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

shocked, i tell you, shocked

incidentally, the 4th biggest write-in album was some major label emo bands i've never heard of? weird

haha i cant believe youve never heard brand new!

as a branding exercise though it totally makes sense to only include the things that you have put your site stamp of approval on. pitchforkers are crafty dudes.

there have been a number of metal albums on the staff lists, so yeah there were plenty to choose from

i'm kinda surprised that mastodon didn't place... they probably would've had this poll been done 2 years ago

If P4k just wanted an album database w/out licensing issues they could have used Musicbrainz. But there's no evidence they had any interest in doing much to help writers-in.

Or Discogs, I guess (not sure how easy it is to get their data).

Thought a Boris album might at least make it

Did Big N Rich place?

haha i cant believe youve never heard brand new!

― Lamp, Wednesday, August 22, 2012 8:53 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

i thought it was clear i don't know any emo bands unless they go platinum

yeah, that's kinda bugging me out

lol but sd isnt your favourite band an emo band who went platinum?

think this was a genius idea for the amount of pageviews the list-making must have got but it might have been a better idea just not to have published the results, impossible not to have predicted they would end up this way but kind of depressing nonetheless

i said "unless" -- although Say Anything never had a gold album, and apparently Brand New did, so i'm exaggerating a little but really these guys were never on my radar at all beyond the vague knowledge that there was a band called 'Brand New' somewhere out there

don't you ever dream of all the emo bands who never went platinum you might have loved tho!

I guess w/ Boris votes were probably split across their albums. I'm sure at least 80% of Radiohead fans placed OK Computer above all other Radiohead albums. Acts with a universally accepted career highpoint were more likely to place higher. That said, That's likely a bad example w/ 4 Radiohead records in the top 20.

can't say i do (xp)

can't tell if it's bugging j0rdan out that they placed or that i never heard of them

some dude were you surprised by the lack of sonic youth records itl?

sincerely no. seems like it couldn't do anything but benefit allmusic. sharing artist & title info on a few thousand albums wouldn't undercut the value of their intellectual property, i don't think - especially not if they're getting hits out of it. i mean, p4rk could easily write code to strip that all info out if they really wanted to...

I'm pretty sure Allmusic's whole business model is licensing their DB to other companies who need it. So no, giving it away for free makes no sense at all.

¿maybe no one cares about boris records?

xp fair nuf

can't tell if it's bugging j0rdan out that they placed or that i never heard of them

― some dude, Wednesday, August 22, 2012 9:12 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

latter

some dude were you surprised by the lack of sonic youth records itl?

― Lamp, Wednesday, August 22, 2012 9:12 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

it actually didn't occur to me to look! i thought maybe Murray Street would place but i'm not shocked it didn't.

again i think this entire discussion overlooks the fact that almost nothing would've changed had the database been expanded -- maybe 'reasonable doubt' would've hit number 186 or something

― young money color me badd (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, August 22, 2012 5:42 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i can see Lauryn Hill doing pretty well if it wasn't a write-in

― some dude, Wednesday, August 22, 2012 5:43 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I just realized that the write-ins are represented in the lists by year. So the top write-in, Brighten the Corners was #13 on the 1997 list. And Mogwai - Young Team was the lowest ranked '97 album to hit the top 200 (at #165). So I guess that kind of puts the write-ins in perspective.

to clarify, Mogwai is #9 on the 1997 list and Bob Dylan, GYBE and Portishead all would have hit the top 200 before Pavement.

Lauryn Hill is #14 on the 1998 list and Silver Jews at #7 is the lowest ranked '98 album in the top 200, so the Beta Band, Mercury Rev, Tortoise, GYBE, Belle & Sebastien, and Cat Power would have hit the top 200 first.

haha i cant believe youve never heard brand new!

Me too! "Jesus Christ" was a big Singles Jukebox favorite in 2007.

Although, come to think of it, I have literally never heard of them in any other context.

i can't tell if their single that's named after a line from Rushmore is familiar or if it's just familiarly eye-rolly in the same way as every other song or video from that era with a Wes Anderson homage

oli#ver wa#ng on FB

I guess I'm of several minds here. On the one hand, I totally get what Matos is saying. The People's List mostly seems to affirm the Pitchforkiness of Pitchfork.To that extent, it really doesn't tell us anything new or surprising.

But tha
t said, I feel like we could take the reactions to their list the same way that, in previous generations, people reacted to the Pazz and Jop poll (back when that seemed more relevant) or any of the Rolling Stone's 100-500 Greatest [fill in the blank]. On the one hand, such lists simply affirmed the identity of the publications and their presumed readership. Call it an insularity feedback loop.

And I think the reason we react to those things is because they mostly feel like an affirmation by those already on the top: hegemony taking an unnecessary victory lap. So yeah, it's not new. It's not surprising. But at the very least, it's annoying b/c these are the dominant outlets of their respective eras/communities and "mainstream society" devotes more attention to them than, say, The Murder Dog's People's List. And race and class and gender all have something to do with that. The outlets that white middle class men gravitate to will usually hold more sway than publications that cater to a broader or different demographic.

But that said (told you I was of several minds): if J's students know Jeff Buckley but not Nina Simone, I have a hard time laying that at the feet of PF. In this regard, I see PF as a symptom of a larger problem around how various kinds of cultural knowledge are privileged but I don't see them as the source of it. Student ignorance/bias may steer them to PF but it's not like PF has some inextricably gravity (as is obvious with this crowd here!)

Well, ok, if they're a symptom, I guess they're one of those symptoms that also propagate problems on their own: an indie rock pneumonia (as opposed to the boogie woogie flu).

i totally did not hide his name. eh what's he gonna do, sue me?

wa♯ng♯ ∞

i liked his comment too.

And I think the reason we react to those things is because they mostly feel like an affirmation by those already on the top: hegemony taking an unnecessary victory lap.

I really agree with this. For a site started by a Chicago alt doofus going "Shit, cat" at the five jazz cds he's owned, pitchfork has evolved its scope impressively, and really is offering more diverse content and perspective than a lot of people appreciate. However, doing this kind of reader's poll and labeling it the People's List just underscores how milquetoast its core market remains, and while i'm sure converse is happy it does undercut any backpatting about what a long strange trip it's been.

well, it's been long anyway

quality zing imo

Because I assassin down the avenue, because my lies were always wishes, because you were right about the stars, because I've got reservations about so many things, and finally, because of Chicago.

Who do we have to lean on at p4k to get reader comments for all 200?

also, i thought Lamp's question about whether these results were depressing to p4k editors/staff was an interesting one. i mean, maybe ryan is somewhere with his shoes sneakers up on his desk, nodding in approval at the confirmation of his canon, but as Tim F. noted, there are a lot of contributors with adventurous taste there that have to be looking at this and saying 'this radiohead shit is getting out of control, y'all.' Lamp wrote:

i guess my impression was that the site has put a fair bit of effort in broadening its scope and its cannon and these results seem to suggest its mostly been in vain?

right. if you're the guy writing the metal column (which i think is great), you have to feel a little bummed at the lack of metal here, even if the results are flattened out by 27k+ ballots.

I haven't read the hundred posts that appeared overnight, but I did a weighted list of the ILX ballots on the other thread. Using the most generous count that I could (when you start counting drummers, that's a sign you're grasping) I got just above 30% co-ed percent.

But I gotta take a meeting now.

Would be nice (theoretically) if all the ilxor Pitchfork ballots could be added up, then the Pitchfork top 200 removed, and we could all have a nice chat about unheralded gems.

I think it self-evident that the assumptions made before people even start voting at all can skew things. Many jobs ago, I had to do a statistical analysis of a survey of kids' internet usage. The questions were horribly skewed and leading, resulting in a big moral panic over online predators when the government released the report.

Seriously though, this has been the worst kind of clusterfuck thread - a boring, predictable one. I'm off to read Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me (RIP blogs) for old times' sake.

there are a lot of contributors with adventurous taste there that have to be looking at this and saying 'this radiohead shit is getting out of control, y'all.'

Post very much in character, I know, but you know it is possible to have "adventurous" taste and like Radiohead a lot, right? I mean I also find the list depressing and lacking in breadth and overwhelmingly dull and white and male and full of a particular strain of meat and potatoes indie rock that I just don't like, but obviously the preponderance of Radiohead in the list doesn't trouble me at all. I know (I hope?) that you're just using them as an example, but I just really hate the idea that any one band (or thinking that any one band has multiple great albums) can torpedo the adventurousness of one's taste, or that anyone who rates them highly must also rate the rest of the list highly due to some slavish devotion to indie rock consensus. Or that "adventurous" listeners would necessarily agree on what specific items on the list are most disappointing. </hypersensitivity>

I'm not any sort of Radiohead fan but that is otm

But this is where I say, there are fans of Radiohead, and then there are Radiohead fans. That the RH fanatics I know (you Mel, Turangalila, a couple of other people I talk to on twitter) who have really rich, varied tastes - that in some cases, RH themselves have led them towards - and then there are people who just go to them because they are the default listening material for the middle class straight white male. And one of these groups is a subset of the other, but the larger group has shouted down the smaller.

I also wanna just repost this thing that Alfred found and posted above, because I want to re-read it and digest it.

I'll say this and bounce, not because I don't want to contribute to the conversation but because I have work to do this afternoon. There is nothing wrong per se with an institution like Pitchfork having an admitted focus on all things indie rock. That's what they do, and they've cornered that market with savvy business practices. The problem begins when "indie rock" is mistakenly conflated, implicitly or explicitly, with the interlocking concepts "white" "male" and "hipster." For one, that conflation denies the rich, promiscuous and porous history of indie rock and the complex racial and gender dynamics that have always informed the makings and reception of the music. (Daphne Brooks among others has done a superb job of disturbing those denials). It also dehistoricizes, decontextualizes and depoliticizes the complex and often insidious race-class-gender-sexuality history of hipsterism itself (well documented by John Leland, among others). It also privileges a discrete strain of straight white male hipsterism as monoculture. It then assumes that music made/produced by people of color and by women (and women of color) and gays etc. is either of little value, or only of value the closer in proximity it gets to that monoculture, i.e. when it serves to affirm or privileged the values and experiences and ideals of that elitist monoculture. Hence Pitchfork's continued reaffirmation of a select authorized number of artists of color/women like Kanye West, Jay-Z, Janelle Monae etc. at the expense of the oceanic expanse of diverse independent music to which it shutters its doors. So, even though it's made slight improvements in recent years, it remains a hermetically sealed culture, constantly keeping difference at bay, even as it pretends to be universal and democratic in its scope (i.e. The People's List). There are many problems with these exclusionary practices, including that Pitchfork's broadcasted elitism tied to their status within the industry has done a lot to (re-)segregate popular music at a time in the late 90s and into the 2000s and 2010s when actual real lived listening practices were likely a lot more cosmopolitan, promiscuous and diverse. As a teacher, I've seen first hand the way those exclusionary practices seem to have played a role in producing a much-less informed audience for popular music, one incapable of realizing you're not going to get far writing about Vampire Weekend if you know zilch about South African music. You get Jeff Buckley papers and zero knowledge on NIna Simone. You get Frank Ocean and no Rahsaan Patterson. Nothing wrong with having an indie rock focused publication, but indie rock doesn't exist in a cultural vaccuum outside R&B, hip-hop, blues, gospel, jazz, outside of issues relating to women and gender politics, gays and sexuality etc. And on and on. If Pitchfork wants to relish in its elitism, it should stop calling itself the rather benign "an essential guide to independent music" and call it explicitly what it is: a guide for "white straight male hipster rockers." Then there'd be no question

I feel like I agree with this, but I need to read it a few more times to make sure that it's not just chiming with mine own truthiness.

I feel like I'm having the same conversation with you, with Owen, with a couple of other people, and want to say "YES, people are using these artists symbolically, we are not actually saying that Radiohead or Arcade Fire are ~terrible people~."

I'm not denying that those people exist, though. I just don't think it's particularly cool to imply that to love them, you must inherently lack a sense of musical adventurousness (I also have an issue with the fact that a lot of people do tend to imply that if a big Radiohead fan's taste goes beyond standard indie rock, then it must be because they're aping the band's taste. Not accusing you of that, but it's something I've been accused of before and it bothers me a lot, especially because the vast majority of the time I get that accusation over music that as far as I know, RH have literally never mentioned [and I don't rate a lot of the stuff that they do recommend or mention]. But it's just assumed that because I am a Girl and I am a Fan that my taste cannot be valid or my own, especially when it is Adventurous). x-post

so basically the moral of the story is that people have pretty fucking awful taste

I just don't think it's particularly productive to use individual musicians/bands as symbols? It doesn't really get to the heart of the problem, which is the homogeneity of the list. And it's always just going to be a distraction to anyone who likes whatever musician/band was selected to symbolize the entire list. I mean, I don't think the answer to what's wrong with the list is to get listeners to focus on who to exclude, but who to include. It just shifts the focus in a way that I am uncomfortable with, even when it comes to bands that I don't myself like. x-post

Ha ha, yeah, I *totally* know that accusation, I have heard it many times before, and resist it with all my might.

What can you say to that, except "haha, I was into ArtistX *way* before Thom was..." but at the same time, I can't deny that they have turned me onto some great stuff. Not because I am a girl who is incapable of thinking for myself and want to be him or impress him, but because he's another person on the shortlist of people who have a good ear for stuff I might like. But, y'know, "DJP, Mel W, Matt DC, The Lex, Thom Yorke" <- which one of these is not like the other ones?

x-post to the thing about taste. And OK, yeah, I agree with you about not using bands as symbols. I try not to do it, but I understand why people do.

It's a pyramid scheme.

People (musicians or listeners) start at a fulcrum point, then cascade down into different directions.

e.g. "Velvet Underground" begat Nurse With Wound and TG as well as every chugachuga indie band...

(Actually, one step up: The Christopher Isherwood "berlin" scene begat the Velvets and manhatTransfer)

Whereas I remember an interview with "The Enemy" where the singer was saying the only band that all the members liked was Oasis, which actually did the opposite of what he intended, that suggested a certain uniformity of outlook as opposed to a sprawl in all directions musical..

From playing in a band of three people with only vaguely overlapping tastes I can confirm you will end up with a certain homogeneity or "happy medium" in the style you play and that something that maybe one member is absolutely enthralled with will get vetoed by the others. I'm reminded of an article about the kind of music people start listening to when co-habiting as a couple and how middle-of-the-road it can become simply through trying to find that middle ground.