting hits... kind of a loser imo. do these people also listens to albums once and then delete all the songs they didn't like first shot? but i do know what you mean about these songs being an important bridge to communicating with other uneducated shmoes.

everyone is discussion musicwrite as it pertains to music, but not as it pertains to writing. if the aim is to be funny, provocative, interesting, and true -- i.e. good from the standpoint of writing -- then everything follows. if that gets displaced by another agenda (to promote a genre, to be proper, to be outrageous, to be authoritative, to be inoffensive, to find a big thing, to be smart) then that's where the trouble is. so we shouldn't be fighting over what agenda crits set themselves. we should take issue with the idea that crits need an agenda, and maybe open ourselves to the idea that its having an agenda -- trying to hard to matter -- that makes things the most inconsequential.

xpost to samosa:

There has to be a less sneeringly self-righteous way to put that idea across. I mean, isn't that what pop is and does (both as a genre and as a form of cultural memory)? It just skims the top of everything for the hits, for the good parts. In fact, I think that's what we ALL do with regard to the seemingly infinite mass of music that exists in the world. We trawl through it in search of our own personal "hits", sometimes in an educated fashion, sometimes not. And there's nothing wrong with that, either way, so long as we find value in what we bring home. We could always be more educated, or less.

I mean, I have nothing against you personally, SG, but that post exemplifies everything that bugs me about criticizing other people's taste.

everyone is discussion musicwrite as it pertains to music, but not as it pertains to writing. if the aim is to be funny, provocative, interesting, and true -- i.e. good from the standpoint of writing -- then everything follows. if that gets displaced by another agenda (to promote a genre, to be proper, to be outrageous, to be authoritative, to be inoffensive, to find a big thing, to be smart) then that's where the trouble is. so we shouldn't be fighting over what agenda crits set themselves. we should take issue with the idea that crits need an agenda, and maybe open ourselves to the idea that its having an agenda -- trying to hard to matter -- that makes things the most inconsequential.

Hi Sterling, how are you distinguishing between these two groups of aims? i.e to be provocative w/r/t writing vs to be outrageous w/r/t the music? I mean I can see ho wn article might be one and not the other but in many cases you achieve one through the other. "True" writing about music is synonymous (though not identical) with writing that is "true" to the music, I would have thought?

i don't know, anyone who is satisfied just skimming the tops of genres for their most accessible and insantly affecting hits...

..etc...

To all the 'genres' that you do not care for, but can appreciate parts of.

I mean, I was never much for HMetal, but someone tried to get me into it via 'accessible' stuff like, I dunno, Journey, Styx, um etc.. When I told them I thought Motorhead were OK, he went Oh.

Wow, Ogmor's big post totally OTM.

There's been a lot banging around in my head on this subject in the past few days, but they still haven't percolated into cogent form. Something Contenderizer wrote on this subject on another thread really really REALLY rubbed me the wrong way and I'm trying to get past my kneejerk reaction of ARGH to put it into words.

Are these outsiders though or just popjustice/G.A.Y. fans?

it's more the attitude i come across that if you're judging everything as pop, all that matters is how pop it is - there's this stubborn refusal to engage on anything like the music's own terms, because if it doesn't succeed in pop terms, if it's unlikely to be embraced by the general public, it can be dismissed out of hand. (the general public, like magazine readerships, are always underestimated i feel - i don't think casual listeners are anywhere near as conservatively close-minded as is often assumed.)

everyone is discussion musicwrite as it pertains to music, but not as it pertains to writing. if the aim is to be funny, provocative, interesting, and true -- i.e. good from the standpoint of writing -- then everything follows. if that gets displaced by another agenda (to promote a genre, to be proper, to be outrageous, to be authoritative, to be inoffensive, to find a big thing, to be smart) then that's where the trouble is

kinda disagree with this! actually, the biggest problem with the (great) anti-rockism arguments over the past 5 years might have been that they were too focused on arguing about arguing - not arguing about concrete things. framing it as an issue solely about the writing rather than about the music has led to, and will continue to lead to, the same ol' same ol' music getting the coverage. and genre boosterism can be CRUCIAL to nascent genres' development (not to mention individual artists' ability to carry on making music). as per my grime example above - the most important journalists were not the stylists and self-consciously intelligent theorisers on the internet. they were the ones who were on the ground, in both the scene and the press, who maybe weren't great wordsmiths but who knew their shit and communicated it accurately, WITH an agenda in mind.

I'm not saying that all taste is "deep taste", or that thinking and talking about one's taste has no value > So presumably you think we do have that golden area of malleable taste we are allowed to talk hot air about, as well as our tedious core of favourites.

I'm saying that taste is complicated, [MMM!] and it's hard to clearly distinguish between one's ideas about art and one's atavistic responses to it.

It's hard to distinguish because “one's atavistic responses” is a pretty murky notion. Is it too complicated for you to try and unpack? Too complicated to be convincing?

Therefore, I'm not inclined to question or criticize straightforward expressions of taste on (for instance) political grounds.

It'd be like fucking with people's souls (or their human rights, or their genes, or something)

I happily grant that tastes change over time, and that we can easily expand our tastes simply by being open to new things Not deep taste, surely, just the malleable area susceptible to intellectual equivocation.

'Pitchfork's expressions of taste' is a bigger thing than just their range & their narrow range is not the only reason for their success, being smart selling advertising, Brent D-style ridiculous shit getting ppls backs up in a famous fashion and the frequency/quantity of their output are more significant, all more distinctive than being 'an indie-centric site'.

Pfork has always covered lots of shit that their real or imagined conservative hardcore of teenage AC/wilco/radiohead lovers don't care about, from david axelrod, to japanese electro-acoustic improv, to vybez cartel, to igor wakhevitch, and this has been a reason for me reading them in the past. They've gradually started to try and cover more stuff and I'm sure they will continue because it makes complete sense, even if not in the way/at the speed people would like.

Personal taste can certainly reflect social conditions, but I don't think that it's appropriate to treat expressions of taste as a form of political speech. Listening habits/taste are/is not purely passive like a mirror but formed through constant engagement, like browsing certain sections of the record shop and not others. Maybe what ppl here are really calling out it is Sartre-style bad faith in listening habits&it's weird that you'd want to defend ppl's lack of responsibility for what they listen to, playlists cruelly thrust on them by nature.
I genuinely do think yll be a little wiser about the world if you engage w/a wider variety of stuff, it's the goal for everyone, a quest to always improve. Obv not the same thing as allotting a fifth of yr week to Chinese music or whatever.

It isn't the expression of taste that's the problem -- the problem is that we only privilege certain voices to express themselves in this manner. Yr talking to yrself here w/yr royal we? I think everyone agrees more breadth in both critics&scope wld be good, and they think it about pitchfork.

^^^real talk

OK, Ogmor, who are you? You are saying far too sensible things to be a sock. I'm intrigued.

I'm starting to think the taste thing boils down to : people like music that's either made by people they could beat in a fight, or people that might want to sleep with them.

as for critics, there are a lot of good writers out there, but also a lot of people too interested in trying to write "like a music writer" than trying to communicate something interesting about the music. This influences the choice of music too - ie "I enthusiastically want to be a music writer, so I should write enthusiastically about music-writery music, woo Merriweather!"

I'm starting to think the taste thing boils down to : people like music that's either made by people they could beat in a fight, or people that might want to sleep with them.

So all these P4k writers are totally gay for beardy white dudes?

I said "people", not "writers"!

also with pfork and beardies, reckon it's 50% beatup and 50% shackup

WRITERS ARE NOT PEOPLE?!?!? WHAT ARE THEY?!?!? SOYLENT GREEN?!?!?

mmm, tasty.

Hi Sterling, how are you distinguishing between these two groups of aims? i.e to be provocative w/r/t writing vs to be outrageous w/r/t the music? I mean I can see ho wn article might be one and not the other but in many cases you achieve one through the other. "True" writing about music is synonymous (though not identical) with writing that is "true" to the music, I would have thought?

w/r/t provocative vs. outrageous i'd say it has something to do with the emotions and thoughts the writer is trying to evoke, which maybe can't be determined always simply and obviously, but then who said that things being simply and obviously determinable was a criterion for good criteria? true writing can be true about many things. the fact that it happens to be about music doesn't mean that it should focus on being true about that in particular. also, being "true" to music is silly because almost all music is full of lies, even if they're wonderful lies, and its rotten and deadening for crit to perpetuate that, which is what it generally does. I mean, you don't have to get all nasty or whatever, but you need to convey a sense of perspective. otherwise what you've got is words and conversation, but i'm not sure if you could properly call it writing.

framing it as an issue solely about the writing rather than about the music has led to, and will continue to lead to, the same ol' same ol' music getting the coverage.

frankly, i don't know if there's any way to frame it that would change things. because framing things is a pretty weak thing to do to them, and the things you frame generally don't even notice that they've been framed.

anyway if you want ambition, why care about what p4k covers? why not care that there's increasingly no outlet for long-form crit that covers everything else? or that there's no (apparent) audience for it? what would it take to create such an audience? what would it take to build an audience of people who already listen to lots of things that maybe you want to discuss, and want to read about them the way you discuss them? what would it bring to their lives for them to do this? what are the reasons that's infeasible, either in the small, or in the large?

and want to read about them the way you discuss them?

"I enthusiastically want to be a music writer, so I should write enthusiastically about music-writery music, woo Merriweather!"

Of course! I should've known I should be giving Daniel Merriweather the time of day over at the Jukebox...

I sympathize, empathize with this tendency, actually, but tbh it's not really a Big Problem -- the big problem seems to be more that there aren't any Big Problems and most issues in music writing c. 2009 have to do with the fact that a ton of music writers and music conversation-havers don't know how to write or talk about music well and don't have the (er, paid) opportunity to do so even if they could. I worry that music as cultural object may be going the way of...oh, I dunno, what's an overreaching analogue...FOOD maybe, where it's not usually assumed that one is supposed to have a critical conversation about it, but rather just sort of appreciate and accumulate it in a relatively unquestioning, if occasionally consciously "tasteful," way. (Which makes Pitchfork TV the Food Network?)

I worry that music as cultural object may be going the way of...oh, I dunno, what's an overreaching analogue...FOOD maybe

Well aside from the 'must eat to survive' part.

So I guess before long there will be a Ratatouille co-produced by Stereogum in which the cranky critic ultimately decides to found his OWN label, maaaaaaaaaaan, and assume that everything produced on it is beyond criticism.

I dunno, I used to forgo having lunch so that I could go buy an album after school!

(I mean, an album at the end of the week. I hadn't yet limited my max album price to $1.99.)

That's a good question for the board, who here actually skipped a meal precisely to purchase a new album? (And when was the last time you did that?)

why not care that there's increasingly no outlet for long-form crit that covers everything else? or that there's no (apparent) audience for it? what would it take to create such an audience? what would it take to build an audience of people who already listen to lots of things that maybe you want to discuss, and want to read about them the way you discuss them? what would it bring to their lives for them to do this? what are the reasons that's infeasible, either in the small, or in the large?

There IS an audience. If anything, the long-term existence of Plan B proved that there was.

However, the decision to tie that outlet to print media in an economy that can no longer sustain print at the quality that Plan B wanted to do it, meant that it would collapse. Not through lack of interest, but through decrease of advertising coupled with the increase in production costs.

I know I bitched and moaned and fired off angry letters to the editors and the like for most of its existence (and before, at CTCL) - but for gods sake, Plan B was one of the few magazines that LISTENED when you brought up complaints, and if they were valid, did something about them. They weren't always perfect, but they *tried* in a way that I don't see anywhere else even attempting at the moment.

Tired and bored with having this argument over and again. I guess I just miss Plan B on so many levels.

(I should note that I don't actually buy my own paranoia about the role of music, just have the thoughts occasionally. I wouldn't write about music if I actually believed it was possible to kill the conversation about it. Just makes the conversation feel smaller, maybe.)

Ogmor, who are you? I'm an upcoming outfit soon to have a heavy rep. Thanks for yr kudos ppl, it is mutual.

WTF ogmor? Yr consistently reducing what I say to one-dimensional nonsense, then sneering at it as if that has anything to say with my basic argument. I've been clear from the beginning that we're "allowed" to talk about all taste, any taste. It's all fair game, though I have strong reservations about the tendency to treat expressions of personal taste as political speech However, since Pitchfork's lists are an aggregate, institutional expression, they're not "sacrosanct" in the quite same way.

It's hard to distinguish because “one's atavistic responses” is a pretty murky notion. Is it too complicated for you to try and unpack? Too complicated to be convincing?

I've unpacked the idea elsewhere in this thread, and I think it's fairly straightforward to begin with. But. Music can speak to us in very direct, emotional ways. We have ideas about music, and these ideas exist in relation to the feelings that music triggers, but the ideas don't really explain or encapsulate the underlying reactions. We feel an intense surge of joy when the singer's voice does this or when the guitar does that, and while we may understand the mechanics of the response, our understanding doesn't diminish its intensity. The feeling isn't something we control; rather it controls us. We like that song not because we have consciously decided to, but simply because something deep within us has responded. That's what I mean by "atavistic". And none of this opposes in any way the idea that tastes change, or that we can intellectually engage with and even shape them.

their narrow range is not the only reason for their success, being smart selling advertising, Brent D-style ridiculous shit getting ppls backs up in a famous fashion and the frequency/quantity of their output are more significant, all more distinctive than being 'an indie-centric site'.

I said something very similar about Pitchfork's success a while back. But I think yr. seriously underestimating the importance of their basic taste and POV. I suspect that if they were dance- or metal-centric they wouldn't have enjoyed the same level of mainstream success and influence. It's not just that they were selling ad space, attracting gawkers and cranking out news/reviews. It's that they were interested in the same things as a lot of other people and were able to use their influence to turn those people on to other things, things they actually liked and wanted to hear more about. I suspect that indie was ready to be mainstreamed (for a number of reasons) and that Pitchfork was catapulted to prominence by its association with the genre as much as anything else. Their success is therefore hugely dependent on their collective taste and sensibility.

Listening habits/taste are/is not purely passive like a mirror but formed through constant engagement, like browsing certain sections of the record shop and not others. Maybe what ppl here are really calling out it is Sartre-style bad faith in listening habits & it's weird that you'd want to defend ppl's lack of responsibility for what they listen to, playlists cruelly thrust on them by nature.
I genuinely do think yll be a little wiser about the world if you engage w/a wider variety of stuff, it's the goal for everyone, a quest to always improve.

I don't know what you're responding to, here. I agree entirely that taste is not passive. But nor is it entirely active. It's a combination of the two, of active interest and deep affinity. Both can and do change all the time, though the former more quickly than the latter, and in a manner more subject to the application of will. I do not "defend ppl's lack of responsibility for what they listen to." I defend people's right to take joy from that which gives them joy, and I'm not inclined to fault them for failing to experience joy in response to other things. Sure, I agree that it's good to be open to new things, but I'm not going to sign on with the idea that we should all strive to "improve" ourselves by liking more and different music. Music plays different roles in different people's lives, none more intrinsically valid than any other. Some people may only be interested in the music that most appealed to them in their youth, others may seldom venture beyond the confines of a comfortable genre -- and that's fine, either way, so long as the people involved are satisfied with the music in their lives.

Personally, I'm curious about and open to all sorts of music (though I find that I have a core affinity for upbeat/aggressive guitar rock with giant hooks, and I think that's been true since I was a kid), and therefore I'm most interested in critical voices that are similarly inclined. But I'd never argue that my tastes are or should be universal, or that critical voices that don't cater to them are less valid. I'm surprised by the fact that the Pitchfork list is so male-dominated, but that surprise doesn't incline me to the knee-jerk/reactive assertion that Pitchfork needs to pay more attention to female artists. Rather it inclines me to pay some attention to who writes for Pitchfork, at which point I notice that, hey, it's (almost) all dudes. And that seems a much bigger problem.

kate, apols for never having read Plan B, or for that matter, much else in the way of musicwrite these last x years, but you and i apparently have a different idea of "everything else" when wikipedia tells me that its covers featured: "Chicks On Speed, Joanna Newsom, Magnetic Fields, Smoosh, Afrirampo, Arcade Fire, Black Dice, Sonic Youth, The Research, Cat Power, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Long Blondes, Silver Jews, The Gossip, CSS, Boris, Sunn O))), Deerhoof, Herman Dune, Electrelane, Grinderman, Battles, Wiley, Björk, M.I.A., Animal Collective, Scout Niblett, Prinzhorn Dance School, Billy Childish, Dirty Projectors, Earth, The Breeders, Glass Candy and Chromatics, No Age, Sparks, Los Campesinos!, Roots Manuva, Rolo Tomassi, Gang Gang Dance, Grace Jones, Micachu, Bat For Lashes, Dan Deacon, PJ Harvey & John Parish, Grizzly Bear."

yeah, anyway.

We did cover a hell of a lot more besides that. yes, they stuck the big indie stars on the cover to get Ver Kidz to buy it, but what was interesting was actually the breadth of the stuff inside - I used to get much more of a kick (fnar) out the little stuff covered in The Void and the various columns than I ever did out of the big cover articles.

But also, say what you like, there's a heck of a lot more women in that list than in the P4k top 20.

there's also a lot more than 20 artists in that list

Micachu

that was the worst ever.

question i'm going to totally regret asking: is counting the number of women on various things a valid metric?

frankly, i don't know if there's any way to frame it that would change things. because framing things is a pretty weak thing to do to them, and the things you frame generally don't even notice that they've been framed

^^this doesn't actually mean anything.

i suspect k8 and i both regularly shouted at plan b editors, as is our wont, about its indie focus and indie cover stars when it was around, but as k8 says it was ridiculously open to covering other genres as and when they were pitched - i don't think i EVER heard "that's not our thing" or "that's not what our readers want" from them - as well as constantly questioning its own taste-consensus, and trying to avoid received wisdom about hyped acts.

question i'm going to totally regret asking: is counting the number of women on various things a valid metric?

nah. it's not about quotas. equal numbers of male and female artists wouldn't necessarily mean fair, open-minded coverage. it's just that when the male/female ratio is so disproportionate, this should be interrogated beyond just going "eh, writers' taste, what can you do!!!"

honest questions: which artists were covered somewhere in plan b that made it such a diverse magazine, and how often would those artists appear?

^this -- vs., say, Pitchfork...

his should be interrogated beyond just going "eh, writers' taste, what can you do!!!"

― lex pretend

not that anyone here has ever said such a thing...

it was ridiculously open to covering other genres as and when they were pitched

Pitchfork has reviewed country and opera, what do you want?

More stuff they like?