pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Sudden visions of MBDTF as the Kid A of the '10s.

MBDTF is 100% the kid a of the '10s

alfred otm

Actual top 3 are:

Sun Kil Moon: Alesund
Cass McCombs: County Line
Glenn Jones - Bergen County Farewell

I do love "County Line."

It's true that many of these blurbs are well written.

hands up everyone who saw "Gucci Gucci", lolled, and them immediately scrolled down to confirm that deej was the person writing about it

i don't care that ap is an asshole, i care that he resides too far up his own to make anything listenable

when i talk to (young) ppl about why they think mbdtf is so good the response is basically always: the production is incredible and it transcends regular rap b/c bon iver elton john and the orchestra etc. then i scream.

hands up everyone who saw "Gucci Gucci", lolled, and them immediately scrolled down to confirm that deej was the person writing about it

yeah i was like "it's like a miniature ilx thread"

but Late Registration had Jon Brion and Adam Levine! Graduation had Chris Martin!

xpost

my GTFO moment was seeing "Blood on the Leaves"

Looking at this list you do get the sense that, if you overlook the fact they're more amenable to hip-hop and R&B and some dance music than they used to be, Pitchfork have basically been repping almost exactly the same broad aesthetic for the best part of 15 years. Seeing Yo La Tengo and Bill Callaghan and Ariel Pink and whoever in there alongside Bon Iver and the Arcade Fire does make me yearn for the days of build-them-up-knock-them-down.

Nothing makes less sense to me than the inclusion of two (!) Jai Paul tracks.

Like there's loads of good stuff in here but you still get the sense that the comfort zone is still basically The Soft Bulletin and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

a jai paul demo placing above "adorn" even

i'm glad yeezus exists because MBDTF really made talking about kanye insufferable for a minute there, i mean the idea that "monster" is better than "mercy" for instance........

It's pretty hilarious how much of a reputation Jai Paul has managed to build by not releasing music. The guy is some kind of genius

but Late Registration had Jon Brion and Adam Levine! Graduation had Chris Martin!

25 year olds who rate MBDTF as the best kanye album make me want to rip my hair out but i'm not sure you can really blame 18 or 20 year olds for connecting more w/ that album than one that came out in 2005

man, "midnight city" could still use an actual chorus

It's pretty hilarious how much of a reputation Jai Paul has managed to build by not releasing music. The guy is some kind of genius

Should have stuck Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong in there for the same reason.

Like there's loads of good stuff in here but you still get the sense that the comfort zone is still basically The Soft Bulletin and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

more that stuff outside the comfort zone is entirely dependent on non-musical image, sense of importance, positioning and so on, to the extent of being even more wholly predictable

matt dc, really? Indie rock (depending how inclusive you want to be with that term) is outnumbered by at least 3-to-1 in the top 20.

It's pretty hilarious how much of a reputation Jai Paul has managed to build by not releasing music. The guy is some kind of genius

~MYSTIQUE

matt dc, really? Indie rock (depending how inclusive you want to be with that term) is outnumbered by at least 3-to-1 in the top 20.

― skip, Monday, August 18, 2014 11:25 AM (13 seconds ago) Bookmark

i actually think it's bent back the other way a bit. go back and look at the top 20 of the 00-04 list

feels like we only go backwards

matt dc, really? Indie rock (depending how inclusive you want to be with that term) is outnumbered by at least 3-to-1 in the top 20.

It was more an observation at how little their idea of indie rock has moved on in that time really. I know Pitchfork helped popularise this particular aesthetic so it makes sense they'd hang onto it but you could zap a lot of those bands back in time to 2000 and very few of them would seem anachronistic.

good point J0rdan - the only rock tracks in that one were Maps, Fell in Love with a Girl and Pyramid Song.

but also pop from 10-14 is much worse than pop from 00-04 so it's sort of a chicken & egg thing

there is definitely a divide between their rankings of tracks vs albums - much more rock in the album list.

it depends on where you look

(ctrl-f "paramore," cough)

(that was an xpost to jordan about pop not being good, because it certainly is more interesting than a lot of what's happening in indie right now, but you have to look in places that don't seem to be explored by the makers of this list)

anyway MAKE YR OWN CANON

It always makes me scratch my head when I hear some people say things like "before MBDTF, Kanye was just a pop artist that nobody took seriously", as if they were unaware of all the acclaim his first few albums got.

(that was an xpost to jordan about pop not being good, because it certainly is more interesting than a lot of what's happening in indie right now, but you have to look in places that don't seem to be explored by the makers of this list)

― maura, Monday, August 18, 2014 11:32 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah i know i'm getting into super dicey territory here. i'm just making the broad point that there is no outkast or missy or "ignition (remix)" of the 10s imo. (well i guess it's MBDTF which -_-)

if you overlook the fact they're more amenable to hip-hop and R&B and some dance music than they used to be, Pitchfork have basically been repping almost exactly the same broad aesthetic for the best part of 15 years.

ha, is that really fair? "if you ignore half the list, they still listen to the same shit"

"if you ignore all the non-indie in the list, they still rep for indie!"

Read my previous post.

ie it's not really about the proportion of indie in the list, but more that the kind of indie they are covering, with one or two glaring exceptions, has changed very little since the early 00s.

more that stuff outside the comfort zone is entirely dependent on non-musical image, sense of importance, positioning and so on, to the extent of being even more wholly predictable

lex otm

my GTFO moment was seeing "Blood on the Leaves"

― Star Gentle Uterus (DJP), Monday, August 18, 2014 11:19 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm going to risk charges of rockism by saying that the inclusion of the Swift and (sorry J0rdan) Miley songs piss me off just as much.

it's ok

miley was interesting to me in so far as it didn't make the list last year but was inside the top 150 of the decade list (rightfully so of course)

Lex OTM. It is frustrating to see how unadaptable Pitchfork has been, continuing to push their Poe-faced square wannabe-alpha-male monoculture arbiters-of-quality approach to their content. All their most desirable content is the off-brand stuff, "interesting things going on in Iowa City noise scene", "our favourite ten Còmeme tracks"-- not actual existing articles. Lists like this just say "we have the microphone. Is this thing on?" They've spent the last ten years proving that "democratic and objective criticism" creates prosaic predictability, and now, as Pitchfork haemorrhages readers, I hope they realize it's also unprofitable. I hope they branch out and get more creative w their content, less listy, more listless, like my appetite. I miss the anarchy of 1998-2003. And they employ way better writers today. Don't die, Pitchfork!

if Pitchfork was actually Poe-faced, I'd be super happy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z8NP0eI4Og

When my phone corrected it I was like "is that actually the etymology of that expression"

best album of the century so far

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/loureed%20raven%20jan19.jpg

MAKE YR OWN CANON

― maura, Monday, August 18, 2014 3:32 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM

i always thought the point of music crit was to foster this approach not to hammer home a strictly defined canon at every chance

as Pitchfork haemorrhages readers

is this really happening?

I thought of something that isn't on the list

i can't. i've been trying really hard, too.

i dunno i mean "Yamaha" and "Streetz Tonight" are on the list so I'm not gonna complain

Every prophet has to have his “Runaway” moment, though—an appeal to the masses.

This was the moment scrolling backwards from #1 where i just had to stop, though the whole "oh the masterful construction of sloppiness" 20th Anniversary Of Bee Thousand cliches of the Ariel Pink blurb made me weary.