pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

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.

and "Wut". Most of the stuff I really like from this list I got from ilx actually.

like, what if there were 200 alphabetically listed blurbs where the authors described their personal engagement with the song and described its lyrical and musical character without waxing poetic about the artist's iconic stature and universal importance in a desperate attempt to dignify canonhood

admittedly, far fewer people would bother to check it out

I so don't care about narrative arcs of musicians at this point. I get why a lot of critics do (they get to help write it! at last, validation) but it just isn't how I engage with music.

xp

musicans' careers

that should say

like, what if there were 200 alphabetically listed blurbs where the authors described their personal engagement with the song and described its lyrical and musical character without waxing poetic about the artist's iconic stature and universal importance in a desperate attempt to dignify canonhood

― da croupier, Monday, August 18, 2014 4:33 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

admittedly, far fewer people would bother to check it out

― da croupier, Monday, August 18, 2014 4:36 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would definitely have bothered clicking if this was the case!

you guys should read my "window seat" blurb it's about me being scared of flying

aw

love that blurb j0rd

yeah thanks for no "erykah makes us all feel more confident on this rocky plane ride we call life" shit

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

― skip, Monday, August 18, 2014 8:31 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is a pretty common divide critical poll divide, right? I feel like if you look at Pazz n Jop polls for the past 20 years, the songs are always a lot more pop-oriented, while the albums are always more dominated by rock.

common critical poll divide, I mean.

is there a Tumblr for Pfork synth "fart" mentions yet? another gem in the Jai Paul blurb for "wet synth farts".

you guys should read my "window seat" blurb it's about me being scared of flying

― le goon (J0rdan S.), Monday, August 18, 2014 1:17 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, that one was awesome! Mostly because I also a) love that song, and b) hate flying.

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

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Monday, August 18, 2014 11:24 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah...it's become this huge mainstream alt-rock radio staple but every time that intro storms in suddenly the actual song starts and it sounds like someone put the stereo on the 'karaoke setting' and the next 3 or 4 minutes are absolute dullsville, depending on how excited you are about saxophone solos. the canonization of that song is a total triumph of aesthetic positioning over anything resembling songwriting.