Pitchfork: The Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s: 20-01

Alfred - is that a photo of Pulp? Being an American I don't understand what they're supposed to look like.

The one on the left is Jarvis Cocker, meeting Beck (right) at Pitchfork '95.

http://news-political.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Hitler_laughing.jpg

Oh - so "Loser" is the song Hitler sang to Eva Braun! Now it all makes sense.

no, that was "Holland, 1945"

Ha!

hitlar

Daft Punk - "Da Funk"
Depeche Mode - "Enjoy the Silence"
My Bloody Valentine - "Only Shallow"
Neutral Milk Hotel - "Holland, 1945"
Radiohead - "Paranoid Android"

One of these. "Enjoy" is the best track I suppose, but it feels like the 80s in spite of its release date.

lolser

Only Stalin

haha

could it be that only shallow is a reference to stalinist death camps and the lack of human respect for even a proper burial - hence the size of the graves, ONLY SHALLOW? could it be?

let us contemplate this

Lots of songs by bands I like that aren't necessarily songs I like - Gold Soundz isn't even that great a song.

For real -- I am one of those "Pavement, best band of the 90s, I love every record" people and probably always will be. And I don't think Gold Soundz is even in the top half of that record. I feel like "coming to the chorus now" is the kind of self-referential the-song-is-about-the-song business that they carry off so gracefully elsewhere. Here it clunks.

fade into you is my favorite of these tbh

just wanted to pop in and say that I really enjoyed stevie's post upthread about NMH.

yeah, me too, and i'm not even a fan

I am a pretty big fan of that album - and I'll just say that for me, the way in was the lyrics. they are pretty special.

bet Anne Frank would've verbally skewered Mangum for trying to slum it in her attic.

'slum in her attic' is a potentially great euphemism imo

slum in her attic and not long until there's one in the oven

slummin it in her attic makes me think there's something anatomically wrong with the girl

haven't read the previous 10000 responses because I'm sure people are butthurtz for no reason, but gotta go with Windowlicker. I was just listening to it yesterday again for the first time in a while, and the little blurb on the pitchfork list (sounded way ahead of its time in 1999...STILL sounds way ahead of its time in 2010) is spot on.

1. Radiohead - "Paranoid Android"
2. Daft Punk - "Da Funk"
3. Depeche Mode - "Enjoy the Silence"
4. Pulp - "Common People"
5. Mazzy Star - "Fade Into You"

My Bloody Valentine, Neutral Milk Hotel and even Pavement work better as albums than songs. "Paranoid Android" to me is a remarkable song. gets my vote just because it's cool and so uncool these day (no that's a lie, i can care less about the latter).

i started this, "Please Understand. We don't want no trouble, we just want the right to be different. That's all." PULP - D.I.F.F.E.R.E.N.T.C.L.A.S.S poll before bumping pitchfork 's 90's countdown thread. just a bit ironic that i decided to do that album this week.

gotta admit if they were going to include snoop dogg & dre, they should've placed "hit me baby one more time" somewhere along the top 10 as well. not joking here when i say that song is a classic.

i thought it was pretty funny as well... pulp, even tho i realize they "won" the britpop war, was one of those bands i cared little if at all for and thought the same for the majority of ilxors (in the same way none of us truly like blur/oasis/etc). i'd suspect a lot of p4k writers peruse here for inspiration.

My favorite is the one that's still causing people to lose their shit 15 years on. Ranked from favorite to most detested.

Pulp - "Common People"
Daft Punk - "Da Funk"
OutKast - "Spottieottedopalicious"
Pavement - "Gold Soundz"
The Notorious B.I.G. - "Juicy"
Belle and Sebastian - "The State I Am In"
My Bloody Valentine - "Only Shallow"
Wu-Tang Clan - "Protect Ya Neck"
Mazzy Star - "Fade Into You"
Depeche Mode - "Enjoy the Silence"
Dr. Dre [ft. Snoop Doggy Dogg] - "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang"
Aphex Twin - "Windowlicker"
Neutral Milk Hotel - "Holland, 1945"
Beck - "Loser"
Aaliyah - "Are You That Somebody?"
Radiohead - "Paranoid Android"
Weezer - "Say It Ain't So"
Nirvana - "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
DJ Shadow - "Midnight in a Perfect World"
Björk - "Hyperballad"

i voted shadow.

Whoops. I can only apologize for the sensitivities I've discombobulated with what I thought was quite clearly a joke.

Am I really the only person who prefers Hypnotize to Juicy?

no

And I should say I really like Kate as a poster here, I like the way she sets her stall out now matter how anti-canonical the stuff she has to say it's always well thought out and she's never looking round nervously to see if anyone else agrees with her or not. I'm not surprised that she comes across as slightly embattled sometimes the amount of yapping tools she gets on her back.

But I still think hers is a pretty clear misreading of Common People.

No one else think that Beers, Steers and Queers (remix) should be at number one?

just gave gold soundz a relistening....and much as i love pavement, this was the pinnacle of the entire decade? a sloppy, self referential song? it innovates in fucking nothing. i suspect a rewrite, a la the greatest albums of the 90's list.

Thanks, I appreciate that, Doran.

But I think it's a bit ironic to call my personal response to a song "a pretty clear misreading" when you haven't even grasped what I think about it accurately enough to lampoon it. <- this was my issue with what you wrote, not whether it was a "horribly formed" "joke" or not.

Say It Ain't So is fine and all, but top 20 of the decade, really?

xp: I understand what your gripe with the song is clear enough - I'm just calling it as a misreading.

You seem to have some kind of issue with something that's happened in your personal life, which in turn suggests that the way that the song rankles with you means the song writing is actually pretty good if it's having these effects of recognition and projection. Cocker is talking specifically about an incident, apart from at the end when he has a broader point to make. And I think your confusion on the terms of cash (told me that her dad was loaded/poor as a church mouse) suggest that you're mixing up something from your own experience with the 'message' of the song (if there is much of one at all...)

"I will never *really* know what it's like not to have an expensive education. "

They met at St Martin's College. They are educationally identical. It would be like a Billy Childish character meeting a M.I.A. character. This has nothing to do with the education system.

"(that one can actually have education and breeding and still be as poor as a church mouse) this does *not* mean that I do not know what it means to live with lack or poverty or difficult choices or narrowed horizons."

If you called your dad he could stop it all.

Breeding?!

"You're right. I will *never* live like "Common people" and, in fact, I absolutely *refuse* to live "like common people" because I refuse to see it as something negative to aspire towards the extraordinary, the sublime, thegoodthebeautifulthetrue. "

Common people should, to be fair, be in quotes on the lyric sheet. The girl from Greece wants to live like common people. Cocker is just answering her statement. You are using common people here to mean people with no imagination and no drive. That is not how the word is being used in the song.

Suede were my favourite britpop band because they were aspirational. Living in the gutters looking at the stars. Sleeping on a bare mattress saving up for the one night of the week when you can strut it like a film star. Blur were the worst because they were downwardly mobile. I don't want some dick who's got a double first from Oxford geezering me around the park going on about pigeon racing. Pulp were observational and everything they said was a lot less militant and a lot more subtle. Whoever (Dorian?) said about Mis-shapes has got it spot on - if you're looking for a message from Pulp that year then you need to listen to Different Class as a whole - it tells a remarkably different story to the one you're giving.

"negative anti-cultural-Thatcherism"

Wrong. The only remotely Thatcherite person in this song is the girl from Greece or her dad. Everyone else - bar Cocker, it should be mentioned - is disenfranchised. Cocker is a freeloading observer, as he clearly makes out. You hear vindictiveness in Cocker's voice where I can only hear warning.

Warning: Everyone hates a tourist. Warning: Like a dog lying in the corner...

As for Neutral Milk Hotel, still haven't heard'em, don't remember'em at all at the time. Were their tapes passed around in college dorms or something? Were they played on college radio?

― Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, September 3, 2010 7:36 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

alf did you seriously forget on one of your own threads like a month ago when i pointed out the CMJ chart that listed NMH as one of the top 10 most played albums on college radio in '98? Billboard Modern Rock Hits - 1998

While calling me out for projecting mine own personal experiences onto the song (which I have admitted AGAIN AND AGAIN that I am) - you are projecting equally strongly about who you think I am and what my experiences might be.

I'm sorry, but that does not make for a conversation.

You are using common people here to mean people with no imagination and no drive. That is not how the word is being used in the song.

I am responding, directly, to words used in the song, Describing that "common people" "drink and dance and screw, because there's nothing else to do" <-if that's not description of having no imagination and no drive I don't know what is. Jarvis's words, not mine. This assessment, I am rejecting. This definition of "common" I refuse, point blank, to live.

Now you can just go and argue with your own class prejudices some more because we're not talking to each other, we're taking to sets of assumptions that come from very different lives.

And this really is the last I'm going to say on this thread because I'm sure people would prefer more carping about Pitchfork when THERE ARE TWO OTHER WHOLE THREADS ABOUT THIS SONG & ALBUM.

Hey working class dudes, shall we play pool and listen to Northern Uproar? Where are you going 'Geezers'? Come back and talk about ferret racing with me. I've brought a flask of Tetley's mild with me...

Was kinda horrified to read that Damon Albarn had an Oxford double-first, feel very relieved now I've checked and found it's not true.

(Horrified in an I've been getting this band wrong way obviously, not a how dare he one!)

I am responding, directly, to words used in the song, Describing that "common people" "drink and dance and screw, because there's nothing else to do" <-if that's not description of having no imagination and no drive I don't know what is

Then you don't know what is. Lots of people have imagination and drive but have not only no resources, but no means of leveraging the scarce things they do have, and no way of even learning how to leverage then. Or perhaps no opportunities to because other responsibilities supercede them. At least in the US, there's an urban/rural aspect here which goes beyond class that I don't even think you've considered.

Describing that "common people" "drink and dance and screw, because there's nothing else to do" <-if that's not description of having no imagination and no drive I don't know what is

No, no, no. How can you write this? The point of the bitterness is 'how it feels to live your life with no meaning or control' and watching it slide out of view - because it's all in the hands of people with art school and money and dads who would stop it all. And who can't see it, even when faced with somebody who's done all they can to clamber out of that trap. Calling it lack of drive is pretty ironic when you're the one who suggested that bringing in more heiresses might ameliorate things.

"It doesn't matter that you don't have money or prospects or control over your life! As long as you can color your hair purple and play a guitar or paint, you'll never be common!"

This has become almost comical at this point, the total mutual lack of understanding going on at this point.

Just carry on putting words in my mouth. I'm not even going to bother trying to contradict you any more. Just make up whatever shit you feel like and attribute it to me. Because I really give up on trying to get you to understand what I think and it doesn't seem to make a difference what I actually post.

Enjoy.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaand cut

Disappointed at Lex's take on Pulp. I hated britpop with a passion at the time and think it was the worst thing to happen in living memory in British music. But then there was all the more reason to cherish the few good 'indie' bands that were round at the time. Pulp were certainly one of them. Have very happy memories of spending two years going to the Blue Note, Turnmills, The Albany, Bar Rhumba, Dog Star, The End when I first moved to London... but listening to Mogwai, Pulp and Suede as much as possible as well. There was no way I was going to hang out in some pub that smelled of piss in Camden, wearing braces, cultivating a cockney accent and pretending to like The Faces and Sleeper. But Pulp were clearly a cut above Oasis. It seems senseless to lump them together.

Gravel: I was over exaggerating for comic effect but Blur have, partially gone on to show their true colours in Alex James' politics and profession.

I had much more time for Justine Elastica who was posh, rich, well educated and didn't give a fuck. There's nothing wrong with having money per se.

I'd fucking love some.

There's nothing wrong with having money per se.

wait what?

the whole point of 'common people' is that rich people suck

what is the greek chick to do?

obvi not try to enjoy herself among the poor folk, because they're unsmiling, canine types who'll rip you apart if you even try to bro down with them

so i guess just stick to her own?

Or not run round Bermondsey swigging Special Brew shouting 'ee by gum, when does the bear baiting begin?'

yeah honestly the biggest wtf for me on this list was "say it ain't so" getting so high. fine track but wwwwwwwwwwwwwtf. and i fucking hate neutral milk hotel, i heard that album and though it was awful -_-