Pitchfork's P2k: The Decade in Music

Other obvious 2009 track missing, imo: Trap Goin Ham

^^^

But yeah it's clear p4k seems to have to wait for some kind of consensus before really repping for rap/pop/rnb traxx

really true and a big part of why i can't take it seriously outside of its indie rock centre, which i'm not interested in anyway. lol remember when they reviewed new amerykah like 4 months after it came out, presumably because they hadn't considered erykah badu worthy of inclusion prior to that, and then were like: shit! critical consensus! better jump on that!

lol as if erykah badu wasn't already critical consensus central.

lol remember when they reviewed new amerykah like 4 months after it came out, presumably because they hadn't considered erykah badu worthy of inclusion prior to that, and then were like: shit! critical consensus! better jump on that!

Still waiting for the inevitable review of Love Vs Money by year's end.

from a dude who discovered the-dream after his 2nd album dropped ....

Don't see why that should matter.

well if your criticizing pitchfork for being johnny come latelys...

fwiw deej was pulling rank on people who bought dream's first album more than 3 months after it was out, so everybody's an asshole here

Yeah, I never understood that either. I first heard "Livin' a Lie" and "Ditch That" on Rich Juzwiak's year-end mix back in January '08. Does that mean I'm qualified to like The-Dream??

Speaking of which, I just heard "Sippin' on Some Syrup" for what I believe is the first time, thanks to the Pitchfork list, and it's pretty great. Also now understand what "So Many Shrimp" is a reference to.

lol remember when they reviewed new amerykah like 4 months after it came out, presumably because they hadn't considered erykah badu worthy of inclusion prior to that, and then were like: shit! critical consensus! better jump on that!

also partly because I was really busy with some personal stuff and took an embarrassingly long time to turn the review around -- but hey, any good LOL-on-P4k theories that help distract from my own flakiness are appreciated and encouraged round here

the thing that's been most interesting to me in reactions to this list, actually, is that word "presumably," the guessing at motives (often sinister or cynical) for why things turn out the way they do, which ascribed motives all too rarely run in the direction of "maybe this is the stuff that they, right or wrong, actually think is good" -- this is perfectly natural, since lists are sort of a form of self-presentation and it's probably good to be skeptical about what that self-presentation is doing, but yeesh does it get weird at points. (I guess this thread has gone over some of the indie types who think the list is, e.g., "pretending" to like mega-popular pop singles most everyone likes, just to make indie folks feel uncool or bad about themselves.)

I've developing a whole taxonomy of responses, but for now two of my favorites are these types:

- "ACT X at 279? Are you kidding me? This list is such bullshit." -- absolutely no way to tell if their problem is that they hate Act X or if they think Act X should be number one

- "This is SO idiotic. 'Single by Band X' at #46? I'm never reading this site again. It should have been 'Other, Similar Single by Band X' instead." -- there's lots of this, like "I can't believe these MORONS included bands X, Y, and Z and not these other acts that are, in the grand scheme of things, practically identical substitutes" -- I mean, it's cool that listmaking gets people arguing out interesting stuff like what's the band's best single, but it seems weird to be punching your computer screen and raging about a list for praising stuff you like via a slightly different single or act

I mean, if you REALLY thought that only an EVIL MORONIC JERK could possibly like 'Someone Great' better than 'North American Scum,' it'd be kinda hard to function socially, right?

i guess after reading reaction in a few places i'm still amazed that people can sound so mad about this list, since it belies a strong emotional reaction that involves some combination of pitchfork, songs they like, and songs the hate, only no one is saying how much of each is involved.

it never occurred to me to take the list as anything other than a reflection of pitchfork's evolution over the last ten years. beyond that there have been some songs i was reminded to download, some decent writeups to read, and one or two pleasant surprises i had totally missed at the time.

The extreme reactions are, in generally, really unnecessary, yeah. Still, I think there's a fair amount of justifiable eyebrow-raising, especially in regards to songs, or versions of songs, that seem to be picked kind of arbitrarily to represent a particular artist or album. Like, why the "Get By" remix instead of the original? Does anybody actually think "Don't Feel Right" is one of the two most notable Roots songs of the decade? I'm not suggesting ill intent or conspiracy, but it definitely feels like if there wasn't an editorial hand guiding those choices, there were certainly some weird voting blocs being set up among the staff to get some picks up in the ranking.

note to self: "generally" or "in general," never both.

i guess potentially it gives away a lot of people as liking talking about talking about music more than they really like music. see also the explosion in commentary around the meta-presentation of sports at the expense of discussion about games themselves.

I don't think a lot of the songs are the best, and there are a many that surprise me, but i've heard lots of great stuff i never paid attention to before (criminally ignored T.I. save two tracks previous to this, also Bat for Lashes 'Daniel' is amazing, plus some good indie guitar stuff I never bothered with).

so lists are imperfect blah blah blah, but now that I'm about to finish listening to the list on Spotify (well, the 390 available), I think all in all it's an excellent representation of the decade, certainly in regards to trends. Also, having been tired of Jay-Z for a while, it was nice to re-evaluate his stuff. I had forgotten how good he really was.

'Crazy in Love' still boring though.

my one "serious" criticism of the list is that it never really figures out how to rectify pop singles and indie rock album tracks--they just sort of sit alongside each other not engaging in conversation.

just to be clear, I'm not picking on responses, even hatey ones, or questions like those about why something winds up there -- those are interesting questions. I just find some of the forms of it funny. (very especially the people who are clearly appalled and outraged by a selection but don't provide enough clues to figure out anything about why! it's amazing how many of those I've seen!)

How would they "engage in conversation"? Not being snarky; genuinely curious about what you mean.

(xp)

my one "serious" criticism of the list is that it never really figures out how to rectify pop singles and indie rock album tracks--they just sort of sit alongside each other not engaging in conversation.

OTM. I think a lot of the indie stuff were mostly singles, but the inclusion of YHF album tracks and that Arcade Fire song in the top ten are a bit odd. Like they wanted to represent the albums as opposed to working as singles themselves, but surely we'll see an onslaught of indie in the albums list, so I don't know why they're there. Generally good songs though.

I dunno, most of the weirdness in the Pitchfork list happens when you extend the list beyond c. 100 tracks, mostly based I would guess on not enough contributors. You'll get more consensus-y 101-500 if you have a ton of people contributing, but given (1) the staff isn't that huge, (2) the staff has extremely varied (and in some cases specialist) interests, and (3) they're not putting these lists together in separate caves or something, it makes sense that you're going to see what seem to be arbitrary choices based on one or two staffers repping for it once you go past a certain number. (I just think 500 is too high for a "group poll" -- were individual lists published this time?)

fwiw deej was pulling rank on people who bought dream's first album more than 3 months after it was out, so everybody's an asshole here

― some dude, Wednesday, August 26, 2009 12:02 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

? i was pulling rank on a dude who discovered the-dream on his sophomore album acting better than pfork for having heard it -- this has nothing to do w your insecurities about being behind on modern R&B

Even individual top 10's would be interesting, just as a sort of symbolic gesture; you'd probably see [random album track] really high on an individual's list.

deej i was referring to something you said to someone else on another thread last year, and the fact that you think it's about my insecurities on being behind says it all!

xxxxxxp i'm not really sure--it's like they agree that for the purposes of a "list of tracks" all these beyonce and robyn and jay-z songs are clearly worthy, but then in keeping with the nature of the publication they have to pull out like two songs from yankee hotel foxtrot and have to find one kid a song for the top 10 and stuff like that. but are those things really on equal footing? for albums that had no songs released as singles how did they decide what song(s) should represent?

to add to that there's been a discussion abt pitchfork bringing in genre specialists to provide coverage to certain unenlightened areas and that's probably where a bunch of the rap and dance and techno tracks on this list came from. but they've done the same thing with metal. and obv metal doesn't release singles (most of the time) but it doesn't look like there was an effort to incorporate metal into this list, not in the same way that lots of indie album tracks made it on.

deej i was referring to something you said to someone else on another thread last year, and the fact that you think it's about my insecurities on being behind says it all!

― some dude, Wednesday, August 26, 2009 1:14 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no it doesnt -- i just said that because i had no idea what u were talking about

if i was it wasnt on some LOL U BEHIND THE CURVE it was more like no one listened to us talking about this record for 12 months until it popped up on a year end list

Why is it hard to believe that a publication that focuses on indie/indie-friendly music would have among its writers an organic consensus about bands like Radiohead and Wilco?

Per some above posts, this list really underlines for me why I always have done singles lists as opposed to songs, if only to make it less redundant from an album list, and to kind of respect singles, as opposed to songs, as their own specific medium. There are a ton of singles I like from albums I don't or haven't heard, but if I every tried to do a list of 'favorite songs' for a given year or decade, it would be chock full of deep cuts from my albums list, because, duh, I like lots of songs from my favorite albums.

i guess it's not that hard to believe (tho weren't we just talking about amnesiac and a bunch of people had different favorites?) but if that's the case then the choices were arrived at totally differently from the hip-hop and pop portions of the list where they more or less exclusively went with big, well-regarded singles. that's part of what i mean by not in conversation.

xp yeah exactly, it seems like they're basically splitting the difference on that.

I guess it depends on what music you like and how you consume it, though -- lots of people grab up tracks and remixes and stuff on blogs now that aren't proper 'singles' in any way but aren't on albums. For me the overwhelming majority of the music I like is either on a CD I own, or is something I was exposed to on the radio or a video channel or something.

the inclusion of YHF album tracks and that Arcade Fire song in the top ten are a bit odd. Like they wanted to represent the albums as opposed to working as singles themselves

Gukbe, can I just register deep disagreement with this? I think that as you come up the list you come across indie stuff that's not just album standouts, but songs that -- if you happened to follow or be immersed in the indie world -- felt like things people really gathered around. (Maybe sort of the modern equivalent of old mix-tape favorites.) That Arcade Fire song is certainly one of those, for me (just for instance): I'm pretty sure it's the only thing from that album I have on my mp3 player right now, because it is -- for reasons having nothing to do with the album -- just a good and memorable song. (To me.) Toward the top of the list I get that vibe from a lot of picks, songs that stuck out as particularly meaningful to a certain audience; the stuff that if 00s indie was graduating from high school would get played over the slide shows of its good times.

Which is what's more interesting to me about them, actually, partly in terms of the pop stuff and partly just in terms of what people look to indie bands for -- a lot of the songs that develop this consensus as meaningful standouts have these grand or nostalgic or tender qualities; they're the ballads. Maybe that has to do with indie not having a radio-type environment where pop singles can seem important as anything other than lures to buy the album; maybe it has to do with the pop consensus stuff taking the role here of the upbeat and the exciting. Maybe this is just what indie does and what it gets used for -- I don't know, but it seems like the stuff that washes into the "important" file for indie is the kind of heart-clutching "this is the song that really meant something to me" stuff.

for albums that had no songs released as singles how did they decide what song(s) should represent?

as for "idioteque", at least, it seems to be the song from that record that's been written about the most in the past decade, and it's probably the biggest crowd-pleaser when they play it live

xp some dude otm

Sometimes seeing concensus build up around an album track is really fun, though -- I loved seeing Ted Leo's "Timorous Me" on the Pitchfork list because I love that song was always kind of begrudged Sage for singling it out as the album's worst track in her review 8 years ago.

i guess it's not that hard to believe (tho weren't we just talking about amnesiac and a bunch of people had different favorites?) but if that's the case then the choices were arrived at totally differently from the hip-hop and pop portions of the list where they more or less exclusively went with big, well-regarded singles. that's part of what i mean by not in conversation

Again, I don't think it's surprising that a publication that started out as indie-centric would generate a decade list where the indie stuff spans the gamut from singles to random album cuts but mostly represents hip-hop and chart pop/rock via singles and indie-approved remixes; it seems like a natural reflection of how their music coverage has changed to me.

xp to nabs ok but it still means that choices are being made for indie that aren't being made for pop.

experience re: kid a that may be true only for me--when kid a came out ppl rallied around optimistic, essentially because it was guitar-based, had a reasonable length, and a recognizable structure--it sounded the most radiohead of anything on that record. now ppl apparently rally around idiotheque which is the same thing except replace guitars with electronics. are either of these the consensus song from kid a? didn't pitchfork run a review this week about how it's the last album meant to be consumed as such?

and dan i'm not saying it doesn't make sense or is surprising but i am more questioning the validity of it?

deej and some dude are SPOILING me with radio killllllah beef : )

i inhale it

xp to nabs ok but it still means that choices are being made for indie that aren't being made for pop.

wait, could you explain this more? because I don't entirely see the difference. "that fantastic pop single we all loved that summer" versus "that terrific indie tune we all embraced that winter" -- we might get different things out of these categories, but the choices we make about putting them on lists are basically the same, aren't they? either way, it's something that was good and felt broadly significant (whether it was significant in the big pop world or within the smaller indie world).

i'm not sure i can define what the difference is between "we all heard the new jay-z single and thought it was great" and "we all bought yankee hotel foxtrot and decided that 'poor places' is one of the best two or three songs on the album" but i think it is something and i think it might be significant.

one of the songs is a single, one isn't

I think you're making an incorrect assumption that people only engage with indie records by buying whole albums and then deciding which songs they like best. That seems flawed to me. It's part of why I mentioned old mix-tape favorites: just because something comes from an "album" sphere doesn't mean people can't still collect around certain tracks in a very track-based way. (And again, I haven't listened to the whole of Funeral in years, but I do really love that Arcade Fire single!)

Trying to find a better example of this. I mean, look, I know some of you might laugh and/or gag at this notion, but if someone is really immersed in the "indie" world, something like "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" may feel every bit as momentous in their sphere as a huge-smash r&b single feels for the larger pop world -- it may be the thing everyone in that space is talking about or marveling at, the thing that happened that year. With that song, it wouldn't be because people studiously decided it was the preferred track on the album, it'd be because the long-ass crazed grim centerpiece of the thing was what seemed significant and important about it, the thing that happened on it.

from a dude who discovered the-dream after his 2nd album dropped ....

Pardon?

lol more entertainment for he1go comin up

no doubt ppl can listen to indie in a track-based way, but the filter that's getting them there is still different from something like a hip-hop single, where it might be released by the record company well in advance of the album, and then played on the radio and in public places and stuff. there's no need for a critic (anyone from a p4k writer to your friend who tells you about music) to be like "hey this is a track to check out"--it's kind of already been decided that this is the track you WILL check out.

looking more at the indie selections i'm surprised at how many of them actually WERE released as singles! so maybe my argument is a nonstarter. lol i'll just stick to complaining about the lack of metal or something.

or maybe the problem i'm having doesn't really begin to show itself until you get to the low numbers, like--

24. everything in its right place
21. since u been gone

this reminds me of when people make ilm polls that are like pick one: motorhead or whitney houston.

haha I was gonna ask how yr hip-hop model was at all different from the indie model aside from maybe terminology ("single" vs "EP" and even then there are still a bunch of indie singles)