pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

"Confusion" is better than any of these New Order songs.

Cosign all you people saying "Back In Stride Again" should be here. Feel like with all the quiet storm faves this should have made it in. Also, that song is the motherfucking best.

In other things:

Of course there will always be omissions but everybody else already posted their "I cant believe x isn't on the list!". So my two cents:

- I would have preferred if they had limited entries to only the most voted song per artist. It feels like almost half of the list is by the same artists. Maybe they deserve it but I would have preferred the other approach to see a more diverse list.

- There's some great surprises on the list particularly on the first half. Also some songs I didn't know which are amazing. Two favorite discoveries for me are Jungle Brothers and Egyptian Lover.

- Guns n Roses?... twice!? If you're going to do space in the list for douche-rock then having Ac/dc twice or something like Aerosmith would've been less annoying. At least those guys handle their douchiness with a tongue in cheek.

- Important omissions that noone cares about because it's not my list:

Songs that feel like 'pretty big deals in the 80s to me':

Tom Waits - anything from him would've been nice, really
Julee Cruise - falling
Glenn Branca- lesson no 1
A number of names - sharevari
Grauzone - Eisbar
Rheingold - Dreiklangs-dimensionen
Young Marble Giants - Final day
Visage - fade to grey
Righeira - vamos a la playa
Alexandre Robotnick - problemes d amour
Die doraus and des marinas - fred vom jupiter
Les rita mitsouko - marcia baila
Billy bragg - a new england
Liasions dangereuses - niños del parque
Enya - orinoco flow (yes, really!)

Songs that are more 'pop' and aren't important omissions but better than similar songs that did made it:
The fixx - one thing leads to another
Human league - dont you want me
The flirts - passion
Pat Benatar would have been cool, too.

No pump up the jam is killing me. I honestly thought that was 1990

The other two, whatever

It hit in the UK in 1989 and in the US in 1990, so that might account for the overlooking of it.

The other two, whatever

smdh

No way!

Pump up the volume > the other two pump songs.

I count pump up the jam as 90s in my mind.

either way it's also missing from their best 90s songs list.

Pump up the jam is way more timeless as dance floor material IMO

"I can't believe x isn't on the list!"

*makes joke, goes back to sleep*

has anyone mentioned how surprising the presence of the Alice Coltrane pick is? because it really is

Yes the Alice Coltrane pick was a nice surprise. I was also surprised with the Nina Simone inclusion but in the opposite way, I think it's an unremarkable song of hers, yet still happy to see her. Both artists sound a tad out of place in the 80s though.

also whoa a Tatsuro Yamashita mention in the see also section for Never Too Much?! I'm so happy. Whoever was responsible for that... I love you. Also the only Japanese artist brought up here, no?

I've totally committed the "Never Too Much" karaoke folly.

I Wanna Be Adored is on both the 80's and 90's lists

I want to read the blurbs and discuss, but that takes a lot more time than commenting on just the list of tracks

but given p4k's role in modern music crit the list in itself is interesting, and probably works as some kind of new pop-political manifesto? even though this may be totally obvious choices for the new generation, I find it weird to have no Neil Young, Tom Waits, Lou Reed or Bob Dylan tracks when all those legends released some p good 80s stuff

some fair points, well made http://www.collapseboard.com/music-blogs-3/considering-pitchforks-200-best-80s-songs/

lotta otm stuff in that collapseboard piece imo

geeta wrote about the apple thing too the other day:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/aug/24/rolling-stones-greatest-songwriters-list-corporate-sponsorship-apple-music

You know, when I looked at the list the first thing that caught my eye was the Apple thing. But whatevs on that front. I don't, however, think this list felt particularly clickbaity. Pitchfork has been doing this for years ('60s list was great), and the format and rollout remains (iirc) pretty much unchanged. I do like the idea that contemporary perspectives have skewed or revised past canon (I am old), but some things on here are inexplicable. Again, like "Purple Rain" at number 1 (is it because younger and more diverse writers listen to or hear Prince differently in 2015 than I did in 1984?) or the absence of college rock ringers (if only critics listened to the Go Betweens at their prime, who listens to them now?) or two GNRs or two Bowies/Replacements when one would have easily done, etc.

Hard to jump in this thread at this point, but the list itself didn't bother me much -- it had tons that frankly, I just wasn't familiar with, and usually that's a good thing in a list. I wish XTC was in there, and agree that on the can't-be-a-coincidence of NWA having 2 songs near the top (and I like them!) Seemed very white, indie-listener centric -- hardly a surprise coming from Pitchfork. I like the quote above regarding the notion of convincing a listener in 1995 that some Whitney Houston singles were better than the New Order ones or whatever. Not totally sure who gets zinged more by that.

The Apple Music stuff in the articles above is obviously troubling. Not even sure what to say about it, because people have said the same kind of stuff about Rolling Stone in the past, and to argue about it misses the point that as long as you have ANY advertising in journalism, you're opening the doors to diminished objectivity. It's a music site, and as any musician can tell you, you have to hustle to make the money work. Don't buy into everything you read, right?

not seen the list but no senses working overtime?!

?!??!?!

"Purple Rain" is an amazing song but it's not exactly a weird choice. It's the title song to his biggest movie, the one that all millenials saw last year at the art theater.

It's only weird that it's top of the list. Because as many (most?) would probably agree, it's not even the best song on that album.

xpost Don't forget Scott P. connection. Former Fork honco now works at Beats/Apple as their "editorial content manager." So there's a Fork/Apple/Dre connection all wrapped up in one person! Tin hats on.

"Where Is My Mind" also placing high, also the one Pixies song from a big movie.

"not seen the list but no senses working overtime?!"

it made my new and improved list.

as did fade to grey and eisbaer since someone mentioned them...

Also, regarding the bit in the Collapseboard article on NWA's lyrics -- this is par for the course as far as I can see. The things about music that get passed on to the next generation are aesthetic in nature, not content. When you look at Whitney Houston singles placing high, think of the indie acts who make shiny, drum-machine driven synth pop and soul. They're not singing about "I wanna dance with somebody who loves me", they're singing "I wanna dance to lose myself in myself because I hate myself so I love myself". Keep the music's aesthetic that you like, but use your own life's perspective.

haha not actual lyrics of course

just read the list

where's the freaky shit? apart from 'o superman' there's little that's particularly odd. no diamanda galas, no foetus, no c******s. do pitchfork just not care about weird music any more?

my other complaint is that 'west end girls' is too low

oh and there wasn't a single track off Rio. BAD PITCHFORK

From collapseboard piece:

Then there’s the writing, which pretty much sticks to the tight, clenched ‘I’ve heard every note of recorded music ever made and will now evaluate it from up on high’ style I find so grating on that site. For example, someone writes in the entry for ‘Ceremony’ that New Order ‘wouldn’t find their creative footing for a few more years’ as if it were the most obvious thing in the world instead of a (hugely) subjective opinion

That's a bit harsh, but can relate to this a lot - p4k 500 book is an infuriating/impossible read bcz of this

pfork lists are never particularly "weird" (including the reasonable/safe #1 choice)

ugh the worst example of the disconnect btwn matter-of-factly tone and bullshit (or at least highly contestable) opinion is anything music-related on Vox.

didn't know Chris Ott changed his name.

They picked the wrong side of the Run-DMC single.

otm

had a giggle that the artwork was for the jason nevins remix

looks like they changed it now

lol

"Walk this way" (the definite run dmc one) would have been better than guns n roses.

pfork lists are never particularly "weird" (including the reasonable/safe #1 choice)

tru, especially the farther back the time period they are covering. i think once they wrote something like 'there wasn't as much music released back then!' to semi-explain why all their selections were chart hits and/or from predictable artists for one of these things, which, lol, i don't think is even true??

If anything it's the song that got half of the 80s into hiphop.

Good call. Too bad they aren't making a documentary on Run DMC.

i think once they wrote something like 'there wasn't as much music released back then!' to semi-explain why all their selections were chart hits and/or from predictable artists for one of these things, which, lol, i don't think is even true??

Yeah it would be better to say 80s and 90s lists can be more hit-filled because there were far more hits then than before or after and that means there were more unusual-sounding (however you interpret it) hits too.

Maybe they could explain it as "we would have included these more obscure songs but it turns out Apple Music didn't have them in their library"

But yeah the hitmachines of the 80s and part of the 90s were pretty forward-thinking compared to the past decades. Can you imagine a song like 'O Superman' being pushed as a single and actually becoming a hit in this day and age?

Naw the Run-DMC pick should have been "Sucker MCs" because it completely changed what hip-hop sounded like instead of just convincing white people to listen to it.

^ this

The Walk This Way collab did more for Aerosmith's rep than it did for Run DMC's.