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

Make a list anyway! Just type it out. 1996 - 2011

I'd be very curious to see yr list if you can still be bothered.

I hope mine didn't make me out to be some late 90s emo guy.

If women dance to it, then it flies

i think this is a pretty pervasive idea w/ dance music. lots of guys don't want to perform their masculinity in a room full of guys i guess. idk i find the politics/difficulties of getting groups of ppl to come out & dance in different places very revealing.

may also reflect "women just want to dance" / "men just want to dance with women" assumptions

(One problem with explaining away male dominance in salsa via: "well, the women ultimately decide because if they won't dance to it, then nobody is happy and the music fails," is that it's not as though it's exclusively music to dance to. The Fania era is known for some incorporation of socially conscious lyrics (which could just mean reflecting everyday barrio life). And then again, salsa romantica is/was as much about love songs to listen to, though again, the responsibility for the trend tends to be assigned to a female audience (generally in terms of blame). Which is kind of weird since it's often considered less danceable than previous styles of salsa. (But considered by whom? Possibly just really hardcore salseros and salseras.)

Sorry this is all rather niche.)

(And can I just say: Jesus people! Company of Thieves!)

may also reflect "women just want to dance" / "men just want to dance with women" assumptions

Yeah, but--the thing is, with a partner dance this is much more of a real issue. It's mostly not common for men or women (more common for women) to dance solo to salsa in a club or relatively open party setting (i.e., not just a small gathering of people who know each other well, where presumably things might be looser). (That's less true in Colombia though, where guys are a little more likely to just dance around solo, maybe in a group of friends. Or so I've heard. Very limited knowledge on what I'm babbling about.)

Maybe I will make a list. The other thing is I really have a blind spot for the 90s so it's probably going to be at most four albums from then.

Sorry this is all rather niche

no, the niche pov is v helpful! the thicket of unattached generalities becomes smothering otherwise. and it's interesting to hear about how these things play out in (what is to me) a less familiar context.

The example of salsa makes me think about the issue of specialization. I don't know if I feel more guilty that my list consists almost entirely of white musicians or that some people would consider it almost entirely "lol indie." And why I would consider it valid for a writer to specialize in jazz or salsa but "lol indie" is not seen as a valid specialization.

From lex pretend:

what makes me suspicious is when i see lists skewed towards genres where there IS a lot of female involvement - that includes indie and pop and dance and rap and in fact almost every genre that western popular music fans listen to - but SOMEHOW all those female artists are just not considered as good as the male ones.

I feel like I can only offer my personal experience on these questions, evidence for the proposition as it were, but this rings true for my list anyway, where (discounting pop and r&b), female acts charted lower than male ones. And I chalk that up to being exposed to predominantly male acts in my formative musical listening years (which p4k had a huuuge influence over).

Harking back to smth White Chocolate Cheesecake said, it's true that it was only upon encountering the poptimists here and elsewhere (incl. p4k) a couple of years ago that I became comfortable with accepting those Usher and Destiny's Child albums I loved as a 14 year old once again. So in my case Tim F's emphasis on the importance of the conversations around music providing models for building yr own identity is absolutely central. And I guess ilx is great because it provides a variety of conversations to contribute to, altho I'm giving this a moralistic spin that is perhaps unwarrented (I'm pretty new here).

This feels like one massive xpost, apologies.

The example of salsa makes me think about the issue of specialization. I don't know if I feel more guilty that my list consists almost entirely of white musicians or that some people would consider it almost entirely "lol indie." And why I would consider it valid for a writer to specialize in jazz or salsa but "lol indie" is not seen as a valid specialization.

― wk, Monday, August 20, 2012 8:46 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well because "lol indie" is too popular among "shallower" demographics that aren't musically mature enough to respect, much less specialize in something like jazz. People don't need a acquired taste for soda and therefore a soda connoisseur wouldn't be as appreciated as a wine connoisseur might.

Mercer Finn: Harking back to smth White Chocolate Cheesecake said, it's true that it was only upon encountering the poptimists here and elsewhere (incl. p4k) a couple of years ago that I became comfortable with accepting those Usher and Destiny's Child albums I loved as a 14 year old once again. So in my case Tim F's emphasis on the importance of the conversations around music providing models for building yr own identity is absolutely central. And I guess ilx is great because it provides a variety of conversations to contribute to, altho I'm giving this a moralistic spin that is perhaps unwarrented (I'm pretty new here).

Evan: Well because "lol indie" is too popular among "shallower" demographics that aren't musically mature enough to respect, much less specialize in something like jazz. People don't need a acquired taste for soda and therefore a soda connoisseur wouldn't be as appreciated as a wine connoisseur might.

Another way to express my beef with a lot of the discussion above is that it assumes that it's somehow self-evident what "lived experience" is reflected back to people by a given piece of music.

There is a banal, simplistic sense in which this is correct - e.g. that a male performer reflects a male experience.

Even adopting for the sake of discussion that "lived experience" is a particularly key part of what is communicated by music per se (as opposed to certain more confessionalor "journalistic" forms), as Lex notes above, one of the barriers to the popular/critical uptake of many female artists is that the lived experience they are assumed to communicate by (let's assume male) sceptics is different to that which their fans would say they are communicating - i.e. the allegation that a female singer is shrill or hysterical or man-hating is one that in most cases the fan would just deny, rather than say, "yes, that's one of the things we like."

So what we often relate to - positively or negatively - is really a gloss on (or framework for) the "worldview" expressed by the music, and this gloss is mediated through our experience of the social experience of music (this is particularly apparent when internet dudes talk about the musical taste of their ex-girlfriends).

The distinction between music that we "get" pretty much straightaway and music we really have to work at to enjoy/appreciate/understand (though I use those terms subjectively - i.e. "I feel like I understand what this music is doing" - rather than according to some objective measure of expertise) itself most commonly turns on the distinction between being able to apply a readymade framework (maybe marginally modified from one we've used before) and being forced to build one from scratch, whether through trial and error or by trying to learn from the experiences of others.

Indie music appreciation isn't inherently "shallower" than jazz appreciation, but for people in a certain demographic, frameworks that enable the listener to feel like they "get" the music are more readily available and hence easily adopted and applied.

The risk (though it's only a risk, by no means a certainty) of any form of specialisation or just confined contexts for listening (e.g. a "pitchfork worldview") is not the sclerotisation and hardening of one's taste per se, but that of the frameworks through which the music is perceived. IMO the cause for concern about, say, having hardly any female artists on a list of favourite records is less the possibility that it signals I don't listen to enough female performers, and more the possibility that it indicates I am applying certain frameworks to my engagement with music like a crutch - i.e. less the lack of diversity of records per se than the lack of diversity of relationships with records.

Well because "lol indie" is too popular among "shallower" demographics that aren't musically mature enough to respect, much less specialize in something like jazz.

that's such bullshit, unless I'm misunderstanding what people mean by "lol indie." I meant that my list of favorite stuff from the past decade is heavy on obvious pitchfork stuff like Animal Collective unlike some of the more pop oriented lists people have posted. And I have listened to jazz since I was a child and studied and played it starting at the age of 13. You really think that contemporary pop or hip hop is as "musically mature" as the kind of stuff pitchfork regularly covers?

I like a ton of what I think "lol indie" is, and that is just what I perceive the reason is in relation to jazz and salsa as you mentioned.

So hip hop is wine and white dudes with guitars are soda basically right?

ell no, the analogy was only applying to your comparison to specializing in jazz or salsa.

Well*

Well because "lol indie" is too popular among "shallower" demographics that aren't musically mature enough to respect, much less specialize in something like jazz. People don't need a acquired taste for soda and therefore a soda connoisseur wouldn't be as appreciated as a wine connoisseur might.

― Evan, Monday, August 20, 2012 7:50 PM (47 minutes ago)

assume this is satirical snark? cuz otherwise, it's complete bullshit. we get out art what we manage to put in, nutshell = infinite space and all.

the only problem with indie (etc) is its overcelebration by people who claim - either actively or passively - to be knowledgeable generalists interested in everything. this leads to horrors like the "acclaimed music" lists from the late 70s and early-mid 80s which were getting polled a while back. they promote as critical consensus the idea that "smart" white guitar rock is by far the best music in the world. i reject this completely.

i mean, i accept that the talking heads and wire were making music that appealed - and still appeals - quite strongly to critics with a special interest in smartguy guitar pop, but that's where i draw the line.

Yeah I'm not saying this is my opinion or some kind of truth, but that I fear it is an underlying reason to the way a specialization is treated differently. The idea is addressed in the condescending "lol indie" label.

Anyway, talking about this stuff doesn't make any sense to me here. These lists are supposed to be entirely personal, aren't they? It's just about how they affect the list owner it has nothing to do with what albums are the best/most important from 96-11.

hmm, i see "lolindie" as reflexive self-denigration of the sort that generally characterizes indie. it's internally rather than externally imposed. the lols are coming from inside the house!

the only problem with indie (etc) is its overcelebration by people who claim - either actively or passively - to be knowledgeable generalists interested in everything.

Aha you got to the heart of the matter right there. I do consider myself a KGIE. So it bothers me to look back at my favorite music of the past 15 years and wonder why it's so overwhelmingly white and male, especially compared to my favorite artists from previous decades. And I think part of the reason is that I specialized my interests more in that time period. I lost interest in new hip hop and tuned out pop music beyond a few standout singles. But why is that specialization only a problem with "indie"? Is it only because it's such a poorly defined category? I don't really care for pitchfork or the vast majority of the music they cover, but their coverage seems pretty eclectic to me. And yet they get shit for it in a way that would never be applied to a specialist metal or hip hop publication.

These lists are supposed to be entirely personal, aren't they? It's just about how they affect the list owner it has nothing to do with what albums are the best/most important from 96-11.

http://freerangelibrarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/pollyanna.jpg

But why is that specialization only a problem with "indie"? Is it only because it's such a poorly defined category? I don't really care for pitchfork or the vast majority of the music they cover, but their coverage seems pretty eclectic to me. And yet they get shit for it in a way that would never be applied to a specialist metal or hip hop publication.

Because straight white male rock is the only genre which consistently elevates its self-experience to the level of a universal.

Because straight white male rock is the only genre which consistently elevates its self-experience to the level of a universal.

But again, that comes down to a lack of a good definition for the genre, no? Pitchfork like say Spin or Rolling Stone is seen as a generalist publication since "indie" is not really a genre. So the takeaway is that "these are the best albums of the year in all genres". Whereas with a metal magazine it's more clearly constrained so nobody cares.

The type of people who analyze themselves and their tastes to try to maintain their unique identity would use the term "lol indie" because they're a bit embarrassed about liking something a bit more obvious than an obscure jazz record, right? This is why many more serious, critical music fans are less likely to proudly embrace a specialization in it I think.

and I would contest the "straight male" part re: much of indie rock. at least compared to the problem of its whiteness.

nah, liz phair was right. the "rock" part of it is still guyville, the best efforts of sleater-kinney notwithstanding.

Because straight white male rock is the only genre which consistently elevates its self-experience to the level of a universal.

^ this, though i wouldn't put it quite so bluntly. the elevation seems to reflect and endorse the white male's sense of his own automatic centrality. it's not that there's anything wrong with indie or liking indie or even white guys liking indie, it's that the overcelebration of indie (and i'm using "indie" a contemporary placeholder for a wide swath supposedly "intelligent", white-guy-endorsed semi-pop) by a specific group of people becomes a tiresome and potentially damaging sort of cultural hegemony.

like this magazine owned by an extraordinarily rich white guy and read mostly by white guys hires a bunch of well-educated white guys to claim that music produced by other white guys is for real and for true the best and most important shit in the whole damn world. "it's not that we really planned it that way or anything, but hey, that's just how it happened to work out..." for a long time, this was going on everywhere, in magazine after magazine, to the extent that "mainstream music criticism" became an echo chamber feeding this one cultural point of view (with endless subtle variations) back into itself in an infinite loop. rockism blahdiddy blah. that seems to be somewhat less true today, but only somewhat.

my awareness of all this it doesn't make me any less likely to like what i like or to express that taste in criticism, but it does incline me to be completely upfront about my identity and the limitations of my interests. i cannot say anything about "the best music in the world." i can only tell you what one middle-aged, middle-class straight white guy raised on the beatles and cheap trick happens to like.

But again, that comes down to a lack of a good definition for the genre, no? Pitchfork like say Spin or Rolling Stone is seen as a generalist publication since "indie" is not really a genre. So the takeaway is that "these are the best albums of the year in all genres". Whereas with a metal magazine it's more clearly constrained so nobody cares.

― wk, Tuesday, 21 August 2012 4:30 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This sense of being hard to self-define is in part the same impulse that motivates dog latin to say he doesn't consciously consider himself to be a straight white male.

i.e. when your sub-culture considers itself to be "culture" (or alternatively "counter-culture") in general, it starts to lose its sense of specificity.

also, when your culture refuses to confront the fact that it is a culture, a limited culture, one with a specific composition. indie is overwhelmingly white and mostly educated/middle class, but is loath to just admit this and move on. it seems somehow gauche to insist on it (just as rich people consider it gauche to talk about money, especially in the presence of poor people), but that's never stopped me before...

^ i guess that's the same thing tim just said, approached from a slightly different direction. pitchfork is a perfect example of this, so it's a natural subject for discussion in this thread. pitchfork started out as an indie site; i.e., a space dedicated to music of particular interest to a specific group of generally middle-class white people - and others with similar interests, of course. it became quite influential from this position, not least because middle-class white people are themselves quite influential within american society.

when it reached a certain size, pitchfork began to investigate and render judgement on other sorts of music, partially out of a natural inclination to grow and expand, and partially in response to criticism of the unacknowledged limitations of its purview. pitcfork, it seems, didn't want to be "the middle-class white music website". it wanted to actually be as universal as it felt.

this is admirable in certain respects, but also tragic. tragic because it seems to represent the triumph of a culture's desperate desire to believe in the myth of its own centrality over the humbling reality of niche specificity. especially tragic because that specificity is the only thing that was ever at all interesting about it.

Now I feel like defending the indie mentality: I think its curiosity about the world outside its niche is a good thing - one of the best things about it in fact (for indie as much as anything else).

But I don't think the limits of the (typically self-reinforcing) perspectives of this curiosity should pass without consideration.

In particular, the false equivalence it seeks to draw between its treatment of itself and its treatment of stuff outside itself, which can remind me a bit of this Anatole France quote:

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

yeah, agree completely with that (and lol @ anatole france). curiosity about the broader world is always a good thing, and that's the sense in which i think pitchfork's desire to broaden its ballpark is admirable. but it's equally important to be clear and upfront about who you are and were you're coming from. "nowhere and everywhere" isn't a satisfying or honest way of locating this.

uh, "were" = "where"

i wish i had finished this in time, but at least i set my #1

This sense of being hard to self-define is in part the same impulse that motivates dog latin to say he doesn't consciously consider himself to be a straight white male.

i.e. when your sub-culture considers itself to be "culture" (or alternatively "counter-culture") in general, it starts to lose its sense of specificity.

I don't think it's difficult at all to define aesthetic commonalities between lots of the music Pitchfork covers. It's just that "indie" is a totally meaningless and non-descriptive term. The problem lies in this post-alternative rejection of labels. Electronic music for example has no such problem with categorizing and labeling its subgenres. And I don't for one minute buy the idea that a band like Animal Collective or their fans consider themselves to be "the culture."

indie is overwhelmingly white and mostly educated/middle class, but is loath to just admit this and move on.

What would that "moving on" look like? Pitchfork not covering any music outside of a more narrow definition of "indie"? ILXors not keeping score on the demographics of other ILXors favorite records?

You're totally overstating indie fans all being middle class. It's honestly not like that in Scotland at least. Sure lots of middle class folks like it, but probably more dont plus I can assure you lots of working class/non university people are into indie.

What would that "moving on" look like? Pitchfork not covering any music outside of a more narrow definition of "indie"? ILXors not keeping score on the demographics of other ILXors favorite records?

― wk, Monday, August 20, 2012 11:46 PM (4 minutes ago)

no, just admitting that their perspective is a perspective - that pitchfork (very loosely) represents the interests and tastes of a specific culture and is closely associated with a specific genre, however difficult that genre may be to clearly define. admission itself is the first step toward moving past.

You're totally overstating indie fans all being middle class. It's honestly not like that in Scotland at least. Sure lots of middle class folks like it, but probably more dont plus I can assure you lots of working class/non university people are into indie.

― Algerian Goalkeeper, Tuesday, August 21, 2012 12:02 AM (2 minutes ago)

that may be. i'm primarily talking about more-or-less mainstream indie music & culture in america today. as exemplified by pitchfork, "NPR indie", arcade fire, etc.

would never say "all indie fans are middle class", btw, and i'm not expressing any kind of class hostility (that i know of...)

In the U.S. almost 70% of high school graduates enroll in college these days, so I'm not sure that indie being "mostly educated" is terribly damning.
xp

no, just admitting that their perspective is a perspective - that pitchfork (very loosely) represents the interests and tastes of a specific culture and is closely associated with a specific genre, however difficult that genre may be to clearly define. admission itself is the first step toward moving past.

How would they do that? I was going to make some tagline up like Pitchfork- the Indie site, but then I googled it and their actual description on google is Pitchfork - The essential guide to independent music and beyond. Is that not fair? They don't go beyond enough? Or they go too far beyond and should stick to "indie"? Or what? I honestly don't get what people want from them. People seem to be saying that "indie" is everything and nothing. That it doesn't deserve to be categorized as it's own distinct genre but that it somehow makes claims toward universality.

"Pitchfork - Be forewarned: Our Perspective is a Perspective."

In the U.S. almost 70% of high school graduates enroll in college these days, so I'm not sure that indie being "mostly educated" is terribly damning.

it's not damning at all though. that's what's so bizarre about this whole thing. if you say that something is, for the most part, white and/or middle class, then a lot of people will automatically assume that you must be trying to cast some kind of aspersion. not at all! the american indie culture i'm describing is in no sense shameful, despite the fact that it happens to be overwhelmingly white (and arguably middle class, collegiate, etc). those qualities only become a problem when they aren't acknowledged, when they try to pass themselves off as universal personhood - or, of course, when they're expressed as bigotry.

But again, I don't even understand what that would look like for indie culture to acknowledge that it's mostly white and middle class. If it's not a problem, why does it have to be acknowledged? Pitchfork - The Essential Guide to Middle Class White Music? How could that possibly be a good thing? I could understand the pitchfork editors discussing the issue within the context of an interview or some kind of op-ed on their site, but as an overall statement of intent? There is no simple categorical solution there like say Decibel - America's Only Monthly Metal Magazine.

It was never really feasible for Pitchfork to remain an indie enclave specifically because of that natural curiosity a lot of its readers and writers would have had about the world beyond. As stated above, it's crucial for it to be aware of the underlying biases that influence its coverage of other things though.

How to do that in practice is a good question. Perhaps avoiding terms like "best", "definitive" and "classic" in general, and particularly when it comes to canon-building lists. I tend to judge generalist websites, which is ultimately what Pitchfork is aiming for, not by the music that they cover in isolation but the culture that they seem to be trying to foster. A willingness to challenge reader / writer preconceptions and a humility that acknowledges that there's a vast amount of amazing music they're not coming close to covering is just as important.

How would they do that? I was going to make some tagline up like Pitchfork- the Indie site, but then I googled it and their actual description on google is Pitchfork - The essential guide to independent music and beyond. Is that not fair?

yeah, that's perfectly fair. i have no idea whether or not that tagline was always there. for all i know, it was. the phrase "independent music" doesn't appear on their front page, but it's not like any regular reader doesn't know that it's their primary focus.

as i see it, that admirably accurate google tagline notwithstanding, pitchfork has adopted a curious reticence about branding itself as a specialist indie site. rather than explicitly focus on a particular culture from within, it at least seems to present itself as a generically authoritative "top down" voice regarding the state of contemporary music-as-culture. if an album, artist or genre seems important to it, it will provide its readers with an instructional point of view.

this reflects indie culture's interest in music as a whole, but like rolling stone rockism of days gone by, it threatens to organize the entire world as a suburb of itself. coupled with pitchfork's cultural prominence and the unacknowledged demographic makeup of the scene it's primarily aligned with, this becomes troublesome.

tbh, i'm not sure how pitchfork should announce its particular point of view and the inherent limitations that accompany it. i just know that most metal, dance music and hip-hop sites don't make a similar attempt to "cover the world" in an authoritative manner. they're much more up-front (and to my mind honest) about the specific culture and genre that they're organized around.

Starting to think Pitchfork can't win either way. Either it sticks to reviewing JUST indie rock with guitars (like a mag such as Terrorizer might have a policy of only covering extreme TR00 KVLT metal exclusively), in which case it would firstly have a dwindling remit as independent music diversifies and cherry-picks from electronic music etc, and secondly be seen as militantly SWM. Or it diversifies, accepts that its audience is keen to learn about music away from guitar rock and is then challenged as being condescendingly pious in its coverage. I don't think any of its readers are under any illusion where Pitchfork's roots and readership lies, but the fact they will cover important albums outside the typical indie rock sphere can only be a good thing. And of course attitudes to how the music is covered will be affected by the writers as well as the editors. Pitchfork readers may well come for the indie rock, but unless they're very stubborn they'll stay for the coverage of other styles ultimately seeking out other publications, sites, blogs that specialise in these new interests.

No one's under any perception that life begins and ends with Pitchfork. It's just another mag on the proverbial newsstand. That said, I do understand that, going back to the print media of my youth, Q, NME, Vox, Select did present themselves as generalist publications while focusing primarily on white alternative pop-rock and treating other styles as the exception. The NME is called "New Musical Express", a title denoting generalism, but it is still overwhelmingly rockist with a fairweather supporting bias of white indie trends (haven't read it in a year or two though, so maybe not?). Select was at its best when it wasn't constantly banging on about Britpop. The most interesting sections for me (even as a Britpop-loving teenager) were not the Noel Gallagher interviews, but the clubbing sections and occasional features on a pop, punk or hiphop acts outside of its usual remit. I don't actually remember Select being terribly "look at us we're interviewing the Spice Girls LOL!" about it, which was refreshing compared to a lot of other publications at the time.

Of course, it's worth remembering that musical approaches and attitudes have changed a fair bit since Pitchfork began. R'n'B and dance are assimilating, indie is taking cues from all over the shop, and Pitchfork has a duty not only to reflect the changing attitudes in the music it originally set out to cover, but also the music that is influencing this. Concurrently, Pitchfork also has tremendous influence over indie listeners' tastes, but maybe not so much outside of that readership sphere. I don't believe that a serious hiphop fan would use PF as their prime source of music info, for example.