pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

i smelled the pumpkin spice as i was clicking through it this morning.

or like, alt-basic. or something

Possibly not basic enough

remember when pitchfork loved black metal that one year? lol

― Paul Ponzi, Monday, October 7, 2019 2:13 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

pitchfork still reviews metal, metal tracks almost never end up in year-end tracks lists, which i think is fair bc it's a pretty album-oriented genre, you remain the most cliché-ass pfork hater on this board

Show No Mercy column NEVER FORGET

to balance that out, including "run away with me" but not "call me maybe" induced heavy eyerolls in this pfork contributor. a "perfect pop" song vs. a perfect pop song ("perfect pop" copyright tom ewing)

no call me maybe, no gangnam style, no old town road

its interesting bc whoever they let do sunday review still has the feel for poptimism done right. maybe it's just a problem of aggregating up the hivemind

Also, the once insta-classic, now deeply problematic pop jams "Fuck You," "Blurred Lines" and "Mo Bamba" are all absent

don't even understand the point of this new-fangled poptimism that can't get behind shit like "Call Me Maybe" and "Uptown Funk" and "Old Town Road"

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Monday, October 7, 2019 2:53 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yup

― flopson, Monday, October 7, 2019 4:34 PM (fifty-nine minutes ago)

poptimism as i remember it was initially about recognizing songs that were often not even really popular in the world of pop, not about making sure the most popular songs in the world were critically acclaimed

like Pavement's "Cut Your Hair"?

lol

I thought poptimism, among other things, meant the elimination of shame and defensiveness from writing about pop musics, which critics for decades have essayed, hence my contempt for the concept.

poptimism as i remember it was initially about recognizing songs that were often not even really popular in the world of pop, not about making sure the most popular songs in the world were critically acclaimed

no, just that they represent attitude and image over actual music.

it was about everyone having to dress and grow a beard like Tom's, according to Austin

In a sense criticizing Pfork for not paying attention to obvious pop classics during the moment of the site's most fervent embrace of artists it once treated like lepers means that the site still has some defensiveness to give up.

Well, yeah. Why expect a site to give up their particular defensiveness though? Why expect p4k to "get with the times"? They've not proven to do or having done so previously, so why would they now?

Shoo, rhetorical questions!

get with the '10s

The POV of an aging pop writer who once worked as editor for a site that covered the music Pfork didn't vs the new Pfork writer in her twenties who grew up in a stronger ecumenical spirit but has had to grow up professionally in the performative world of social media. I may be the one who's too forgiving.

according to Austin

wrong again, MARGE

also: remember when pfork's tagline was "GOOD MUSIC WILL PREVAIL" so much for that

poptimism as i remember it was initially about recognizing songs that were often not even really popular in the world of pop, not about making sure the most popular songs in the world were critically acclaimed

― J0rdan S., Monday, October 7, 2019 5:36 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lines are getting a bit crossed here; 'call me maybe', 'gagnman style', 'old town road' are all legitimately great songs that imo should be on any pop-oriented top 200 songs list. my criticism is more along the lines of whiney's poptimism 2.0 thread, where media poptimism matured into a version of rockism where critics cottoned to pop by album-oriented artists with strong cross-over aesthetics and marketing, at the exclusion of trad pop acts

NB: I've just mixed a Fernet and gin and have to watch the new Soderbergh tonight, so I'm ornery.

Just saying, one has little to expect from a website that hasn't been paying attention to pop in forever.

In a sense criticizing Pfork for not paying attention to obvious pop classics during the moment of the site's most fervent embrace of artists it once treated like lepers means that the site still has some defensiveness to give up.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, October 7, 2019 11:43 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This ~deep cut ~ is getting at the same thing. The thing being: why are we talking about p4k and their rankings so much?

my criticism is more along the lines of whiney's poptimism 2.0 thread, where media poptimism matured into a version of rockism where critics cottoned to pop by album-oriented artists with strong cross-over aesthetics and marketing, at the exclusion of trad pop acts

or in the Spotify era they avoided the Big Hit in favor of the more obscure album track

feel like poptimism was a combination of both j0rd’s and alfred’s definitions, embodied best by late-‘00s idolator

obv we don’t go six months on ilx without arguing about what poptimism is

There comes a point when a proto-poptimist has to realize that many people aren't gonna stream Empire Burlesque and Alexander O'Neal at all.

i think everyone agrees on the definition; alfred's and jordan's are perfectly consistent. i also think this list is pretty ideal as an example of an impt change in the structure and texture of poptimism and think it's one of the most relevant critical frames w which to think abt this list but YMMV

lines are getting a bit crossed here; 'call me maybe', 'gagnman style', 'old town road' are all legitimately great songs that imo should be on any pop-oriented top 200 songs list. my criticism is more along the lines of whiney's poptimism 2.0 thread, where media poptimism matured into a version of rockism where critics cottoned to pop by album-oriented artists with strong cross-over aesthetics and marketing, at the exclusion of trad pop acts

― flopson, Monday, October 7, 2019 5:53 PM (three minutes ago)bookmarkflaglink

yeah that's fair -- i would agree that the view of popular music as presented by this list is pretty wonky

lines are getting a bit crossed here; 'call me maybe', 'gagnman style', 'old town road' are all legitimately great songs that imo should be on any pop-oriented top 200 songs list. my criticism is more along the lines of whiney's poptimism 2.0 thread, where media poptimism matured into a version of rockism where critics cottoned to pop by album-oriented artists with strong cross-over aesthetics and marketing, at the exclusion of trad pop acts

― flopson, Monday, 7 October 2019 21:53 (seventeen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

Kind of inevitable that once you persuade rock critics to take pop music seriously they then proceed to treat it like the other music they listen to.

But it's also the case that 10s pop hasn't had many overarching narratives that one would be inclined to rally around like the previous decades - like I'm not sure that even ILM's pop fans want to champion any of EDM or tropical (except me lol) or Chainsmokers-style spotify'n'chill as an amazing thing that happened to music - so it's not surprising that the rock crit apparatus basically gravitates towards pop that otherwise works the way the other music critics listen to works.

otoh hand certain things don't change: the Jansenists who work at my college radio station wonder why the hell I write about Sheryl Crow at Pitchfork.

pfork: "TALKED ABOUT MUSIC WILL PREVAIL. . . or just get talked about some more lol who cares how about a craft beer"

xps Tim- finding gems in edm, tropitcal, spotify-n-chill seems like one thing a good poptist criticism in the 2010s should be doing

yep

Flopson I did that but almost no one is interested

AKA Neiked’s “Sexual” didn’t even make this list.

yes but lists are about finding consensus not gems

AKA Neiked’s “Sexual” didn’t even make this list.

― Tim F, Monday, October 7, 2019 6:07 PM (twenty-eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

one of the greatest songs of all time :)

gems are for year-end lists, decade-end lists are broader by nature

xp

yes but lists are about finding consensus not gems

― J0rdan S., Monday, October 7, 2019 6:07 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

sure but p4k has the power to create consensus. i mean why is a mixtape track you, tpp and i were freaking out over in 2012 on this list?

i hope they reveal individual ballots

It's not a binary?

i mean why is a mixtape track you, tpp and i were freaking out over in 2012 on this list?

― flopson, Monday, October 7, 2019 5:09 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hmmm very suspicious ... is Jordan defending this list in exchange for rankings 🧐

what im trying to say is there could be more 'good poptimist' gems on this list if p4k had prioritized good poptimism over rockist poptimism 2.0 as an editorial vision throughout the decade. maybe the list is as good as it gets as a reflection of its editorial vision, i'm not trying to argue about that per se (although i think bringing more ilxors to the table would've been a good start--what happened to 5 years ago when all of you were writing for them weekly all of a suden?)

there's an editorial reality to listmaking which is that you're working with a fixed number of spots and you can't 100% truthfully represent consensus. the raw voting data for the top 200 of this list would probably return 10-12 kendrick lamar and drake songs, a handful of robyn songs, multiple carly rae songs, etc. but publishing a list like that would be boring for the reader, so you start artificially paring back the list and plucking songs as replacements so that you end up presenting a curated consensus. artists eventually fall into tiers of sorts where they get more songs as a representative percentage -- more like an electoral college approach than popular vote. so how do you represent an artist? i'm surprised "call me maybe" was left out, but if you were going to pick 1 song to represent what carly rae jepsen was to the music of the 2010s, you *could* make a compelling case for "run away with me." i'd personally make a poptimist case for the weeknd's "can't feel my face" but i also get why, if you were picking a song to be the stand in for "the weekend," you might pick "the morning." i would agree that the "curated consensus" aspect of this list is pretty wack/corny from a taste perspective (clairo etc) but it's also how you end up w/ something like "hold yuh" in the top 50, which feels more true to the spirt of poptimism as i interpret it than anything involving bruno mars

xpost yeah flopson perhaps any ire/hand-wringing would be better directed not at these lists but at the failure of critics to build the consensus necessary for certain kinds of music to have a chance to make these lists in the first place.

A lot of factors play into that but one of the biggest is probably today's much stronger critical emphasis on surrounding narrative context, which inevitably results in a critical de-emphasis on 'gems' (whether commercially successful or otherwise). It's possible to buck this trend (see the Singles Jukebox) but it requires a lot of effort and/or conscious niche positioning.

a thread for "edm/tropical house gems" might be good, bc the whole tropical house wave has been so underwhelming compared to the potential it seemed to have

the p4k list did have "levels" as a token edm hit i guess

m surprised "call me maybe" was left out, but if you were going to pick 1 song to represent what carly rae jepsen was to the music of the 2010s, you *could* make a compelling case for "run away with me."

Really?! I love both songs, but then CRJ has always coded weird to me. Do you congratulate her for the unabashed world-conquering hit or point readers toward the opening track on an album far fewer people bought? Sometimes you pick the obvious choice but make a compelling case.

my beefs w/ the list are in the selection of delegates -- i.e. picking "monster" over "mercy" or even "clique" as the representative for "kanye west posse cut" presents a vision of the decade's music that i think is both wack and wrong

ahh yes, the gerrymandering of the pfork lists. nice.