THE WORST NME COVER OF ALL TIME

Stevie, could you compile a list feature on the 100 best music lists ever for me?

*VOMITS WITHOUT EVER STOPPING*

Truth is I actually quite enjoy a good listicle, with an interesting angle, penned by a knowledgeable and opinionated writer. But I do honestly believe that a constant procession of "Top 100 Rock Anthems" style list pieces that padded out music mags for much of the 00s are lazy as hell. Gimme a list that exists to provoke, not one that aims for an agreement that The Beatles are as good as its ever gonna get so we might as well give up.

a lot of people like their taste validating. regularly.

Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On.

Let's all agree to agree (zzzz)

Yeah actually I might choose Let's Take It To The Stage now I think about it, Better By The Pound is just unimpeachable.

Was shifting piles of magazines round the other day and came across that one copy of the Wire with the 100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening) list in it. Great feature and an amazing list.

List is here and some nutcase has typed all the blurbs into Discogs too right here.

Scarily, I have 86 of these. Well I was listening anyway.

I really enjoyed all those vanity polls that ppl like emil.y and imago and Eric h were doing recently of their favourite albums/films (or, a bunch of albums/films they thought ppl should seek out). That's the sort of list I like.

Main gaps are mostly down to dull electronica from 1993, but not Atlantis by X-103 (aka Jeff Mills) which is truly classique.

Ha, I believe it - it is mostly a very Marcello list.

That Wire list was very important to me at the time as a statement of purpose - I think I own just 15 of them but a number of those turned out to be cornerstones of my taste (Sextant, Black Woman, World of Echo, In Greenwich Village, Paris 1919, Faust Tapes, Belle Album).

388. Tim Buckley, 'Happy Sad' (1969) Elektra. A daring venture into jazz at the beginning of a rich experimental period for the English songwriting icon.

http://www.nme.com/photos/the-500-greatest-albums-of-all-time-400-301/324199/1/1#13

Ruh roh

I guess he wrote songs in English?

"daring"

"OHMYGOD HE'S VENTURING INTO JAZZ, BE CAREFUL TIM!!"

"last guy i knew ventured into Jazz two or three years back now, we never heard from him again"

Now you've got me sucked in.

383. The Long Blondes, 'Someone To Drive You Home' (2006) Rough Trade. Sheffield janglers provide a glossy guitar-pop fantasy alternative to Alex Turner’s grey depiction of life oop t’north.

oop t'north

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BXVj9QpCIAAAodV.png

There's some Google Translate-style prose going on here.

357. Sugar, 'Copper Blue' (1992) Creation. Husker Du's Bob Mould discovered a post-Nirvana spurt of accessibility and cracked out the breeziest record of the grunge era, making us all dance to the drownings.

Greetings From Luton is my face buckley album

Talented American MC collection.

Lmao lex

330. Portishead, 'Third' (2008) Island. A mesmerising trip-hop adventure, noted for Geoff Barrow’s slick, soulful production.

Love the slick trip hop of Third.

357. Sugar, 'Copper Blue' (1992) Creation. Husker Du's Bob Mould discovered a post-Nirvana spurt of accessibility and cracked out the breeziest record of the grunge era, making us all dance to the drownings.

I don't actually hate that sentence, and it certainly suggests Bob's seminal, without saying it.

301. Arthur Russell, 'World Of Echo' (1986) Rough Trade. Pioneering electronic murmurs that hypnotised NY dance-floors in the mid-’80s and beyond.

^^^ has obviously never heard World of Echo.

We love these records so much we got the work experience to write these blurbs armed with wikipedia and a computer without a sound card.

326. Yo La Tengo, 'I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One' (1997) Matador. Proving themselves masters of jangly indie pop, this eighth album included a cover of Beach Boys’ ‘Little Honda’.

If only my band had covered Beach Boys' "Little Honda", we could have had the 326th greatest album of all time!

I don't want to be a dick about it but I do think if you're going to do a big once-in-a-decade mega-list you should at least edit the entries so that they (a) are grammatical and (b) describe the right record.

357. Sugar, 'Copper Blue' (1992) Creation. Husker Du's Bob Mould discovered a post-Nirvana spurt of accessibility and cracked out the breeziest record of the grunge era, making us all dance to the drownings.

Actually did Whiney write this?

It’s never been more important to us that you feel you can trust our knowledge and opinions, and the only way we can achieve that is by being credible.

357. Sugar, 'Copper Blue' (1992) Creation. Husker Du's Bob Mould discovered a post-Nirvana spurt of accessibility and cracked out the breeziest record of the grunge era, making us all dance to the drownings.

I don't actually hate that sentence, and it certainly suggests Bob's seminal, without saying it.

Cracked out a spurt of seminal what now?

Seminal release

remind me how much of Mould's pre Copper Blue work was really, really inaccessible?

Well Copper Blue is way catchier and glossier than early Husker Du. That claim isn't the biggest problem with that review.

dunno, i have more problems with the bizarre characterization of his career path than whether the language is a bit off

glossier yes, catchier no. warehouse is chockfullahooks.

OK OK, you win, Dü crew.

But anyway, writing like this is unforgivable. It reads like it was mistranslated from the original Thai. I don't understand how anyone thought some of these entries were printable.

498. Lou Reed, 'Berlin' (1973) RCA. Few albums manage to envisage the languish and pain that the artist struggle to express, but ex-Velvet Underground member executes it strikingly. Although Reed isn't a paramount vocalist, his abrasive delivery works wonderfully with the tone of the record.

497. Daft Punk, 'Random Access Memories' (2013) The French duo with their latest electro-dance album claimed huge success, full of undeniably catchy hooks like 'Get Lucky' and dance tunes such as 'Doin' It Right' featuring Panda Bear.

495. The Killers, 'Hot Fuss' (2004) Lizard King/Vertigo. The Las Vegas stadium fillers broke onto the scene with this massively successful debut album. It brought us the indie-essential tracks 'Mr Brightside' and 'Somebody Told me' which remain to be some their best work to date.

494. The Cure, 'The Head On The Door' (1985) Fiction. One of the more accessible albums from The Cure, the alternative band reached a point in the career where their sound was evolving. 'Inbetween Days' shows this awareness of maturing, "Yesterday I got so old, I felt like I could die, yesterday I got so old, it made me want to cry".

This is more in the style of Ladies Home Journal in 1967.

492. These New Puritans, 'Hidden' (2010) Domino. In the midst of new indie bands of muddled, reverb-happy recordings, These New Puritans have a refreshingly clean-cut sound thats joyous to hear.

We love these records so much we got the work experience to write these blurbs armed with wikipedia and a computer without a sound card.

― Defund Phil Collins (stevie), Thursday, October 24, 2013 5:20 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Notably the entires for 500 to 431 have no blurbs in the print mag.

are these actually for real? i'm scared to look

This clown can't even spell "weird", let alone write a sentence. It's not even lazy boilerplate. It dreams of one day being lazy boilerplate. I know that NME has quite a few good writers so who wrote this stuff?

486. Bjork, 'Homogenic' (1997) One Little Indian Bjork is wierd, but it's an insatiable wierd. Homogenic is a an album of grandiose scale, embracing her iceland roots, and epic orchestral moments that make it such a dramatic listen.

Few albums manage to envisage the languish and pain that the artist struggle to express

I assume that's "anguish and pain", quite like "languish and pain" though

language?

We can't get enough of their no-bars-held guitar smashing rock

No bars held