pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Mike Patton is kinda crepey and a bit, uh, i can't keep track of who has been called out anymore. But FNM is def on the bro-down side of alt-music

I went to the first YouTube hit to see what the kids thoughts of "Games Without Frontiers" and here you go:

Peter Gabriel is a brony. I just know it.

Most of it is stuff I heard from friends, though I do remember him touching my friend's butt at a Death Grips show about 5 yrs ago

(that was about Patton, not Peter Gabriel) sorry xp

It's interesting to me how relatively low Born in the U.S.A. places (#56) -- considering that it's an example of an album that was both hugely popular / "era-defining," as well as a (deserved) critical success.

Can we go back to talking about the greatness of Rudimentary Peni

not to be ableist but the way that 95% of the reaction on ilm of all places is ‘x album placed but y didn’t??!’ is bad

― flopson, Tuesday, 11 September 2018 16:34 (fifty-nine minutes ago) Permalink

lol flopson

Can we go back to talking about the greatness of Rudimentary Peni

They were no Crass imo.

In the "omission police" spirit, here are a few relatively well-known albums I would have included on a ballot, to reflect what the '80s (and I guess primarily the late '80s) felt like to me (I know, no one cares!):

Indigo Girls, S/T
Tracy Chapman, S/T
John Fogerty, "Centerfield"
Traveling Wilburys, “Vol. 1”
Lou Reed, "The Blue Mask" (possibly also "New York")
Fine Young Cannibals, “The Raw & The Cooked”
10,000 Maniacs, "In My Tribe"
Terrence Trent D’Arby, “Introducing the Hardline…”
R.E.M., "Green" (in place of "Reckoning")

xp apples and oranges IMO, both great

i agree that the blue mask should’ve been on there somehow, it’s much better than let’s dance

Another Life is @AmnesiaScanner’s most accessible and impactful release to date https://t.co/T8MktydrrG

— Pitchfork (@pitchfork) September 11, 2018

morrisp, i think a few of those albums were on the RS list posted upthread

I must be more of a Wenner kid, lol (shudder)

'from a specifically UK/US viewpoint' is a limitation that I don't really know how these lists can be expected to get around unfortunately, as the token non-Western albums that do make these lists are always going to be ones that managed to cross over in some sort of way. it's certainly desirable to expand it as much as possible of course

― ufo, Tuesday, 11 September 2018 16:31

I agree with that, and I'm not even sure I would particularly want them to do anything differently*, I just don't think we should be patting them on the back for "breadth" because hip hop and R&B are better-represented this time. It's good to remind ourselves that there's always more!

*Actually in a dream world perhaps spend some time considering what the selections tell us about the things Pitchfork writers currently think is cool and what that says about Pitchfork, but I realise that my interest in music writers talking about music writing is a minority interest.

I can't speak for anyone else but I don't nominate albums because I think they're "cool"

If cool was the top criteria then the Miami Vice soundtrack would be number one

Obv

that is definitely influential!

Jan Hammer was at his coolest on John Abercrombie's 'Timeless'.

I don't know, Billy Cobham - Spectrum is pretty cool

I can't speak for anyone else but I don't nominate albums because I think they're "cool"

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine)

Fair enough, but replace "cool" with "best" or any other adjective of your choice and my point stands. I mean, the intro says "in 2002, we made a list of The Top 100 Albums of the 1980s. That list was shorter, sure, but it also represented a limited editorial stance we have worked hard to move past; its lack of diversity, both in album selections and contributing critics, does not represent the voice Pitchfork has become" - that's great, and it seems true, but it wouldn't be true to say that Pitchfork has moved past a limited editorial stance, just that it's broadened its editorial stance.

Again, nothing wrong with any of that, I'm pleased they've broadened and I'm pleased to have a list to disagree with, I'm just saying that in my dream world there'd be more reflection on the part of Pitchfork about what the limitations of its current editorial stance are.

As self-aware as pfork is, self-criticism is not something they've ever made a priority.

Or any similar publication, really(?)

The NME of the early and mid 80s spent quite a lot of energy on self-reflection (so did the Sinker-era Wire in a v different way) but whether you’d consider them similar is another matter. I loved both.

Tim is offtm. It's quite correct to say that they've moved past the limitations of the 2002 list, even though other limitations remain. And it's wrong to overlook how different this new canon is! This list manages to both be objectively quite radically new and different, while still seeming as boring and obvious as ever. And if that sounds like a backhanded compliment, I don't mean it like that! The FACT list is great, but it also looks lie an attempt to make a counter-list. Pitchfork looks like an attempt at a new consensus, and it really is quite something that we begin to include Janet Jackson, Sade, Madonna, Sinead O'Connor, Kate Bush, etc, in the center of the canon, rather than at the periphery where basically every woman has been before.

I said it was true that they've moved past the old limitations and I didn't overlook how different the list is? Truthfully I can't see what in my posts you're disagreeing with, unless you think that there's no value in thinking what the new limitations are or what that might mean?

I'm not saying limitations are wrong, or that having them is bad, I'm saying that in my dream world there would be some reflection on what those new limitations are - that reflection would include saying it's good that the artists you name are included.

I think that ranking all these albums against each other cuts against the grain of elevating new/different artists in a certain way (even in cases where they sit comparatively high on the chart), because it creates this weird arena in which ESG dukes it out with Bruce Springsteen (and wins handily!), and the resulting hierarchy relies on the conceit that albums from different genres -- and artists with totally different goals and approaches -- can even really be ranked comparatively at all. I do acknowledge that fewer readers would look at the list if it weren't ranked, tho.

Tim, I just think it's wrong to complain Pitchfork isn't self-critical enough after they've this time managed to do a really good thing.

Mate I wasn't complaining. I said (repeatedly) that *in my dream world* this kind of list (which is more interesting than the previous) would be accompanied by a reflection on what that says about the people who made the list.

I mean, any act of canon-building should include a reflection on the results - it's interesting! And valuable!

I think that ranking all these albums against each other cuts against the grain of elevating new/different artists in a certain way (even in cases where they sit comparatively high on the chart), because it creates this weird arena in which ESG dukes it out with Bruce Springsteen (and wins handily!), and the resulting hierarchy relies on the conceit that albums from different genres -- and artists with totally different goals and approaches -- can even really be ranked comparatively at all. I do acknowledge that fewer readers would look at the list if it weren't ranked, tho.

― stan in the place where you work (morrisp), Tuesday, September 11, 2018 5:20 PM

Morris OTM. This really articulates what feels weird about these lists to me. It's less true in cases where they focus on a genre ("50 Best Shoegaze Albums"), but when you're saying that this here private-press synthesizer improv album is quantitatively better than "Appetite for Destruction", well that just starts to feel kind of meaningless.

Still, I can't resist these list, so I'll patiently await the 2034 re-working where they decide that they forgot to include country, yacht rock, and east asian pop.

yeah, no YMO seems like an oversight

My guess is by necessity the list has been massaged

no need to guess imo. the likelihood of pitchfork (or any of these other publications) putting out as many ranked lists as it has and never having two releases by the same artist rank next to each other (or have anything tie, regardless of artist) is near zero if rankings were actually based on un-massaged poll numbers. we've all seen ilm and p&j poll results.

given the prevalence of such massaging, i don't see why these publications shouldn't stop slavishly adhering to the ranked-list format. like, okay, if you want to communicate some degree of appreciation, agreement or consensus among your contributors, i suppose you could establish a tier system or something, but why continue to pretend that each and every ranked position actually represents something different from all those above or below it? it is fundamentally silly imo

Fuxake... lists have been a reliable marketing scam while also being the scourge of decent music journalism for so long that we could have a thread about who did it first. Take it or leave it. (Most people here could leave it because you already have good taste.)

I really wish Pitchfork would just finally give this stuff up. They don't know what the best albums of the '80s are, nobody knows what the best albums of the '80s are. I just want to read writers that feel passionately about something and have something to say. Not a blurb where you have to provide a little historical context, give a little description, and then you're just about done.

In that list they did manage to publish writers who feel passionately about their albums and had something to say.

I don't mean to be combative and don't doubt that there are some good insights throughout, but I don't like the conceit of "best albums" and I hate hate hate the blurb context and the apparent need to explain historical context and provide description within such a limited space.

Especially for albums that have been blurbed to death over the past 20 years.

I think the self-critical point above is interesting. I think it could have been a fascinating history of criticism to read about the Tom Waits that dropped out entirely, or Sister, or the re-appraisal of Janet, or how in many ways Arthur Russell wasn't really even around in 2002.

I mean maybe that's only of interest to me and the 11 other people that own Stranded, but still.

Generally speaking I think the songs list did a better job with this because it's usually easier with a song to provide context/description and say something passionate in the same breath.

But I don't think these ranked lists are useless. Someone reading this list with the happy expectation of having their belief in the greatness of Purple Rain or Daydream Nation confirmed is much more likely to then read, say, the blurb for Meredith Monk's Dolmen Music and be intrigued enough to check it out than they likely would be otherwise. In many ways the primary reason to re-blurb the former two is to create a context where readers are more likely to read the latter.

That it's technically meaningless to say which of those three albums is "better" than the other doesn't really seem to me to be that important - the ranking is really just a device in my view, and I don't think anyone involved is seriously suggesting that there is a meaningful difference between being ranked 42 and being ranked 43.

I should qualify by saying that I think sometimes providing description is important in criticism when the critic is saying something, but sometimes I'm just given adjectives and I don't know what the critic is saying about these characteristics of the music. So, I sometimes come to the conclusion that the critic is not, in fact, saying anything and is just providing description.

xp
The flipside to that is: if you (say) don’t think Daydream Nation is a particularly tremendous album, seeing it ranked near the top yet again will reaffirm your belief that “these jokers don’t know what they’re talking about,” and maybe you’ll be less likely to take the list seriously as a whole, etc.

(Or feeling that your favorite band has been slighted in some way... “What good is this list!”)

My favorite band had a string of flawless albums in the 80s, and they don't appear anywhere in the list. I did enjoy the brief period about 10 years ago where they suddenly gained a slight amount of cred after being pariahs in the cool world for several decades.

name names!

Rush. For me, every single song from Permanent Waves through Power Windows is excellent. They could easily throw Grace Under Pressure in this list and it would be both correct and not at all a cliche.

If any reader really does approach a list of this sort thinking they will or should agree with each assessment, or that the list is fatally flawed if their favourite album is not on there, then I worry for their mental health tbh.

check out this Rush video directed by Zbigniew Rybczyński

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMSFqXGZ5TQ