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

You might need this, Dog Latin

http://www.chillingtontoolsonline.co.uk/images/products/large/Round-Mouth-Shovel.jpg

Keep digging.

iirc he hasn't actually offended anyone here except you, which y'know big accomplishment

No it's true my list is offensively white.

Oh! Isn't King Khan indian? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about!

Anyway

Also, why frame this in the context of "straight male listens to x music" when it could be applied to pretty much anyone at this juncture? Just as an example, is there a difference between asking your stereotypical hetero white British male why he does not listen to NY vogue-house; and asking a gay black man from New York why he doesn't listen to the Charlatans. It's probable that both may well do, but is it very likely?

because, just by virtue of being a gay man from New York, there is about a 60% chance your hypothetical gay black man from New York also listens to the Charlatans; the boxes you're constructing are overlapping rather than distinct, and they always seem to overlap in directions that make the straight white male the default by which everything else is othered

Pitchfork sucks dunnit?

you're trying to take a series of concentric spheres and turn them into a line

DJP - sorry I don't follow your post.

you're creating a scenario with two hypothetical people and painting stereotypical tastes upon them without allowing for the fact/idea that one set of those tastes is far more likely to be spread far and beyond the person to whom you're assigning them by virtue of the culture we exist in; the mental image of a gay black man from New York listening to The Charlatans is only unlikely because it's 2012, not 1991

so, you're basically taking overlapping spheres of influence and trying to treat them as if they're wholly distinct and equivalent in their pervasiveness in our culture, when they aren't and never have been

Wait what

it's a grain of "truth" inside a horribly formed "joke"

lol they're called "The Charlatans UK"

Xposts djp. I'm still not sure I follow what you're saying, sorry if I'm just being very thick here. Of course there's going to be a measure of overlap involved, but by and large NY vogue house was developed, and by and large defined, by the black/Latino gay scene in new York. The Charlatans might be a bad example, replace them with any old quintessentially British guitar band if you must. Of course one demographic is more likely to listen to one than the other - there'll be overlaps, but few surprises if you were to poll fans of such acts/styles. I have, I admit, managed to lose my train of thought on this as I'm on the hoof now and in danger of not being clear on what I meant so I'll leave it for now. I'm not trying to make out that white straight males ought to be considered some sort of norm though, quite the opposite.

it's just really loaded to pick one group that's developed its own musical subculture almost as a direct result of being marginalized by mainstream straight white culture and then contrast it with the British guitar bands that have been a cornerstone of popular music for 50 years

That is true.

my response to your arguments is that none of them make sense because you are not taking into consideration the pervasiveness in US/UK musical culture of the straight white male as the default against which everything else is measured, and as a result your arguments are hollow/naive

I mean, even in your hypothetical you are comparing an entire genre to any one example of a quintessentially British guitar band, because QBGBs are so pervasive you can build entire subgenres off of one band name; you're presenting this as an example of equivalence but it's fundamentally flawed from the ground up

I should delete this because some dude basically said the same thing from a different angle but maybe the angles are different enough to make this worth posting

I guess I was assuming the UK Charlatans didn't exactly leave an enormous dent on general US culture, but I could be wrong - i have no idea whether they became popular over there or not. But yeah I see how it's loaded.

they had 3 top ten modern rock hits between 1990 and 1992, including a #1 with "Weirdo", and were semi-inescapable during that time period

It's an uphill battle, too, for men who choose to work within the genre of female singer-songwriter

― omg stop talking (Ówen P.)

This is definitely an under-appreciated point: that sometimes men face some sort of speed bump (humps, UK) in an otherwise uninterrupted run of thousands of years of being on top.

Xpost Haha, okay that's actually kind of wow to me. It's like telling me Shed Seven outsold Destiny's Child in the US chart or something, so consider me boggled. I had no idea how popular they were, but then I was only about 9 when charlatans released Some Friendly.

99. King Khan & The Shrines – What Is?!

― Evan, Monday, August 20, 2012 9:08 AM (1 hour ago)

why o why did i not vote for this?

speed bump (humps, UK)

they're called "sleeping policemen" iirc

Sleeping Policemen UK

contenderizer- I never bothered to check out other King Khan projects beyond that album, which I love. Have you? How do they stack up?

Scoring 'hits' on the modern rock charts between 1990 and 1992 was not always a sign of general pervasiveness in the culture.

they are a sign of pervasiveness within a particular scene, and a good number of the gay black men I know from New York are all old enough to know exactly who Charlatans UK were and to be able to name at least one out of "Weirdo", "Then" and "The Only One I Know"

my point being that putting all gay black men in New York into the box that says "you only listen to vogue house" is stupid

they had 3 top ten modern rock hits between 1990 and 1992, including a #1 with "Weirdo", and were semi-inescapable during that time period

Semi-inescapable, I suppose, for a certain kind of listener. Only their first two albums cracked the Billboard 200, peaking at #73 and #173. And the number of radio stations that fed the modern-rock chart in 1990-92 would've been fairly limited. They certainly weren't being played in supermarkets.

(What Sund4r said.)

to extend something dog latin suggested a billion posts up, the essential character of certain subgenres of "extreme" music is defined not just by anger, violence and transgression, but by the macho, almost cartoonishly masculine aspects of the anger, violence and transgression on display. in suggesting this, i'm not denying that women can feel or express such things or that anyone is "naturally" this way or that. i am, however, suggesting that there are culturally-defined "masculine modes" that prevail in certain sorts of extreme music, and that, perhaps as a consequence, these musics do seem to attract a lot of men both as fans and as artists. the cultures that develop around such subgenres may at times be hostile to female fandom and/or participation, but that seems more an unfortunate consequence of unthinking tribalism (a human problem) than a black mark against the music and anyone who likes it.

contenderizer- I never bothered to check out other King Khan projects beyond that album, which I love. Have you? How do they stack up?

― Evan, Monday, August 20, 2012 10:49 AM (7 minutes ago)

that's the best KK & the shrines release, afaic, though three hairs and you're mine is nearly as good. beyond the shrines, the KK & BBQ album what's for dinner is pretty damn great. obviously much more stripped down than the the shrines, but w lots of great songs, rocks like nobody's business. the debut king khan & BBQ show album is good, but if you're starting from what is, i'd hold off on that until after what's for dinner, as it's not terribly well-recorded.

Djp - wait up I'm not saying that at all. I'm not categorising gay black men or straight white men in the way you say. I'm saying that if you were to poll all the fans of one style of music over another, you're going to get different results - there's no surprise in that. If you were to poll all the charlatans fans in the world, would you be surprised that there would be a spike where straight white males from the north of England are concerned, while significantly fewer will be gay black men from new York. And there are obvious reasons for that - ones that go beyond the usual accusations of prejudice.

Same as I wouldn't necessarily expect to get into a taxi driven by an ageing Sikh man who was playing his beloved copy of 'Heaven or Las Vegas'. (cue someone popping up and telling me about how Cocteau Twins' early EPs were distributed by South Asian taxi companies or something)

Contenderizer managed to express a lot of what I couldn't upthread. The irony is that metal is actually a hugely popular genre for females as well as males although this tends, speaking in very broad terms, to apply to fans of the genre rather than those who make it. I also think that depending on which band and style of metal is playing, you'll find different proportions of male/female ratios. It's not about 'you're a gurl, you don't get it', at least I really hope not and if anyone's ever said this to anyone, they deserve to have their eardrums removed.

i prefer the kk&bbq debut but both are essential & full of smash hits

It's just fun looking at all the album covers!

your larger point, DL, seems to be that music and culture are closely tied together. i have no argument there, but you have to know that speaking broadly about the presumable tastes of gay black men and aging sikh cabdrivers is going to irritate a lot of people...

hey btw what sparked this debate? i had figured they released the people's list & that it was exclusively male or sth but can't find it anywhere on the site

I think it started when looking at the male-centric lists were putting up. Crucially there were no judgments from anyone, just suggestions that there's a subconscious bias at work.

ah ok thx

Xpost. Contenderizer Yes I am saying that music and culture are interlinked, but what I am also saying is that people's musical preferences go far beyond this monochrome argument of male/female, black/white and it's unfair to make judgement based on whether someone listens to exclusively one or the other.

Thanks for the suggestions!

On another note I was going to mention how much of a wrench 1995 would have thrown into this mix in my case.

Xpost Don't forget I'm also speaking broadly about the presumed tastes of white northern englishers of a particular age. And of course they don't all listen to the Charlatans. Please understand, I'm talking about the demographic of a particular scene or band - not the music tastes of a particular culture. There is a difference.

I would have liked to have done one of these but I guess it's closed now. It probably would have been pretty white-male centric, which might be indicative of something, but these days I think it's just the vagaries.

What's kind of funny to me is that my list happens to be male dominated but that Sleater-Kinney record probably has more muscle than any of the others.

Gukbe I had the same issue, just write one out as well.

Not posting my list as i had browswer issues and couldn't sort my list into any kind of order.

Just type it out here.

On another note I was going to mention how much of a wrench 1995 would have thrown into this mix in my case.

yeah I sort of thought about doing one of these lists but looking up release dates to figure out what was or wasn't before 1996 was too annoying and pointless.

I am saying that music and culture are interlinked, but what I am also saying is that people's musical preferences go far beyond this monochrome argument of male/female, black/white and it's unfair to make judgement based on whether someone listens to exclusively one or the other.

― Julian Asshole (dog latin), Monday, August 20, 2012 11:26 AM (1 minute ago)

yeah, i agree.

that said, to the extent that there's a pronounced critical/cultural bias in favor of music made by members of certain groups over others, there's a real problem. if we think that a problem of this sort exists and have any stake in pop criticism, we have to ask ourselves how we might best address it. one obvious step that anyone can take on a day-to-day basis is to make a conscious point of engaging with and perhaps even publicly "preferring" the products of marginalized groups. taking this step at least causes whatever cultural capital one expends in publicly expressing taste to achieve some potential good. i don't know that anyone on ILM is explicitly advocating for this approach, but it does seem to be implied in the arguments that some have made.

another possible solution is to pin the blame not on individual voices expressing individual taste, but on the tastemaking entities that attach special importance to certain voices (for instance, to demand more equity and inclusion from influential magazines and websites). i'm not sure a clear line can be drawn between the two though, between the opinions of individuals and those of larger aggregate entities, especially not in the voice-enabling digital age. and no matter what, the change pressure probably has to come from individual critics.