Pitchfork's P2k: The Decade in Music

White Winter Hymnal was definitely a single, or at least it had a video. Hounds of Love as well, and that still gets played at UK 'indie' nights. I presume a lot of these were singles, or at least had videos. The bizarre thing is the tracks off Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which as far as I know weren't singles at all.

Anyways, it's a list and therefore pretty arbitrary, but still good fun for the unemployed saddos out there like me.

Updated Spotify list (now 342/450)

I think 'since u been gone' gets a free pass because it epitomizes reality shows such as american idol which saw their rise and demise in the 00's and also it's a relevant piece of memorabilia from that short period where chick rock dominated the airwaves It works as a very important piece to define mediatic history in this decade.

What do you think Jordan?

it gets a 'free pass' bcuz everyone loved it and its awesome

Yes you're right everyone loved it. Its an awesome awesome song. My eyes have been opened.

I will go now and reflect upon this.

I like Kelly Clarkson, idk. Also, I think American Idol is still pretty popular?

Only thing that I'd like to see more on this list is some r&b. i may be wrong but i don't remember seeing any ne-yo, dream, rihanna (although umbrella will obv. make it) etc. etc. etc. just 1 destinys child song and one beyonce song. They never really covered it though, so I knew it would be unlikely to see any on the list other than the biggest singles.

there are couple of Destiny's Child songs so far, and I expect at least one more. Also, Beyonce's Irreplaceable, and Crazy in Love must place at some point. I know Usher's Yeah! is on it, and I wouldn't be surprised to see another one. Ne-Yo's 'Closer' wouldn't be a shocker.

I did an Aaliyah review Samuel did you not notice :-(

Oh yeah, sorry. She got two songs! But still 10/500 is a rubbish return, if the genre gets to 10.

Hounds of Love as well, and that still gets played at UK 'indie' nights.

it made #8 on the pop charts there too

i was thinking this too. def the case for ghost 'tracks' like "Shakey Dog" & "Nutmeg". & picking nutmeg of cherchez laghost, which was a bigger club single, is even more random (im assuming cherchez probably wont place). It kind of annoys me bcuz there are SOOOO many rap songs from iffy albums that deserve/earned attention that will be ignored in favor of tracks from LPs that will be def represented on the albums list.

yeah, i complained about the tracks-representing-albums thing upthread. but still, it's pretty clear those songs sum up GK's appeal for the people that voted for him, his one token club hit does not.

imo g-unit 'wanna get to know you' is better than half the rap singles on this list.

yeah but that's a challop

im also SUPERsurprised at how low "Stay Fly" placed ... behind a kanye album track??? super random

super surprised? really? i dunno i'm just happy to see songs like "Stay Fly" on there at all

Like I don't remember "Hounds of Love" being a particularly break-through track on that Futureheads album, and it's a good song, but it's good in a way that a lot of the other songs are good. I'm curious why they decided to include one Futureheads song and picked that one, or whether a few people actually felt that was the definitive Futureheads single. (It seems like this in a couple places -- the Fleet Foxes song is another good example.)

I dunno, it definitely seemed to me that a lot of people who weren't particularly Futureheads fans got excited about the fact that they covered a Kate Bush song and did it really well. IIRC, it finished in the top 10 of both Pitchfork and Stylus in 2005.

As for "White Winter Hymnal," it was in fact the first single off the Fleet Foxes album, so it was probably a lot of people's introduction to that band. It was also on Time magazine's top 10 of 2008. The only other song of theirs that I could've seen placing would've been "Mykonos," since it was the standout track on the EP and the first song they played on SNL. But "White Winter Hymnal" isn't that much of a surprise, really.

I wonder if that Quarashi single will place higher than "B.Y.O.B." I think the theme from the Requiem For A Dream soundtrack is a lock for top 5. And umm.. four words.. "You Know You're Right??" Hello???

"Jesus Etc." is its wizened brother, meditating on last cigarettes amidst stabs of pedal steel and eerily dovetailing with 9/11 ("Tall buildings shake", "skyscrapers are scrapin' together").

CONGRATS U WROTE LYRICS ABT 9/11

god this song is worse than i remember.

I strongly support "Jesus, etc."

Much the best track on that album.

Super pumped to see clinic's "distortions" on there, one of my favorite songs ever

I strongly support "Jesus, etc."

^^^^^ This. Obviously, there's lots of room to quibble and complain about omissions and ordering, but there's a lot of great songs on the Pitchfork list.

"Jesus Etc." is its wizened brother, meditating on last cigarettes amidst stabs of pedal steel and eerily dovetailing with 9/11 ("Tall buildings shake", "skyscrapers are scrapin' together").

CONGRATS U WROTE LYRICS ABT 9/11

god this song is worse than i remember.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, August 19, 2009 9:08 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Great song! And it was written BEFORE 9/11, so that comment makes no sense.

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_hotel_foxtrot):

Wilco had planned on releasing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on September 11, 2001, but Tweedy did not want a change in record labels to significantly delay the release of the album. . . . In a decision aimed at discouraging the pirating of lower quality MP3s and having some control over how the album was distributed, on September 18, 2001, . . .

Also, the best track on Yankee is NOT "Jesus, etc.," which seems to be the consensus pick for non-Wilco fans, but "Ashes of American Flags," esp. in its Kicking Television incarnation w/ Nels Cline's solo.

"The cash machine is blue and green . . ."

That three-note guitar figure that keeps emerging throughout the song in the background is the perfect touch on a wonderful song.

esp. in its Kicking Television incarnation w/ Nels Cline's solo.

All music is better with Nels Cline.

^ This is true. Except even he couldn't save Sky Blue Sky. I want a Wilco record where they really let him loose. Having him play these strange, backwards 30 second solos at the end of "Everlasting Everything" and "One Wing" does not count.

Wilco is fucking terrible

Remember when people cared about Sigur Ros?

Whiney, good morning!

i have a really small and insignificant complaint about this list: it reads too much like a random mash up of all their previous year end lists with the words just rearranged a bit. what i really appreciate in a thing like this is when secretely wonderful album tracks replace singles, or when something that's not already been best new music'd or highly reviewed pops up, when guilty pleasures are exposed, trump cards played. the 2001-04 list was nice cause it was mostly radio jams and populist indie hits, kind of showed that pitchfork writers still know what's up even when they step out of their niche. i suppose this is kind of their big chance to formally establish the pitchfork canon as definitively as they can, but it doesn't make for a very interesting read i gotta say. good tunes, though.

chris i gotta say at this point you might as well be mooning college kids for playing fleet foxes in the student lounge.

I really love Sigur Ros! I got into Agaetis byrjun pre-college when a friend recommended them to me and I heard "Olsen Olsen." I also got into "( )" around that time, and I would still rank Untitled #1, #4, and #8 as some of my favorite postrock songs of the decade. "Glosoli" from Takk... has THE best postrock climax I've heard.

The "new" one from last summer is kind of bad, though.

samosa has a point. although i was pleasantly surprised to see "The Middle" on the list all these years after that awful Bleed American review.

i just tried reading this thread and stopped after like the third kshighway spazz out. could anyone fill me in wrt if we at any point start talking about music or this pitchfork list?

Still going through the list, and I'm THRILLED to see that "Forgot About Dre" came in at 68. Such a great song. In 8th grade, one of my best friends and I memorized the entire song and would rap it at lunch. The video, too, is hilarious.

kinda interesting to see it higher than any other Eminem (assuming none of his other solo singles will place higher than "Real Slim Shady," "Lose Yourself" and "Without Me")

Maybe "Stan" will.

Surprised that Silent Shout placed as low as it did. I figured that would be in the top 20 fer sure.

kinda interesting to see it higher than any other Eminem (assuming none of his other solo singles will place higher than "Real Slim Shady," "Lose Yourself" and "Without Me")

― some dude, Wednesday, August 19, 2009 11:22 AM (3 minutes ago)

Yeah! That's especially surprising because Eminem has been much more of a presence in the 2000s than Dre.

I also had no idea Eminem wrote "Forgot About Dre" until I read the blurb on the P2k list.

I was confused by that info too. I would assume he meant that Em wrote HIS portion. He's written worse than "If y'all don't like me BLOW me," but nothing so trite.

ha, totally blanked on "Stan," that will probably be higher

"Heartbeats" will probably be top 20. Please god not in Jose Gonzalez form though

Heartbeats will certainly be top 20. no fucking doubt there.

some new thoughts:
- i am SOOOOO glad i stopped reading p4k in 2004.
- i am blissfully unaware of what most of these 'indie' tracks sound like.
- alex in mainhattan, i've actually talked about you to friends of mine irl. and they're all like, "anyone who says things like that about amnesiac needs a head examination." it isn't just us.
- kshighway, you seem to have the same taste in music that i did when i was a junior/senior in high school. which was eight/seven years ago. not a diss, i just don't understand how these things happen.

Good display name.

I was pleased to see "Forgot About Dre," too, because I thought it was a 1999 song. Single released in 2000, I guess.

the vague, ominous lyrics of most songs of amnesiac to me describe quite well the insecurity of today's world on a meta level. there is not one interpretation, there are many. we are on shaky ground. nothing is sure after 911 and the financial crisis anymore. not even the states, not even capitalism. we had forgotten about the fragility of the most powerful country and the most powerful economic concept. we were ill. we were amnesiacs. probably most of us still are, actually. maybe this is not the right thread for this discussion. shall we start a new one?

okay my last post on gaydiohead here:
i just don't get you. are you a fucking suburban mom? do you even know what 'meta' means? do you watch too much msnbc? are you a blogger on huffington post? are you secretly paris hilton?

you're not speaking to anything profound. if anything, you're spouting off soundbites from the past 10 years in an obvious way just to stan for a crappy Radiohead album. please stop.

would u say that we 'forgot' "forgot about dre"

/sorry

the table is the table, what do you mean by "i just don't understand how these things happen."?

Also, what do you listen to now? Recommend a few albums to me.

Daniel, i forgot to thank you for it. when i saw yr post, i just sang some Foreigner and was like, 'new display name time.'

hey here's some free advice for everybody--stop posting about how glad you are that you haven't listened to some indie rock.

^^