pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Agree Solisbury was hurt by Shining.

I thought the terror of Tom Cruise hugging Penelope Cruz did that to "Solsbury Hill."

Peter Gabriel was, ahem, my gateway to a thousand churches.

Including Kate Bush.

I don't know about "hurting" it but this is kind of what I meant by wallpaper -- it's been used for so much that it barely registers as a song that can be good anymore. kind of like "All Star" (to take a very different thing)

xp -- it was the opposite way for me, around the same time I got into Kate Bush I naturally heard "Don't Give Up" and "Games Without Frontiers." but then again, even those are tracks that are a bit too earnest and utterly irony-free in a way I can easily see not registering for others

They should learn to be a bit more earnest, those songs are awesome, fuck irony.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNjQxOTFmNmItMDk1Ni00NTk3LTk0N2MtNmU4OGE5NDIzYjJmXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTQxNzMzNDI@._V1_.jpg

^'80s

xp -- I actually do like both of these songs, but I don't necessarily expect anyone else to

I really hope Games Without Frontiers will be helped once The Americans becomes a cultural touchstone, but I might be wrong on several levels there.

7/4 groove in "Solsbury Hill" is all-time.

seems very idiosyncratic these days - like i dont think young people even here in australia care about midnight oil anymore

Ha, "Beds Are Burning" went to #1 in Canada when I was 9 and is permanently burned into my memory.

it's kinda funny how looking through this list it has so little to do with so much of the actual music that was *everywhere* in the 80s
no AOR/MOR like REO, Air Supply, Rick Springfield, Styx, Bonnie Tyler, Bryan Adams, John Cougar Mellencampm, Christopher Cross, Foreigner
no hair metal Warrant, Ratt, Def Leppard, Cinderella, Quiet Riot, Whitesnake etcetc even Van Halen (unless I missed 1984)
no new wave one/two hits like Cutting Crew, Fixx, Kim Wilde, Simple Minds, Wang Chung, Men at Work
no Eliminator by ZZ Top, no thrash except Metallica
no Police Synchronicity
no Dire Straits Brothers in Arms
none of the huge soundtracks that were so dominant like Top Gun, Footloose, Dirty Dancing, Pretty in Pink, Flashdance
no boomer comeback stuff like Henley, Raitt, Heart, Boston, Aerosmith, Genesis/Collins
no pop/R&B (except Madonna, Whitney) stuff like Paula Abdul, Bobby Brown, Bananarama

thanks for reminding me how most of the omnipresent music of my youth was horrible!

xp way up thread to Whiney g -- Nurse With Wound and Psychic TV are way less "problematic" (esp. re call-out culture ) than Swans, Faith No More, etc. The latter camp is way more "bro-y"

the fuck did Faith No More do?

Mike Patton is kinda crepey and a bit, uh, i can't keep track of who has been called out anymore. But FNM is def on the bro-down side of alt-music

I went to the first YouTube hit to see what the kids thoughts of "Games Without Frontiers" and here you go:

Peter Gabriel is a brony. I just know it.

Most of it is stuff I heard from friends, though I do remember him touching my friend's butt at a Death Grips show about 5 yrs ago

(that was about Patton, not Peter Gabriel) sorry xp

It's interesting to me how relatively low Born in the U.S.A. places (#56) -- considering that it's an example of an album that was both hugely popular / "era-defining," as well as a (deserved) critical success.

Can we go back to talking about the greatness of Rudimentary Peni

not to be ableist but the way that 95% of the reaction on ilm of all places is ‘x album placed but y didn’t??!’ is bad

― flopson, Tuesday, 11 September 2018 16:34 (fifty-nine minutes ago) Permalink

lol flopson

Can we go back to talking about the greatness of Rudimentary Peni

They were no Crass imo.

In the "omission police" spirit, here are a few relatively well-known albums I would have included on a ballot, to reflect what the '80s (and I guess primarily the late '80s) felt like to me (I know, no one cares!):

Indigo Girls, S/T
Tracy Chapman, S/T
John Fogerty, "Centerfield"
Traveling Wilburys, “Vol. 1”
Lou Reed, "The Blue Mask" (possibly also "New York")
Fine Young Cannibals, “The Raw & The Cooked”
10,000 Maniacs, "In My Tribe"
Terrence Trent D’Arby, “Introducing the Hardline…”
R.E.M., "Green" (in place of "Reckoning")

xp apples and oranges IMO, both great

i agree that the blue mask should’ve been on there somehow, it’s much better than let’s dance

Another Life is @AmnesiaScanner’s most accessible and impactful release to date https://t.co/T8MktydrrG

— Pitchfork (@pitchfork) September 11, 2018

morrisp, i think a few of those albums were on the RS list posted upthread

I must be more of a Wenner kid, lol (shudder)

'from a specifically UK/US viewpoint' is a limitation that I don't really know how these lists can be expected to get around unfortunately, as the token non-Western albums that do make these lists are always going to be ones that managed to cross over in some sort of way. it's certainly desirable to expand it as much as possible of course

― ufo, Tuesday, 11 September 2018 16:31

I agree with that, and I'm not even sure I would particularly want them to do anything differently*, I just don't think we should be patting them on the back for "breadth" because hip hop and R&B are better-represented this time. It's good to remind ourselves that there's always more!

*Actually in a dream world perhaps spend some time considering what the selections tell us about the things Pitchfork writers currently think is cool and what that says about Pitchfork, but I realise that my interest in music writers talking about music writing is a minority interest.

I can't speak for anyone else but I don't nominate albums because I think they're "cool"

If cool was the top criteria then the Miami Vice soundtrack would be number one

Obv

that is definitely influential!

Jan Hammer was at his coolest on John Abercrombie's 'Timeless'.

I don't know, Billy Cobham - Spectrum is pretty cool

I can't speak for anyone else but I don't nominate albums because I think they're "cool"

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine)

Fair enough, but replace "cool" with "best" or any other adjective of your choice and my point stands. I mean, the intro says "in 2002, we made a list of The Top 100 Albums of the 1980s. That list was shorter, sure, but it also represented a limited editorial stance we have worked hard to move past; its lack of diversity, both in album selections and contributing critics, does not represent the voice Pitchfork has become" - that's great, and it seems true, but it wouldn't be true to say that Pitchfork has moved past a limited editorial stance, just that it's broadened its editorial stance.

Again, nothing wrong with any of that, I'm pleased they've broadened and I'm pleased to have a list to disagree with, I'm just saying that in my dream world there'd be more reflection on the part of Pitchfork about what the limitations of its current editorial stance are.

As self-aware as pfork is, self-criticism is not something they've ever made a priority.

Or any similar publication, really(?)

The NME of the early and mid 80s spent quite a lot of energy on self-reflection (so did the Sinker-era Wire in a v different way) but whether you’d consider them similar is another matter. I loved both.

Tim is offtm. It's quite correct to say that they've moved past the limitations of the 2002 list, even though other limitations remain. And it's wrong to overlook how different this new canon is! This list manages to both be objectively quite radically new and different, while still seeming as boring and obvious as ever. And if that sounds like a backhanded compliment, I don't mean it like that! The FACT list is great, but it also looks lie an attempt to make a counter-list. Pitchfork looks like an attempt at a new consensus, and it really is quite something that we begin to include Janet Jackson, Sade, Madonna, Sinead O'Connor, Kate Bush, etc, in the center of the canon, rather than at the periphery where basically every woman has been before.

I said it was true that they've moved past the old limitations and I didn't overlook how different the list is? Truthfully I can't see what in my posts you're disagreeing with, unless you think that there's no value in thinking what the new limitations are or what that might mean?

I'm not saying limitations are wrong, or that having them is bad, I'm saying that in my dream world there would be some reflection on what those new limitations are - that reflection would include saying it's good that the artists you name are included.

I think that ranking all these albums against each other cuts against the grain of elevating new/different artists in a certain way (even in cases where they sit comparatively high on the chart), because it creates this weird arena in which ESG dukes it out with Bruce Springsteen (and wins handily!), and the resulting hierarchy relies on the conceit that albums from different genres -- and artists with totally different goals and approaches -- can even really be ranked comparatively at all. I do acknowledge that fewer readers would look at the list if it weren't ranked, tho.

Tim, I just think it's wrong to complain Pitchfork isn't self-critical enough after they've this time managed to do a really good thing.

Mate I wasn't complaining. I said (repeatedly) that *in my dream world* this kind of list (which is more interesting than the previous) would be accompanied by a reflection on what that says about the people who made the list.

I mean, any act of canon-building should include a reflection on the results - it's interesting! And valuable!

I think that ranking all these albums against each other cuts against the grain of elevating new/different artists in a certain way (even in cases where they sit comparatively high on the chart), because it creates this weird arena in which ESG dukes it out with Bruce Springsteen (and wins handily!), and the resulting hierarchy relies on the conceit that albums from different genres -- and artists with totally different goals and approaches -- can even really be ranked comparatively at all. I do acknowledge that fewer readers would look at the list if it weren't ranked, tho.

― stan in the place where you work (morrisp), Tuesday, September 11, 2018 5:20 PM

Morris OTM. This really articulates what feels weird about these lists to me. It's less true in cases where they focus on a genre ("50 Best Shoegaze Albums"), but when you're saying that this here private-press synthesizer improv album is quantitatively better than "Appetite for Destruction", well that just starts to feel kind of meaningless.

Still, I can't resist these list, so I'll patiently await the 2034 re-working where they decide that they forgot to include country, yacht rock, and east asian pop.

yeah, no YMO seems like an oversight

My guess is by necessity the list has been massaged

no need to guess imo. the likelihood of pitchfork (or any of these other publications) putting out as many ranked lists as it has and never having two releases by the same artist rank next to each other (or have anything tie, regardless of artist) is near zero if rankings were actually based on un-massaged poll numbers. we've all seen ilm and p&j poll results.

given the prevalence of such massaging, i don't see why these publications shouldn't stop slavishly adhering to the ranked-list format. like, okay, if you want to communicate some degree of appreciation, agreement or consensus among your contributors, i suppose you could establish a tier system or something, but why continue to pretend that each and every ranked position actually represents something different from all those above or below it? it is fundamentally silly imo