To "rock fans", what is meant to be the canonical, everyone can agree on, album of the decade?

F--k the Strokes.

(xp)

Succinct and to the point.

I saw the Strokes twice and the Hives once, and the Hives kicked the Strokes collective ass so far out of sight the Hubble Telescope couldn't have registered their cute 80's digital watches. I haven't seen anything good said about the Strokes that wouldn't count a hundred times for the Dandy Warhols, who wrote better songs and had more hits,

was hoping you wouldn't pick up on this. i thot you meant the vines :(

i like the hives better than the strokes, but i dont' see how my tastes enter into it

OK, Strokes represent Rock to people who don't like Rock = win? WTF?

gotta be something by qotsa, system, or the white stripes, surely?

quotsa or stripes maybe, system no way - alienates too many subtribes

metal dudes can mostly get behind QOTSA, and so can indie dudes. Whereas lots of indie dudes wouldn't ride for System, and a lot of metal dudes wouldn't ride for White Stripes.

i think some of that foo fighters nonsense might actually be the answer here.

m@tth OTM

FF have some of the same problems as stripes & system, but then again, have lots of appeal outside metal & indie peeplz: the silent majority guitar-based radio pop crowd. think they work better as competition for the strokes in "decade-defining rock bands for not-just-rock fans"

Guys, I already said Kid A like three days ago, we can stop arguing.

unless you guys want to debate the concept of "everyone"

except what if it's OK conputer, or that free rainbows one?

Why do we even need an album of the fucking decade?

many x-posts.

Please. If you're talking about bands liked by not-just-rock fans there isn't a universe in which The Strokes are even 20% as popular as Foo Fighters (the fact that the latter have been shit for the entirety of this decade notwithstanding).

Alfred OTM but the question is about what it is not whether one is needed. (What's not needed is me baiting Radiohead fanboys so I'll shut up now).

xxpost

One came out in 1997 and the other stfu

Shit, I don't even like Radiohead, I'm just saying that the writing's been on the wall for six years that every magazine read by rockist people is gonna have Kid A at the top

Says more about the hyper-involvement of Radiohead fans amongst the readership than consensus mind. I can't see Foo Fighters fans being as slavishly devoted, somehow.

my album of the decade is Ulver - Blood Inside fwiw, but nobody except like me and Scott Seward and maybe John Justen will vote for it, and Scott doesn't vote in polls

If you're talking about bands liked by not-just-rock fans there isn't a universe in which The Strokes are even 20% as popular as Foo Fighters

yeah, but being popular does not necessarily = becoming a (or thee) decade defining. a disproportionate number of supposedly "decade defining" records & bands underperformed, sales-wise. plus i don't really know anyone who holds the foos in especially high regard, so it's hard to properly account for them

i went through a few weeks of loving the blood inside, but then it went away

Besides which most people who like rock music don't read rock magazines (or post on websites for that matter). Kid A can eat a dick (and does) amongst most _rock_ fans, who probably haven't listened to it in eight years.

x-post I didn't say Foo Fighters defined the decade canonically (obviously they don't), I was responding to the post above where it said that if THAT was the criterion, FF would "rival" The Strokes, which is nonsense, as on that score the FFs would probably be the runaway winner, maybe QOTSA in second (and QOTSA are a substantially better band than 00s FF).

;_;

KID A

esp, since we haven't really have any other "canonical" records in that Pet Sounds sense of the word in the last ten years (save maybe Jay-Z's The Blueprint), like they used to do with The Soft Bulletin or Nevermind or Miseducation Of Lauren Hill or Odelay.

magazines, scared of the internet, have been making their coverage more pandering (Fall Out Boy cover x1000) and their critical opinions more chaloppy to compete. The hivemind agrees on the same 500-or-so bands (yay fleet foxes! yay TV On The Radio!), but after Kid A, no one can really agree on ONE BAND or ONE ALBUM like we did Nirvana and the Beatles

Kid A was the last rock album to be a critical EVENT

And people aren't gonna forget that when compiling their boring, boring lists

And it's a rock album.

my thought re: foo fighters is that no one really seems to bother to dislike them either, they have some sort of teflon innocuousness to them that makes them invisible to ire.

obviously not a glowing statement from me about them but everyone i know that is into the rock and roll music seems to have this "ehh yeah whatever, they're fine" and maybe i am just cynically thinking that that is what makes for canonical albums of the decade in decades past.

xposts

more Kid A x-post
It's preposterous to say that just because amongst critics it enjoys Beatles-esque approval that _everyone_ among _rock fans_ can agree with it. Universal critical acclaim doesn't alter the fact that it is still a polarising record. Event != canonical agreement.

(also it's completely shit)

i don't know that your take on the tastes of "most rock fans" is accurate, edwardo. suspect that most rock fans is a bigger bucket than yr giving it credit for, and that the most die-hard rock fans (i.e., teenz in black clothing) will be playing the SHIT out of it for decades to come.

and you kinda misinterpreted my earlier post. i think strokes will become a decade-defining rock band for all kindsa people because they sort of have that "whee! fun" oldies radio/dance club vibe built in. people will be wedding dancing to songs off is this it for similar decades as those mentioned above. dunno that foos will have this kinda pop nostalgia power, but who knows?

it being the kid a/gaydiohead

also it's completely shit

― edwardo

the fact that you have an opinion is clearly making you biased and therefore QED

xsomethingpost

every rock fan i've ever met loves radiohead! they're the clear winner because unlike the Strokes (uh, huge backlash) or Foo Fighters (indie rocker hated) or TVOTR (rock radio ignored) they unite hipsters and meatheads and dads and critics and little brothers and MTV watchers and Pitchfork readers and Starbucks and Stereogum and everyone. They're the only band who crosses all the demographics. They are the easy walk.

Maybe not as much as Nevermind in the 90s, but way moreso than London Calling in the 80s.

Kid A is a good album. A very good album. I'd be a little disappointed if it won a decade poll.

i mostly agree with you wrt radiohead Whiney, but i know a bunch of guitar loving ok computer dudes that hate kid a with a passion.

I think it's a huge bucket, the pool or rock fans that is, and I don't think it's easy to pin it down, but I'd say it's a cert that what is critically acclaimed and what tops magazine polls is a very very very tiny proportion of what you'd have to take into account when working out what THE CANONICAL CHOICE IS of people who self-identify as rock fans. Many of whom are pretty quiet about their tastes as the number of people who LIKE music who are forthright and communicative about what they prefer is actually way smaller than you think.

"Songs for the Deaf" strikes me as the best answer so far.

x-post I'm winding you up, contenderizer.

Songs For The Deaf didn't even go platinum. What the fuck planet do you live on?

The Strokes/Radiohead back biting nonsense here makes me want to nominate Rush's Vapour Trails

I reckon Geir is on to something re: Franz

every rock fan i've ever met loves radiohead!

I know plenty - PLEEENNTYY - of "rock fans" who would regard radiohead as "that weird faggot arty music", so, no. Sorry.

FooFighters, yeah. QOTSA maybe in the early 2k's but not now.

I'm thinking of generic "I listen to Clear Channel radio stations and buy chart music" rock fans here, mind you, which is as broad a church as can be assumed, surely.

people will be wedding dancing to songs off is this it for similar decades as those mentioned above.

^^^ this is actually true. i think that the strokes' albums, for better or for worse, will have some nostalgic staying power.

i think it's actually very similar to both of those, though more in terms of they way they're all now viewed than the way they occurred in their respective moments. throw dark side of the moon in there, too. all rock canon klassiks - not just popular and influential, but sanctified by some invisible (critical) hand.

franz f = even narrower in their rock appeal than the strokes. indie + pop + dance is their circle. no real appeal to throwback/dadrocker types, metalheads.

that was in response to whiney's mention of nevermind & london calling

I think that is probably a very accurate reduction of Franz Ferdinand's fans (at least US-wide) but you could do that to most of the other albums and artists being discussed.

I don't think you trust in my
Self-righteous suicide
I cry
When angels deserve to DIE!!!!

I'm not sure there have ever been better lyrics...

that song is comedy gold at rock clubs. the bouncy start gets everyone all fired up, so much so that they forget that 60% of the tune consists of slow, maudlin wailing. cue a dancefloor full of frustrated metalheads standing around looking utterly unsure what to do with themselves. some may emote-mime if you're lucky.

sorry.

as you were.

NEVER FORGET

Uh, won't it likely be My Chemical Romance or something? I mean, isn't that our generation's Nirvana?

no

to the ongoing and extremely important question of foo fighters, the reason gaydiohead win out over FF (and strokes and other FF bands named after things related to wars and maybe even white strhipes) = rockism. it's not about having fans or radioplay or chart hits, though those matter - it's about artistic artistry, breaking new ground, the cutting age, and being seriously important for reasons to be enumerated, etc. that's what makes bands not just present or remembered, but symbolic, iconic.

the reason that led zep IV and london calling seem to bookend the 70s (not that they're alone in that) isn't just sales or hooks or fans, it's that there's a narrative of significance attached to each. they're not just collections of songs, they're expressions tapping into something "valuable". this narrative is super dominant and self-supporting at this point. like the foo fighters, bachman turner overdrive, BOC and grand funk sold records, rocked stadiums, authored extremely classic tunes that will live in history for all the days of mankind. but they never managed to create an aura of almost holy "artistic importance" around themselves. so they're not enshrined in the decade-defining cubbyholes of history. they're just these bands, see.

radiohead have done this, as did nirvana in the 90s, and maybe kinda NIN? sonic youth? kyuss? suspect that the slowly increasing importance of the latter will sneak rated R & songs for the deaf into the decade-definement biz (as also-rans) long before foo fighterses. who will be remembered as record your dad had, plus maybe it was that guy from nirvana.