Pitchfork's P2k: The Decade in Music

they deleted it after realizing there are three blurbs that talk mainly about 9/11 in the top 100

― some dude, Monday, September 28, 2009 12:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

They also edited my Tough Alliance review. I thought this was a really interesting point so I'm sharing with u all:

Ultimately, it's impossible to listen to The Tough Alliance without being reminded that the Coalition of the Willing was in fact the toughest alliance of them all. Here's hoping that the Norwegian duo's insistence that "any day's a new chance" galvanizes a flagging US global democratic mission into taking A New Chance in Iran and Pakistan.

you know ppl making fun of that set-up like two posts up, right?

TOTD: trail of the dead

that's not their name but great try

pedant bear

i would never call out the o.g. mistake but u can't perpetuate it imo

you know ppl making fun of that set-up like two posts up, right?

― ott or pop (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, 29 September 2009 15:36 (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

so tim f cant make fun of it?

Judge Whinehold has spoken

i didn't even notice the misplaced the!

Since I missed it the 1st time around, thank you blueski and this thread for pointing out Tim talking about Discovery in that other thread.

yes, thank you.

comparing albums' placement on a list to their old pfork scores is the most boring bean-counting imaginable.

especially since OMG certain albums hold up and others don't

What's boring is having such a strongly negative opinion on how other people enjoy a fucking music list. Especially when you're going to point out exactly WHY it's interesting to compare album placement seconds afterward.

I like this, too, but you're still assuming that there's a grand design to it all, that the revisionism is a deliberate choice, rather than a natural effect of the fact that a) it's a collective vote rather than a single review, b) there's a turnover in writers, and c) even the writers who have been around for several years will inevitably change their minds over time. It's sort of silly to imagine that the editors would say to their staff, "Hey guys, make sure you vote the first Arcade Fire album really high because Dave Moore, who doesn't even write for the site anymore and is now best known as a champion of teen-pop, gave it a 9.7 five years ago and we want to look consistent?" (I mean, Funeral probably will finish in the top 20, but not for that reason.)

But there is a deliberate revisionism in that P4K is actively hiring writers with diverse POVs and differing opinions, and with enough fluidity of thought that those change and adapt over the years. You're going to be able to compare that to the inevitable shitshows that will be SPIN's and Rolling Stone's decade wrap-ups and see that there's plenty of design and forethought going into P4K's actions. Maybe they didn't ultimately know that they'd land Andrew WK on the list, but they definitely set the wheels in motion for it to happen. And that's pretty awesome.

So I loaded the Pfork 150-101 tracks list last night, and read the first few blurbs. This morning I booted up the list again, and it looks like there have been a few revisions in a good number of the blurbs. Not sure why these weren't edited completely before they went to press, but here's an example.

Original blurb for Twin Cinema (my emphasis, as the bolded parts were later removed):

Great pop always knows it's pop. On Twin Cinema, Carl Newman and his band of moonlighting luminaries (including Neko Case and Destroyer's Dan Bejar) build a film-studio lot's worth of outlandish sets, and seek to discover that special something that keeps us returning to pop music. So "Use It" is a powder-keg of kinetic energy, while "The Bleeding Heart Show" (a song so awesome it made a University of Phoenix commercial seem transcendent) commemorates a missed gig with one of the most towering codas of the decade: Fuck playing for a cause-- music is the only cause. Yet for all the great moments here-- and it's one after the other-- the geeky majesty of "Sing Me Spanish Techno" stands above the rest. The song has epic scope and infinite energy, but Newman et al. express pop's power in its first three words alone: "go to now!" --Eric Harvey

New blurb for Twin Cinema:

On Twin Cinema, Carl Newman and his band of moonlighting luminaries (including Neko Case and Destroyer's Dan Bejar) build a film-studio lot's worth of outlandish sets, and seek to discover that special something that keeps us returning to pop music. So "Use It" is a powder-keg of kinetic energy, while "The Bleeding Heart Show" (a song so awesome it made a University of Phoenix commercial seem transcendent) commemorates a missed gig with one of the most towering codas of the decade: Fuck playing for a cause-- music is the only cause. Yet for all the great moments here-- and it's one after the other-- the geeky majesty of "Sing Me Spanish Techno" stands above the rest. --Eric Harvey

Why???????? I liked the original one better!

I disagree.

One thing about the blurb is right: Sing Me Spanish Techno is a standout among standouts on that disc (maybe The Bleeding Heart Show's outro, with all those cascading harmonies, is as good or better).

lol @ p4k not being able to edit these blurbs before posting em

Silly list. I'm sick of lists besides totally subjective ones. So much list obsession these days...

next you'll say individual lists are more interesting

I like lists that embrace their subjectiveness is all. Then nobody has to have stupid arguments, you just get to have interesting discussions about personal taste.

how could marc hogan even reflect on da drought 3 with impoverished sudanese still dying of thirst every day

Miss E blurb is the most eyeroll-worthy September 11th reference yet (and it's competing with like, what, 8 others?)

did that joke get intercepted after you posted it yesterday? xp

Miss E blurb is the most eyeroll-worthy September 11th reference yet (and it's competing with like, what, 8 others?)

― een, Wednesday, September 30, 2009 12:27 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

poll?

we've got two more days iirc, can only get better

waiting for Blueprint before i call it

not only did j. dilla die, but also 9/11

man maybe we should all self ban for a while if it makes a dude come back like you

Disappointed that Third placed so low, but ranking is really pretty arbitrary outside of the top 20 anyway.

i've been writing pfork 9/11 fanfic

the gleaming silver scales of the fish on the cover of ghostface's 2006 opus only magnified the loss of the twin towers that once loomed over new york city

the junior boys' "so this is goodbye" was a perfect headphones album for the post-9/11 world - just like the once magnificent twin towers tragically crumbled, jeremy greenspan wrote the group's second album without the input of his ex-partner

kinda surprised how low miss e is ... below the jr boys, really??

"SexyBack" is likely a time capsule joke in a decade or two-- our very own "Y.M.C.A."

^^^whaaaaaaaaa?

i think he might be right about that tbh

this though:

If Malice and Pusha T sound unapologetic about their dope-dealing pasts, it's because they know that-- given the Clipse's troubled track record as major-label artists-- it's a life they're prepared to face again.

*rolling my damn eyes*

http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll43/myknsj/d34fc96f.gif

I would agree with putting Junior Boys above Missy. Both good, but I find that Missy has a hard time sustaining her brilliance over a full length record.

ha, haven't got that far. but yeah, who isn't prepared to go from being millionaire rappers back to poor street pushers?

http://emoticons4u.com/violent/sterb046.gif

Also, the Elephant blurb is just "hey, cheers for the free promo", right?

I would agree with putting Junior Boys above Missy. Both good, but I find that Missy has a hard time sustaining her brilliance over a full length record.

― untrue pitch, Wednesday, September 30, 2009 2:33 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

enlightening

http://emoticons4u.com/fingers/fing37.gif

huh, there I was sure that Ys would be top ten, or at least twenty. I know nothing.

Yeah, can I just say that Ys at #83 is my favorite part of this list so far?

(Also, there's a lot of decent stuff on here that I like a lot. And it doesn't seem to suffer from quite the same schizophrenia as the singles list.)

Purpose and common sense coalesce around the 70 mark. A top 100 would have sufficed.

the fix >>> your top 200

FWIW the Uncut top ten is

10. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
9. Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker
8. Bob Dylan - Modern Times
7. Arcade Fire - Funeral
6. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand
5. The Strokes - Is This It
4. Brian Wilson - Smile
3. Wilco - A Ghost Is Born
2. Bob Dylan - Love And Theft
1. The White Stripes - White Blood Cells

lmao raising sand

I can't name a single song off Raising Sand. I'm not even sure I've heard a single song off it.