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

http://buzzofla.com/Detail.aspx?aid=417

sad/hilarious irony to some of this complaining - though others would of course disagree, I would guess, if such a thing could be quantified, that Pitchfork has done as much this decade to assist the push against rockism than just about any other media outlet.

considering where the site was 10 years ago, where the audience for it in general 10 years ago, how many people we communicate to, and the ripple effect we lately can have on u.s. music criticism (unless those burial and field records somehow got into pazz/jop placements some other way, etc), our constant redrawing of our "borders" and what makes our year-end lists and what we cover, etc., might not be as demonstrative and combative and flag-planting as one NYT article about Christina Aguilera but I think we've changed the landscape more, and for more people. In 2001, indie and PItchfork WAS pretty much white straight male guitar rock; five/seven so years later, it was a no-brainer that M.I.A., or Ghostface, or LCD, or Burial, or Tim Hecker, or Robyn was "ok" for indie kids to like-- the things they got all pissy about was stuff like the Hold Steady! Or folky/jammy Grateful Dead/classic rock types. In any event, I think we've taken a lead with that and continue to do so. Maybe not at the pace some of you would like, but some people we can't please no matter what anyway, so...

nipple effect?

innovation. technology. yes, here at pitchfork media we're leading the way into the 21st century.

In fact, if we let Mats Gustafsson stand in for his collaborators, Pitchfork actually HAS reviewed 32 of those 40 artists. And most of the ones they haven't certainly don't seem far outside of Pitchfork's sphere. No Pitchfork review for Peter Rehberg, for instance, but plenty of reviews for other albums on Mego. Ditto for SebastiAn and Ed Banger. Or: no P4k review of Stanley Brinks, but two of his old band, Herman Dune. Etc.

Would we still be sexist then, if seven of our top 20 artists were in some part female? That's less than the m/f ratio in the world, but surely greater than the ratio of m/f making music, so I'm confused.

Well, it's really frankly amazing how the pop charts and best selling artists manage to be gender split pretty evenly 50/50 over the past few decades, as discussed on that poll (and how, as discussed above by Dan and myself, that even the retrogressive world of classical music is split pretty evenly between the genders) and yet your supposed progressive website seems to think that 7 out of 20 is ABOVE average?

classical music isn't necessarily more "retrogressive" than popular or folk music imo

you would hate the brass band world, kate

(no women in the major bands, there are a couple of women-only bands, but they're not very good)

I should have put "retrogressive" in quotes.

I don't think that 35% of the records released in the world have female artists on them, no. Particularly not rock music.

And I didn't claim that anything made us progressive! I was questioning your sample size and selective use of statistics, and then challenging the notion that we only cover and champion white guitar indie rock.

(I do think that, yes, female pop stars have dominated pop/R&B in the past decade though, as has been discussed here on other threads-- and when it comes to pop and R&B we do skew female more than male I would guess. Amerie, Beyonce, Rihanna, Ciara, Britney, Robyn, Annie, Kelly Clarkson, etc-- the vast majority of the pop/R&B performers who have placed on our year-end/decade/book lists have been female.)

the pop charts and best selling artists manage to be gender split pretty evenly 50/50 over the past few decades, as discussed on that poll

Link?

I just looked at all the #1 albums in the U.S. in 2008 and 2009. Discounting mixed-gender bands like Black Eyed Peas and Sugarland, as well as soundtracks and compilations, there have been 41 albums by men or all-male groups to hit #1 and only 19 albums by women or all-female groups.

bands with one woman in them are female, much like ppl with at least one black grandparent are black

All right, we'll give the female side two Sugarland albums, Now 31, the latest Black Eyed Peas album, and the Juno, Twilight, and Mamma Mia! soundtracks. That's still 41 to 26.

Include 2007 in the data, and it's even worse: 67 to 35.

The number of men vs. women actually making pop/rock records has been the elephant in this discussion for a while, or one of two. The other (perhaps disguised by the first in the sort of stacking maneuver that the species is known for) is the openness of the industry and audience to female artists of various sorts, relative to males. Scott calls attention to this by mentioning that "the vast majority of the pop/R&B performers who have placed on our year-end/decade/book lists have been female." Male pop critics do seem very willing to extend respect to female artists in the "R&B diva" role. Audiences and the industry are certainly more welcoming of female artists in some genres than others -- though exceptions will always be made for attractive girls who can sing moderately well.

All of that does suggest that it's unfair to simply count heads in search of proportional representation. Then again, it also calls attention to the pervasive and deeply-entrenched obstacles that female artists have to deal with in finding any kind of foothold in the industry -- especially if they aren't cute/sexy and don't fit into one of the obvious girl-shaped niches.

bands with one woman in them are female, much like ppl with at least one black grandparent are black

http://www.amalah.com/photos/when_you_marry/epson082.html

I tried to address lots of these issues (e.g. as between the representation of females and the discussions of particular genres) upthread.

With respect to Plan B I really do wish it wasn't being used as the yardstick as it always struck me as more indie rather than less than Pitchfork, columns and articles from people I like notwithstanding - and again, remember that Tom Ewing, David Drake, Philip Sherburne, Jess Harvell etc. all write for Pitchfork.

I would say the exact same thing that Kate says about pitching - I've never been told by Scott that something was outside the scope of what Pitchfork write about (the bigger problem is that I don't pitch or write enough).

That is meant less as a defence of Pitchfork and more of a way of saying that the difference between a writer's experience of what it is like to work for a magazine, and their memory of what their own articles and the articles of their friends covered, is very different from the overall perception of the magazine.

I mean you can say "oh but I always ignored the big cover articles on Plan B", but to say this is to apply a fundamentally different means of judgment which, if applied to Pitchfork, could be equally as complimentary of its non-indie-ness. e.g. If you just read the "Month In" columns you would assume that Pitchfork was about dance music and dancehall.

Remember that Tom Ewing, David Drake, Philip Sherburne, Jess Harvell etc. all write for Pitchfork.

^Real modest talk. Etc. = TIM F.

Don't mean to put him on the spot but I'd love it if Tim wrote and pitched more! (His forthcoming Electrik Red review will unite us all.)

Wow didn't even read the paragraph directly below what I quoted. Tim OTM about not getting a red light for coverage though which has basically been true since c. 2005. I got all kinds of crazy song reviews published, most originating in the teenpop thread!

Anyway I still don't think Pfork is the most useful target for this particular convo -- the real enemies are the network of music "coverage" sites that at best are incidentally uncritical and at worst actively disdain any form of critical thought or application of intellectual thinking to music. The worst I can say of Pitchfork is that it isn't [insert publication run for insane effort and no financial gain that is no longer with us -- say, Stylus].

But if you did like Stylus, note that a ton of their most frequent writers now have regular reviewing gigs at Pfork...

Now that it's been mentioned, and before anyone starts smelling conspiracy, I pitched an Electrik Red review to Scott before this thread was started.

By far the worst IRL example of what this thread is about is the "100 Greatest Songs of all Time" list as voted by Triple JJJ, the national "youth" radio station in Australia. If I recall it had ONE song by a woman in the entire top 100.

To be honest, the main reason I brought up Plan B was because they made a real effort - and showed genuine results - about coverage (at all levels, from new bands on MySpace reviews to cover artist coverage) of female artists *and* recruiting female writers.

Yes, Pitchfork is a scapegoat here - I don't think either of these threads are actually *about* P4k, but more showing discontent with the state of a thing of which P4k is the most obvious and visible example.