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

which I guess makes sense because there's really no monolithic critical consensus either

eh I would've guessed the Missy and MIA and Joanna Newsom albs are as canonical as things get...?

but there isn't a publication -- certainly not one on its level -- that covers as wide a breadth of music as in-depth.

You seriously believe the bolded bit?

older rock crits on my facebook HATED this thing. man. like serious hate. the results of this thing. they are not down with the fork at all. the list looked pretty much exactly like i thought it would. so, no hate from me. i knew what to expect.

― scott seward, Wednesday, August 22, 2012 5:32 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Exactly. I'm a little surprised by the degree of nastiness.

I would have submitted a list if I didn't do it so damn often at the day job.

Not in the same "greatest of all-time" sort of way. There's a consensus that they're good or great, not so much a consensus that they belong at the very top of your list. x-posts

i am more and more baffled as to how they arrived at 'distinction index'

Regina Spektor is #1 on the female voters distinction index, also you aren't a woman.

Fair enough. I haven't perused any of the individual voter block info.

i am more and more baffled as to how they arrived at 'distinction index'

― thomp, Wednesday, August 22, 2012 5:46 PM (16 seconds ago) Bookmark

what about their explanation of it isn't clear?

You seriously believe the bolded bit?

― some white dude (Turangalila), Wednesday, August 22, 2012 5:44 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

uhh... yeah. pitchfork runs probably 4,000+ new words of criticism every day for practically the entire year. that's not even counting features, news or video stuff.

Anyone who got legitimately angry about these results must have a massive stroke every time the People's Choice Awards roll around.

i am more and more baffled as to how they arrived at 'distinction index'

― thomp, Wednesday, August 22, 2012 5:46 PM (16 seconds ago) Bookmark

what about their explanation of it isn't clear?

― some dude, Wednesday, 22 August 2012 21:47 (7 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that it doesn't tell you how they arrived at the number

I didn't get angry at these results, just kinda eye-rolly. But I do get annoyed at the massive pile-ups of endless white dude lists of white dudes.

i expected this list basically, nevertheless it is still a deeply wack list

if i get the distinction index correctly, it's telling us which albums were voted predominantly for by a subset. If that's true, the overwhelming maleness of the voting populace is underscored by the fact that only two albums (Regina Spektor's Far and Devendra Banhart's Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon) had women voters making up more than a third of its endorsers. And only just more than a third. Basically it looks like every album took at least 10% of its support from women, and never more than 35%.

I think the percentage is the number of votes for that album which were from people in the particular demographic.

J0rdan S, idk, quantity has rarely been synonymous with quality, but okie.

Amount not number obv.

if that were how it works then some records on the men's distinction list would be over 88% ?

I think the percentage is the number of votes for that album which were from people in the particular demographic.

I think that's the same as how da croupier is reading it.

xpost yeah that throws me off - how many votes did an album need to qualify for the index? because there has to be albums where only one dude bothered to vote for it

J0rdan S, idk, quantity has rarely been synonymous with quality, but okie.

― some white dude (Turangalila), Wednesday, August 22, 2012 5:52 PM (9 seconds ago) Bookmark

right... but quantity is often synonymous with... depth

guys you are saying 'the gender distribution for ween is the same as that as total votes cast in the poll. for every other record, a given female voter is more likely to vote for it than a given male voter'

or not, i have an arts degree and i'm drunk

Incidentally, some stuff I've written about for p4k: lots of female fronted r&b, dancehall, minimal techno, OG disco, funk carioca... And I'm nowhere near the most adventurous staff writer taste wise.

i mean there were still 30 thousand ballots for this thing, i think anything in any of the sublists must've been on a decent number of ballots

xpost

30,000?? jfc

Jaymc: yeah, my phone doesn't warn me about xposts.

oh wait. points v votes!

30,000 people provided free labor so pitchfork could sell a platform to converse

Incidentally, some stuff I've written about for p4k: lots of female fronted r&b, dancehall, minimal techno, OG disco, funk carioca... And I'm nowhere near the most adventurous staff writer taste wise.

yes you are very representative and prolific on the site of course

Have you read any joe tangari? Oh wait silly question.

lol

guys you are saying 'the gender distribution for ween is the same as that as total votes cast in the poll. for every other record, a given female voter is more likely to vote for it than a given male voter'

I'm not entirely clear on this, either, but the 88%/12% gender distribution overall is for voters, not votes.

yeah re-reading the distinction index description, it's definitely something vaguer than literally 36% of the votes for a regina spektor album were female, but that women were 36% more likely to vote for Regina Spektor's Far? in that case yeah i dunno how they worked that up.

i guess if converse is happy that's all that matters

tbh i feel like they should've just left out those percentages, even if we knew exactly what they meant i kinda doubt they'd add any real shade of meaning to the rankings

30,000 people provided free labor so pitchfork could sell a platform to converse

...

it's possible they left those percentages to generate think pieces across the interwebs

if people are sick of white people lists maybe they should read rap lists? merengue lists? don't read bluegrass lists though. or metal lists. i mean indie rock is uh traditionally and historically whiter than white. indie rock fans listen to indie rock. it ain't rocket science. and indie rockers like rap that reminds them of indie rock. they want everything to sound like indie rock. that's why they play wilco records instead of country records.

The distinction index list for USA in general is rather interesting, only for the fact that it's probably one of the few times that Third Eye Blind or Sublime will ever be mentioned on the site:

1.94.93% My Morning Jacket Okonokos
2.93.25% Dr. Dog Fate
3.93.21% The Avett Brothers Emotionalism
4.92.9% Ted Leo and the Pharmacists Shake the Sheets
5.92.9% Beulah The Coast is Never Clear
6.91.17% Third Eye Blind Third Eye Blind
7.90.91% Sublime Sublime
8.90.88% Ted Leo and the Pharmacists Hearts of Oak
9.90.81% Dr. Dog Shame, Shame
10.90.78% Matt & Kim Grand
11.90.72% Hum Downward Is Heavenward
12.90.32% Dr. Dog We All Belong
13.90.03% Ted Leo and the Pharmacists The Tyranny of Distance
14.89.64% Ra Ra Riot The Rhumb Line
15.88.96% Fountains of Wayne Welcome Interstate Managers
16.88.56% Enon Believo!
17.88.12% Lucinda Williams Car Wheels On a Gravel Road
18.88.04% Crooked Fingers Crooked Fingers
19.87.85% Minus the Bear Highly Refined Pirates
20.87.54% Minus the Bear Menos el Oso

sorry that was dumb and obvious. just keep seeing this on facebook with people lamenting what pitchfork people don't listen to.

think the wider problem remains gender roles throughout industry (why so few female duos/trios/quartets/producers/engineers etc.) nor as many m/f combos as there ought to be really.

rosen's quote lists 'solo' figurehead women as some sort of equivalent to bands like the national, which just highlights further the playing field is not so much uneven as severely fragmented and divided unevenly across a much wider area. it's quite a clunky comparison on that basis, regardless of how many people try to appreciate both archetypes.

the dearth of successful bands while solo acts increase generally obstructs this further (even tho the latter has ended up seemingly leading to more solo women than men in the bestsellers list).

man ted leo does not have international appeal at all huh (xpost)

or maybe i'm the only person who thinks of pitchfork music as being an actual genre. which is why i don't get the hate. people don't get mad at rap listmakers for ignoring kate bush or whatever. its a genre thing!

well that's because they asked big boi

argh beaten to the punch

I'd think if the distinction index means the percent someone in a subset's more likely to vote for something that someone who isn't, there'd be some albums where men are more than 100% more likely to vote for it then women are. The idea that it's literally the percent of people in the subset who voted for the album makes more sense - only 6% of Love And Theft's voters were over 51, more than half the people who voted for Danse Macabre were age 26-30, etc - but that's definitely not how it's described.

man ted leo does not have international appeal at all huh (xpost)

Yeah, I was chatting about the list with a coworker earlier today, and he was disappointed/surprised that Ted Leo didn't show up. I forwarded him that USA Distribution Index, and he said "Yeah, I'm pretty sure that his style is extremely American. But, shit, he sings about Europe and socialism all the time!"

In-depth = quality, insightful, incisive.

The idea that it's literally the percent of people in the subset who voted for the album makes more sense - only 6% of Love And Theft's voters were over 51, more than half the people who voted for Danse Macabre were age 26-30, etc - but that's definitely not how it's described.

haha i'm pretty sure i don't trust that either?