To "rock fans", what is meant to be the canonical, everyone can agree on, album of the decade?

I don't remember exactly what was said but I remember the words "future of rock music" were spoken over a vid of Scott Stapp in full-on Christ mode soaring over the crowd with 3d revolving camera effects and dramatic guitar wranglin'

damn I'm actually getting nostalgic for those early '00s music video gimmicks now

I'm not claiming these are separate groups, nor even implying anything about the quality of each record, just that one is canonized and the other isn't, for better or worse.

― jaymc

not so sure about that. in the overall critical canon, nirvana shines from on high, but in the more contentious rockist trenches, the difference between the two isn't quite as vast.

to put my last post another way, i'm talking about the "best of the decade" and "representative of the decade" as though they're two sides of the same coin. dirt and nevermind have both been canonized, though in different ways.

knee-jerk "yr talkin bout ROCK lolz" thing is weird

but jay did Nevermind only gain access to the rockist canon? I know it's kind of unhip right now to namedrop Nirvana, but certainly their contributions to popular music have been universally acknowledged at least?

or do rockists not like Dirt? is that what ur saying?

knee-jerk "yr talkin bout ROCK lolz" thing is weird

me?

Honestly I think Coldplay are probably the band we're looking for here even if I & other ppl here aren't fans.

no, not u, drugz. just something that's come up here and there on the thread

yeah, Kid A is so representative that it couldn't even win the P&J poll in its year of release.

oh yeah I guess Kid A would probably work too wouldn't it

Collision Course - Linkin Park and Jay-Z

coldplay are a risky call, cuz they not only piss off the die-hards & rockists, they don't enjoy a great deal of critical respect. plus the UK/US divide is pronounced. and again, i think bands that can't manage to establish auras of art/crit-holiness around their work are rarely canonized. this is why nirvana tend to ace out AIC. coldplay don't even get junk-pain cred points.

yeah, Kid A is so representative that it couldn't even win the P&J poll in its year of release.

― Ioannis

kid A is and was divisive. i'm not saying it's THE RECORD OF THE 00s, but i have the feeling that even its divisiveness will only add to its cred in the long run

didn't read thread, but if one were to argue that Nevermind is the canonical rock album of the 90s, I suppose a case could be made for one of the White Stripes' big sellers? Elephant? I'm guessing it doesn't come near the stratospheric numbers that Nevermind did, but I imagine "rock" doesn't move the units it did 15 years ago, either.

the properties of Kid A seem to have been taken by the greater rockcrit mass (pop is a music; rock is a body of criticism) as a sort of guideline of what interesting music sounded like this decade...its relentlesly futurist technological impulse meant that most of the beloved indie albums of the decade would at least dabble in electrodrizzle*...its strains of anti-music, and anti-song would lend artistic currency to all different types of experimentation in noise and formlessness...hell, it could be said that its lingering devotion to anthemic rock prolley managed to leave a niche for bands like The Killers to attain quasi-cool status, plus Radiohead leaving rock behind meant that Coldplay could sell 5 million albums...

I imagine people could call bullshit on every point i made, and its true...Kid A prolley did not make electronica or noise cool. it's bcz I'm kind of a rock fan that I dont know this, but I do imagine that 95% of the population is at least as ignorant as me, so I imagine that theres a lot of people out there to whom Kid A acted as a way into the decade...

most of the beloved indie albums of the decade would at least dabble in electrodrizzle

^^ pretty questionable premise imo

prolley; I'm groping for something but I don't think I nailed it in that post

i LOVE elephant, and it seems like one of the few big rock records of the 00s that held up WR2 critical respect and popular attention. plus it is undeniably a ROCK RECORD -- very formalist and even reactionary in its rockist agenda and respect for the canon.

but there are a lot of ways that it just isn't nevermind (or nevermind the bollocks). first, it didn't have a profound influence on rock and pop. if anything, it came at the tail end of a blip in interest in retro-formalist rock, capping a small splash with few ripples. second, as you say, it wasn't a MASSIVE hit. just a strong steady seller that got a lot of press attention at the time. finally, it doesn't really articulate a generational POV. it's a great record, but by no means a rallying cry.

EDIT: and i'm totally on board with drugz' claims about radiohead's influence. said pretty much the same thing sometime yesterday. the phrase "most of the beloved indie albums of the decade would at least dabble" is overstated, but still conveys a useful truth about what's going on now and how radiohead (and beck, and teh flaming lips, and lots of others) laid the groundwork.

kid a does a much better job of satisfying these last 3 demands. it was more influential, a bigger hit, and it seemed to speak as the emotional voice of its moment.

i dont really like Elephant

weird. stuck my "EDIT" in the middle of the post. last paragraph was sposed to come before the one preceding.

to restate: you did nail it, drugz. only problem is that u hyperbolized a bit. and not liking elephant is cool. i'm a garage rock stan from way back, and was so totally on board with the white stripes at that point that they could do no wrong. the fact that they managed to crank out "seven nation army" in the process sealed the deal forever

yeah i like garage rock a lot too...BIG Dirtbombs fan...like a bunch of White Stripes records just not that one...

If Nevermind is the canonical choice of the 90s, what would be the record of the 80s?

Or put in a slightly different way, do we expect every decade to have a single album that has a huge galvanizing effect on the music world the way Nevermind did?

daydream nation?

dare?

VH MCMLXXXIV

eh?

rly?

maybe the 80s were a different world

idk :-/

Thrillerz??

some might not want to call it "rock" butit did huge numbers, had EVH, and sort of legitimaized (?) video & pop/rock synergism?? That's pretty fuckin 80s..

maybe i prefer purple rain

^^ good case could be made

moodles: NO. expecting every decade to boil down to THE RECORD is foolish, and the OG thread question is fucked. we're much better off talking about trends and "what is rock lol", putting together groups of albums that represent in different ways.

i posted a top 10 list yesterday, but i'm thinking that it doesn't pay enough attention to the beardy/saddo mostly-west-coast US indie thing that's really taken off over the last five years. not sure how to shorthand that. i'm thinking maybe sufjan stevens' illinois is the spokesmodel for a whole bunch of stuff, including that, though it seems a counterintuitive pick (not west coast, not beardy, sorta un-rock)

My question about the 80s was kind of goofy anyway since I immediately thought of about a dozen records that all had huge impacts on the rock world.

I think it may be safe to say that as time goes on, these huge landscape-altering records become fewer and farther between.

thriller & purple rain are good 80s picks. so are appetite for destruction & shout at the devil. daydream nation & surfer rosa. closer? pornography & disintegration? madonna LP (not rock?)

again, lists are the way to go

80s "rock" - Appetite for Destruction, The Joshua Tree or (gulp) Money For Nothing

most of the beloved indie albums of the decade would at least dabble in electrodrizzle

^^ pretty questionable premise imo

― LMA.O. Scott (some dude), Thursday, February 19, 2009 2:14 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^this^^^

the most electrodrizzly most white folks/indie heads i know tend to get is gorillaz + teh postal service

maybe this is just a southern thing but in the car with indie kids ur still likelier to hear 2pac or mf doom than anything blog-housey

If Nevermind is the canonical choice of the 90s, what would be the record of the 80s?

Using the criteria as I understand it for this thread, maybe: Bruce Springsteen, Born In The USA; Guns and Roses, Appetite for Destruction; U2, The Joshua Tree; Police, Synchronicity; Van Halen, 1984; Bon Jovi, Slippery When Wet; or Def Leppard, Pyromania.

These aren't the best rock discs of the 1980s, but that isn't the question.

probly joshua tree imo

I asked a bunch of rock fans this question and the best answer I got was "Origin of Symetry", which has to be wrong.

― Ringtone bisexual bible shower (The stickman from the hilarious xkcd comics), Monday, 16 February 2009 19:32 (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is probably right.

although, true, it's spelled wrong...

these huge landscape-altering records become fewer and farther between

dunno about that. i think music people are more balkanized, so they're less aware of how the landcape outside their niche is being altered. think there have been tons of big, game-changing records in the 00s. maybe not so many big rock records though...

electrodrizzly most white folks/indie heads i know tend to get is gorillaz + teh postal service

― harry s tfuman

but, see, that shit is EXACTLY what i meant by "electrodribble" in the 1st place. plus kid a, and yoshimi battles the pink, and whatever beck record, and looper, and (more distantly) all that gross indie dance shit everybody loves to hate.

80s "rock" - Appetite for Destruction, The Joshua Tree or (gulp) Money For Nothing

It's called Brothers in Arms, idiot. 'Born in the USA' is the right answer for the 80s anyway

Drugs A. Money, I wonder if you are misunderstanding what I mean by "rockism," a term I'm already regretting bringing up. The "overall critical canon" -- as exemplified by the Rolling Stone 500-best albums list -- is, for all intents and purposes, a rockist canon. The very impulse to canonize is, as you yourself suggest upthread, a rockist one. Rockists could find something to like about both Nirvana and Alice in Chains, since both bands "kept it real" to some degree. But I'd argue that the ones who would champion Alice in Chains alongside Nirvana are a minority group within the larger rockist community.

Let's look at it this way. Albums that wind up being canonized by Rolling Stone are typically praised by both critics and fans: rarely will you find an album on the list that hasn't done decent sales, unless it has some great mythology behind it or is considered extremely influential. Nevermind is the rare album that critics loved, fans bought by the millions, and it was seen as a milestone in the lineage of rock history. Its place in the "overall critical canon" is thus secure. Dirt, while a very good record that had multi-platinum sales at the time, simply didn't have the same degree of critical support. And while you can make a good argument that it was wildly influential -- plenty of grunge and post-grunge bands borrowed from the Alice in Chains template -- the album's reputation after its initial mainstream success lay mostly among these Average Rock Dudes we've been talking about. 35-year-olds are still putting "Rooster" on the jukebox, but 19-year-olds aren't buying it like they are old Nirvana records.

Appetite & Joshua TRee, yep... I'm trying to think of things that did hueg numbers, made lots of top ten lists but like, even little kids were totally in to.

xxxxpost Daniel ESQ's list looks pretty good

(and buy top 10 lists, i mean P&J and the like, not just Spin and RS)

35-year-olds are still putting "Rooster" on the jukebox, but 19-year-olds aren't buying it like they are old Nirvana records.

^^also v. important

HYSTERIA?...SLIPPERY WHEN WET???????

Bruce Springsteen, Born In The USA; Guns and Roses, Appetite for Destruction; U2, The Joshua Tree; Police, Synchronicity; Van Halen, 1984; Bon Jovi, Slippery When Wet; or Def Leppard, Pyromania

this this this this this. some of that is THE CANON, some of it ain't, but it's a big part of how we remember the 80s. plus speaking in tongues, freedom of choice, plus the other stuff i said before, etc.

overlooks THE CANON though, and the way we set up weird moats between the "important" and the not.