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

ugh, sorry, what a horribly formed 'post'

All caps when you spell the album's name (anyone else put Madvillainy at #1?):
https://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/cf710159/

Hi Craig, sorry I missed you last night

No prob, Owen (btw, I'm contemplating hitching a ride to Hamilton in a few weeks to watch you et tes mouches play--have had fun at Supercrawl before </thread derail>)

nice to see Tim Hecker on so many lists; i don't think he's discussed much on ilm.

Craig good on you for remembering "Music is rotted one note" that is a forgotten former love if I've ever seen one

I must admit, if I'd bothered to write in/add records not already in the P4K ballot system database my list would've looked pretty different (and would've taken hours longer to complete).

what surprised me about my list, timeline-wise, was 2003-'05 having a heavier presence than '00-'02, which was not the case when i did a '00s decade list a couple years ago.

1999 to 2002 pretty much killed everything else on mine, which i was not surprised about in the least.

http://i48.tinypic.com/30a8dmt.jpg
Wendy Van Camp | August 19, 2012 at 3:31 pm | Reply
If you want to try some interesting female singers, I can recommend “Indigo Girls” to you. Excellent vocals. I found your conjecture about if you are a racist or not to be interesting. Why think that about yourself? If you are white and male does society automatically feel there is something wrong with you and you MUST feel guilt about the race and gender to which you were born? Is that not also racism? Perhaps it is time that we all feel equally good about ourselves. Dr. King said it best: let the measure of a man’s character be how we judge, not the color of his skin.

Gotta love blog comments.

the scales have fallen from my eyes

so who is wendy van camp on ilx again?

i don't care if you're black, white, purple, indigo

I thought it was you.

if you sing about your penis or putting it in things, fuck you

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v681/blusapphire/Prince/Tongue-40.gif

I can recommend “Indigo Girls” to you. Excellent vocals.

otm

indigo girls laid the groundwork for dave fm

nice to see Tim Hecker on so many lists; i don't think he's discussed much on ilm.

Harmony In Ultraviolet was one of the last albums I cut from my ballot, unfortunately.

you know i think this whole thing was awesome b/c all weekend i've just been listening to records on my list and on your guys' lists and thinking "this album rules" to myself every few seconds

like any project that makes me feel compelled to listen to celebrity skin, beaucoup fish and folie a deux in a day is a totally worthwhile project

somehow i'd missed that you posted yours itt, awesome list

i need to scour this thread just for list links and paste them into a word file.

follow up to last post: i tried pasting a bunch of links into this thread but i got an error message.

I started to analyze the breakdown of my list but basically my tastes are not that exciting to women (only one girlfriend I've had in my lifetime has enjoyed Swans or minimalist drone) so it makes sense that the gender bias would skew heavily male (interestingly though the top ten contains around a third of the women in my list). Also, I hate hip hop & my desire to not muddy my poll w/ re-issues meant that I couldn't include any of the afrobeat / ethiopiques reissues or mississippi records / soul jazz compilations which would have hugely added to the racial diversity of my list.

So there you go. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

An interesting question though. Does anyone know what percentage of records made overall were by women? I fell like that base level would be an interesting figure to compare the percentages people feel guilty about.

basically my tastes are not that exciting to women (only one girlfriend I've had in my lifetime has enjoyed Swans or minimalist drone)

i am a woman and this is v. exciting to me.

I am woman
hear me drone

at this point in my life, the "music enjoyed by my girlfriends" list is probably a lot broader than "music enjoyed by me".

amount of women in your record collection seems very very tied to what types of music you prefer, since the participation of female musicians varies pretty hugely from one genre to another.

how much the musicians you listen to 'look like you' (racially, culturally, etc.) is a little more complicated. my listening habits might be "diverse" by some standard but it's all relative, i know i'm pretty incurious about music from outside America and especially non-English speaking countries.

my desire to not muddy my poll w/ re-issues meant that I couldn't include any of the afrobeat / ethiopiques reissues or mississippi records / soul jazz compilations

God yeah this would have made things even more difficult - I allowed myself compilations/retrospective releases but only if the material on them came inside the '96-'11 time frame. No shortage of great reissue labels these days.

I did my best to leave out reissues but had Calling out of Context on mine because I couldn't omit it and it was never previously released anyway, also African Scream Contest because well not sure.

It pained me to leave out Arthur Russell but if I'd started w. reissues I think at least 95% of my list would have been recorded pre: 1985 which would have defeated the point no matter how accurate an insight into my actual listening habits it would have been.

they should've let us know ahead of time, if you want to be more anonymous you should sign in through twitter

i went with gavin's rule, though i made space for death's for the whole world to see, which wasn't issued in any form until 2009. probably should have included calling out of context for similar reasons. shangaan electro was the only genre compilation i included, allowed because the tracks it comprises are contemporary.

Yeah I had Shangaan Electro too, don't see any reason to exclude compilations of new stuff.

Craig good on you for remembering "Music is rotted one note" that is a forgotten former love if I've ever seen one

― Ówen P., Sunday, 19 August 2012 15:01 (6 hours ago) Permalink

The definition of a 'grower'. Sounds better each time I've given it a go every time since it came out all those years ago. Wish I'd voted it.

Also, I swear I voted for Arcturus's The Sham Mirrors, but I think it got lost down a plughole.

Re: compilations - I had to include bangs & works ii and 2manydjs as I see them both as important in shaping sounds, attitudes etc

UGH I forgot Charlotte Hatherley's The Deep Blue. Bummer. Love that album.

My thoughts on @Sick Mouthy's blog post abt gender/race/class in yr music taste, this bit in particular:

“I’m a white male 30-something and I mostly listen to music made by people like me”; when couched in that terminology, it doesn’t seem outrageous at all.

Idk, man, one (perhaps the biggest) appeal of pop music for me is engaging w/ the world-view of completely DIFFERENT ppl. So listening to Robyn, Dizzee Rascal, Pistol Annies takes me into their worlds, as it were. And hopefully makes me understand them, or their image of themselves, a bit better. But tbh, one of my concerns regarding my taste is the propensity to fetishize these different (more 'authentic', 'relevant') experiences, w/o really understanding them.

Anyway, I agree w/ the "I’m trying not to be. Are you?" mssg. You like what you like, and self-awareness about yr preferences is always A GOOD THING.

Kinda feel left out that I wasn't compelled to do this until exactly after the poll closed... should I post a handmade one here anyway or is it old news by now?

Sorry that was a bit long. For the record, there are plenty of whiny middle-class English boys on my list, so I'm not casting stones at anyone

xpost - sure, do one anyway.

Alright I'll give it a shot!

Idk, man, one (perhaps the biggest) appeal of pop music for me is engaging w/ the world-view of completely DIFFERENT ppl. So listening to Robyn, Dizzee Rascal, Pistol Annies takes me into their worlds, as it were. And hopefully makes me understand them, or their image of themselves, a bit better. But tbh, one of my concerns regarding my taste is the propensity to fetishize these different (more 'authentic', 'relevant') experiences, w/o really understanding them.

Yes is absolutely OTM and a big part of it. The part about attempting to engage with the worldview of people who are not like you. Not as a fetishised others, but in an attempt to understand and normalise the experience of difference. It becomes very easy, if stuff that looks just like you is the only stuff that comes into your sphere, to believe that everyone else is just like you. When we are not. Those experiences are not the default, they are one set of experiences among many many others.

And then there is the other half of it, which is: if you are a straight, white, middle class, male anglophone, it is very *easy* to find a whole lot of material that reflects back your experiences of and perspectives of the world. This stuff is frequently put in a position where it is just routinely considered first, and considered more.

If you are a person who is on the other side of one of those qualities (if you are not-male, not-straight, not-white, not-middle-class or some form of other-than-the-frequently-represented-image) it becomes much harder to find material which does accurately describe or reflect your experiences. Which makes it harder for you to accept and recognise yourself and your experiences as good or even normal. And when the things that *do* represent your experiences are routinely ignored (or even denigrated or put down as just not as worthy) that's even worse.

So, for one group of people, it's "here's a way to explore people that are not like you" and for other groups of people it's "here is the rare place where you *do* see people like you."

It's complicated. What it's *not* is about making people feel guilty. What it *is* about is saying "open yourself to the possibility of multiple viewpoints and experiences."

And then there is the other half of it, which is: if you are a straight, white, middle class, male anglophone, it is very *easy* to find a whole lot of material that reflects back your experiences of and perspectives of the world.

haha yes the idea of only or even mostly listening to music that reflects who i am is completely bizarre to me even if you only take into account the surface things like ethnicity, sexuality and nationality

my entire history of loving music is finding stuff that i deeply identify with in the work of artists who are nothing "like me"

Well, the thing is, that for many many people (including me) trying to find something to identify with in the work of artists that are not like them is the default mode.

While for this other group of people (people whose group has a disproportionate control over and representation of "what culture is") it's something weird or unusual that they have to be pushed or tempted into doing.

It's just lopsided.

yeah - the idea that i might not find a piece of music resonant because it doesn't reflect myself accurately is just unfathomable to me. white str8 middle-class men really think like that, huh.

See, I don't know if it's like that. I don't think it happens at the individual level. Or if it's more the case that what culture in general serves up to them is such a reflection of themselves again and again (in music, in movies, in books, whatever) that they've come to think it's just normal, that art should be a mirror for their own world, not a mirror into someone else's.

(Art should ideally do both. Like I said, it's the lopsidedness of it that bothers me.)

that art should be a mirror for their own world, not a mirror WINDOW into someone else's.

I should really not go on ILX when I'm so sleep deprived.

There's an implied assumption in this discussion: "you are what you like". Like, you're defined by your taste. I know it's a popular idea round here but it isn't necessarily true? Anyway @ Nick I wouldn't look at any list of records with a pile of white dudes innit and assume the listener was same.