pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Frankly, when it comes to Nona Hendryx I agree with Christgau(!): Every time I listen to one of her solo records I want it to be great, but it's just...not. Black women are as capable of making bland, overdetermined rock as any white dude.

I like her first album and love Nona (1983), to my ears the most successful Material-involved project. The Art of Defense is damn tuneless, and I've tried. The Heat tries hard for a Tina Turner-type crossover.

Art of Defense has one of my favourite Nona jams on it - 'To The Bone':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gMUlqaOtbk

yeah that's one of the good ones

also i really like a lot of the jazz album she did with kahil el'zabar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7DvOimaRJk

Well they certainly chose a better song for number one than “Gold Soundz” this time.

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/

They did but I'm still not that keen on this one either

I even like "Ray of Light", but ranked that much higher than "Vogue"?

I haven't read any of the write-ups yet - I see a few familiar faces though! - except for Murder She Wrote, where the song being anti-abortion is strategically tiptoed around. Also a few of the years are wrong (I'm sorry I can't help myself but when no. 7 in the list is two years out I can't help but notice)

I don't even see any tiptoeing there really, which is fine imo. What is weird is not mentioning who produced the thing

Hyperballad would have been a good choice for what is ultimately a silly exercise

really enjoyed making lists for this one

"I don't even see any tiptoeing there really, which is fine imo. What is weird is not mentioning who produced the thing"

Well I was feeling in the space of a capsule review there's inevitably not really any space to mention it, or else it will seem incidental once it quickly moves on

Like many lists of this type it has influenced what I've been listening to all day. Which are songs here that I love but haven't heard in some time.

It's a good/fun list

The number one song is exactly the type of song that Pitchfork of 2022 would place as number one.

Gold Soundz always felt less like an actual number 1, and more of an appropriate choice to close out a 90s retrospective done by a predominately indie leaning publication.

I am curious to see if the tides have changed enough to unseat OK Computer from the top spot of the album list.

I for one am really really sick of most of these songs.

Gold Soundz always felt less like an actual number 1, and more of an appropriate choice to close out a 90s retrospective done by a predominately indie leaning publication.

idk this is a publication whose new generation of writers listens to Mariah Carey and Beth Orton.

selections are pretty good, i think the populist picks in the 250-201 range are better than the populist picks at the actual top of the list, but what can you do.

basically, len and return of the mack are too low!

I was psyched to see "My Boo" show up

Well I was feeling in the space of a capsule review there's inevitably not really any space to mention it, or else it will seem incidental once it quickly moves on

― you can see me from westbury white horse, Tuesday, September 27, 2022 12:06 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago)

oh ok yeah I agree, there's no way to provide enough cultural context in a single paragraph. Reminds me of reading the youtube comments for "Heads High" and it being filled with people talking about how they sang the song all the time as kids without knowing what it was about

idk this is a publication whose new generation of writers listens to Mariah Carey and Beth Orton.

I was referring to the Pitchfork of 2010, who put Gold Soundz on top, not the Pitchfork of 2022.

I know you were.

on that note, maybe Fantasy works like Gold Soundz did, because the 90s feels like a fantasy now, especially to the young people I see in Montreal wearing amusingly anachronistic combinations of the full span of 90s fashion

Oh hey I completely missed What's Up? first time around

man that song sucks

karaoke ruins people's minds

I can vouch for that

I can vouch for that

Oh boy.

if pressed i would have to admit that i am also sick of many of these songs and find it kind of boring as a list, but its definitely an interesting window into how those kids are are thinking about the 90s right now and building a fresh canon. which i guess is the point, obviously.

(I haven’t clicked the link, but glimpsed the headline, and thought “heads must be exploding all over the internet.”)

oh not this holy horse shit again

really have come to hate these lists

great convo starters tho

The DJ Miko cover of What's Up? is pretty alright - though not as much as Jam Tronik's Another Day in Paradise or A.D.A.M. feat Amy's Zombie

lol Austin quite a swerve-y post there, but yeah this is sort of helpful in making me realize I've completely lost interest in the list as a genre. I'm not sure what I even think a good or bad list of the top 250 songs of the 90s would look like (if it was 250 songs I'd somehow never heard of maybe?)

Oh, I know this Pearl Jam song well ("Corduroy")... wonder how, don't think I've listed to that album.

I still prefer "Dissident" or "Daughter," but whatevs

i cant complain too much about a list where ctrl+F "Neutral Milk Hotel" returns 0 results

yeah sorry kind of "lol this sucks" gut reaction post there. but all told-

-i have many gripes that i will yell and swear about a lot if anyone cares to listen (the big one: not enough digable planets; but also who cares). goes with the territory.

-actually many great picks! some rankings seem trollzy. have to admit the #1 pick is very amusing to me in that respect. really pleased to see odb get that amount of love.

anyway.

Surprising lack of post rock. No Slint or Tortoise. Stereolab missing as well.

i'm sure they'll make the albums list

I don't want to evoke the p word, but I'm not sure how to articulate the (personal) weirdness of, e.g., seeing "Paranoid Android" next to "Believe". I guess lists like this are good for reminding me I don't own the decade just because I grew up during it—or rather this list doesn't need to reflect the 90s zeitgeist itself. That said, there are a few entries (not many) where I am depressed to see dire crap being canonized in a way that seems almost meme-y (What's Up? being a good ex).

Might as well beat the dead horse of "does pitchfork know they make music in countries outside the US/UK?" while I'm here (yeah I know there are some exceptions)

"fantasy" as number 1 is a great choice but the original > the remix

Predictably, all the big beat's gone. Sad!

They had to make room for Wilson Phillips and “Semi-Charmed Life”.

Can someone post the list so I don’t have to trawl through the endless crap of the Pfork website?

Tbh, this is my main complaint about these lists— as much as I love some of your writing about music, I want the list first, and then to investigate further. Not an endless scroll and clicking to next page bullshit about some bullshit songs I don’t care about now and didn’t care about then.

No "next page" this time, just a very slowly loading endless scroll that freezes now and then.

I recommend using a "reading mode" browser extension like Tranquility or Distill.

This is why the internet is absolute bullshit in 2022– I need to download a new browser just to mostly hate-read a listicle that shouldn’t have been published in the first place

Thanks, table!

This is why the internet is absolute bullshit in 2022– I need to download a new browser just to mostly hate-read a listicle that shouldn’t have been published in the first place

^^New Borad Description?

It's kinda interesting to me which vestiges of US indie rock are present (besides the obligatory two Pavement tracks) – a Helium song, a Jawbox song, a Galaxie 500 song (none of which do much for me personally); some warhorses like "Fuck and Run," "Slack Motherfucker," "I See a Darkness," and "Autumn Sweater"; a few tracks by Bikini Kill and Le Tigre; and one song each from Cat Power, Silver Jews, GBV, and Sleater-Kinney (plus three Elliott Smith tracks, if you count him, and a major-label Built to Spill track).

It feels somewhat idiosyncratic, as if it reflects the reviewers' "personal favorites" (which is actually cool & fitting) – even if it doesn't track too closely with my own taste, and misses a few arguably important ones. I'm sure the omissions were well-covered in the site's previous Best of the '90s lists...