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

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

me neither! high five

The idea of "identification" is an interesting one to me, whether it's about exploring the world view of someone "other" and finding common ground in some aspect of it (and expanding yourself), or whether it's about having yourself reflected back at you. Because I don't think I look for either in music particularly; I'm not really into lyrics and I don't think that much of the music I love describes world views or experiences all that much (although some of it clearly does), and even the stuff that does do that, it's generally not an important facet of it to me. I think I mainly get an aesthetic, sensual kick out of music, for the most part.

I wanna make an "...on my yacht" joke but instead I'm just gonna

I find it very difficult to discuss topics like this, so forgive me if I appear gauche here.

But the discussion's set me thinking about the relevance of something like hiphop in a country like America, compared to say the UK. Say (like me) you're a white middle class male from the UK. And say the majority of acts you picked were white middle-class males. Now, a lot of critics may ask "Why such a lack of black artists on your list?" which is a fair enough question - hip hop and r'n'b being huge genres with a whole gamut of records to pick from. But surely (for someone from the UK) this is intrinsically asking "Why are you not listening to music of a very specific genre, from a location miles away across the Atlantic, often made by Black Americans?". It completely discounts the question of why as a UK resident you're not taking the time to listen to music of Indian or Arabic or Polish origin etc, seeing as you're just as likely (if not more likely) to come across people of these backgrounds in day-to-day life than you are a Black American. Yes, the UK has it's own plethora of black musical styles such as grime, but it's not really an 'albums' genre.

I absolutely agree with the idea of music as escapism, of being shown a window into another world. Coming from a pretty staid suburban town, not quite near enough to London to allow regular trips, literally all music that isn't the Bluetones provides that kind of escapism. Strictly speaking minimal house (being way more popular in urban settings) is almost as foreign to me as African kuduro. In order to branch into music that doesn't speak directly to white Britishers from commuter belt market towns, I have to mentally assume a role; pretend I'm someone or somewhere else for a bit. That's what music is in a lot of cases really - the soundtrack to an imaginary film. In some cases I want Spike Lee, in others I want Mike Leigh. It takes different levels of play acting to get into that mental role as a listener; to imagine the scene and therefore create a world around oneself that will suit whatever style of music one is listening to, be it death metal, experimental electronica, Britpop or Miami bass.

I think something like hip-hop can seem a lot more exotic, and therefore maybe more impenetrable to Britishers than to Americans. I do like a lot of hiphop, but if I find myself shying away from listening to it on a regular basis, it's not because of any reason other than I find it takes a fair amount of mental work to understand the lyrics and truly soak it up. I can't read and listen to hiphop for example, or concentrate on very much at all unless I'm doing nothing else but listen. I feel like it needs my full attention, like watching an episode of the Wire or something - it doesn't work for me as wallpaper music.

I think I just realized that at least part of the reason I listen to a larger percentage of music that doesn't fit my particular demographic is that (speaking as a straight, white male) I find most straight, white males to be completely baffling.

I thought I hated Ludacris for years and then I realized I only hated him because I ~am~ him

the "identification" thing is a pretty limited argument imo because so much music is either instrumental or doesn't have any particular cultural perspective in the lyrics that has anything to do with the race or nationality etc. of the artist.

i don't think it's remarkable is a "12 CDs a year" type listens to primarily people who look like them, but if you have thousands of albums and that's still the case, i dunno, i think it's worth looking at.

Well to pick 2 artists that I came to love when I was a teenager, NWA and The Smiths, both of them seemed equally 'exotic' or 'alien' to me. I could no more imagine hanging out with 'Strawberry' than I could see myself spouting poetry in graveyards tbh.

spouting poetry at Strawberry in the graveyard = Salem

lol

Oh I definitely spouted poetry in graveyards.

nice to meet you, Morrissey

Mistake we all seem to make is to think that this is about the specific music we listen to and how we relate to it. I think it's much more (and/or much more often) about the musical conversations we have, who we're having them with, how we are lead to music and how much we resist (mostly passively) or propel the forces leading us. This is one reason why it's much easier to get a handle on how a person relates to music as a whole (or, perhaps more accurately, self-relates as a fan and consumer of music) by finding out who/what they read on music (assuming they read anyone) than what they listen to.

On an individual level there's nothing stopping people ending up being totally immersed - to the point of myopic obsession - with a type of music totally divorced from their background. This is true of all areas of life, and the many odd things that end up defining people's sense of the world world. But the world also tends to drive most of us some of the way, and some of us most of the way, down paths of less resistance.

How we are lead into music is quite a salient point i think Tim. For instance the main reason I bought 'It takes A Nation Of Millions' (which was the first rap album I owned) was because the NME described it as "the greatest rock n roll album of the year" or something like that. Which is reductive but worked on me.

That's exactly the kind of thing I mean, though obv (as your comment alludes) it's a more bald-faced example and usually these processes are much more insidious/subtle ("insidious" probably has unnecessarily negative implications but you get what I mean).

Great post Tim

tim otm. if there's a problem here, it's less what individuals do or don't like and more the way canon-building & conversation-driving entities emphasize certain voices over others. of course, that's a pretty big and complex subject too.

Also - why we listen to music and what qualities we enjoy. There are people who genuinely prefer music that is raw, macho, visceral, antagonistic and so may be drawn to certain elements of heavy metal or hiphop, whereas others listen out for sounds that are mellow, groovy, chilled out, cool and therefore are more naturally inclined towards r'n'b or house. For a lot of people it's the reason they listen to music at all - not because they want a varied musical diet with a panoply of emotions. Some people go through life not giving a hoot about music until one day they come across, say, a Minor Threat track that hits them over the head and after that they're hooked on hardcore with little need to sway or diversify from that sound because it quells a certain appetite that they have a strong craving for - a craving that simply won't be satiated by, say, disco or whatever. That person might like to diversify a little. Maybe they hear the same kind of thrill in listening to hardcore as they do in metal, gabba, gangsta rap, but maybe it's specifically hardcore that works for them and the buck stops there. For someone like this, listening to any other music is either a waste of time or bordering on painful.

This is where comparisons between things like race and class (people who are othered because we are separated from them by culture) and things like gender and sexuality (people who are othered even though they inhabit the same culture) just completely break down.

This is what I just find so frustrating: when someone who can get obsessed with music made by a man completely outside of their experience from the other side of the world, musically will, at the same time, just not even consider the idea of listening to or, in this case "canonising" (listifying?) a woman on their musical block.

again, though, i think that's incredibly reliant on how much of a given 'musical block' is even populated by women. in some cases you'd have to look really hard to find even one.

xpost but who does this WCC? I don't believe anybody who's got an interest in a style of music from the other side of the world would prefer a male/female artists merely based on the grounds of basic sexism. If I were interested in, say Nyabinghi-style roots reggae, the experience of actively seeking out this kind of music (probably via a compilation most likely) would make "oh no i don't want to listen to that because it's sung by a woman" sound very strange indeed...

People having a problem with women's singing voices is a deep and storied history

again, though, i think that's incredibly reliant on how much of a given 'musical block' is even populated by women. in some cases you'd have to look really hard to find even one.

Why? That is a question that needs asking, too.

1) is this really an actual genre without any women at all, or have the women in that genre been routinely discounted or ignored?

2) there are some genres where it feels like (to me) the lack-of-women is a feature, not a bug. What does it say about someone if they are really drawn to that genre? Is it the music they like, or the girl-free lifestyle?

(And I say that as a woman who has many, many times, been attracted to and tried to participate in certain genres that code as male, and been told flat out "women don't like this" or harassed until I leave. Women-free spaces very rarely happen by accident these days.)

And again - there is music out there that clicks certain buttons for people; music that would be considered macho, aggressive, visceral etc that is almost inarguably masculine, and therefore male-dominated by nature. There are some tremendous female death metal vocalists for example, but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. It would take some extreme denial not to be stunned by the presence of someone like Angela Gossow (Arch Enemy), who can cookie-monster growl better than a lot of male metal singers.

But equally, there's plenty of music out there for people who prefer a more traditionally feminine touch. R'n'B is a genre where females appear to be canonised if not equally then more than their male counterparts. But R'n'B isn't really a very aggressive or hard-hitting genre. It's not going to click everyone's buttons, but it is one of the most popular styles of music in the Western world, so it's not as if it's being ignored.