The Pitchfork People's List - top albums 1996-2012

last 'year' - really

One way they could do it that once someone typed "Beastie Boys - Hello Nasty," it would be automatically entered into the database and come up as a suggestion for the next user. Maybe that would create an unusably large database, though?

...could do it IS that once...

lol at you guys wondering what write-in might make it and thinking 'reasonable doubt' and going huh at old pfork not covering d'angelo

― balls, Friday, August 17, 2012 11:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

RD has totally become a retroactive illmatic among the jay-z stans, if any unreviewed rap album makes it it'll be that one

johnny when you construct a poll that has even the staff having to write in not remotely obscure choices in their top ten (among other problems) than that is a poorly constructed poll. nevermind other ways they play into default biases. this thing's alot closer to a drudgereport poll than quinnipac or whatever.

― balls, Saturday, August 18, 2012 12:56 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a poll of the albums in the current archive, not hard 2 understand

Hate Kanye.

And good morning to you.

One way they could do it that once someone typed "Beastie Boys - Hello Nasty," it would be automatically entered into the database and come up as a suggestion for the next user. Maybe that would create an unusably large database, though?

the problem isn't that the database would be large, but that it would be full of the album "smell of bals" by the artist "likk penis"

They could've spent the last year behind the scenes building a database of everything someone might conceivably vote for in this poll they probably cooked up only a short while ago, OR they could just let people write in things. I'd have gone with the latter too.

― Johnny Fever, Saturday, August 18, 2012 2:01 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

last 'year' - really

― balls, Saturday, August 18, 2012 2:03 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As someone whose job is creating a huge database of information for a living, with new information coming in all the time, I can tell you that it's a slow process. Places like Rate Your Music or Discogs weren't created in a week or two. Like I mentioned before, they probably could've set up something to scrape those databases or used Amazon as a backbone or any number of other options, but it's so much easier and cheaper to just let voters write-in albums on their ballots. Especially for something that's just a summer timekiller and a demographic info net.

yeah i know reasonable doubt's rep (not retroactive btw though i understand you were 8 at the time or whatever), i'm just thinking that it might not feature highly among a demo that tbh probably think the black album is the best jay-z album (if not "whichever one has 'niggas in paris' on it"), write-in factor (which it apparently might surprise some ppl actually works as a big hurdle for respondents in polling) seals it.

xxp Fair point, but each person wouldn't necessarily know that their unmatched entries were being added.

johnny explaining why it's half assed or poorly designed isn't really working as an argument against 'this poll is half assed and poorly designed'. well aware that pfork is lazy and has no incentive to be otherwise (again, 'amy phillips, senior news editor').

a) I don't know why you're taking such issue with the fact their database isn't all-encompassing.
b) Did Amy Phillips shit on your rug? I know she wrote the terrible Sonic Youth article a decade ago, but damn.

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/090eb47f/

Didn't realise that the voting would close so soon, otherwise some of the final positions would change. Top 20 looks about right.

i'm not taking such issue w/ the fact their database isn't all-encompassing. i merely pointed out that this poll is poorly designed and half assed in standard pfork fashion. to which capn-save-a-poll jumped in and said 'b-b-but doing it another way might require WORK!' to which i responded this doesn't really argue against my point at which time you decided to disagree w/ a straw man instead. if one of the interns in my lab read some tubes at the spec for me but didn't validate the spec ('work') and o yeah the readings were out of range and they couldn't be bothered to do dilutions ('work') and o yeah they read it at 450nm instead of 280nm i wouldn't regard the data as valid or their performance as anything other than poor and half assed. if the point of this exercise was to gather any kind of accurate data about their readers they've failed in nearly every way a poll can fail at this (all encompassing database wouldn't solve it and isn't necessary). if the point of this was to create some buzz and build the brand than maybe they've succeeded (big maybe). eg requiring all choices to be written in would help the former cause of data gathering but hurt the latter cause by making this exercise much less user friendly. i was merely noting that putting a finger on the scale, nevermind five fingers, can skew the results and that in this case that the results would probably be skewed in a way favorable to how pfork would like to present itself and that this might prompt suspicion if one wasn't pretty sure that this poor design was due to incompetence and not cunning.

lol. poll more than likely did what it said out to do. complaints that it failed to be something else are beside the point.

capn-save-a-poll

lol @ me being nicknamed this after how I routinely create chaos in any poll Algerian Goalkeeper creates.

yeah if the poll was designed to get ppl on facebook and twitter to promote pitchfork it succeeded (maybe? i literally don't know anyone non-ilx who gave a fuck about this and i live in a place where their black kids review was a major topic of conversation), if the poll was designed to survey their readership's opinion of the best records of the pfork era and by doing so provide the world w/ a 'people's list' than it's a highly flawed (but not useless and for the triviality of the task almost definitely good enough) model.

seriously nowhere near as perturbed by this issue as i am by this: the jason alexander body double in this nickelback video is a really poor jason alexander body double imo

Just realised I voted for completely the wrong spoon album and forgot 'in a beautiful place out in the country'. Fuck. My. Life.

Completely forgot Mahogany. Bah.

Would really like a cross-rating system whereby one could check one's musical compatibility with other posters (e.g. in order to decide whether to take their musical opinions seriously or not) that came up with a percentile match based on albums and/or artists listed.

(Would also like ability to put in a facility for posters' particular bugbears like "no rap except Kanye" mentioned above or "has no female artists in their top 10/fewer than 10% in whole list" for me or "slags off Radiohead but still put OK Computer in their list" for Melissa or Turangalila)

http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/090eb47f/

Didn't realise that the voting would close so soon, otherwise some of the final positions would change. Top 20 looks about right.

― fun loving and xtremely tolrant (Billy Dods)

Great list. Especially pleased to see another vote for Beyond The Sun and a great choice for your number one.

My female artists as a proportion of overall list is 23% (counting stuff like Hole and Gang Gang Dance). Not sure if that's low or high or what.

If I were at work, I'd get out a spreadsheet and work out the average (I should have started one while I was bored at work yesterday.) I have a gut feeling it's higher than average (from a lifetime spent calculating the female content of critics' lists, it's often a depressing 10% - obviously depending on genre. Pop and R&B lists tend to slant higher.)

I only placed 17 female artists in my top 90, so not that good really.

It's an impossible percentage to even calculate because (this comes up every time) how do you even define "female artist" - like, can you count a sole female singer fronting an otherwise all male band? What about duos of one female/one male songwriter (an arrangement which makes up a great deal of my list.) What about artists that are two blokes, but routinely use a shifting series of female singers? (Thinking of Basement Jaxx e.g.) Is that better because female voices are included, or is it worse because the blokes are the named artists while the women are so anonymised they don't even get named? What counts? Does having a female violin player in your backing band count? I only know what doesn't count.

I mean, I had a bit of a panic when I got to about 40 and I was all "OMG, I have included ~no men~!!!" and went to throw in some Aphex Twin and FlyLo, but then realised that SVIIB, The Knife, Medicine, Goldfrapp - the bulk of the artists in my top 10 were female/male duos.

But I do think that it says something about a person's taste, and what they recognise as worth counting when I see a list which is 90% all-male groups. It's not even that I think they're deliberately excluding females - and in some ways throwing in a token is kind of worse, because it's a kind of "look, I've addressed this!" with a last-minute impulse when really they haven't addressed it at all. It's more the idea that in their day to day listening and counting and judging-of-merit they just do not encounter or include female voices at all. That does say a lot to me about a person and what they value.

Anyway, it's an observation, not an invitation to a clusterfuck, so please take it with several thousand grains of salt.

yeah i know reasonable doubt's rep (not retroactive btw though i understand you were 8 at the time or whatever), i'm just thinking that it might not feature highly among a demo that tbh probably think the black album is the best jay-z album (if not "whichever one has 'niggas in paris' on it"), write-in factor (which it apparently might surprise some ppl actually works as a big hurdle for respondents in polling) seals it.

― balls, Saturday, August 18, 2012 1:12 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was 13. & no, reasonable doubt was not considered the new illmatic at the time

no one gave 2 fuxx about jay-z like THAT till hard knock life

My female artists as a proportion of overall list is 23% (counting stuff like Hole and Gang Gang Dance). Not sure if that's low or high or what.

― Tim F, Saturday, August 18, 2012 4:30 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

that strikes me as low because you seem to heavily favor female artists (compared to someone like me, anyway, and i'm at 17%)

gah, came to the library this morning just to do this (stupid work PC has such an out of date browser it couldn't handle the software though I could view everyone else's lists) only to find that entries are closed. Stupid pfork.

yeah I've been away for a week and spent this morning reading this thread and looking at everyone's lists and jotting some favourites down into a text file to do my own... and then realised halfway down the thread voting is closed.

I mean I am not a super-regular p4k reader so, sure, the poll wasn't intended for me anyway, but I liked the delusion that I could bump some favourites up the ranking or that a treasured obscurity would somehow creep into someone else's worldview because of being at #37 on a list compiled by someone they've never heard of

I was prepared to come in here all defensive about how I listen to a ton of female artists even if my ballot doesn't necessarily reflect that, but then I counted and realized that over half of my votes went to solo females/female-fronted bands/male-female duos and that my #1 was Charlotte Hatherley so I figure I'm off the hook. I'll blame any dearth of racial diversity on Pitchfork, though (they didn't have any of the '60s-'70s r&b I've spent most of the year listening to in their database).

ooh, Sick Mouthy's first list is loaded with albums i like! probably only a handful are what i would actually put in my top 100 but if the one's i know already reflect your taste i should probably get to downloading some of yer recommended indie electronica selections post haste

I lol'd:
http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/11fc973b/

I just got in under the wire, which means I can't tamper with it. Which is both annoying and a relief. https://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/b8261215/

i only wound up with 17 female artists (or bands w prominent female members) in my list of 100. while that's a disappointingly low ratio, it's probably an accurate reflection of my day-to-day listening. to some extent that's a product of genre. i like metal, garage rock and "american primitive" guitar stuff, genres in which female artists are a decided minority. nevertheless, that feels like an excuse as much as an explanation.

they didn't have any of the '60s-'70s r&b I've spent most of the year listening to in their database

Probably because '60s-'70s R&B doesn't really fit the remit of a '96-'11 poll.

Joeks, emil.y. Joeks.

32 of my albums were by female artists or female-anchored bands.

I just checked my list and I'm actually quite shocked that 51% is made up of all-male groups/male solo artists, whereas only 8% is all-female. The remaining 41% of mixed artists I divided into completely mixed (15%), male-fronted (12%) and female-fronted (14%), though my definition of 'fronted' kind of changed depending on the sort of act...

Just realized that much of my 'female-fronted' percentage is represented by Broadcast and Deerhoof, who collectively compose a whopping 10% of my ballot. Guess I'm a fan.

Now That's What I Call Female-Fronted Bands!, Vol. 32

90% of my album covers were female-fronted, or specifically featured the front of a female. The other 10% featured penises.

doing this I realised I listened to a lot fewer women ten years ago

continuing defensively from my last post...

i listen to rap more than R&B, guitar rock at least as much as modern indie, electronic music and chartpop. these are habits as much as they are considered expressions of taste. not sure whether i'm attracted to male-dominated genres because or in spite of the gender imbalance, but that feels like a dodge and it's beside the point anyway. i could have made room for portishead's third, melt banana's cell-scape, joanna newsom's milk-eyed mender, cat power's moon pix, goldfrapp's felt mountain and the fourth angel in heavy syrup album, all of which i've spent a good deal of time with during the last decade and a half.

and the bellrays' let it blast is a top-ten favorite that i just plain forgot. fuck. what i get for doing this at the last minute >:[

I would really love to see the compiled ILXor-specific results of this particular poll, if anyone has scads of free time and the hyperanal determination to see it through.

I don't think I'd ever give anybody the business over a tendency towards listening to more music from a particular gender or race than another (although a Skr3wdr1ver album in their collection would certainly be cause for alarm). I probably tend to listen to a fair number of female-oriented artists because I'm not a very dude-y brah, but I'm sure a lot of guys are probably much more drawn to testosterock. I don't tend to listen to much current r&b or hip hop, but (as hinted at above) old school r&b is very nearly my personal popular music high-water mark. At any rate, I'm not sure that a whole lot can be legitimately discerned about gender/racial bias based on the 50-100 albums that someone cherrypicked from a 15-year span of time.

It's an impossible percentage to even calculate because (this comes up every time) how do you even define "female artist" - like, can you count a sole female singer fronting an otherwise all male band? What about duos of one female/one male songwriter (an arrangement which makes up a great deal of my list.) What about artists that are two blokes, but routinely use a shifting series of female singers?

Yeah I had this problem - I'm on about 20% but quite a few of those are bands featuring a combination of male and female voices (e.g. Low, New Pornographers) or female vocalists collaborating with male producers (Aaliyah, Electrik Red).

Never mind the fact that there are very few legitimately solo albums and therefore very few albums sans artistic collaborators. And artistic collaborators tend at least half of the time to be male. I can't even imagine what might count as a legitimately female-only album on my ballot.

More female producers and session musicians now!

Considering this is a "people's poll" and not an official critic's end-of-year/end-of-decade round-up, I don't think you should feel pressured toward gender- or genre-neutrality.