Pitchfork: The Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s: 20-01

by "this" i meant alfred's initial response to KDT.

not history mayne's inability to properly listen to music

Thanks for your dismissal of my personal reaction to a song as "a dismissal". It was not a dismissal, it was a pretty powerful disillusioning - which was probably rather important for me to make at that age, and in that time and place. I'm not denying that that song was, certainly, a generational moment. However, it did mark for me the moment (along with Grunge Boutiques in Macy's and the like) that I realised that anything and everything could/would be coopted by the mainstream, that I wasn't so unique and that I should stop being such a fucking snob about music because many of the lines were absolutely arbitrary and "indie" or "alternative" or whatever it was that I'd been a part of in the late 80s and early 90s was really just one lifestyle choice among others.

i was 13 when 'loser' 'dropped', felt it was something of a parody?

Karen, no offense, but that disillusionment seems like a good thing in retrospect, no?

wasn't beck's fault, either, cuz he was clearly & authentically of my generation & culture, but he was one of the first examples of what i then thought of as "my" outsider/slacker/indie-refusenik youth culture and values being sold back at me by the dreaded "mainstream". it was somewhat jarring in that sense.

Yes. This ^^^^^^^^

It was that sense of having your own self-generated culture sold back to you that I disliked, not the song. The song was actually pretty catchy.

Karen, no offense, but that disillusionment seems like a good thing in retrospect, no?

This was my ENTIRE point.

So then, thank you, record company!

Not really, no.

i was 13 when 'loser' 'dropped', felt it was something of a parody?

it totally was, but it was a clever insider's self-mockery. delivered to us from one of us, if you will. the otm wit was a big part of what made it feel so weirdly intrustive on pop radio. plus awesome. still love it, btw, though not as much.

As for Neutral Milk Hotel, still haven't heard'em, don't remember'em at all at the time. Were their tapes passed around in college dorms or something? Were they played on college radio?

kind of glossing over the parallel doublethink required, because at the same time is was SO FUCKING GREAT to see this stuff beginning to break through to the mainstream, to see "kool thing" on MTV and trade secret tapes of nevermind demos while waiting for it to officially drop.

speaking of tapes.

and yes, afred, college students passed neutral milk hotel demos around as if they were doobies

once again, there is a huge transatlantic divide on this [via the bbc]

I remember similar sort of phenomena, but the reaction to this stuff starting to break through to the meainstream wasn't so much "SO FUCKING GREAT!" but "Oh shit, we're about to get really completely screwed, aren't we?"

Perhaps that's down to indie snobbery, perhaps that was the cynicism that would haunt my generation. But my personal reaction to the sight of the kind of people who used to beat me up in high school suddenly walking around in Kurt Cobain t-shirts was "oh fucking shit, end times" rather than untrammelled joy.

Downloaded Neutral Milk Hotel years ago after it came high in an ILX poll. I remember them nearly as dull as The National.

now that's just mean

Sorry!

I remember when Neutral Milk Hotel came out - I think I read an article about Tribe 8 in like Relix or something - but I could never find any of their albums and Olivia Treble Control was a better band name anyway. Every now and again, someone extols the genius of "The Aeroplane Flies High (Turns Left, Looks Right)" to me and I'll go check out some song samples on iTunes, but it's always really unremarkable.

Olivia Treble Control was a better band name anyway.

it is kinda better than their actual name

my horribly-formed attempt at one of those faux-naive skot seward posts.

I'd pick any number of the >20 tracks before these, but from this list I'll go MBV. Stunning piece of music, one of my favourite album openings ever.

Enjoy the Silence.

'da funk' -- then aaliyah

at least the mood im in right now. i think i voted 'g thang' highest on my ballot

Went with Hyperballad, btw, but I'm really having a good time listening to this Enjoy the Silence youtube. I haven't heard this song in years, but it's pretty dope.

just to say a few words in defense of NMH...

I don't know how that album went down in the US when it was released, I've always presumed it was a modest, cult success. I remember seeing them support Olivia Tremor Control at the Garage in 1998, and being entirely blown away by them. In the context of those times, you didn't often see 8-piece groups with musical saws and hobbit-looking dudes playing tubas onstage, so that was remarkable. But there was something so joyous and unhinged about the performance, swinging hard between chaos and melody: I remember the drummer playing these crazily overloaded drum rolls that were so OTT he had trouble getting back into the rhythm of the song, but somehow it all held together. The songs were great, much better than those of OTC, and they had none of that group's antiseptic slavery to a single style and moment - NMH seemed gloriously alive by comparison.

I got the album, and loved it. I remember pushing hard to write about them while I was at Melody Maker, but was turned down, and told that others in the office thought they sounded like the panpipe group from The Fast Show. An editor at The Times was more understanding at let me write some end of year blurbs about them. I was pretty obsessed with the record, but in the UK, it just seemed to pass by under the radar. I was a pretty dedicated partisan for their cause, putting their songs on mix-tapes I made for friends. If I was interviewing a musician I thought would appreciate their music, I'd make 'em cassettes, most of which probably ended up discarded and unlistened on the floors of tourvans. But if that artist turned round and said they already loved the album, it was a pretty big thrill, and would often result in long discussions about the unheralded magic of NMH, this brilliant secret were were lucky enough to be in on.

I'm really not surprised that the album has enjoyed such acclaim in the years since it was released. The 'concept' behind the songs - that Jeff Mangum was so inspired by reading the Diary Of Anne Frank that he penned this album-length treatise of love'n'death/fantasy that he travelled back in time to try and save her - is both opaque and alluring, and, of course, makes for both good copy and at-length decoding by obsessive fans. Jeff Mangum's own subsequent non-career and silence, full of mystery and hints of tragedy, also makes for a great story - the doomed artist and his final folly, etc etc. It's an archetypal 'lost album', if you like. And you'd be crazy to deny its influence on indie groups (many of whom I detest) that have followed.

I still think its a marvellous record, though I don't play it often now, as I perhaps played it too much a decade or so ago. I can't deny that it still moves me today, when I do hear songs from it, and even a track as outwardly-ebullient as 'Holland 1945' remains affecting, not least for the poetry of Jeff's lyrics, and the sentiments and stories its telling.

I mean all the above is corny as hell, but its also the truth

Say what you want about this list but the inevitable torrent compilation is going to kick ass.

Sometimes > Only Shallow, voted for Loser for old time's sake. Bought the CD single because I would usually rather get 2 singles than one album with my $12 for music.

I still think its a marvellous record, though I don't play it often now, as I perhaps played it too much a decade or so ago. I can't deny that it still moves me today, when I do hear songs from it, and even a track as outwardly-ebullient as 'Holland 1945' remains affecting, not least for the poetry of Jeff's lyrics, and the sentiments and stories its telling.

QFT

xp: The Loser CD single was dope too! The alternate version of Soul Suckin' Jerk is soooo much better than the album version.

re: NMH, i got the holland 7" before the album and was v excited, the album was subsequently a ridiculous disappointment to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_5nNQmszDw

between gold soundz and juicy for me

I bought the first Neutral Milk Hotel album after reading a rave review in Spin or Magnet, liked a couple tunes but didn't really see the big fuss and then proceeded to ignore them for the next couple of years, only later realizing that In the Aeroplane had become an indie touchstone.

At the same time, the Elephant 6 collective as a whole was definitely a *thing* if you paid attention to US indie in the late 90s. I mean, I skipped In the Aeroplane in 1998 but I did buy Olivia Tremor Control's Black Foliage.

"Loser"

Sorry, autogoons

In ILMverse I would assume "Enjoy" will take this handily.

'da funk' or 'midnight iapw' for me

lot of those choices, mbv, outkast, b.i.g., don't seem right to me, and very few of the rap choices blew up in the uk, at least from the perspective i had -- some of them i heard later -- whereas 'da funk' and 'midnight were everywhere when i was 16/17.

aaliyah, even though it isn't even the aaliyah single that made my own top ten for this thing.

the NMH song is one of my all-time favorites; has been for years. Try Again wd be the Aaliyah song that would have made me think about changing my mind...

i want to read more on why k8 hates "common people" because whenever people talk about pulp these days there's a really really strong assumption that *everyone* loves them, that you *should* love them and jarvis cunting cocker is a national treasure and wise man of letters, which is BULLLLSHIT, so yeah, k8, if you have time?

i was 11 when "loser" was released - surprising, thought i was older, but at any rate i had no conception of the music press or indie or whatever it meant, i just thought it was HILARIOUSLY PATHETIC. and i was right, c'mon, to like that song you really have to hate yourself.

xp "Try Again" came out in 2000.

yes good job maintaining the same mindset/attitude you had at 11, lex.

atlex shrugged

dyslexia more like

i still love janet & luther's "the best things in life are free" with all my heart, which iirc i did at 11 too

to like that song you really have to hate yourself.

Ha what? Most of what I liked about Beck in the '90s (indeed, starting with "Loser") was his collage-like aesthetic in both words and sound. "Loser" is a triumph of great nonsense.

lex, you know you're making the same assumptions about the audience for this shit as the Ashlee and Taylor haters, right?

I assume you have heard the grateful dead?

oops wrong thread hehe

btw these arguments still going?

even the P&J arguments dont last this long. Pitchfork must be really special to posters on ILM

deej you can rockcrit this shit all you want but if you ask your average outkast fan to name five kast songs from the 90s this woouldn't be one

― k3vin k., Thursday, September 16, 2010 12:45 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

bulllllshit

i still hear this one at clubs btw -- awesome 'end of the night' jam (i think i posted this somewhere)

way more than i hear rosa parks

deej has been otm itt

iet

yeah, def the 90s outkast jam i hear out the most. not sure kevin is old enough to go to clubs tho, so won't hold that point against him.

lol

the zinged becomes the zinger

i have never heard this song outside of me playing my own copy of aquemini, so ¯\(°_°)/¯

we're talking about strip clubs, right?

Midnight In A Perfect World is gorgeous, it's one of the few tracks on Endtroducing that's aged well.

^^^

played it about an hour ago and i can't remember how it went. as with weezer and pavement and belle and sebastian, totally unremarkable piece of music.

you're dumb.