The All-New STYLUS.

Lex you rescinded your right to pass comment when you passed up the chance to participate.

that would have been published regardless of whether i sent in a ballot, right? it's a calamity of music journalism, that sentence

So only people who contribute to a magazine have the right to comment on it? This news has come as a great relief to me, I must say.

For a second there I was actually thinking something other than Kid A might win :/

Great work tho.

Yes, John, that's absolutely the kernel of truth at the heart of my post to Lex, a great universal conclusion based on a particular relationship between 2 people and 1 thing.

Lex: who knows whether that would have been published if you'd submitted a ballot? We're into chaos theory here now, butterfly effect bollocks. I wanted you to contribute a ballot, and hopefully blurbs too. I was desperate for you to do so, and you didn't manage it. With your ballot the ordering may well be different, and if you'd been blurb-writing then the allocation of those blurbs would be different and Tal may not have written that.

Regardless, that sentence is how that writer feels about that thing; you feel differently. He gets a different emotional response to something than you do.

Ignoring the sentence about Burial I'd kind of agree with the first bit except that Soul music has always traded on a disconnect between lyrical "content" and musical expression. In fact music throughout time has done this afaic

bullshit, whoever edited that had the chance to edit out something which is prejudiced, lazy bollocks, and they didn't

But yes, on a wider scale, the practical side of getting stuff up and published could have done with a lot more work; that this was a one-off with established systems of operation has hampered us quite a lot, and I think in the flurry of emails some things have been published at different stages of evolution. You're bound to get snags; the fact that everyone has done this around dayjobs and seasonal commitments warms the cockles of my heart, though. If there are a few copy-editing kinks, they'll be ironed out and the version that sits there for posterity over the next 20 months will be fine and dandy.

Nate DeYoung, who built the site and uploaded the content, has done an amazing job, as has Miguel Jiron, the illustrator, Todd H, Alfred, and Derek M, the editors and whip-crackers, all the writers, all the voters (not all could blurb as well), jaymc and Andrew Unterberger (who matriculated both lists), and anyone else who had input who I've forgotten. And all for nothing more than love.

Lex how on earth is that prejudiced?

with = without in first line of my post a moment ago, btw.

it isn't prejudiced.

wasn't lex's famous 'four sweaty white boys with guitars should die' or whatever it was on stylus more prejudiced and more deserving of editing? when someone says something that may annoy other people on the internet in a forest does it make a sound (i need caffiene and this is stupid)

props on vespertine and ante up

No, no, Lex is right. It's much easier and much more fun to complain.

Anyway, if you've not read this essay - http://thestylusdecade.com/apocalypsesky.html - you should correct that now.

Folks on rolling metal thread spent a fair bit of time clowning him the other week, I think it's safe to assume he read it

Quite enjoyed that though, probably due to it not hinging on his opinions about things

Stylus' pop love was always more apparent than real. We had a louder claque than everyone else, but its inability to make a serious beachhead explains the results of the list (and why a handful of our writers fit so well in Pitchfork).

Sorry guys, but these lists are even worse than Pitchfork's. 'Kid A' again? 'Ignition' as the song of the decade?
The singles top 20 is just as bad as The Lex would have voted for it.

Consensus, meet it's-a-bitch, and I hope you two are happy.

trying to imagine a list where Chocolate Factory is best album and Idioteque best single

What's wrong with that R&B sentence (other than it ignores the fact that BALLADS exist)? It's not a criticism - disconnect between lyrical content and music is part and parcel of pop, look at New Order ffs, look at the Pet Shop Boys.

c'mon it is very clearly meant as a denigration

Really? I'm not buying that.

even if it is, saying you don't like something is part of what critics do.

(I mean, I don't think it really matters given that R&B doesn't need critical orthodoxy and never has, especially from something like Stylus)

yes why even bother taking it seriously

do you really believe that?

Lex, at this point in the history / evolution of the persona, is now far more reactionary, small-minded, and defensive than the things he's bemoaning for being reactionary, small-minded, and defensive. But we knew that already.

Sorry Alfred, but I've never understood this love for 'Ignition'. And you couldn't answer your question ("So what does “Ignition” do better than not just every R.Kelly single of the last ten years, but every other single?") in your ballot either.
(Perhaps because I'm living in a country without black population, I still can't see any "revolutionary" in r&b, and find this choice a way exaggerated. This song didn't have any peculiar "cultural impact" or so like Outkast had, I haven't heard this song on the radio - or heard just forgot because it was so generic.)

Why not? It's essentially exactly the same argument you make when Tim complains about certain critics getting excited about post-dubstep house and techno and not taking UK funky seriously. (xpost)

a calamity of music journalism

The worst kind of calamity!

ignition was massive in the uk and there are a lot of british writers on stylus. pretty sure in ireland that it is the only r kelly single that is known by most ppl, maybe i believe i can fly or the worlds greatest, but only cos of the movies they were in rilly

I mean, the difference being that UK funky could probably do with that sort of critical support and the multi-million pound globally successful and utterly ubiquitous R&B industry really doesn't. You're making an underdog out of a triumphant winner.

I never got Ignition either (and didn't vote for it at all), but I'm kind of glad it won.

only if you believe the sole purpose of criticism is to help sell records - of course this is important but that is not why you or anyone else reads music writing

xp

"ignition was massive in the uk and there are a lot of british writers on stylus. pretty sure in ireland that it is the only r kelly single that is known by most ppl, maybe i believe i can fly or the worlds greatest, but only cos of the movies they were in rilly

― plaxico (I know, right?), 2010. január 8."

Perhaps this shows that globalization is still has a way to go. I've lived in the whole decade in the conviction that 'Ignition' was never a big hit. Wow.

if r kelly wasn't an evil child fucker then ignition would be the greatest song ever

Nick, why are you glad then? I'm really curious.

also it's nice to know that there's a world where electrik red, richgirl, vistoso bosses, cassie, meshell ndegéocello, teedra moses, tweet, j*davey, lloyd et al are "globally successful and utterly ubiquitous" but sadly it is not the actual real world

xps to matt

Why not? It's essentially exactly the same argument you make when Tim complains about certain critics getting excited about post-dubstep house and techno and not taking UK funky seriously.

my argument here is that people DO take uk funky seriously, it's just that post-dubstep bobbins is good too, so it's not actually as sidelined as tim thinks it is.

whereas in terms of critical respect, r&b and soul are definitely sidelined - either ignored or dismissed or seen as inherently flawed genres.

and the reason i'd like this not to be so is that i'd quite like to see a lot more smart writing about great music

Yeah but a lot of those acts can't even sell records or get adequate promotion IN AMERICA which means there is a different and bigger and more significant problem which would be a far better target for your critical ire than whether they fit into the indie crit canon. You're railing against the wrong enemy here.

why does 'smart writing about great music' always seem to equal 'opinions i agree with about music i like'

That said I've got so used to eyerolling at lazy criticism of dance music that it barely registers by now. It actually doesn't really matter.

oh i am angry w/the music industry as well - this is a recurring theme with me, surely you know by now! - but that's an entirely separate issue! ideally i'd like my favourite music to sell well and get critical respect, but these two things shouldn't have anything to do with each other. i mean most publications don't seem to have any problem with covering lots of other relatively obscure acts, right?

i wasn't aware that stylus considered itself an indie-specific site - nick, do you consider it indie-specific?

This is all very amusing given the rnb single at #1 in the list (undeservedly so IMO).

zeus; Just because everyone at Stylus loved it at the time - it was a single that seemed ubiquitous both on TV and radio where I was, and in the internet circles I moved in, especially the ones with Stylus writers. I'm glad it won because it's a very Stylus choice, if that makes sense.

I think, when you organise a list like this, you become very... comfortable, with the idea that the list is the product of consensus, and thus not going to be very close to your own choices. Or, at least, very much less enraged by "where's my fucking favourite, are you saying I don't matter?!" thoughts.

ideally i'd like my favourite music to sell well and get critical respect

this seems like a rubbish objection

Lex; I thought Stylus was some poncey Wire-esque publication when I started writing for it, dealing mainly with uber-obscure and experimental electronic bollocks that no one buys. Obv. that changed quite a lot. I'd say that we were "independent"; take that how you like.

like, so do the ppl who make these lists, which is why they picked music they liked, this seems kinda obvious

Lex; if people who want to write reasoned and intelligent and OTM criticism about r'n'b etc actually wrote it as much as people who want to write pointless verbiage about shitty ego-indie wrote that, then, y'know, it'd exist.