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

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.

Mad strawman building going on here. If I listen to a particularly whiny or entitled Terius or Kanye title I do find myself thinking "why should I give a shit?" but I doubt that's exactly a default mode for a lot of listeners.

If this were the main factor at play here then yr "white str8 middle-class men" wouldn't be able to identify or empathise with vast swathes of film or literature. It's inane.

(I mean we are talking about a world where Jonathan Franzen is currently one of our most celebrated authors but still...)

It's not that they're not *able* to, it's that 1) they rarely get fed anything but StraightWhiteMen, it's a very easy option to take and 2) they are routinely told, either implicitly or passively, that they shouldn't have to do anything else. (And indeed, there's a whole industry dedicated to telling them that listening to or rating the experiences/work of others will make them somehow less of a man.)

Yah I don't think there's any strawmen here, Nick's being self-evaluative

Oh, I'm not saying "taste = identity" is false, either. But if you stop saying "I'm a guy who should like Clipse because" then you don't owe anybody an apology for not being into it except yourself (and maybe Clipse).

Oh, look. Here is the conversation I did not want to be having. That I was actively trying to resist having. And yet, lo and behold, I am unable to resist the little open circle, and here I am having it again.

I really need to do something else with my day than argue about piles of lists of straight white men, or my head will explode.

(x-post to myself, sorry Owen.)

@ WCC there's no debate in my mind that the long tradition of str8 white men writing about music has (un)-coloured its development and what works have been canonized. But Nick's article isn't about "my responsibility as a music writer" but an invisible debt he feels he owes

In full disclosure, I did not read Nick's blog post. Mostly because of the way it was framed was so head-deskingly depressing to me. But also because I really don't need to read any more straight white man guilt in my life. I'm glad that he is having that conversation and I hope that he and others find it useful. I'm not saying that to be snarky, I'm saying it genuinely completely honestly and I generally rate Nick as an A+ human being.

I just really do need to go and think about something else for some time because this is reaching OCD levels for me.

(Hah easily my favourite album of the past five years is Let England Shake ie a woman writing largely about StraightWhiteMen whose perspectives are infinitely harder to comprehend than the Pistol Annies/Dizzee Rascal/Kanye West).

as far as the identification question goes, it's not at all hard to find pop music of almost every imagine sort made both by men and women. male artists obviously dominate in certain genres, and the critical discourse often seems to favor them, but those factors don't (or shouldn't) have much to do with our ability as individual listeners to find music to relate to and/or learn from. and obvious difference isn't the only sort that exists, after all. i often relate very easily to music made by people who aren't superficially "like me", and just as often find music made by straight white men completely alien to my values and sensibilities.

we might legitimately ask why female are so much less common and successful in certain genres, but there's no simple answer to that question, and it's difficult to meaningfully address in making an honest list of personal favorites.

how do you define "successful"

some intersection of popular appeal and critical respect

in which genres have women been less successful?

Err, rock music?

yeah, technical death metal is a more specific example.

You know where they're less successful too? The kitchen. Damn things can't even boil water.

rap's another example. we can certainly find female rappers, but there do seem to be a hell of a lot more men actively pursing careers in the genre. this is less true now than it was, say, 20 years ago, but i think the imbalance still exists.

I can only assume you guys are talking at cross purposes here.

oh my god it's the exact same argument with the exact same people saying the exact same things all over again

totally feeling WCC's frustration

White male guilt: don't wanna read about it (but you guys better feel it)

White male guilt: don't wanna read about it (but you guys better feel it)

Owen, that was an uncharacteristically dickish thing for you to say, and out of line.

<3 I was joking and I'll stfu if I offended

oh my god it's the exact same argument with the all over again

totally feeling WCC's frustration

― lex pretend, Monday, August 20, 2012 4:28 AM (18 minutes ago)

you can hardly make this complaint when you're one of "the exact same people saying the exact same things"

otm

erm, i haven't really been posting in this thread for that exact reason