pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

* this is as a concept

The “Playing God with…” articles were AWESOME!!

Dusted Magazine

Apparently still exists :)

It's a tumblr page :(

singles jukebox is also still around

good morning!

I don't even know who's left on ILM who still writes for Pitchfork besides a handful.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, October 6, 2021 6:21 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I was just thinking that it's kind of weird to talk about the site's self-conscious course corrections in the last few years as though it's still the same indie-rock guys from the early 2000s being like "Fuck, I guess we need to cover Bad Bunny now." Looking at the masthead, I think there are three staffers who started before 2010: Amy Phillips, Marc Hogan, and Ryan Dombal. The EIC (Puja Patel) is a woman of color who came over from SPIN in 2018 and was nine years old when the site started. The current staff is cognizant of the site's legacy and wants to build on it in a way that feels truer not just to the current cultural moment, but to their own unique perspectives.

(I should say: "I expect that the current staff is..." I don't have direct knowledge of that.)

I like to say with some pride that former Stylus people who moved to Pitchfork in 2007-2008 changed the site's ethos gradually.

I think the prevailing attitude on ILM in 2005 was poptimist in its original sense of being antirockist…This is different from a more recent critical mode that Whiney has called Poptimism 2.0, which praises pop through a new set of values that can be as limiting as old-school rockism.

…but maybe ilx/ilm doesn't need 1000 autopsies and an influx of young people. maybe it's just supposed to be a bunch of older people arguing about increasingly petty things until they don't, at the end

Admittedly my poptimist analysis was based mostly on the recent Top Ten Songs of the 1980s thread (which I can’t even find now). The issue is mainly subjective tho and Whiney’s take seems much more comprehensive than anything I have to offer.

Even if this were an issue of concern it’s not clear anything could be done about it, there’s no editorial board here. But I don’t want ILM to die because at this point there’s really not much else for a guy like me. Maybe if I was 20 years younger I would just be on TikTok, as is my only real alternative now is Twitter and that’s pretty fucking bleak.

Here you go

The 10 best songs from the 80’s

The dumb that keeps on giving:

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/pitchforks-25-next-list/

Interesting list in that P4k is basically saying that its (music's?) future is pinned on a whole lotta experimental/R&B hybrids. Gonna be interesting to look back in 5 years and see if that holds true and if there's going to be a mainstream-adjacent breakout artist on the level of Arcade Fire/Bon Iver (unless Solange is that rn)

list features ILX fave Xenia Rubinos, therefore Pitchfork is good

Actually lots of artists I like in there.
Have they done something like this in the past? Would be interesting to see how much they nailed it - or have been completely off the mark.

I mean, this stuff (save Angel Bat Dawid & Moor Mother) is decidedly Not My Thing, but some of these blurbs seem like they're going out of their way to make this all sound unappealing

The album also includes a song called “Doritos and Fritos” and the sound of frogs ribbiting

After performing in other people’s bands for years and working as a press secretary in the Obama Administration,

they stan for Enya

The WhatsApp voicemails that soundtrack the project

but his earliest professional endeavors were as a pro skateboarder and model for streetwear brands like Supreme.

xpost Not exactly, but they've been doing "Rising" features since 2009

https://pitchfork.com/features/rising/

If you don't stan for ENYA, then tbh, you can fuck off

Some people on that list I really like, but also a lot of missed opportunities. No one is going to care about some dime-a-dozen psychedelic metal band in five years, but I guess they had to put Blood Incantation in there as genre representation.

The WhatsApp voicemails that soundtrack the project

how many classic rap albums have voicemail skits? is the problem that they happen to be from whatsapp calls?

xpost Not exactly, but they've been doing "Rising" features since 2009

yeah, this is basically a list of 25 risings

how is Blood Incantation any more dime-a-dozen than most of the tuneless bedroom r&b artists on this list

Who are these artists you're speaking of?

I see some people pushing boundaries, whereas Blood Incantation are just stitching together another fucking corpse

Yeah, I love Blood Incantation, but I've never thought of them as boundary-pushing. Their inclusion on the list is shorthand for "metal is still relevant too."

Maybe "boundary pushing" is a little ott, but I think they are doing some pretty interesting and unique things, esp on the most recent album.

Weird that they went with a death metal band instead of, like, the Armed, but wgas

careful, you might start to sound like LJ!

Place your bets now on which of these bands p4k will claim were never very good to begin with in 5 years.

Snail Mail

snail mail is probably the weirdest inclusion just for being a bog standard 90s-ish indie act that isn't doing anything distinctive at all

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stompboxing a Pavement riff on a human face — forever.

also Snail Mail had a Rising feature 4 1/2 years ago

I think there's a bit of a mismatch between the subhed ("blazing new paths forward") and the acknowledgment that the list favors "music that has recently moved us, and people we believe will play meaningful roles in their communities going forward." "Where music will go from here" implies artistic innovation, but I suppose it need not.

"Where music will go from here" implies artistic innovation, but I suppose it need not.

I guess they didn't want to come right out and say "Faced with the prospect of civilizational collapse and possible human extinction, people will retreat and seek solace in bland, unthreatening bullshit"...

Music 25 years in the future? Well there will definitely be flying bands by then, given the current arc of tech progress

lo-fi study blast beats

"Where music will go from here" implies artistic innovation, but I suppose it need not.

I guess they didn't want to come right out and say "Faced with the prospect of civilizational collapse and possible human extinction, people will retreat and seek solace in bland, unthreatening bullshit"...

― but also fuck you (unperson), Monday, October 11, 2021 2:37 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is a little unfair, there are some great artists on this list! Loraine James, Moor Mother, Duval Timothy, Yaeji, and a few others have made great (and in some cases pretty challenging) records in recent years.

how can pitchfork and yet all of you as well all be so wrong

anyway, blood incantation even allowing for a tedious americanist perspective are a horribly mundane token metal choice

and both keiyaa and l'rain are straight-up amazing, not 'tuneless bedroom r&b', albeit l'rain went from an all-time classic debut to a merely good follow-up

also there's a (good) british prog band in the list so all things told i'm really not hating it as much as i thought i would, even if pitchfork's recent self-regarding shenanigans have otherwise annoyed

since this whole exercise is theoretical anyway i'm more interested in the question of what a list would look like if you reverse engineered it based on the artists in 1996 that shaped the next 25 years of music. like not what ppl would have said at the time but what would be accurate in retrospect, bcuz i feel like those would be two largely different lists

i think they should have predicted bands that are yet to exist

xpost Would be a good thread. Who would have possibly guessed Screw and Dilla back then

LJ approved R&B made the list .. always a good sign..

its weirdly missing both mainstream rap and r&b

like ... no chloe bailey, brent faiyaz, EST Gee, Babyface Ray... RIP poptimism lol

In April 1996, SPIN published a feature titled The Alternative to Alternative, which feels similar to what Pitchfork is trying to do here:

"This section honors artists who represent the best way out of the alternative morass: genuine experimentation that acknowledges the bars of orthodoxy, then wiggles through whole. ... The best alternative to alternative provides a perch for the future."

It wasn't a list so much as a series of short profiles, but here's who made the cut:

-Afghan Whigs
-James Carter
-Cornershop & Cibo Matto (paired for some reason)
-Fugees
-Will Oldham
-Mo'Wax (label)
-Scott Walker

the first mention of Screw in SPIN afaik is in a 2000 sidebar on "HIP-HOP'S NEW HOMEMADE HIGH: SYRUP"

ftr the fugees were busy outselling tupac and oasis and shania twain and metallica

people are so weird about what alternative means when it comes to rap

Tbf, The Score was released in February 1996 and didn't hit #1 until May. When that issue was going to press, their only hit was "Fu-Gee-La," which had just cracked the top 40.

Also they were just done being like an East Coast Pharcyde

since this whole exercise is theoretical anyway i'm more interested in the question of what a list would look like if you reverse engineered it based on the artists in 1996 that shaped the next 25 years of music. like not what ppl would have said at the time but what would be accurate in retrospect, bcuz i feel like those would be two largely different lists

― J0rdan S

I’m blanking out. There’s albums from 1996 that still feel influential to me but couldn’t name what artists from 2021 they are still influencing… maybe they’re not.

Anyways:

Outkast - Atliens
Everything but the girl - walking wounded
Ground Zero - Pekinese Opera V. 1.28
Aphex Twin - Richard D James
Fiona Apple - Tidal
Dr. octagon

And La Macarena obvs