The All-New STYLUS.

Not banned at the moment iirc

But anyhow, let's not make this thread about her eh?

would be kinda poetic if it were to mirror the p4k thread in that regard tho

It would also be boring, tiresome and assholish.

Simon Reynolds:

The Stylus Decade was a jolly good read, but, um, those results. Meaning the Top 20 albums. The same old names. And, again, that syndrome I noticed in Pitchfork's and a fair few other Noughties surveys: thirteen out of the top twenty from 2000/2001/2002.

More commentary & his ballots:

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2010/01/stylus-decade-was-jolly-good-read-but.html

I agree with him, but it was always a potential risk with so many Stylus alum now at P4k.

SR playing the stopped clock telling the time, there.

having already had this debate on the p4k thread though, it seems even more pointless now; no one really seems invested in doing anything to alter the status quo, leaving those of us who are interested in the critical world, lists and cultural commentary but who feel inadequately represented, taste-wise, by what they inevitably end up as, with no options except a) bitching pointlessly b) ignoring completely.

9/ The Good The Bad and the Queen - s/t

Really don't get how this is rated so highly.

I don't understand the "same old names" objection, isn't it just a sign of a critical consensus emerging?

as for "thirteen out of the top twenty from 2000/2001/2002" isn't that to be expected given that an album needs a few years before its true quality can be evaluated?

leaving those of us who are interested in the critical world, lists and cultural commentary but who feel inadequately represented, taste-wise

You were asked to contribute and didn't, dude. Don't know what else I can do on his front.

re-do it?

dim to make the "same old names" complaint. how could it be otherwise?

Andy K's list (posted on the decades list thread) is a great example of a list that actually feels weighted towards the end of the decade, not to mention being equal parts perverse and brilliant.

(the cumulative stylus top 20 i mean. of course it will represent a consensus.)

oh yeah, obv it's unlikely to happen with a collective list.

What were the top albums on the 90s polls? I imagine there was the same phenomenon e.g. Nevermind / Loveless / Blue Lines etc.

all 1991!

iirc END OF MILLENNIUM/CENTURY trumped trivial END OF DECADE concerns. plus they hadn't invented the internets then, not really.

iirc which i probably don't ok computer swept 90s polls?

for a collective list you could get everyone to just list their top 2 or 3 albums from each year and do it that way.

yeah, plus the ones tim named, screamadelica, maxinquaye... thank god the strokes and white stripes came along and saved music.

xp

Yeah obv 'OK Computer' won a lot of polls. Off the top of my head I'm assuming this would be the usual top picks for the 90s (chronologically):

Fear Of A Black Planet (if any rap at all)
Nevermind
Loveless
Blue Lines
Screamadelica (if in the UK)
Automatic For The People
Illmatic (if any rap at all)
Parklife / Definitely Maybe (if in the UK)
Maxinquaye
OK Computer
Deserter's Songs

Any obvious ones I'm missing?

iirc which i probably don't ok computer swept 90s polls?

― Karen Tregaskin, Thursday, 14 January 2010 13:08 (10 minutes ago)

It did, but the 00s methods of consumption would pretty much preclude any album / band from doing that these days.

Anyway, my response to Reynolds - http://sickmouthy.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/the-stylus-decade-rip/

Any obvious ones I'm missing?

i don't think FOABP would do that well tbh - Enter The Wu-Tang would tho (as it did on ILM's own 90s poll), way ahead of any other 90s rap LP

Any obvious ones I'm missing?

wu-tang? where i was, n e way, they were a bigger deal than nas.

ha xp

i mean way ahead just in terms of getting vote love. Raekwon might do as well as Nas too.

Oh yeah, that's a totally obvious one - Wu-Tang I mean.

Dunno about Raekwon, that seems more the choice of people who actually collect Wu-Tang member albums.

well that's quite a few people! esp. critics, but yeah

'The Chronic' should poll as well as '36 Chambers', but i guess so should a dozen other rap LPs

Odelay?

'should' as in i would expect it to given its critical status (acknowledged as classic, ground-breaking even...yet not in ways that Wu-Tang are). xp

odelay otm

My memory of 90s polls was always that the dance and rap choices (at the top of the lists at any rate) felt, hyper-tokenistic, as if the rock critics involved had only ever heard a max of five records in each category. Maybe this is a false memory though.

But yeah, no Dre, no Biggie, no Tupac.

Odelay definitely.

My memory of 90s polls was always that the dance and rap choices (at the top of the lists at any rate) felt, hyper-tokenistic, as if the rock critics involved had only ever heard a max of five records in each category

they still do (viz., the blueprint 3 showing up anywhere at all)

i'm bored of rock critics and the critical consensus. is it going to change or become more interesting any time soon? and when will this be?

My memory of 90s polls was always that the dance and rap choices (at the top of the lists at any rate) felt, hyper-tokenistic, as if the rock critics involved had only ever heard a max of five records in each category.

yeah... i sympathize with 'em though. i used to f/w rap but wouldn't say jay-z had made a great album.

i think by 1999 the big dance album acts (underworld, leftfield, orbital) were out of fashion, but they had been EOY staples.

Seemingly, Lex, people just don't want to read or write about r'n'b albums as much. I'm not sure this qualifies as some kind of ghettoisation.

people with indie-centric backgrounds (regardless of their broad taste), at least (not a diss)

What about in general though; is there an r'n'b equivalent to Pitchfork? Mojo? Uncut?

spelling it out, consumers of music journalism tend not to like r/n/b.

because they're racist.

hahahahahaha

re 90s love : Dummy by Portishead.

surely that got a lot of love by the end of the decade ?

xposts yeah that's the thing, not sure whether there are really enough people who don't fit that description interested in challenging it or just trying to balance it. this came up on pfk thread and other places already and the only answer is for a (for argument's sake) 'soul-centric' critical movement to get big enough to match the platform of those mags and engage their audience in the same way (making them give more of a shit about polls, canon etc.). or be like FACT and balance the scales more genre-wise but then you still have predictable choices at the top.

the argument will never end, but i guess i'm guessing that the core audience for r/n/b doesn't read that much about music. would welcome contradiction, but, j/s, if there were a market for it, wouldn't someone be tapping it?

The "trouble" with R&B is that it's impossible to write about it even passably without some acknowledgment of the value of playing with (rather than appearing to break with) convention. Not that, like, indie rock is breaking with convention every five minutes either, but its approach just sits better with the entire underlying thrust of rock crit both historically and today.

Saw some old Lester Bang talking head footage tonight and he was hating on disco as some kind of zombiefied betrayal of the incendiary rebellious underground black music of the 1950s and I just wanted to go back in time and slap some sense into him.

Youtube commentary suggests that R&B fans are not at all interested in playing with convention and are more interested in R&B as some kind of spiritual communication device - the biggest difference between R&B and rock in that regard is that with rock (and not just indie-), rock crit modes of thought have filtered down to the general public who espouse rock crit 101 without even realising it, whereas this is much less true with R&B where it's like the languages being spoken w/r/t the same record can be very different.

Hoping that rock crit will drop its narrative of progress all of a sudden is prob. a fool's errand - Lex I think you may be quite unusual amongst established/successful rock critics insofar as you are both (essentially) a subjectivist and thoroughly convinced of your absolute rightness - i.e. for you there is no particular reason why R&B is better than indie-rock outside of the fact that you love the sounds of the former and you hate the sounds of the latter. Whereas a lot of critics rely on meta-theories, acknowledged or otherwise, to explain their genre-leanings.

Yeah the cultural differences can't be under-estimated - they really can be quite jarring to the extent where most mags probably don't think a hyper-consciously balanced list is worth the risk of alienating their audience with their own partisan attitudes.

I still cling to the 'we love everything equally' fantasy tho.

Lex I think you may be quite unusual amongst established/successful rock critics insofar as you are both (essentially) a subjectivist and thoroughly convinced of your absolute rightness - i.e. for you there is no particular reason why R&B is better than indie-rock outside of the fact that you love the sounds of the former and you hate the sounds of the latter. Whereas a lot of critics rely on meta-theories, acknowledged or otherwise, to explain their genre-leanings.

Can you expand on the last point? Explaining my high school tastes in an interview a couple of weeks ago, I remarked that, then and now, I saw no problem with creating a mixtape in which Amy Grant's "Every Heartbeat" followed Meat Beat Manifesto's "Now" and Luther Vandross' "Power of Love/Love Power."

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Andy K's list (posted on the decades list thread) is a great example of a list that actually feels weighted towards the end of the decade, not to mention being equal parts perverse and brilliant.

― Tim F, Thursday, January 14, 2010 6:54 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

could some kind person link to andy k's list? i can't find that thread anymore.

http://blog.allmusic.com/2010/01/11/andy-kellmans-100-favorite-albums-of-2000-2009/