pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

not seen the list but no senses working overtime?!

?!??!?!

"Purple Rain" is an amazing song but it's not exactly a weird choice. It's the title song to his biggest movie, the one that all millenials saw last year at the art theater.

It's only weird that it's top of the list. Because as many (most?) would probably agree, it's not even the best song on that album.

xpost Don't forget Scott P. connection. Former Fork honco now works at Beats/Apple as their "editorial content manager." So there's a Fork/Apple/Dre connection all wrapped up in one person! Tin hats on.

"Where Is My Mind" also placing high, also the one Pixies song from a big movie.

"not seen the list but no senses working overtime?!"

it made my new and improved list.

as did fade to grey and eisbaer since someone mentioned them...

Also, regarding the bit in the Collapseboard article on NWA's lyrics -- this is par for the course as far as I can see. The things about music that get passed on to the next generation are aesthetic in nature, not content. When you look at Whitney Houston singles placing high, think of the indie acts who make shiny, drum-machine driven synth pop and soul. They're not singing about "I wanna dance with somebody who loves me", they're singing "I wanna dance to lose myself in myself because I hate myself so I love myself". Keep the music's aesthetic that you like, but use your own life's perspective.

haha not actual lyrics of course

just read the list

where's the freaky shit? apart from 'o superman' there's little that's particularly odd. no diamanda galas, no foetus, no c******s. do pitchfork just not care about weird music any more?

my other complaint is that 'west end girls' is too low

oh and there wasn't a single track off Rio. BAD PITCHFORK

From collapseboard piece:

Then there’s the writing, which pretty much sticks to the tight, clenched ‘I’ve heard every note of recorded music ever made and will now evaluate it from up on high’ style I find so grating on that site. For example, someone writes in the entry for ‘Ceremony’ that New Order ‘wouldn’t find their creative footing for a few more years’ as if it were the most obvious thing in the world instead of a (hugely) subjective opinion

That's a bit harsh, but can relate to this a lot - p4k 500 book is an infuriating/impossible read bcz of this

pfork lists are never particularly "weird" (including the reasonable/safe #1 choice)

ugh the worst example of the disconnect btwn matter-of-factly tone and bullshit (or at least highly contestable) opinion is anything music-related on Vox.

didn't know Chris Ott changed his name.

They picked the wrong side of the Run-DMC single.

otm

had a giggle that the artwork was for the jason nevins remix

looks like they changed it now

lol

"Walk this way" (the definite run dmc one) would have been better than guns n roses.

pfork lists are never particularly "weird" (including the reasonable/safe #1 choice)

tru, especially the farther back the time period they are covering. i think once they wrote something like 'there wasn't as much music released back then!' to semi-explain why all their selections were chart hits and/or from predictable artists for one of these things, which, lol, i don't think is even true??

If anything it's the song that got half of the 80s into hiphop.

Good call. Too bad they aren't making a documentary on Run DMC.

i think once they wrote something like 'there wasn't as much music released back then!' to semi-explain why all their selections were chart hits and/or from predictable artists for one of these things, which, lol, i don't think is even true??

Yeah it would be better to say 80s and 90s lists can be more hit-filled because there were far more hits then than before or after and that means there were more unusual-sounding (however you interpret it) hits too.

Maybe they could explain it as "we would have included these more obscure songs but it turns out Apple Music didn't have them in their library"

But yeah the hitmachines of the 80s and part of the 90s were pretty forward-thinking compared to the past decades. Can you imagine a song like 'O Superman' being pushed as a single and actually becoming a hit in this day and age?

Naw the Run-DMC pick should have been "Sucker MCs" because it completely changed what hip-hop sounded like instead of just convincing white people to listen to it.

^ this

The Walk This Way collab did more for Aerosmith's rep than it did for Run DMC's.

We can have both. Run DMC is way more deserving of two spots than NWA.

According to wikipedia 'walk this way' is credited as the song that helped break hiphop into mainstream pop music and catapulted run dmc into mainstream stardom. Yeah it also helped resurrect Aerosmith's career but RUN DMC are probably one of the most popular 'old school' bands thanks to it.

And Run DMC were actually popular because they wrote great hits and not because of all the crew drama like NWA.

Nah, in 1986 Run DMC were well on their way to crossing over anyway. If it wasn't Walk This Way, it would've been something else. Raising Hell is an atomic bomb of a record and another single from it would have crossed them over.

Aerosmith were desperate relics in 1986.

Can we agree it's a better song than 'straight outta compton' or at least the two gnr singles?

not really - it's a novelty cover prob more worthy of being in a Best Videos Of The 80s countdown

i do like that tyler made the chorus less shrill

now if they'd replaced straight outta compton and one of the gnr hits with "king of rock" and "rag doll" i'd give that a thumbs up

Yeah, no. No agreement there. xps

But you could make the argument that rap-rock crossovers are still a thing and esp remix songs feat. guest stars also a huge thing. In a lot of ways it was ahead of its time.

Like how many pop songs nowadays have a rap guest verse? Pretty much all of those are indebted to "Walk This Way".

walk this way doesn't have a guest rap verse, it's two rap guys covering aerosmith

how many rap acts straight-up do rock covers now? if anything it's very uninfluential

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36hLtWglrhM

seriously name five songs where rappers and stars unite to...do the old song word-for-word with some scratching

Name five of any hit songs that were covered word for word. It's kind of a thing that is not done much anymore.

The Roots? Mos Def?

those aren't songs or even collaborations, those are the names of acts with question marks next to them

Ok:

the roots - seed 2.0 which covers cody chesnutt

And Mos def has a live band nowadays and they cover hendrix i think.

seed 2.0 is a word for word cover?

Not sure why "Walk This Way" needs to have a modern rock hit covered word for word by rap star (and word for word only, no samples, no remixes, etc) to be influential. It seems like a needlessly specific criteria.

well that's a matter of perspective - it's treated as "highly influential" but actually the "influence" isn't so much the song but the music video - way more people have done "YOU? ME? TOGETHER? WOW!" than actually ape the track

and wtf a breakthrough in mtv gimmickry has to do with Best Songs Of the 80s i dunno