pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

NFR! will place in the 15-25 zone.
― billstevejim, Tuesday, September 24, 2019 9:47 PM (two weeks ago)

I called this shit so hard.

"changed the course"/"altered the sound" is not an inherently positive thing! i can think of a dozen artists who have been the point of a spear that has resulted in great waves of shitty music.

12. Rihanna: ANTI (2016)

9. D’Angelo & the Vanguard: Black Messiah (2014)

Can't argue with that, although they should be #1 and #2.

Is Anti in there because it has a Tame Impala song and they’re less ashamed to love him via Rihanna?
― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, October 8, 2019 2:18 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Because that album sucks.
― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, October 8, 2019 2:19 PM (four hours ago)

You can go straight to hell.

In theory, I get why they don't want to waste words where a link will do, but ffs, they should try and read the list. It's dreadful. Pitchfork was full of itself back in the old days, but those early lists were fun to read.

Even #1 sounds less like a great album than something that sounded like the times: The year 2016 crystallized the political disaster right under the surface. People theorized that we needed anthems to get us through the dark night. Big choruses, hooks as wide as highway signs, regular percussion that could gird us from chaos. But our mood was languorous; jingoism was the problem in the first place. We wanted the blurred, the softened, the existential. “Inhale, in hell, there’s heaven,” Ocean sings on “Solo,” capturing the whiplash experience of being young in this country in one line. Blonde is one synonym for American. That sounds awful, why would anyone willingly listen to 'languorous'?

Also, lol at them saying jingoism is the problem, then literally ending the countdown by saying it's a 'synonym for American'. As if America was the only thing that mattered.

xxpost yeah it's the execution where it falls apart.

Another issue with it is that when you're talking about stuff from a few decades ago, the grandiosity of the scene-setting is either familiar-but-earned (e.g. why this Prince or Janet Jackson track is important) or it's at least partly necessary to introduce and explain the music to the intended audience (e.g. why this 80s R&B track that is not Prince or Janet Jackson is important).

Whereas for the most part neither of those categories can apply to music from the last decade that is likely to end up on a Pfork best-of list - given almost by definition it will be music that the publication has already covered extensively.

This may be one reason why the Sunday Review feels like the most vibrant part of the site now.

but oh yeah the "this is how WE felt in 2016" stuff is always always always a bad look.

Xxpost I already explained I was referring to Tame Impala album sucking not Rihanna haha

but oh yeah the "this is how WE felt in 2016" stuff is always always always a bad look.

Critics should never use the word "we."

Looking forward to the revisionist 2010s list coming in 2028.

On other note: I just assume Blond is like an actually good album that I just don’t get because everybody that loves it is insanely obsessed about it, I’ve tried at least 20 times to listen to it, even tried it with weed once and I just get bored. I wasn’t a fan of channel orange either but it sounds better to me, it’s the one that has the actually memorable songs, I feel like that should actually be the album considered the best one he did this decade.

Channel Orange is objectively better, but the narrative is heavier with Blonde or something. I recall liking 3 songs.

People theorized that we needed anthems to get us through the dark night

lol is this supposed to condescend to the opinion about anthems being described or to aggrandize it?! i can't really tell

i agree that frank ocean's music is absolutely 100% music that exists and sounds like other types of music. nothing about it is at all remarkable or memorable.

I’ll say at least I agree on their pick for best Beyonce album this decade. Nothing against Lemonade but I find myself preferring to play the self titled.

Best single this decade is Countdown by a wide margin though, they fucked up giving Formation a higher rank.

I suppose Formation feels “more politically important” which is what they’re going for in this thing.

Disrespectfully dropping Lemonade 2 days after Prince died is only the narrative I'll remember.

Lemonade is Beyonce's most fully realized album because, couple clunkers aside, she filled an album with sounds I cared about w/out my attention drifting. But that's my opinion. The eponymous album was rather long and text-heavy. 4, also not without its duds, was my former favorite.

So they’re pivoting from their indie rock roots. A little sad as someone whose early taste was formed by indie, but arcade fire, beach house, mbv, grizzly bear and other groups like that—tune yards—don’t reflect the 2019 zeitgeist.

― treeship., Tuesday, October 8, 2019 12:11 PM (three hours ago)bookmarkflaglink

pitchfork isn't a "they," it's a constantly changing roster of staff and contributors that is getting younger and pointedly more diverse partly as a reaction to the pitchfork of the past. jaymc's list of top 10 records that didn't make it onto this list is interesting, but it doesn't seem to me like there is less indie rock as much as there's just a different kind. yeah there are no ariel pink and swans albums, but there are albums by snail mail, soccer mommy, courtney barnett, frankie cosmos, mitski (multiple), jay som, downtown boys, GLOSS etc... draw your own conclusions

Putting Swans in that company is bananas

there was a discussion upthread about maxwell and miguel... i think maxwell is basically just a victim of timing. the first blacksummersnight and prob "pretty wings" would've made it onto this list if they had come out a year later. the second BSN def didn't connect w/ critics or the public in the way the first one did, i don't think that's just a pitchfork thing. as for miguel, leaving kaleidoscope dream off is a big misstep esp for an album that got best new music at the time, but i think his last two albums sorta wasted the critical goodwill (not saying i agree one way or another just an observation)

moka hating on anti confirms that it's great, which it is. i hated on it at the time, but it's a top 15 album of the decade for me bcuz it's the first rihanna album that really dovetails w/ what what her persona has crystalized as--the sort of cool, powerful, dgaf superstar who can do whatever they want. her previous records (even rated r) always reeked of label machinery, her personality rendered pretty one dimensional ("here's a reggae one", "here's an edgy one" etc). there's no shadow of the A&R man or label president looming over anti, and as such her personality shines thru in a way that comes off as more real and authentic than not just her previous albums, but most other pop albums released this decade. it doesn't necessarily make sense as a record but that's what makes it great -- its genre leaping really feels less adventurous than it probably should because the personality we understand from the public persona is so threaded thru the entire record.

but there are albums by snail mail, soccer mommy, courtney barnett, frankie cosmos, mitski (multiple), jay som, downtown boys, GLOSS etc... draw your own conclusions

with the honourable exception of mitski, my conclusions from that list would be 'indie has gotten worse'

fortunately there's loads of amazing indie that for various reasons pitchfork doesn't care about

A rockist argument for Rihanna then.

Also Bruno Mars ‘Unorthodox Jukebox’ is the best pop album of the decade

What is interesting to me: that apparently indie rockism is alive and well— preference toward authenticity and all— but it’s been kidnapped by a crew of young (mostly) women.

Goddamit I’m not hating on Anti, I’m hating on Tame Impala

I like Anti, which I guess confirms it’s not that good huh?

And makes the Tame Impala album a good one lol

A rockist argument for Rihanna then.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, October 8, 2019 8:06 PM (one minute ago)

i think it's pretty obvious that her albums pre-anti were as formulaic/mainstream as major pop music got during that era, even tho some of those records are good. is it rockist to say that it was clear even at the time that the constraints of being an A++ list pop superstar/cottage industry were drags on her music? this isn't true for every label-made pop star btw... katy perry is someone whose music started to suck precisely as she began to take more control of it. but w/ rihanna, it's clear now, there was an auteurism that needed space to flourish, and it is directly related to her relationship w/ the pop machine. it's not a coincidence that anti is her first album after splitting from the label that signed her as a teenager (the blurb on pitchfork elucidates all this pretty well)

Yeah she really demonstrated auteurism on this anti record for which she wrote 0 material on it.

Putting Swans in that company is bananas

I would bet there are a significant number of fans of 2010-and-after Swans who have never seriously investigated the 1982-1997 incarnation. It's totally understandable to see them as two entirely different things.

Yeah she really demonstrated auteurism on this anti record for which she wrote 0 material on it.

Auteurism in pop is demonstrated by choosing material, not writing material. This has been true at least since Elvis.

I’m kidding I know she co-wrote several songs in here but I allegedly hate that album

i think it's pretty obvious that her albums pre-anti were as formulaic/mainstream as major pop music got during that era, even tho some of those records are good. is it rockist to say that it was clear even at the time that the constraints of being an A++ list pop superstar/cottage industry were drags on her music? this isn't true for every label-made pop star btw... katy perry is someone whose music started to suck precisely as she began to take more control of it. but w/ rihanna, it's clear now, there was an auteurism that needed space to flourish, and it is directly related to her relationship w/ the pop machine. it's not a coincidence that anti is her first album after splitting from the label that signed her as a teenager (the blurb on pitchfork elucidates all this pretty well)

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, October 8, 2019

as you know, I'm lukewarm about Rihanna, but even during her peak 2006-2012 period she projected a strong blankness; it's probable that labels forced her to record material, but she sang the material as if she composed every note.

You're discussing a lot of biography that doesn't explain the strength or weakness of her records. Rated R sounds as integrated as Anti to me.

How do we know the space she needed to flourish is "directly" related to her relationship with the Pop Machine? This is speculation.

pitchfork isn't a "they," it's a constantly changing roster of staff and contributors that is getting younger and pointedly more diverse partly as a reaction to the pitchfork of the past.

ah the editorial directive not to describe what something sounds like really explains things then. cultural context is important and all but if an album blurb is going to make me interested in something i haven't heard of before, a description of its sound is much more effective and helpful

Best single this decade is Countdown by a wide margin though

"Countdown" showing up on the Singles list made me smile a little. Still love that song.

What is interesting to me: that apparently indie rockism is alive and well— preference toward authenticity and all— but it’s been kidnapped by a crew of young (mostly) women.

― i could chug a keg of you (flamboyant goon tie included), Wednesday, 9 October 2019 00:06 (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

In my head i tend to frame this phenomenon as less about authenticity and more about identification.

Early pitchfork stressed authenticity but arguably this was just a function of bookish young white male music writers being (mostly) drawn to artists they identified with.

As the site grew it drifted away from this in part because the cohort of writers grew more diverse, and in part because many of the writers added tended, as a function of their taste and as a stylistic device, to downplay identification as a critical frame, or to use it perversely or counter-intuitively (in both cases a matter of presentation more than anything else).

What we now see across the board (not just pitchfork) is a strong reemphasis on identification, but it's certainly not a return to the original pitchfork model - e.g. much of the critical framing around pop artists like beyonce, taylor and rihanna becomes about identification and relatability and, concomitantly, their social and artistic intentions, however, the collapse of music criticism, ideology, gossip culture and social media into one another means that identification and relatability mean something quite different to what they would have meant circa 2000.

Yes. I've seen a gradual shift from, "Let's see what X has to say about [this album]" to "Let's find the right critic to say the right things about [this album]." The first approach resulted in often grotesque takes, the second in lauding intentions and a general complacency.

Yes. I've seen a gradual shift from, "Let's see what X has to say about [this album]" to "Let's find the right critic to say the right things about [this album]." The first approach resulted in often grotesque takes, the second in lauding intentions and a general complacency.

brad nelson

Good point, and just got me thinking; besides Fantano (who has basically 0 to do with Pitchfork), is there any music journalist who got their start in this decade who people read every piece of criticism by just because it's by them?
― triggercut, Tuesday, October 8, 2019

It still happens. Many of us who still write fall on both sides.

Good point, and just got me thinking; besides Fantano (who has basically 0 to do with Pitchfork), is there any music journalist who got their start in this decade who people read every piece of criticism by just because it's by them?

I'm not sure when Seth Colter Walls got his start but he's definitely a lot younger than me, and I read everything by him that I come across.

xps maybe meaghan garvey? i did not have lots of interest in future but when he was rising she always made him seem really interesting

our own katherine must have gotten started at the tail end of the previous decade too, right? i remember taking an interest in her criticism when reading her on j newsom's HOOM

@ Tim F: great response, and I hope my original post wasn't taken snarkily. I've always valued "authenticity" when I listen to music-- though I tend to be more specific, "single-origin authorship" for example-- and try to examine "concerns of authenticity" seriously without privileging them over other qualities of a piece of music

yeah I didn't take your comment as snark, fgti.

for the most part the issue with privileging "authenticity" (at least for me) is that too many writers don't really understand what they're privileging or why. Normally "authenticity" as a concept is a stand-in for something more complicated, but whether that something is a worthwhile or silly thing to care about all depends on the nature of, respectively, the artist, the writer and the something in question.