NPR's 150 Albums Made by Women

I thought it was convenient that the entire Jezebel list was all on one page rather than divided into 15 annoying parts, but then the page finished loading and there ended up being an ad every 3 entries, amounting to 50 ads you have to scroll through as you read a list of the 150 lowest rated rateyourmusic albums. very 'fuck the system', that

just realised, no Abba!

There's some good juxtapositions on that list, like this:

133. Chief Keef, Finally Rich

132. Drake, Views

131. Phish, Lawn Boy

Guns'n'Roses surprisingly low.

Clemenza otm on the arbitrariness of the Mamas and the Papas and Jefferson Airplane falling out of favor.

it's cuz they suck

A 1939-1963 list:
https://medium.com/@jonathanbogart/the-150-greatest-albums-by-women-before-1964-54393ae871ec

Throwing Muses/Hersch (and maybe Mary Margaret O'Hara, though she's more obscure to begin with) feels like the biggest omission from a list which is explicitly setting out to grapple with gender questions.

I think the artist choices are good ones. I assume there were pretty explicit riding instructions to focus on ~impact~, hence selections like Like A Virgin which pretty much no one thinks is better than the albums before and after it, Britney's debut, even Erykah Badu's debut.

I have lost track of what this thread has covered, as is often the case when I browse this web-site, but I wanted to say 150 of the worst albums by men seems like a drop in the ocean. I think it is safe to say every other album released by a man is bad, not necessarily based on their sexual orientation and/or gender, but because DAW software is so easily attained and has made music creation very simple. We need not go further than Jake Paul, who I'm sure would top this list if he had the attention span to write a full album's worth of songs.

I admit to being a bit surprised by the inclusion of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as one of the "worst" albums by men in the totality of albums made by men, though. The higher placed albums seem to be honest attempts at selecting the worst ones at least.

32. Enrique Iglesias, Sex and Love

31. Placebo, Placebo

30. Nickelback, Silver Side Up

that's some shade @ Placebo lol

Against Me!
Transgender Dysphoria Blues (Total Treble, 2014)

Thought this was a list of albums by women.

Congrats, I've been on ilx for eight years and that was the first time I've ever flagged a post. Truly disgusting comment.

Yeah, what the hell there, Rudi?

While I disagree with the sentiment expressed above, that particular album's inclusion did feel very "it's 2017—we've gotta have one" to me. I mean, musically, Against Me! ain't shit and never have been.

yo rudipherous fuck you

it's cuz they suck

― Οὖτις

Hey, c'mon, we already had this fight on the Cream thread--not fun!

Response-lists are proliferating so quickly that posting about omissions seems even more nitpicky than usual. But I'll point out what I think is a major one on the pre-'64 list, the second thing I checked for after the Shirelles (who are there): the Chantels. They essentially invented girl-group. Skimmed quickly, looks like a good list otherwise.

thought greil m's comment today was interesting:

The point of a list is selection: ruthlessly, unfairly, perversely, both to start a conversation and to mock the whole idea of boiling anything in life down to a list. Dave Marsh’s The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made is not really a list: it’s a long walk through one person’s taste, sense of history, idiosyncrasy, love and hate.
With a list of 150 albums—as if the great moments are there—all kinds of factors come into play that deforms any sense of what is and what isn’t. Considerations of balance and fairness—the opposite of what a list should be—in terms of eras, race, ethnicity, genre, and on and on make decisions, not what do I love, what would distort the story if it were left out (or included). And there’s too much—when there’s room for anything and everyone, who cares?
I could say that any top list that puts Joni Mitchell’s Blue over Aretha’s I Never Loved a Man or X-ray Spex’s Germfree Adolescents is a travesty, but really, you have to dive into the depths of 130-150 to grapple with the thing, and who will? The truth is, when you run through the whole thing, it’s dispiriting. The need to play fair has led to a pile of records, many of which are not really very good, and some of which aren’t good at all.

https://greilmarcus.net/ask-greil-2/

Hmm... so basically his point is that 150 is not a good number of items for a list of this type? It sounds like he's saying they should either have picked more or fewer.

I don't get where he thinks "the need to play fair" led to inclusion of bad records. He knows how P&J works. High-scoring albums and, I'm sure, the need to play fair affected those choices too. He's assuming these women picked Bluebecause they were playing fair? He's on firmer ground arguing the pick is a travesty and letting it go, which is at least an aesthetic judgment.

The need to play fair has led to a pile of records, many of which are not really very good, and some of which aren’t good at all.

NPR's arts coverage in 28 words.

Any list.

Gentlemen, it's not a stretch to imagine Blue showing up on the most ballots by female critics, as it will in many male critics' list.

Blue is not one of the albums on the list I'd argue with. I've never heard it.

A 1939-1963 list:
https://medium.com/@jonathanbogart/the-150-greatest-albums-by-women-before-1964-54393ae871ec

― etc, Wednesday, July 26, 2017 5:46 PM

This is a fantastic list, and dare I say it would be more educational to more people than the NPR list. He nails virtually all of the albums I considered when I was daydreaming about making such a list. His top Ella Fitzgerald choice would also be mine: The Duke Ellington Songbook, which I've been listening to recently and is truly astonishing. It's a quadruple album! I like that Italian singers Milva and Mina also make this list.

His choices for Peggy Lee are also excellent - Black Coffee (1953) and Latin ala Lee! (1960). I own almost all of Peggy Lee's albums and those are definitely two of my favorites.

Hard to argue with the choice of Yma Sumac's Voice of the Xtabay but I might choose her album Mambo! over that, or in addition to it.

This is a fantastic list, and dare I say it would be more educational to more people than the NPR list.

It's a very good list, but I doubt it will have much educational value when there's no description of the records. Not even a blurb.

Re the lack of blurbs, he wrote:

I haven’t written blurbs for them because I wanted to get this list out while people still remembered NPR’s original list. But I extremely recommend every single last one of them — and the top fifty or so are change-the-world great

that's not enough to be educational imo

i liked the blurbs in the npr list -- seeing the albums listed without them (and the cover art) diminishes the utility of the list imo. they were thoughtful and contextualized the albums for people who may not be familiar. they were...educational!

it makes me long to be 12 and educate myself in the era of streaming

NPR had a team of folks writing those blurbs, Bogart just did his pre-1964 list himself

that's fine, my point is that the that lack of blurbs makes it less useful in this way
doesn't mean it wasn't a good list -- i'm sure it is!

Fair point re the blurbs, but I meant just listening to the albums - however that might happen - would be educational, or perhaps "broadening" would be a better word

yeah -- i think the NPR list acts as a perfect gateway to that kind of further exploration. it's why i like the list! it generates discussion (see the many lists generated by the existence of this one) as well as points of reference for noob seekers.

Nothing very contentious, just a list of more oddball omissions: http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/07/27/25308219/the-problem-with-nprs-150-greatest-albums-made-by-women-list. Love seeing the Shop Assistants on there, was going to mention them.

it makes me long to be 12 and educate myself in the era of streaming

I think about stuff like that often--the trade-off between what I missed out on in access and what I got from the lifelong search.

I remember how excited I was in 2000 during the Napster era when I finally go to hear Mick Jagger's "Let's Work"!

I'm still searching for "Let's Work."

Like that list by The Stranger

Not sure they needed to go this meta though: http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/07/27/25310745/the-problem-with-jezebels-150-worst-albums-made-by-men-list

lol this is getting out of hand

That Stranger list keeps destroying my browser!

I get the discovery angle - any decent list is a gateway - but at the same time I keep imagining that inquisitive 12 year old saying "Oh so women make music too? Wow!" Greil Marcus makes a good point, the overall urge for inclusiveness renders the bulk of NPR's selections obvious, bland or just bad.

I think there's also the issue of the blurb format and how writers will use that. If you're using 2/3 of the space to explain background information on the album, there's not much room left for particular insights on the music.

but at the same time I keep imagining that inquisitive 12 year old saying "Oh so women make music too? Wow!"
you are really underestimating the mental capacity of a 12 year old

A 150 albums list with blurbs suggests right off the back that the writing is going to be dispassionate. A piece like that with 150 blurbs all filled with passion would be a major overload.

it makes me long to be 12 and educate myself in the era of streaming

I was just reading through some person's lists on RYM, and he had probably almost 100 lists which he had made over a couple of years, apparently while in college and getting into music for the first time (this was circa 2010), and it just blew my mind to think how much music this guy had been exposed to in such a short span of time because of the internet. When I was in college I probably spend as much time as that guy trying to discover new music, except I probably ended up hearing about 1% of what he was able to hear with the same amount of effort.

i recently discovered Fairuz (on the 1939-1964 list) when i asked a friend who just moved here from Syria via Lebanon about Omar Souleyman, and he laughed in my face for a good minute, and said 'no one in syria listens to that crap' and 'he's a fool who looks ridiculous and his lyrics make no sense' then told me to check out Fairuz. it's really pretty

I could say that any top list that puts Joni Mitchell’s Blue over Aretha’s I Never Loved a Man or X-ray Spex’s Germfree Adolescents is a travesty, but really, you have to dive into the depths of 130-150 to grapple with the thing, and who will?

What's Marcus' stance on Mitchell anyway? The extent of my knowledge is that he didn't include her in Tresure Island, and that obviously he prefers lady Punk Rock to her.

If you scroll down a few questions on the "Ask Greil" page, there's actually a question specifically about Mitchell:

07/21/17
I recently reread your review of The Last Waltz movie and was struck by, among many things, your wonderful description of Joni Mitchell singing “Coyote”:

“Joni Mitchell, swaying her hips for ‘Coyote’ is mesmerizing; she acts out the role of a goddess on the make, an image only slightly undercut--or reinforced—-by the pack of cigarettes jammed into the waistband of her skirt.”

After reading that, I looked around to see if you had any other writing on Joni Mitchell but I couldn’t find any. I’d be curious to know your thoughts about Joni Mitchell’s music or, more briefly, which songs of hers, if any, have resonated with you over the years.
Thank you!
– Andy

I think I’ve only written about Joni Mitchell one other time, in a Real Life Rock Top 10 item from February 1998

4. Darren Starr, creator, Melrose Place (Fox, November 24, 1997) Dr. Brett Cooper, who has a real serial girlfriend-in-a-coma problem, attends comatose Megan. “Music can get through where nothing else can,” Coop says over Megan. “I’m betting you love Joni Mitchell as much as I do.” He slips a CD into a boom box, and as the camera comes in close on Megan’s face you can barely hear “Big Yellow Taxi.” “I’m awake! I’m awake!” screamed a sympathetic viewer. “Just turn off that horrible music!”

Save for a song here or there, that pretty much sums up my response to the endless self-regard and smugness I’ve found in her music--she and Leonard Cohen were made for each other.

As I wrote to a friend, I think his designation of self-regard (which is probably endemic to the early-'70s singer-songwriters anyway) is pretty arbitrary there--not sure how she's any more given to self-regard than Neil Young.

Oh, OK. I also seem to recall seeing a pan of the Counting Crows & Vanessa Carlton cover of "BYT" in a RLRT10 back when it was new and possibly an entry about Mitchell's then-new orchestral LPs in another column.

but at the same time I keep imagining that inquisitive 12 year old saying "Oh so women make music too? Wow!"
you are really underestimating the mental capacity of a 12 year old

i was being totally sarcastic (like a 12 yr old)

my point is despite its worthy intentions this whole exercise is condescending