pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

biggest omission for me is lexicon of love

or Golden Age of Wireless.
kind of starting to think classic new wave/synth-pop is a problem for the current generation of writers, especially given similar omissions on the singles list.

okay i will say some of their hip hop picks were the wrong album (BDP should be Criminal Minded not By Any Means) and Straight Outta Compton is way too high for an album that is about half filler

though the half that's not is about as impactful as music gets

No Def Leppard on the list? or did I miss Hysteria or Pyromania?

No Van Halen 1984?

I saw Appetite for Destruction but pop metal was pretty underrepresented for huge that was in the decade

xpost Criminal Minded is #20

no don't be cruel?

no petty?

Pet Shop Boys shafted again.

no petty?

― maura, Monday, September 10, 2018 9:51 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah classic rock might actually be a bit underrated at this point

Pet Shop Boys shafted again.

― piscesx, Monday, September 10, 2018

yes this terrified me

Appetite for Destruction at 86. uh...

I wonder if Ned’s Music For The Masses piece in The Quietus (“Weirdly enough, it’s almost ignored”) played a part in its revival.

I was secretly hoping that revisionism would get Alexander O'Neal's Hearsay to sneak in at the bottom of the list, but alas.

yeah i was bummed about this too but it's fine, i can't convince everyone that it's practically as good if not better than rhythm nation

In every Florida primary in which I've participated since 2004 I've written Hearsay on the ballot.

and man...Pitchfork calls out the 'problematic' Descendants but not even a mention of Bad Brains homophobia?
smh

the presence of like a virgin is v confusing to me

Was Tom Waits a victim of the great Fedora wars?

did True Blue make it? I didn't check.

Is that also why Hats is only 85?

btw everyone psb's actually is at 125

Pet Shop Boys shafted again.

― piscesx, Monday, September 10, 2018 10:51 AM (thirty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this, yet again, is partly my fault

126*

did True Blue make it? I didn't check.

― The Silky Veils of Alfred (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, September 10, 2018 8:23 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i forget half the records that placed every time i go through the list but: no i don't think so

a better '80s chic org-driven record than like a virgin is called diana

biggest omission for me is lexicon of love

― princess of hell (BradNelson)

Yeah, I was disappointed to see they'd left out this (my favourite album ever) and Dare. I would have liked to see more albums from the synth pop/new romantic era. No room for New Gold Dream, Sulk, Non Stop Erotic Cabaret, Tin Drum, A Secret Wish, Metamatic, The Golden Age Of Wireless, Upstairs At Eric's, Dazzle Ships, Kings Of The Wild Frontier, Telekon etc. I know I shouldn't be surprised at some/most of those, but to see them all miss out was a shame.

Also, no Go-Betweens!!

or country...

no Yoakam or Cash fer instance.

yeah total lack of country and anything made in Latin America (iirc) were the glaring omissions to me.

king's record shop robbed again

I feel like the 60s and 70s hipster canons are way more wide open for country and latin american music

My feeling skimming was that while critical culture broadly had recognized the significance of 80s r&b on a much bigger scale than was true previously it seems to have only manifested on this list in certain Sade-Esque tokens

No “Diana” is insane

Hip hop wise I think it *has* kind of been reduced to the bare bones minimum, canonically ... Eazy e’s first solo should have made it

To my mind, anyone listing Technique and Music For The Masses but not Introspective should be called to account before a jury of some kind.

yeah total lack of country and anything made in Latin America (iirc) were the glaring omissions to me.

Was there anything on the list not sung in English?

also lol at my no. 1 appearing absolutely nowhere on this list, it is not yet rickie lee jones' time i guess

I feel like the 60s and 70s hipster canons are way more wide open for country and latin american music

― President Keyes, Monday, September 10, 2018 11:37 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah part of why I noticed is I don't know much about these albums and could use pointers

and tbf I did enjoy the hipster-canon-subverting fact that there are half a dozen Jamaican albums on this list while there is only one on the old 70s list (though smh at still managing to rank the Marley album highest)

Was there anything on the list not sung in English?

― grawlix (unperson), 10. september 2018 17:46 (forty-five seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, the Indestructable Beat of Soweto, for one.

I always feel very guilty about voting in these lists because I don't feel like I am a useful counterbalance in any direction and particularly not in any direction lists get criticized for

(except gender parity, I guess)

w/r/t Tom Waits, it's a little weird considering how those '80s albums are right up Pitchfork's alley, but i guess the old hat men aren't as likely to hang w/the canon as much.

any list is going to have a lot of obvious picks up high. Purple Rain is predictable but also as good a #1 as one could hope for. Thriller is a good #2. The album is ridiculously fantastic, just listened to it again recently after unearthing my vinyl copy from my folks' house and playing it for my kid. "Wanna Be Startin Something" still makes 7 year olds bounce around.

Digging this Virginia Astley album. I'd never heard of her.

As soon as Rio turned up at #172 I knew this list wouldn't be made with my ears even remotely in mind but although I'm not solipsistic enough to expect Cardiacs, Rudimentary Peni, Julian Cope, Foetus, The The, The Astronauts, The Chameleons or any XTC album not made by Todd Rundgren to all appear, one of them might have been nice. I mean, this list was made by the sorts of people who (in the main) prefer The Head On The Door to Pornography, so there was never any chance, was there? At least Big Science is high - although it should be in the top three

The metal choices are all great. I wish there were more.

i forgot i voted for another metal album that didn't make it, coroner's no more color

which fine, more coroner for me

Quick, dirty, imperfect, subject to change:

Top 40 Eighties Rap Records Missed by the Pitchfork List pic.twitter.com/7OpjqlGiiW

— Christopher R. Weingarten (@1000TimesYes) September 10, 2018

I did a thing on my radio show like 10 years ago where I played a 2-3 song block from every album on the original '80s list. So that's when I figured out that I liked Swordfishtrombones a lot better than Rain Dogs, or that I even appreciated Tom Waits at all.

Re: country, Randy Travis "Storms Of Life" would have been a good choice, although knowing 2018-era Pitchfork I'm sure Dolly Parton probably came closest.

tbh I'm surprised that Stevie Nicks is absent.

I always thought This Heat was a strange choice for the original top 20. It's a great album, but it seems more accurately placed here.

seriously though, where the eff is mary margaret o'hara?

Aah bummer - they yanked both Ghost In The Machine and Synchronicity. :(

Was there no Police at all? I guess Sting’s solo career is a lot to overcome.