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

Karuki Zamen Kuri No Hana would have been on my list had i submitted it in time. FWIW:

1. Mylene Farmer - Innamoramento
2. Faye Wong - Fable
3. Oskar - Beg Pa Ostriyu Nozha
4. Lee Jung Hyun - I <3 Natural (Vol. 4)
5. Afghan Whigs - Black Love
6. V.I.A Gra - Popitka No. 5
7. Tatu - 200 km/h Pa Vostrechnoi
8. Puffy - Spike
9. Allison Moorer - The Hardest Part
10. Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs
11. Brodka - Granda
12. Ruslana - Diki Tantsi
13. Marit Bergman - Baby Dry Your Eye
14. Taylor Swift - Fearless
15. Shiina Ringo - Karuki Zamen Kuri No Hana
16. Zdob Si Zdub - Agroromantica
17. Fabrika - Dyevushki Fabrichnie
18. The Ark - In Lust We Trust
19. Bjork - Homogenic
20. Alcazar - Alcazarized
21. Girls Aloud - What Will The Neighbours Say?
22. Ayumi Hamasaki - LOVEppears
23. Outkast - Stankonia
24. TLC - Fanmail
25. Air - Moon Safari
26. E-40 - Revenue Retrievin' Day Shift / Night Shift
27. Einsturzende Neubauten - Ende Neu
28. Mazzy Star - Among My Swan
29. Screaming Trees - Dust
30. Broadcast - Work And Non-Work
31. Tove Styrke - Tove Styrke
32. Kapela Ze Wsi Warszawa - Wiosna Ludu
33. Olivia Tremor Control - Dusk At Cubist Castle
34. Los Tigres del Norte - Pacto de Sangre
35. Electrik Red - How To Be A Lady vol.1
36. Katya Chilly - Ya Molodaya
37. Felix Da Housecat - Kittenz And Thee Glitz
38. A*Teens - Teen Spirit
39. Shakira - Laundry Service
40. Waka Flocka Flame - Flockaveli
41. Destiny's Child - The Writing's On The Wall
42. Carla Bruni - Quelqu'un m'a Dit
43. Adult. - Resuscitation
44. Miranda - Es Mentira
45. Utada Hikaru - Exodus
46. Paola & Chiara - Giornata Storica
47. Vitalic - OK Cowboy
48. New Kingdom - Paradise Don't Come Cheap
49. The Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun
50. Sleater-Kinney - Dig Me Out

If only b/c I like certain contributors to p4k a whole lot and it would be nice if I can just scroll down a page of links to their contributions. Would also re-enforce the idea that the site isn't some monolith of single opinion (which is what, like, The Economist tries to suggest), but an amalgamation of viewpoints.

isn't their entire thing that it IS a monolith hivemind of branded opinion?

have u ever actually looked at pfork lex

that's a crazy-ass list, SV. in a good way, i think...

I do like the idea of Press, especially review-type Press, which treats its reviewers as individuals. And I love that thing that many websites do, where you can click on the writer's name and see what other stuff they have written, in order to just kind of assess their viewpoint, what their angle is. In the case of something like Pitchfork, it would help, when deciding whether to pay attention to the review, to see what other artists/music they had rated highly.

I wrote for a UK magazine for a while where we all had to conform to the house style, where you were not allowed to use "I" or "me" and if mentioning yourself in the review, you had to refer to yourself as "Magazine X" - I couldn't do it. (I think a big part of that was not really being that into the magazine's special music interest area, even though they approached me to write for them.)

I do have mixed feelings, though about turning it into some kind of social media thing, where some people will end up judging the writing/tastes based on their membership of certain groups (good or bad, stronger or weaker) which is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes it feels like representation, sometimes it feels like exoticism or tokenism. I don't know how to counter that, though.

isn't their entire thing that it IS a monolith hivemind of branded opinion?

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 22 August 2012 07:59 (26 minutes ago) Permalink

I do like the idea of Press, especially review-type Press, which treats its reviewers as individuals. And I love that thing that many websites do, where you can click on the writer's name and see what other stuff they have written, in order to just kind of assess their viewpoint, what their angle is. In the case of something like Pitchfork, it would help, when deciding whether to pay attention to the review, to see what other artists/music they had rated highly.

― my god it's full of straw (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Wednesday, 22 August 2012 09:33 (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I actually can't believe PF don't link to "other reviews by this writer". I know Stylus used to do it, and the Quietus do it now as well as probably a whole load of websites. It's a function I use very often, not just because I agree with a writer's views and tastes but also because I like their writing style. So why not PF? I'm sure this would be the most productive way for them to get away from the kind of negative assumptions levelled at them by the likes of the Lex. Because really, I honestly believe that no matter the editorial stance, the majority of music websites and their views are affected by their writers and it is kind of unfair to complain about a site's viewpoints in such wide generalist terms. Attitudes and tastes will vary from writer to writer, so if PF wants to get away from being seen as a totem of rockism it's high time they started showcasing their writers as individuals rather than pawns.

I'm reminded of the video game magazines of my youth - Mean Machines etc - which always included an editorial section at the beginning, often humorously or self-deprecatingly talking about the team of writers (Julian 'Jaz' Rignall', Radion Automatic etc), their current interests, some daft thing they did in the office that day. You quickly got to know a bit about the person whose writing you were reading. And throughout the magazine you KNEW who was doing the talking. Not only this, but you felt included as a reader - something that was important to young gamers at the time I think. Also - up to two or three people contributing to a game review (sometimes with conflicting views). This was standard for the computer mag format in the early nineties, but it's something that just doesn't exist in mainstream music writing.

I guess this boils down to whether one believes that music criticism ought to be objective or subjective though.

who the hell believes music criticism is objective?!

the idea of following what "a publication" thinks rather than individual writers (or non-writers) is completely alien to me. even when i was like 15 i had a very firm idea of which writers i trusted and which writers i thought were morons.

NME's authority waned at about the point it went from being a cacophony of different voices with different opinions to having a set party line with one or two token dissenters. The chance of backing the wrong horse is too high but hey Pitchfork's being doing that for years.

Different and conflicting opinions I should say.

Forgive me but I don't understand how

the idea of following what "a publication" thinks rather than individual writers (or non-writers) is completely alien to me.

and

isn't their entire thing that it IS a monolith hivemind of branded opinion?
― lex pretend, Wednesday, 22 August 2012 07:59 (26 minutes ago) Permalink

correlate.

xxpost

Although yeah, I think NME is an even more extreme example of "in-house" conformity if ever there was one.

The idea of a "house voice" or "house opinion" bugs me no end; it's dishonest and it's myth-making. So glad Stylus not only put all a writer's stuff together but also gave space for a photo and bio if you wanted to put one too.

At the same time, my guess is that most readers just don't look at bylines, they see a review and go "Pitchfork said this" or "NME said that".

xpost Yeah, photos, bios - do it! It's a great idea. Music IS subjective after all and trying to homogenise everything under a house style is as ridiculous as me expecting all my friends to be into exactly the same things.

I guess this boils down to whether one believes that music criticism ought to be can be objective or subjective though.

^^^^fixed your post

It's the photos/bios thing that bothers me. I would much rather have a list of what ratings they gave to recent albums. I just think that a photo/bio, rather than provide the person's context, will just provide a way for some readers to dismiss that person's opinions if they are not of the expected gender/race/etc.

x-posts

At the same time, my guess is that most readers just don't look at bylines, they see a review and go "Pitchfork said this" or "NME said that".

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 22 August 2012 11:05 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It just seems so old fashioned to think this way in this day and age. Especially when writers move from publication to publication. I'd really like to see music writers given a chance to exorcise their individual eccentricities and values - to maybe have multiple reviewers talking about a release and seeing where their opinions agree or conflict - somewhere between Singles Jukebox and the usual review format, maybe?

It's not old-fashioned, that's how modern media brand-building works, for better or worse. The Economist doesn't have a single byline in it most of the time.

The exception being columnists obviously, but that's something of a special case.

in my experience having a "bio" on your publication serves no other purpose than that when people disagree with your reviews they can grab at whatever factoids are available about you to use as insults when they want to discredit your opinions (the best was when a guy from a band i panned laid into me using each of the 4 or 5 things i'd tweeted that day against me in random contextless ways). if a publication doesn't edit away your personality or writing style and puts your byline on what you write that's all they're really obligated to do. not going beyond that to a bunch of social media nonsense is not 'monolithic.'

xpost Music (other than music news) is opinion-based, and therefore it's pointless to shy away from making that explicit. Music reviews are not facts, and so a byline works as a caveat: "this is my opinion, your listening experience may vary"

The idea of a "house voice" or "house opinion" bugs me no end; it's dishonest and it's myth-making. So glad Stylus not only put all a writer's stuff together but also gave space for a photo and bio if you wanted to put one too.

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, August 22,

Your house opinion isn't in what you say about records, its about what you decide to cover

i mean i'm guessing virtually every PF writer has an easily googleable blog or social media presence where you could really get to know them and their taste if you want to, which would not have been as true 5 or certainly 10 years ago, so i don't know why there's a demand for the publication to hold your hand through that anyway.

xpost

i was gonna say "i don't" but then i remembered 12 years of the ilx archives. u_u

Your house opinion isn't in what you say about records, its about what you decide to cover

― coal, Wednesday, 22 August 2012 11:20

That's true.

Only partly true.

"truthy"

(sorry, couldn't resist)

PF does manage house opinion to a great degree, possibly more than other publications -- like seemingly going to pains to assign reviews to people who don't go against the staff's emerging consensus, etc. that's probably a smart thing in terms of, like, not panning a record that's going to get voted as one of the year's best a few months later, but it definitely seems a little overmanaged in that sense.

One year at Stylus we didn't even review the album that ended up taking our end of year poll #1 spot.

It's that kind of shortsighted amateurism that made us great.

Ouch this skews male.

http://pitchfork.com/peopleslist/

Might've hoped for 20% female. But no. 12%.

oh thank god we don't have to talk about stylus anymore

Is that 12% the artists or the voters, though?

It looks like the voters to me. (And I chose not to disclose my gender, and I know many women who do the same on the internet.)

12% female voters, aye. I'm not sure how they've gathered that data, though - I connected via twitter, but Google+ and Facebook were options. I don't remember filling anything in, so I assume they've farmed the data straight out of the API for whichever platform you used to login.

I signed in through twitter (which doesn't collect that info) and they asked, but I was able to decline.

Not that the actual representation of women in their list is any better. It's actually worse than I expected. :-/

Should we have a separate thread for the countdown or is that futile?

It doesn't merit its own thread.

More or less exactly the top 20 I'd have predicted, although maybe not in that order.

I hope the ILM 80s rock poll isn't as predictable

Would be fun (ha) to start a poll thread to see how high the first album on their vote placed. (40 for me, and it was the one I was most ashamed of including, 51 for an unconditional vote.)

I wrote about this on my blog

http://www.ci.desoto.tx.us/index.aspx?NID=61

no write-in votes placed afaict

apparently people who like pop/hip hop the most still prefer radiohead over outkast.

top ten write-ins

PAVEMENT BRIGHTEN THE CORNERS
REFUSED THE SHAPE OF PUNK TO COME
LAURYN HILL THE MISEDUCATION OF LAURYN HILL
BRAND NEW THE DEVIL AND GOD ARE RAGING INSIDE ME
PULP THIS IS HARDCORE
QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE RATED R
DEFTONES WHITE PONY
JAY-Z REASONABLE DOUBT
BEASTIE BOYS HELLO NASTY
PAVEMENT TERROR TWILIGHT

There's not much to say about this list, is there? 10 of my picks were in the top 200, pretty much the ones I expected.

Their 'experimental' list is ridiculous

Boring list, but between this and that cat power article they've been slipping in some really good design on p4k..

The country distribution is weird. There are more artists from Oxford than the entire country of Ireland? Really?

(am trying not to bristle that Aphex Twin has clearly been called English.)

i'd characterise him as English

Hang on, how can the same artist/album be in both the "experimental" category and the "pop/r&b" category. How does that work, then?

I suppose there can be experimental R&B, but there is no universe in which Radiohead are R&B. (Tho I don't think there's much of an argument for anything in the "experimental" section actually being experimental, more like.)