pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Punching down & bullying don't make much sense to me as concepts in this context, but that flopson post table quoted is good. I didn't really get the "poptimism 2.0" thesis (though revisiting that thread, Whiney's op is p lucid), but this list clarifies it to some degree.

xp uh oh

violator is about 100 spots too low. and attributed to the wrong year

ok Hole above Nirvana is a strong challops, kudos pitchfork.com

Perhaps more current contributors owe it to themselves as paid influencers to bother listening through the entirety of previous lists before settling on their choices. But they don't, because they're lazy.

― billstevejim, Wednesday, September 28, 2022 2:43 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I logged in just to tell you to fuck off

― like, I’m eating an elephant head (katherine), Wednesday, September 28, 2022 2:47 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I cannot describe the warm nostalgic glow this exchange gave me but I thank you so much

I'm actually a bit surprised that Liz Phair is as high as she is on both of these lists. For whatever reason, I don't hear as much about that album as I did back in the 2000s.

As I’ve said previously, I like a lot of songs on this list, but there are few surprises, and the poptimism-as-hegemony element to it is real— why do we need this list? Wouldn’t a list of forgotten or poorly remembered grunge or riot grrl bands be more interesting? Is rehashing radio playlists and throwing in an occasional pick from CMJ charts really a good look at a decade? I just don’t think it is! It feels more attuned to algorithms of now than what the decade was actually like.

(Also, I didn’t even realize that the other SY pick was “Kool Thing”—- might be the most irritating song in that record, if they really wanted to pick a non-Thurston track they could have at least picked “Mote,” which is one of Lee’s crowning achievements in that band)

ok Hole above Nirvana is a strong challops

elsewhere maybe but I feel like that's pretty much ilm canon, right? (as it should be.)

yeah I'm not even necessarily disagreeing, just recognizing the annoyance that will cause (I think?). I haven't heard either album in at least 20 years. For nostalgic reasons, I'd prefer to listen to Nirvana myself, but I'd pick In Utero way before Nevermind anyway

Siamese Dream over Loveless would be my kind of trolling.

Will Oldham being persona non grata on both lists is the clearest sign they want to distance themselves from ye olde Pitchfork.

That might be the first time I've seen *anybody* praise the first Cranberries album. I mean, maybe it's good, for all I know, but I thought conventional wisdom had whittled it down to "Dreams" (whereas acts like the Sundays or Sinead get the full-album love).

Janet Jackson feels like one of the biggest beneficiaries of the site's current editorial vision: three songs on the songs list and Velvet Rope in the top 10 albums. Hard to imagine that result even just a few years ago.

xp
I See a Darkness was on the songs list

Ah I missed it somehow, thanks.

first cranberries album is great top to bottom

i just went through the whole list and can’t remember if the sundays made it tho

loads of people have always loved/praised that cranberries album! xps

First Cranberries album rules! I still put it on at least a few times a year.

it was too much for me to hope for them to include imani coppola's chupacabra which is way overdue for the sunday review treatment

I'm a little perplexed that Rid Of Me is the PJ album pick, not to mention really high on the list with none of her others placing.

Also interesting/odd to me that Dummy is so high compared to Maxinquaye and Blue Lines (and that BL was picked not Protection or Mezzanine)

"What's Up?" only made the list because the Four Non-Blondes drummer later joined the Loud Family, kudos on such a subtle tribute to Scott Miller

it is ultimately an Authority and it operates From On High

I don't know, it seems to me that anytime websites publish these lists nowadays, the discourse is 90% critique, 10% "OK I'll listen to that", and 0% "the Gods have spoken". Maybe it was always that way, did 'zines bother to criticize the lists that Rolling Stone or Spin published in the 1980s?

lol at the idea Pitchfork would even consider a Loud Family album for their list

I don't know what it says about either me or the list, but at a quick count I think I owned 70 of these as actual physical media during the 1990s themselves. (Still own most of them I guess, in bins of CDs in my basement.)

Noticed a few album blurbs by critics who were writing for mainstream pubs in the 1990s: Simon Reynolds, Will Hermes, Alan Light.

I'm only four albums in but The Bodyguard?? Wow

People keep accusing Pfork of being too poptimist but they rated Liz Phair over Alanis Morissette in both tracks and album polls which is both wrong and indie-cred-damaged.

I'm only four albums in but The Bodyguard?? Wow

― you can see me from westbury white horse, Wednesday, September 28, 2022 9:09 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not only that, but a reference to the Kenny G song as a "worthwhile" non-Whitney cut.

All they had to do was include Sing To God and I'd be recanting every word right now

there's nothing that the 90s kids loved more than kenny g and joe cocker

there's nothing that the 90s kids loved more than kenny g and joe cocker

one more time for the folks in the back

lol that Fear of a Black Planet ranks lower than live through this. Nice to see American Water high in the list though.

lol at garbage above gbv

Main thing I'm perplexed about is the Gang Starr-oatmeal cookie comparison.

Honestly not surprised people like the Cranberries album, it's that I don't think I've ever seen it on a list before.

Lil Kim- Hardcore as the 8th best Hip Hop album of the 90s is something else

Jason King wrote The Bodyguard blurb, and I tend to trust him on R&B matters (though whether that soundtrack counts as R&B is another matter).

Yeah Violator for 1993 stood out for me as well. I don't get how these things don't get noticed.

I guess I just wasn't expecting The Bodyguard because I Will Always Love You seemed to fill that quota in the songs list.

Maybe it was always that way, did 'zines bother to criticize the lists that Rolling Stone or Spin published in the 1980s?

Rolling Stone’s 1989 list of best songs of all-time was so terrible that Spin went and made their own in response (the one with “It Takes Two” at #1).

I theorised Miseducation might top and it was second. Nice.

retrospective reviews of OK Computer are always so wild.

Agree:re Liz Phair reappraisal seeming a lot more pronounced of late. Possibly this is just a reflection of who my friends are/their friends are/etc but I feel like Exile in Guyville took a back seat for quite along time and now its stumbling back. I haven't heard it for maybe 7-8 years so this has reminded me to hear it again.

I remember a lot of renewed hype when she did that anniversary tour a few years back.

pretty strong contingent of artists who have had relatively recent critical reappraisals, toured in the past few years (omitting 2020-2021), or otherwise appeared in the public eye
(wrote this before seeing the liz phair comments and that hits the mark -- she headlined a local music festival here in 2019 and not as a retro act)

Like every new rock band sounds like some combination of Liz Phair and Pavement, this isn't hard, guys

I saw the Chemical Brothers a few weeks ago playing to an enthralled audience of mostly 20 and 30 somethings but alas :(

i'm happy jordan: the comeback made it

my favourite new inclusion tbh!

interesting the general lack of dance music- none of the UK big hitters e.g. Orbital/Underworld/Chems/Prodigy but instead Autechre, KLF and Roni Size (all good records!), little in the way of Detroit (only Drexciya) or for that matter any other North American records. Then there's the obligatory Daft Punk and, slightly weirdly, Oval.

orbital were on the tracks list

I haven't scrolled through the albums yet - too much content too quickly.

A few months after they posted their 200 80s albums, I had a pretty fun time challenging myself over the span of a few weeks to listen through the entire playlist (to help pass the time while doing gig work food deliveries). It's a surprisingly dope list overall. Loads of stuff that I dug right away. It was my first time hearing Kool G Rap & DJ Polo, or reggae stuff like The Scientist or Horace Andy. That might have been my first time listening all the way through Songs from the Big Chair or Sandanista or Youth of America or the 1st Lucinda Williams album. All great choices.

The biggest WTF that still sticks with me is the self-titled Whitney Houston, which was obviously only chosen because it's Whitney Houston despite that it's actually a terrible album. Doesn't surprise me in the slightest that they would include The Bodyguard soundtrack in the 90s list. I get why they would include Private Dancer for sure. It actually rules. I get why Anita Baker is in there to a degree. But Whitney Houston is just not an albums artist. Sorry guys.

I guess I will probably do the same with this 90s list eventually.